by K. Panikian
The river was still wide and deep. We would have to swim it if we wanted to cross. I suggested that we try and follow it for a bit though. If it crisscrossed the valley, there was no point crossing it now if we needed to cross it again later. We could pace along its bank until we reached the end of the valley, and then we would see on which side we needed to be.
Julian agreed and we started walking again, my leg muscles stiff and sore from that difficult descent. The constant murmuring of the river lulled me and I deeply inhaled the fresh water scent, clearing the dust from my nose.
Finally, we decided to stop for the day and set up our camp. Julian used the deadfall along the bank for his fence. We washed up in the river again, taking turns standing guard.
Julian caught a couple of trout for our dinner and I found greens along the shore to bake with them in the coals.
Later that night, we snuggled by the fire and listened to the river shush by.
BY midday the next day, we realized we needed to cross the river to keep moving toward the mountain range. We were almost to the end of the valley and could see a huge, shimmering expanse of silver in the distance where the river emptied into a massive lake. We needed to stay to the west side of the lake, and that meant fording the river.
At this point the waterway was skinnier, but still fast-moving. I could see the ripples where it flowed over the rocks in the bed, so I knew the current was strong. I could barely see the far bank and its sandy beach, so I again launched our packs over the expanse to the other shore.
We decided to lock arms as we crossed, so if one of us lost our footing, the other could help. Julian told me, too, that if I did end up getting caught up in the current, to point my feet downstream so I could push off any rocks, instead of hitting them headfirst, and to swim for the far shore at an angle, instead of trying to swim back upstream.
He added that if we got separated, to take care of myself and get to the far shore.
All of his tips were making me more nervous. I’d forded rivers before, but not with someone I loved. And I loved him—desperately. These weeks alone together had only solidified my deep feelings. I hoped he felt the same but I was afraid to ask, remembering his rapid retreat the last time I told him about my feelings.
I kissed him and we locked our arms, moving into the chilly, churning water.
We did well at first. The river slowly climbed up my legs to my waist, but the smooth gravel bed didn’t unbalance my steps. When we reached the center though, the current became much faster. Debris floated by—large branches and logs. A snag must have just released upstream. We paused and regrouped, assessing the rest of the journey. The water was up to my chest.
My legs felt numb and my teeth chattered. It was summer, but this was a glacier-fed river, and my body was losing heat fast. Julian watched upstream for a moment and then started tugging me long again. I followed and stepped where he stepped.
Then I moved and my foot sank much deeper than I expected, deep into a hole in the riverbed where a rock had broken loose. My body dropped into the hole and the river washed over my head. I reflexively let go of Julian’s arm and started to tumble downstream with the fast-moving current.
Panicking, I flailed and spit out the water that filled my mouth. Managing to get my feet under me again briefly, I pushed up to the surface to gasp and suck down some air. Over the roaring in my ears, I heard Julian shout my name, then I was under the water again.
The glacial silt churning and swirling made everything gray and it was difficult to see which way was up as I rolled through the water.
My lungs burning, I made my body go limp instead of fighting the spin and when I finally felt the riverbed beneath my feet, I jumped upward, my head breaking the surface, and I started treading water, pointing my feet downstream.
I sucked in deep lungfuls of air, tilting my head back. It was hard to see the shoreline over the ebbs and swells of water in my eyeline, but I thought I could see treetops to my right, so I tried to angle my treading arms in that direction.
My hearbeat thundered in my ears as I focused completely on the treetops along the near shore. When an arm grasped me up and out of the water, I screamed and thrashed in shock.
Then I realized that Julian was holding me in his arms, standing steady in the rolling water, his eyes blazing blue with his magical strength.
I wrapped my arms desperately around his neck. Wading slowly across the rest of the way, he held me so firmly I almost couldn’t breathe. I gripped him tightly back and tried to calm my ragged crying.
When we stumbled into the shallows, the river reaching only his ankles, Julian dropped to his knees in the sand, exhausted.
I tried to wriggle down but it was like being held by a marble statute. He was unmovable. So, I lay in his arms, resting my head on his chest, and listened to his heartrate slow.
Finally, he dipped his forehead to rest against mine for a moment and then lowered me so I could stand. I helped him to his feet and we waded the rest of the way out of the water together. Julian made me stand still while he checked me over. I felt some new bruises and scrapes, but the pain was slight. I was almost dizzy with the adrenaline release.
It took over an hour to walk back upstream to where our packs waited. I must have really been moving quickly in the water.
Without discussing it, we went ahead and set up camp right there by the river. After Julian pitched the tent, I stripped out of my wet clothes and crawled inside, wrapping myself in the sleeping bags, trembling uncontrollably from the effects of the cold water.
I listened to Julian heaving and tossing snags and logs around the tent for a few minutes and then the rustle of his wet clothes dropping as he stripped too. I could dry everything later, I decided. Then he was in the tent with me and I pulled his shivering body under the blankets.
Wrapping my arms around him tightly, I ducked my head under his chin and we slowly warmed up again.
After a little while, I felt his calloused fingers stroking up and down my back and I lifted my head so he could reach my neck with his warm lips. He traced my collarbone with light, nipping kisses and I scraped my fingernails along his muscled, hairy chest. His fingers were gentle but insistent against my skin and I tugged him the rest of the way up to my lips with an impatient moan.
A little while later I said, as I lay sprawled on my stomach, “I thought you were supposed to leave me if I fell?”
Julian, draped across me, murmured drowsily, “I’ll never leave you.”
And we fell asleep.
Chapter 20
After the incident crossing the river, I felt an increased urgency to reach our destination. My floundering had cost us half-a-day’s travel. We didn’t even know which part of the western mountain range to aim for yet, potentially costing us even more days if we guessed incorrectly.
When we reached the large lake at the end of the valley, the vista opened and we could clearly see the base of the mountain range ahead of us. However, low-lying clouds ringed the lake and it was impossible to see if any of the peaks were smoking.
I sat on my pack, resting and worrying.
“We need to be higher than these low clouds to see the summits,” Julian confirmed. “But it looks like we’re on flat ground for the next few days until we reach the foothills.”
I nodded.
He said doubtfully, “I guess if we aim for the middle of the range, we’ll be able to go north or south once we figure out which mountain is our destination?”
I agreed again, absently this time. I wondered if I could do it? I looked at Julian. He was sturdy and strong, but if I dropped him, he would die. I wouldn’t drop him, I resolved.
I stood. “I think I should be able to lift you up above the clouds.”
Julian raised his brows.
“I don’t like to lift people, generally. They’re harder than objects because I can’t exert too much pressure on a body. Otherwise, I’ll crush you, or tear you apart. But I’ve done it before. I lifted Ow
en out of that crevasse in Russia, remember?”
“That was maybe twenty feet,” Julian countered. “These clouds are a mile above us.”
“I used to lift Cato to the top of the tower so he could spy on the Elder Council. He would turn invisible with his illusion magic, and I would fly him to the window and hold him there.”
Julian looked at me hesitantly still.
“I can’t do it to myself. My magic doesn’t work like that. I’ve tried.” My voice wavered. It would be amazing to fly. I cleared my throat. “We don’t have to do it. We can keep heading west and hope the clouds clear before we’re too committed to a specific mountain. It’s just an idea.”
Julian said carefully, “I want to try it, I do. I’m a little, ah, nervous, I guess. Can we do it in stages, like a few feet, then a few feet more, et cetera?”
I beamed at him. “Sure!”
He took off his pack and stood in front of me, his face frowning with worry.
I swirled my blue filaments of elemental magic around his body, equally distributing his weight and pressure points, and raised my arms slightly. I lifted him and once his feet left the ground, pushed up against the air below. I had to balance the lift and push movements and the higher we went, the weaker the help I would get from my push. To lift him higher than the clouds, I had to pull from above, as high as I could reach. It would be very strenuous, but I knew I could do it.
Julian rose smoothly and hovered about two feet above the ground.
I saw the expression on his face as he gazed down at me and I lowered him back down.
“Why’d you stop?”
“You’re glaring at me! I’m not going to do it if you’re too freaked out. Are you scared of heights? I should have asked.”
“Sorry,” he said, purposefully turning his face into a neutral expression.
I looked at him carefully, trying to decide if he really did want to try it, or if he was being stoic so I didn’t feel bad about my idea. He looked calmly at me.
I lifted him again, this time to ten feet, before checking on him. He looked west, toward the mountains. I lowered him back down.
“What?” he asked. “I did good that time!”
“If we go all the way up, I won’t be able to see you in the clouds, or hear you either. I’ll be able to feel you with my magic though. I just thought I’d tell you, so you don’t worry.”
I snapped my fingers. “Also, don’t move. It might mess me up.”
He stared at me again and then nodded. “Let’s try it. I’m ready.”
After hugging him quickly, I stepped back again. This time I lifted him and kept going, maintaining my steady pressure and my slow pace. I lifted and pushed, repeating the movements over and over, until I solely lifted. Julian rose up ten feet, twenty feet, one hundred feet… He rose into the gray, heavy sky until he was only a speck above me, and then he vanished into the low-lying clouds.
Closing my eyes, I felt him, my elemental cords still enclosing him firmly, and I lifted him even higher. Finally, at the limits of my control, I paused, waiting and hoping he was above the clouds and able to see the range. My powers straining, I felt stretched and fragile. Then I lowered him swiftly and carefully.
As soon as he was a speck again on the leaden backdrop of the cloudy sky, I slowed his descent and eventually, he stood on the ground again. Dropping to my knees to catch my breath, I shook out my clenched hands. I felt weak and tired, but exhilarated.
I rose and staggered to his side. His clothes and hair were damp, his skin pale and ice cold. His eyes burned bright with excitement.
I started steaming him dry, waving my hands slowly over his body, but then had to stop. I was too tired. I helped him pull a change of clothes from his pack instead while he told me what he saw.
“Right there.” He pointed southwest where the mountain range rose out of the foothills. “I saw a crag that’s almost vertical, like a tower. And at the top, there’s a smoke ring swirling.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed.
Julian nodded. “That was the most incredible thing, Astrid. I won’t lie, at first, I didn’t like it at all, but the higher I went and the more I could see, the more amazing it was. I’ve never been skydiving, but now I think I want to try it.” He laughed breathlessly.
“Going through the cloud wasn’t fun though. It was cold and wet and I couldn’t see anything. I kept wanting to wave my hand in front of my face, but I didn’t move, remembering your instructions.
“When I finally burst through the top of the clouds though, and the sun fell across the whole bright, glowing white surface, like a rainbow of yellow and orange. That,” he cleared his throat, “was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
I listened wistfully. Maybe I should try skydiving.
He hugged me tightly and we shouldered our packs. Then we skirted the lake and turned our feet toward the southern-most mount of the western range.
“WHY do you think the mountain is smoking?” I asked the next day. We’d left the vast lake and the river valley behind and now we trudged through a flat, dry landscape.
“Do you think it’s smoke from the dragon?”
Julian shrugged. “I don’t know enough about dragons. I’ve only seen the minor azhdaya that came through the portal as part of the scout cohort in Russia. They had small fires and only two heads.”
I nodded. This one had at least three heads, if it was the one my uncle chased. That meant it could fly, which I’d never seen before.
“It could be a volcano?” Julian offered. “I know of some volcanos that emit smoke all of the time, even if they’re not erupting.”
“Or maybe it’s something to do with Abaddon’s magic,” I mused. “We don’t know what he’s doing with the dragon to create the stronger besy.”
I still couldn’t see the towering crag with the smoke ring; the dense clouds remained low in the sky. Staring across the brown and tan shrubland, I watched a dust storm blow westward. No, not a dust storm. I pointed it out to Julian and he pulled his binoculars from his pack.
“Todorats again,” he said grimly. “I think we’re far enough away, and we’re not kicking up dust the way they are. But with the mountain visible now, there may be scouting parties. We should make sure our fires are out before the sun goes down.”
“What about a disguise? We could try and change our appearance to mimic some kind of animal?”
Julian frowned. “Maybe…” he said slowly. He looked over at the backpacks, speculating. “I can’t think of anything we brought to use.”
“We don’t have time for me to tan the hides of the animals we’re hunting, but I can do a rough curing for some of the larger pelts. I just have to scrape all the meat and fat from the hide and then dump on a ton of salt.
“I’ve seen lots of salt beds as we’ve hiked along, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
“They won’t last more than a month or so, but we could make cloaks out of the pelts to disguise our shapes.”
“That’s a great idea,” Julian said seriously.
EASIER said than done. We hunted a lot over the next few days, trying to accumulate a pile of pelts. We didn’t make much forward progress toward the mountain, but we ended up with a lot of snowshoe hares. They were everywhere. I didn’t complain; they were easy to skin.
Each night Julian cleaned the hares and cooked them for our dinner, while I rubbed the hides in salt. Each morning, while we ate more rabbit for breakfast, I scraped the hides clear of the salt and then rubbed them again. My hands turned raw from the salt before I felt like I had a sufficient pile of gray and brown rabbit furs to make two cloaks.
Then we needed eggs, which were harder to find than the rabbits. We searched every bush we passed and ranged widely around each other, trying to flush partridges, quail, and grouse.
I shared with Julian that we could use snake eggs, too, but that only got a shudder and a significant negative head shake.
We camped that night next to a stream
and I told Julian we’d need to stay in one spot all the next day. While Julian fished for our dinner, since we were both sick of rabbits, I rubbed the egg yolks into the pelts and let them stretch overnight one last time.
In the morning, I scrubbed them all clean in the creek. Julian made a large fire and we spent the rest of the morning slowly smoking the pelts. They had to be close enough to the fire to soak up the smoke, but not so close that we cooked them. It was a frustrating, dirty, and smelly task.
With the furs finally dry and cured, I started sewing them together with fishing line and a thick needle Julian made from some bone splinters. It took a long time, since he kept having to make me new needles when mine would snap or dull.
At the end of that last day, I felt heartily sick of the whole project. Leaving Julian to roll up the cloaks, I carried my peppermint soap to the stream for a long, long, soak.
Chapter 21
Now, as we marched west, we stretched the rabbit fur cloaks across our packs. We looked like odd, gray two-humped creatures instead of humans.
The smoking mountain grew larger and larger on the horizon and I knew we were only days away from starting our climb. I could see the murky ring of smoke now. It encircled the top of the towering crag and rotated in a slow, winding path, white-gray and thickly opaque.
Game became scarce, most likely because the landscape changed again, becoming more and more arid as we approached the mountain range, but I worried it was because numerous besy already crossed this shrubland and depleted its resources.
There were still narrow creeks and streams, so we didn’t worry about our water supply, at least. Not yet.
At night, due to the absence of fallen trees, instead of building wooden barricades to shelter our tent, Julian stretched his coiled vines in a crisscross pattern between whatever landmarks were nearby, like a large rock or a scrubby bush. Before we went to bed, we hung on each strand a pair of forks, or a pair of mugs, so if something disturbed the vines, we’d hear a tinkling sound. It wasn’t ideal and every night I missed our log perimeters, but it was better than nothing.
