by Ginn Hale
Though they both paused after they came over a ridge to see a beaver pond and a vast alpine meadow spread out below them. A huge herd of snow-white mountain goats grazed on brush and explosions of wild flowers, while a pairs of ridingbirds cooed and preened from mounded nests. Betty watched them and then peered back over her shoulder to where Grover knew Romeo trailed them. Two days past Grover had allowed him to sleep curled up in sight of their campfire; since then the male ridingbird had grown steadily less shy.
But it wasn’t the mountain goats, riding birds or even the clouds of butterflies descending upon the flowers that captured Grover’s attention. Some hundred yards from them, King Douglass stood, his wings folded, watching over four fuzzy, speckled flaplings as they speared and poked after marmots, snakes and hares. Between catches, they scampered on all fours, like gigantic bats, squealing and chirping and then playfully fencing one another with their glinting beaks.
Grover felt King Douglass’s pride as he watched the young thunderbirds. They already stood taller than full-grown men and sported dots of fiery color across their growing crests. In a year’s time they would be magnificent.
“You really adore that fella, don’t you?” Lawrence asked.
“I…” Grover flushed, realizing how absurd he must look grinning happily at the big old thunderbird. “But just look at him. You can tell he’s been through tough times. That tear in his wing, the scrapes across his beak and all those scars on his back legs. But he’s still got his dignity and his pride. He ain’t been beat for all the hard knocks he’s taken.”
“I suppose,” Lawrence allowed, and they rode on.
Though that night just before they went to sleep, Lawrence took out his sketchbook and showed Grover a little cartoon he’d made of King Douglass wearing a battered crown and a heart-shaped locket. The tiny portrait inside the locket looked suspiciously like Grover himself. It was silly but it made Grover strangely happy.
The next day they at last reached Grover’s cabin, which he’d built back into a hill on the high ground overlooking the rift lands. Before this, he’d thought it had been a miracle that his place hadn’t been destroyed when the rift had opened up. But now he wondered if somehow Lawrence hadn’t protected the cabin, even while he’d battled against Cixi.
“It’s even prettier than I remembered,” Lawrence said softly.
Grover nodded.
The sod roof sported so many flowers it reminded Grover of his ma’s Sunday hat. A family of squirrels had moved into the outhouse, but the rest of the place Grover had sealed up tighter than a crypt when he’d left. His little treasury of smoked meat, tanned hides and applejack remained undisturbed. Lawrence helped him set up the A-frame that served as a stable and pull off the heavy shutters to air out the stuffy interior of the cabin itself. Grover hauled water from the nearby creak while Lawrence fed and penned his horse. Betty and Romeo settled themselves down to flapping and flirting near the sapling apple trees Grover had planted two years back.
The cabin’s single room wasn’t so nice as the place Grover rented from the Codys, but he took great pride in it. The table and three chairs had belonged to his parents, as had the few dishes and the simple tablecloth. He’d built the two cabinets and the bed himself, and he’d worked himself almost to death the first year he’d been on his own to save enough money to buy the cast-iron potbelly stove.
Watching Lawrence build a fire in the stove, while he made-up the wood-framed bed with furs and his prized quilt, Grover felt nostalgia creep over him. Though in the past Lawrence might have grumbled and pouted about doing woman’s work and, of course, there wouldn’t have been a tiny green pterosaur peering in the newly opened window.
“You’ve done a lot with this place since I was last here.” Lawrence closed the fire door.
“Not that much.” Grover glanced around, trying to remember what he’d added or refined since Lawrence had left. The fact that he’d thought so often of Lawrence while he’d worked—at least in those first two years before he’d learned of Lawrence’s death—made it difficult to recall his absence as much as the longing for his return.
“I remember helping to haul parts of this blasted stove out with you,” Lawrence said. “But there was only one window back then. And the walls weren’t anywhere near as thick as these are now. The second cabinet is new too.”
“Stick around and you might get to sample a three-horn haunch from the new smokehouse I’m planning.” Grover made the remark lightly, and Lawrence did smile, but only for a moment. Then he picked his hat back up off the table.
“You said the rift is just west of here.” Lawrence started for the door. “I should probably go have a look.”
“You’ll have better luck finding it if I go with you.”
“I figured I’d just follow the old path down to the springs,” Lawrence replied, but he stopped in the doorway. He cast Grover a sheepish smile. “Which I can tell from your expression isn’t there anymore, is it?”
“The place thereof knows it no more. To misquote the Good Book. The whole hollow where the Fire Springs were isn’t anything like it used to be. But I know a couple shortcuts I might be willing to share with you. If you asked nice.”
“All right. Nice as you like.” Lawrence pulled off his hat and bowed low like he was some old-time knight. “Will you do me the kindness of showing me the way, good sir?”
“Certainly.” Grover tossed the last blanket across the bed and swept up his own hat.
“There’s no need to look quite so smug.” Lawrence commented.
“Just wait, you’ll see,” Grover replied.
As soon as they reached the great cavernous tunnels that the explosive opening of the rift had torn through the surrounding hills, Lawrence agreed that Grover had every right to look smug.
Ferns, cycads and young ginko trees hid many of the openings, and others had long ago become homes to a few bears, and several skunks. But one of the tunnels rose up like a black mouth in the side of the hill.
“Takes a little time for your eyes to adjust, but once they do it’s easier to find your way,” Grover assured Lawrence.
He nodded and stared at the surfaces of the immense cavern they strode through.
Big white-and-blue crystals as well as huge shards of obsidian studded every surface of the tunnels, catching light and reflecting it across the dozens of tiny streams that ran down the walls and pooled across the floors. Bats veered overhead and disappeared into a dark crack in one wall.
“This is like walking through an immense geode,” Lawrence marveled. His voice soft as it was, bounced and echoed all around them. He glanced sidelong at Grover. “How did you ever learn to find your way through this place, Grove?”
“I followed a mother whiptail leading her young back across the rift and then marked the path.” Grover pointed to the tattered remains of cord that he’d first tied around the base of a gleaming white crystal. Though now he could have found his way blindfolded.
“You never fail to astound me.” Lawrence smiled at him with such open admiration that Grover felt almost giddy. He had to look away, and it was good that he did because he nearly missed a turn in his delighted state. That would have made for a nice bit of irony, he supposed.
After that near miss he quickly led Lawrence out from the tunnels. They emerged on one of several promontories that ringed a deep ravine. A multitude of ferns and orchids clung tenaciously to the slick, wet stone walls, and a strange variety of bees buzzed between them.
Across the ravine, some three hundred feet away, a huge waterfall gushed from the jagged rift in the mountain wall. Red splinters of the mountain itself bridged the distance between the gaping rift and the surrounding cliffs like fallen trees spanning a stream. Some of the stone bridges were too fragile to support anything above the weight of the eagles that nested on them. But only a short hop down from where he and Lawrence stood was a bridge
that jutted out wide as a city road and sturdy enough for two longnecks to stroll across.
Thankfully today it stood empty except for a couple of hawks.
Six years ago, all of this had only been a little gully where a hot spring bubbled away.
Now, walls of salt mist rose up from the river far below and blanketed Grover in the scent of the ancient ocean that poured improbably from the tear in the mountain’s stone face.
While overhead the sun had only risen an hour or so past noon, rays of twilight sun streamed out from the breech in time, throwing odd shadows across the stone bridges.
Grover crouched down and contemplated the chasm ahead of him. The rift wasn’t a neat straight line but crooked as a lightning bolt and much wider at the far end where floodwaters roared out.
“How did you ever get through there?” Lawrence asked.
“I walked across like everything else.” He’d only crossed over once and had been all too happy to turn right back around once he took in the miles and miles of swamp and jungle that surrounded the heaving sea. Not that he needed to tell Lawrence that right now.
“But how did you get through all that water?”
“Only part of the rift opens underwater. See up there.” He pointed to the top end of the lightning bolt. “Higher up, at the end of that stone bridge, there is land. You can just make out the beach and the forest beyond that.”
Lawrence continued to survey the chasm of the rift then he grimaced.
“Neither of the other two rifts opened on such a steep angle. I’d hoped…” He drifted off as he swung down onto the big stone bridge. He strode several feet farther and then obviously sized up the distance to another far more fragile-looking one. It angled high into the far wall of the mountain. Lawrence started to lean out to it and alarm lit through Grover.
“Stop!” Grover shouted. “It won’t hold you! There’s a huge crack in it farther along.”
Lawrence nodded and sauntered back to rejoin Grover, standing at the edge of the promontory.
Grover tried to hide how jumpy Lawrence’s recklessness made him by casually asking, “So we’re here now. How do we close this thing?”
“If you look closely at the edge of the rift,” Lawrence said, “you can see white flecks in the midst of all the burnt and blasted stone.”
Grover scrutinized the dark edge and spied the opalescent rock Lawrence pointed at.
“It’s a hunk of alchemic stone, isn’t it?” Grover asked.
Lawrence nodded, his expression grim.
Once Grover recognized the first alchemic stone, he quickly picked out another five, studding the chasm’s gape. He squinted and felt sure he could just make out tiny symbols flashing from the stones’ surfaces.
“They’re the lynchpins that I focused on when I was manifesting Nate Tucker’s spell and fighting Cixi. Now they continue to radiate the spell and hold the rift open. What I have to do is get close enough to burn at least half of them out. Once they fail then the entire rift will collapse.”
“How close do you need to be?” Grover asked. After all he’d opened the rift from half a world away.
“Touching them would work best,” Lawrence replied, his gaze still pinned to the chasm. “Farther than three feet away and I risk the lynchpins radiating the spell to all the other alchemic stones surrounding them and just making the rift stronger. I have to be close enough to isolate them. Honora worked the distances all out.”
Grover had heard enough of Lady Astor—and seen enough of her skill—to take it on faith that she was right. But the distance between the top and the bottom of the rift opening was easily ninety feet at the narrowest spots. It would be a hell of a trick to get up that high to reach the alchemic stones ringing the opening.
He and Lawrence both stared at the sheer face of the mountain ahead of them. Something large and dark plunged over the edge of the waterfall and disappeared into the clouds of white mist below. It was such a long way down, Grover wondered how anything survived such a fall, even into the deep, deep water of the Rift River. But creatures of all kinds did. He’d seen them basking on the riverbanks and swimming in lakes.
Just because a thing seemed impossible didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.
“Are you thinking of scaling the side of the mountain?” Grover asked. If so, they’d need ropes and pitons. If they had a month or two, that wouldn’t be any concern at all. As it was, they likely had mere days before Tucker found the rift. Maybe they could construct ladders of some kind—they had more than enough wood in the surrounding spruce. And if they only needed to reach half the lynchpin stones, maybe they could manage it.
“It’s too steep and too wet to climb, but I can bring the stones down to me,” Lawrence said. “That’s what Gaston had to do to reach his.”
“Didn’t he die?” Grover asked.
Lawrence said nothing but just continued to glower at the scattered alchemic stones glinting across the rift’s gaping mouth. Inside the rift, the sky darkened and a strange scattering of stars gleamed from the black.
“Look, I ain’t a mage or a theurgist but even I know that pulling a heap of boulders down on top of yourself is a terrible plan,” Grover announced.
“Sometimes bad choices are all you have—”
“But it isn’t all you have!” Grover grabbed Lawrence’s arm and jerked him around to face him, instead of the yawning pit of the rift. “You have me and we still have time to think this through. Unless what you’re really after is a way to kill yourself!”
Lawrence flinched slightly at the accusation but then shook his head.
“I don’t want to die,” he said quietly. “After I lost my arm I did think about it. But I realized that what I truly wanted was to come back here, to see you again and tell you how sorry I was that I ran away and left you.”
Grover wrapped his arms around Lawrence. The two of them held each other.
“I have to put things right, Grove,” Lawrence whispered. “I don’t know how but I have to find a way.”
“I know,” Grover told him. “But you don’t have to do it this minute. Come back to the cabin with me. We’ll make our selves some supper and think about how we can get this done. Tucker and his airship are probably still a few days behind us.”
Lawrence nodded and turned with Grover. They walked through the tunnel with their arms linked.
“If only I had stolen the damn airship,” Lawrence murmured, and he gave a soft laugh at his own suggestion. “Well, most likely if I tried I’d have been riddled full of bullets before I could even work out how to fly the bloody thing.”
Grover paused as something in Lawrence’s words sparked a thought. Flying…if only he could fly.
Perhaps it was a mad idea but all at once Grove felt his entire body humming with excitement.
“You could fly!” Grover’s voice echoed wildly through the cavernous tunnel. A bat flitted away.
“What are you talking about?” Lawrence asked.
“King Douglass, Lawry.” Grover had to fight to lower his voice. “I could do like I did with the bat and get him to carry you.”
Lawrence went very quiet for several moments as they left the tunnel and started through the woods towards Grover’s cabin.
“I find the idea of being carried by a giant pterosaur terrifying. However…” Lawrence paused like he had to work out a math problem before he could go on. “If you really could control it, your plan might just work.”
“Sure it could.” Grover’s thoughts raced forward. “We could build you a sling out of tanned skins, and King Douglass could pick that up and fly with you. We’d have to practice first of course, but it could work, Lawry. It could. I could do this for you.”
“As if you haven’t done enough for me already.” Lawrence shook his head but he was smiling.
Chapter Eight
After the
y returned to the cabin, Grover decided to break out his best smoked meat and tap his aged applejack, by way of a small celebration and maybe to show off a little. After all, it was Lawrence’s first night back with him at the cabin, and they’d completed the journey with days to spare.
When he returned from his dry cellar with the haunch and jug, he found that Lawrence had not only set the table but shaved and put some effort into gussying himself up. The shirt he wore looked cleaner than what he’d been sporting for the last week, and he’d combed his auburn hair back in a stylish sweep.
“Well, howdy-do, handsome stranger,” Grover greeted him. “You ain’t seen my dusty traveling companion anywhere about, have you?”
To Grover’s surprise Lawrence flushed slightly at the passing compliment. Lord knew why—the man was a looker, always had been.
“I took the liberty of acquainting myself with your bare spice cupboard and reckoned that now might be a good time to break out the masala powder I won gambling in India. I’m thinking of making you a curry like I had there.” Lawrence took the smoked haunch from him and laid it down on Grover’s cutting board. “I don’t suppose you have any potatoes or onions in the root cellar?”
“There should be a few.” Grover watched as Lawrence drew an ornately decorated box from his saddlebag. It looked like a miniature treasure chest. “I ain’t never heard of masala powder. Is that it?”
Lawrence flipped open the lid of the box and held it out to him. Grover took a sniff and about a thousand perfumes rolled up over him. Pungent, hot and sweet. Christmas cake, Chinese tea and mole poblano all floating through his senses.
“That’s amazing.” Grover couldn’t help but take a second sniff of the complex aromas.
“I know,” Lawrence replied. “The variety of spices in India was astounding. If things had been different, I would have brought more back home for you. The food there was—well, hot as Hell, but also delicious in ways I would never have imagined.”
“Wish I could have tasted it,” Grover sighed.
