Horizon
Page 34
So it was here she would die, broken on the rocks next to the bodies of her enemies, only the very last of the many deadly threats since the Siege, but at least it would be instant and she would be washed clean in the freezing water of the river before her body was deposited, lifeless and pale, on a gravel spit far downstream. It would be consumed by animals, picked to the bones, dried to nothing while far above, the new community took hold, Ruthie and Dor and Sammi and her father and all the others she’d known, the imperfect people she’d loved, sometimes badly but always with all of her heart.
And then she felt herself being dragged again, her arm nearly pulled from its socket. Dor bellowed her name and she scrabbled on the crumbling asphalt as a huge chunk of the bridge split off a few yards away from her and fell toward the water.
She slipped back a foot, another, and then miraculously her boots found purchase and she propelled herself forward, holding tightly to the hands reaching for her, climbing with bloodied fingers up the sloping, tearing edifice. Above them, the bridge’s concrete footings began to separate from the earth into which they’d been poured, like tree roots after a storm, tearing off chunks of dirt and saplings with them.
She realized Dor was trying to help her, even though he was about to lose his own grip, somehow he’d managed to climb ahead and had one arm wrapped around an exposed root, his feet kicking against the gaping earth, and still he was reaching for her. Above him people screamed and reached for him, but he did not take his eyes off her. She slid another few inches, nails scraping and breaking on the crumbling surface, before she found her footing again and pushed herself upward toward the rough poured concrete. It provided a handhold but too late, too late, as the footings separated from the earth and seemed to hang in the air for a moment before the entire bridge half slammed down into the gorge.
Cass screamed and flailed wildly, her hand brushing the feathery leaves of a wild honeysuckle vine. She seized it and held on with all her strength, getting her other hand around the branch as the bridge fell away beneath her feet and she was suspended in the air.
She looked down, and knew it was a mistake when she saw the bridge span split into pieces on the rocks, the water frothing and geysering around the detritus. She thought a body bobbed on the surface of the water for a second before disappearing beneath. Smoke—oh God, Smoke was down there Smoke was dead he had died saving them. Her hands slipped on the vine and she realized the shrill screaming was coming from her. Desperately she tried to pull herself up, her arms quivering with the effort, but the vine tore away from the earth, flinging clots of dirt into her face.
A thin network of roots was all that held, the woody vine beginning to splinter at the base. And then strong hands closed over hers and she let herself be lifted, dragged across the muddy outcropping to safety. She lay facedown, heaving for air, exhausted and aching, using the last of her strength to lift her chin and search for Dor and there he was, on his knees in the dirt, he’d made it, they’d lifted him to safety too, and she was weak with gratitude as he crawled to her and took her in his arms and she lay there, cradled in his safety while he kissed her hair and whispered her name.
When she got her breath she twisted to look behind her where the bridge used to be. The earth was torn and jagged on either side of the gorge. Down below, the rushing water had swept most of the bridge away, a few broken edges jutting from the surface where pieces lodged among the rocks. There was no sign of the attackers’ bodies. The river had swallowed them whole, and at its leisure would spit them out again, indifferent as the rest of the earth to human struggles, to right and wrong, intent only on coming back to life itself.
Chapter 48
IT WAS NEARLY nightfall in the camp. They’d put out the smoldering fires around the settlement and built a new one in the center, feeding it with the lumber from a ruined structure that Nadir identified as the ornamental gate with the symbol of the new community designed by the people of his old town, a clover with four leaves to represent the four settlements.
The attackers had actually left most of the place intact, burning largely superficial structures. Or maybe they had intended to pile the bodies on a pyre to burn, and run out of time. For now, the Edenites carried the bodies outside the edge of the settlement to a grassy clearing. Tomorrow, they would dig graves.
Smoke would have no grave, but Cass did not need one to visit. For her, the river itself would be his memorial. She would visit it in every season, she would look down at the rushing waters, crusted with ice in winter, running with fish in summer, and she would remember and honor him.
One building in the clearing was nearly complete, a long wide dormitory with windows set high in the walls and a roof framed out and nearly finished. The first-wave settlers had outfitted the building with bedding and a few personal items: photos tacked to walls, rolled-up socks and clothing stacked on the floor. They gathered these and stored them at one end, before getting the children settled for the night. Pink insulation lined the walls and roof of the structure; already, the heat of their bodies was warming the interior.
Everyone was silent. The latest losses had stunned them, the terrible memories of the attackers falling into the gorge, the bodies of the four who’d been shot while trying to cross. The daunting tasks that lay ahead of them. All of this was too much to bear at the end of this long and cursed day. Tomorrow they would take up the yoke of their futures yet again, but for now they were spent, and before long everyone went to bed.
Cass waited until Dor’s breathing became deep and even beside her, and then she got up as carefully as she could. Her body ached from her scrapes and bruises, and she limped painfully out into the night.
The moon lit her path back to the gorge, glinting off bits of mica in the earth, souvenirs from a volcanic eruption aeons ago. She shivered in the cold, but she would not be out here long.
At the edge she looked out over the river and the land beyond, the sloping trail that led back down to the camp and finally the road back to civilization. Here on this side, they were safe—for a night, a month, a season—no one could say. The future was unknowable, but she knew some other things.
She knew the sound of her daughter’s voice.
The touch of a strong man.
The friendship of people who were no longer strangers.
The love of her father.
She did not yet know the limits of her strength, but she was ready to be tested, and tested again. She would be tempted and discouraged and broken, but she would come back each time, into this world that had been bequeathed to them, into the dangers that threatened them and the joys that waited, buried but not impossible, for them to unearth and cherish.
“Thank You,” she whispered into the wind, praying to a God she was not sure existed, whose purpose she did not yet know.
Her words were plucked from her lips and carried into the night, no one to hear them but the spirits of the dead. After a moment she turned and started back to the settlement. Tomorrow she would work alongside the other survivors. Her family. Her lover. Her friends. She would do the next right thing and the next. In small and humble ways, she would begin to live again.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
The Aftertime series marks a turning point in my life as a writer. Because of the efforts of my agent and editor—Barbara Poelle and Adam Wilson—I was able to take on a challenge that was far more rewarding than it ever was daunting—and it was plenty daunting.
Thank you, thank you, Harlequin team! I keep wanting to pinch myself. E
very writer should be so lucky.
ISBN: 9781459220416
Copyright © 2012 by Sophie Littlefield
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