“No. You couldn’t,” he said, mocking in his voice. “You can’t.”
The wind swirled. Halley’s bracelet banged again on the sore spot on her wrist bone. The painful sensation reminded her once more of the people she’d met on her journey, of their anger and powerlessness, of their fear. She stilled the movement of the bracelet with her other hand. How useful it would have been to inject the others with some of Trance’s power, some of his absolute conviction. How useful, to have access to those hyena teeth when needed.
“Come here,” she said. She couldn’t believe she was saying it.
“What?” He was incredulous as well.
“Come here.”
“You’ve never invited me close before.”
“I never understood before.” She held out her arms. “It’s just a few steps.”
He didn’t move.
“You’re right – I can’t kill you,” she said. “I need you too much. Let us now work together. Let us both live.”
“I don’t want you to live.” He drew out each word for emphasis.
“You are not in charge of that.”
He began to walk up the stone staircase as if mesmerized. The sun glowed on his white hair and thick torso. He began to look less solid, almost transparent. The wind swirled the dust in the air; it seemed to blow it right through him. He stopped three steps away.
“Closer,” she said.
When he finally reached the step on which she stood, he shimmered like vapor, a white, gaseous cloud.
She breathed the vapor in. It reminded her of the dawn mist rising from a wintertime river. “Yes. That’s where you belong,” she whispered. “With me. In me.” It was like inhaling a mixture of menthol, eucalyptus and pine: refreshing; clearing; powerful. With her breath, she guided him to the ancient, primordial place in her brain stem where the wild things were kept.
“You are mine. You are me,” she said.
She felt him pushing at her, trying to shove his way higher into her consciousness, up her brainstem. “No. I am in charge this time,” she said firmly.
“Sure, Sparrow, sure,” he whispered back. “You’re in charge.”
She shoved him back where he belonged.
“My name is Eagle.”
* * *
His essence remained. It resided within Halley, where its rage and craftiness could be put to good work.
“You succeeded,” Halley said. “You killed some of me. But it was a part that had to die, a part whose work was done.”
Eden ran down the steps to embrace Halley, clapping her small hands. “You won! That was so cool!”
Halley smiled, but it was not a smile of conquest. “I didn’t win. I just put him back where he belonged.”
“You mean…”
Halley nodded and massaged the small hollow near the base of her skull. “It’s not over. The battle between Trance and I will never be over.” She gazed out into the distance.
“But…what will you do?”
“I’ll be vigilant. I’ll have to be conscious he’s there, stay stronger than him.” Halley looked back at her. “I guess I mean I’ll have to keep my eyes open.”
Eden glanced around at their unsafe position on the stone staircase. “Halley?” she said.
“Yes?”
“It’s just that…”
“What?”
“Speaking of keeping eyes open…it’s just…I’m a little scared. That’s all,” Eden finished, gesturing at the drop.
Halley felt tension flow back into her tired muscles as she re-awoke to precariousness of their position. They were at least five-hundred feet up, on a narrow stone staircase, with no shelter and no ropes. To slip meant death, or worse, impossible injury. It was hard to force her body to relax, to soften her joints, but it was essential. She took a deep breath and focused her mind.
“Okay. Listen,” she said, forcing her shoulders down. “Here’s what we have to do…”
Eden frowned with her eyes but paid close attention.
“Keep the weight on the balls of your feet, and keep your knees bent, see, like this.” Halley demonstrated. “Now lean your body just a little in towards the solid rock, so you’re angled away from the drop. That’s it – that’s the way! That will make you more secure. Okay? Let’s go…”
They climbed for the best part of the afternoon. The sun was warm, and the gentle breeze was just enough to wick away their sweat. They reached the top of the camel-colored steps, and Halley sighed with relief, moving out onto a wide ledge that was sheltered on both sides by large outcroppings. They were safer than they’d been on the stairs, and this was a huge comfort. Still, Halley instinctively bent her knees, lowering her center of gravity towards the wide ledge, towards safety. Only then did she look outwards and down.
“Wow,” Eden said, entering the ledge and looking out as well.
The view was tremendous. The river was a thin serpent winding its way across the landscape. It nestled between the foothills which marched towards the mountain range. Beyond lay the immensity of the yellow grass plain. Just visible was the edge of the woods (I can see it again, Halley noted, with some surprise), though most was hidden by heavy cloud cover. Perhaps it was raining in the forest; the thought was restful, mist on trees.
Halley lifted her eyes. The sky, with its gradations of deep blue, aqua, and light blue, was awe-inspiring: thin white clouds; circling eagles; an immensity of nothingness.
“Wow,” Eden said again. “Hey…look at that tiny bird…”
The bird was being tossed about in the wind, its small brown wings flapping furiously. The eagles were keeping it in the center of their wide circles. On one wheeling spin, however, the small bird was tossed free of its shelter. It spun about wildly at the mercy of air currents, until it careened onto the ledge.
It was a sparrow.
It’s just a bird. It is no longer my namesake. It is simply a perfect, beautiful little bird. A small wonder.
“You’re a long way from home, brave bird,” she said.
The sparrow looked at her with black eyes and sang a greeting. So are you, it said, so are you.
The eagles floating on air currents heard the exchange, and screamed for joy. Halley laughed aloud. It’s just a bird – I haven’t thought that about a sparrow in years. She looked upwards; her chest swelled with gratitude for simply being alive on this high ledge.
The sparrow took flight. It fluttered in the air, dancing along the rock wall like it was trapped inside a house and trying to find its way out. Its wings stirred the air as it hovered, and a small clinking sound echoed off the rock face. Halley searched for the source of the sound.
“Is that…? It’s a rope!” she said. Addressing the sparrow, she added, “Thanks, my friend.”
It dropped back down to the ledge, and began to hop two-footed down the staircase.
Halley took her gaze back up the rock wall, evaluating the rope. Its placement looked good, and better yet, it looked new. The carabiners holding it in place were not rusty. She pulled on both ends of the rope at once and was reassured by the answering tension of its anchor-point. A gentle pull on a single end told her that the rope would move freely if not tied off.
“The rope looks good. And the climb doesn’t look too technical. I think we can do this!”
“Looks like fun to me!”
Something in her voice made Halley turn. She looked from Eden to the precipitous drop. Kicking at a small pebble, she watched it bounce away. It moved slowly at first, but with each bounce it gathered momentum, height, and speed, until it careened out of sight, swallowed up by the vastness of space. Halley was adult enough to climb the wall, to take the risk, but she couldn’t let Eden. Eden was just a child. “It isn’t safe. We’ll have to turn back.”
“What? We can’t turn back! Not after coming all this way!”
Eden didn’t see the danger. Halley tried again.
“We’ve got to turn back. We can’t climb that wall without gear.”
“Did you hear
that?” Eden asked, looking up.
Halley heard a repeat of the plaintive cry she’d taken to be a birdcall. But it wasn’t a bird, she realized.
“It’s the baby!” they shouted in unison.
The cry came from above. It was slightly muffled, suggesting the baby was still some distance away. But it was definitely up.
“Well?”
“We’ve got no choice. We’ve got to go.” Halley paced back and forth. “But there must be some way to make it safer…”
Her voice trailed off as her eyes fixed on a brightly-colored object hidden in a small gap in the ledge. She walked across carefully, edging aside a flat rock. Hidden in a small cache were two climbing harnesses, a number of locking carabiners, and a Figure-8 descending device. Halley picked up one of the harnesses, turning it over in her hands.
How did these get here? Right where we needed them?
A sudden impulse to drop the harness came over her. It could be a trap! Then she saw the initials, sewn in blue thread: PW. She closed her eyes.
Eden came to stand by her side, and placed a small hand on her arm.
Halley looked at her.
“This was Dad’s. This must have been the place he used to tell me about, in his bedtime stories.” She handed one of the harnesses to Eden, who held it cupped in two palms.
“But I thought that place was just make-believe.”
Halley ran her finger over the initials on the harness she held. “It was real. This is the place.”
“But why would the harnesses be here? He wouldn’t have just left them…”
“Maybe he’d planned on coming back and didn’t want to carry it all up again…”
Halley stopped speaking suddenly. Her hand went to her mouth.
Eden’s face reddened. She looked like she might cry. “And then he died…” she said, looking at the ground. “He never made it back.”
Halley turned the harness over and over in her hands. “We’ll climb it for him,” she said finally. “He’ll make it back, through us.”
“You think?”
“Yes.”
“I miss him.”
“Me too.”
They sat down together for a while, each holding one of the climbing harnesses, lost in their own memories.
“The baby’s stopped crying,” Eden said, after a time.
“You’re right,” Halley replied. “We’d better get moving.”
She got to her feet, and examined the rope. Its newness suddenly worried her. Unlike the other gear that had been sheltered, the rope had been exposed to the elements. If it had been hanging there since her father’s time, it should be more weathered. It must have been put up later. But by who? And where were they? Were they at the top, or – the thought chilled her – had they fallen? She forced herself to dismiss the thoughts.
“We’ve got what we need,” she said.
The harness slipped loosely over Eden’s thin legs, and Halley tightened the straps, making sure it was snug around her legs as well as over her belly. Locking the straps by tucking them back upon themselves, she gave them a hard tug to test them for slippage.
“You sure know what you’re doing.”
Halley didn’t answer. She did up her own harness, and attached carabiners to the middle loops of both harnesses.
“Can you check my harness now, like I did yours?”
“You trust me?”
“Of course.”
Eden made sure Halley’s harness was secure, and then the two of them approached the wall.
“Look – can you see the handholds and footholds?” Halley asked. “That’s the line we have to climb…”
Eden shook her head no.
Halley pointed up to a series of rock outcroppings that looked solid enough to bear weight. “There, and then there, and then there.”
“Oh…I see…” Eden said.
Halley could tell she didn’t. “Don’t worry. I’m going to climb first to test the rope. You belay me, I’ll make sure it’s all safe, and then I’ll come back down, and belay you up. Once you’re safe on top, I’ll join you.”
A cool gust of wind whipped the hair across Halley’s eyes and she brushed it aside impatiently.
“This is really scary.” Eden frowned with her forehead. “And I don’t get it. When one of us is here on the ledge, we can belay the other. If the climber falls, we stop the rope, and that way we stop the fall. I protect you. You protect me. But what happens later, when I’m at the top waiting for you, and you’ve got to climb up alone? What if you fall then?” Her eyes widened. “You’d die if you fell then!” She clenched her fists. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”
There it was – in black and white; Halley would die if she fell with no one to belay her. But there was no choice, no other way; they had to get to the baby.
“Come on – let’s get you ready.”
Eden breathed out hard.
After attaching both their climbing harnesses to the rope, Halley got herself ready for the test climb. She checked the knots, flexed her fingers open and closed. “Okay. You’re on belay. Take your feet wide and then take one in front of the other. Bend your knees a bit. That’ll make you more stable.” She looked at Eden. “Don’t forget to breathe, okay?”
Eden gave a tight nod.
“I’m ready to climb,” Halley said. “You ready to belay?”
Eden hesitated, grasping the rope tightly. “I’ve only ever belayed on a climbing wall, never for real like this.”
“I know. But you’ll do great.” Halley touched her shoulder. Remember, I trust you.”
She turned to face the wall, trying not to think about the hundreds of feet of empty space between her and the earth. “Here goes,” she said, reaching a bare hand up towards the rock face. Her heart was in her throat, pounding a rapid pulse. The rock felt cool and slightly damp. This close, she could smell its mineral make-up, the iron and quartz and the streaks of amber.
Quickly driving down with her elbow, she used her back muscles to pull up, immediately reached for a second hand-hold with her free arm, and footholds for her dangling feet. In a moment, she was five feet above the ledge, with the whole world at her feet. Her face was inches from the rock. Staring upwards for a moment, she studied the line she would climb, and reached for the next handhold. The rest of the world slipped into insignificance.
The muscles in her back were powerful. Her fingers instinctively found grips. The rope gave her a sense of security as Eden pulled up the slack. After several minutes of breathless ascent, she stopped. The line up the rock face had ended abruptly. From the ledge, it had appeared to go all the way to the top. She was stuck, hung high above the earth.
“You okay? Why’ve you stopped? You’re only halfway!”
Halley’s body was trembling. She felt nauseous. Her fingers throbbed. The rock face blurred. She failed to convince her body to move. Then, without warning, the rock under her right hand shifted. She tried to take her weight off it. It moved a little more. Suddenly, it broke loose, falling, plummeting towards the ledge below.
“Below!” she screamed, trying to warn Eden.
Then she too plunged downwards, in free fall.
On the ledge, the heavy rock whizzed by. Eden had heard the shout, knew the sparse jargon used by climbers to warn of falling rocks. With a quick movement of her arm, she braked the rope.
Halley felt a sharp jerk on the middle of her harness. Her free fall stopped abruptly. She swung on the rope, back and forth, praying she wouldn’t smash into the rock face, praying that the rock anchors would hold. Reaching out with shaking arms, she was able to stop the swinging motion, finding a grip with her hands, her feet scrabbling to find purchase. Finally motionless, her heart pounding like it would explode, she began to breathe again.
She had not fallen. She had survived the moment, and the moment was over.
Glancing downwards, she called out, “Thanks.” She was breathing hard.
“You’re welcome!”
<
br /> Several minutes later, Halley had calmed enough to try to find a new line to the top. She leaned her body back against the harness, releasing her hand grips, and took the weight on her feet. Now she was sticking out from the slope, horizontally, as if the world had turned sideways on its axis, and she was standing up straight on solid ground. It was a dizzying position; she was staring straight up into the blue sky, but it was the only way to find the line to the top. She studied the rock face, looking right and then left, and then right again with a longer gaze. There it is.
With a few bounces on her feet, she moved under the new line. The wind blew, and she hugged her body tight back into the rock face, gripping with hands and feet. Instead of minerals, she now smelled her own sweat. It reminded her of rusted metal, tinged with fear.
I’m okay. I’ve found the line again. I’ve just got to climb.
Her stomach moved nervously. She spoke aloud: “Come on. That slip is over now – leave it behind.” She imagined wiping one hand on her thigh, parking the fall there to examine later. “Do what you’ve got to do. The longer you wait the worse it’ll be.”
She reached up; it felt like pulling the rock wall towards her rather than climbing. She was aware of each second, each tiny finger grip.
Rock after rock, moment after moment, finally, she reached the top of the face, and could look over the edge to the expanse of land on the peak. She leaned her whole body into the rock face. This close, she could feel the rock radiating warmth, as if it were alive, breathing, gripping her as tightly as she gripped it. Carefully, she released her handholds, first one and then the other, testing, taking some of her weight onto her firmly-planted feet and the rest through the rope and harness. Her placement remained stable. With her palms over the top of the cliff, her fingers digging in to grasp tiny edges of rock, she shoved her body upwards. She rose above the cliff-edge. Smiling, she tipped forward and scrambled onto flat ground.
Up here the air was sweet. She stood and stretched up her arms in a “V” of triumph, her fingers wide, as if in thanks to some higher deity. It was pure joy: she had surpassed who she was, become someone new in getting to the top of this mountain.
Out of The Woods Page 25
