Broken Earth

by C M Blackwood

  Heidi rubbed at her sore, tired eyes, trying to make her vision less blurry.

  “We don’t have any choice,” she said to Dera, who had pulled up her hood against the snow.

  “So it would seem. But I still don’t want to do it.”

  “And I do?”

  Dera looked back down the mountain. “I can hardly see,” she said. “I’m sure the horses can’t. If we go down, we’re going to have to lead them on foot.”

  “I know.”

  Dera’s teeth began to chatter. “I would cry in hopelessness,” she said, “but it’s too cold.”

  They hesitated for some minutes more. Their anxiety could scarcely have been more, had they been told that there was no pass at all, and that they should have to use their own hands to scale a sheer cliff-face.

  Yet Heidi caught Dera’s eye through the blinding snow. “Are you ready?”

  “If I was ever ready to do this, I would be sincerely concerned about myself.”

  Heidi let slip a smile. She went to Dera, and pressed her hand. Dera looked at her, with what did not even begin to resemble confidence; but took hold of Dillyn’s reins just the same.

  Heidi took up Eriah’s, and moved slowly towards the lip of the spiralling pass. “I’m going to go first,” she said.

  “Why you?”

  “Why would you want to go first? If you fell, there would be nothing to catch you. You would just go rolling, all the way down to the bottom of the mountain.” She looked down. “Well, you would probably just plummet.”

  “You’re right. You should go first.”

  Heidi led Eriah at the pace of dribbling honey, caught and crusted in a bottle top. She stepped out onto the descending path, feeling forward with her right foot before actually putting any weight into her step. This practice, however – as she soon discovered – was by no means a foolproof method of avoiding the slicker spots of the pass.

  When she had gotten down a-ways, Dera came out with Dillyn. It was slow and tedious work, but, little by little, they were making their way down the mountain.

  “I cannot believe we are doing this,” said Dera. “We could be anywhere else – sitting by a fire, or eating bacon out of a glass in the company of dwarves.”

  “Better save the complaining till we get to the bottom. Just concentrate on what you’re doing.”

  Dera mumbled something beneath her breath, but Heidi did not care enough to ask her what she said. She was so caught up in the task, of walking without falling, Dera could have said any one of a hundred insulting things, without having her respond.

  By Heidi’s guessing, it took them almost eight hours to get halfway down the mountain. Thankfully, it was not as steep as the opposite side of the mount had been; but still, they were growing exceptionally weary, and had a great deal of work left to do.

  Aside from being at less of an incline, Heidi thought that the South-side of the pass was a bit wider, too. She could see a spot up ahead, which seemed nearly flat, and decided that it would be a good place for a rest.

  The sun had risen only a short while ago. Heidi glanced up occasionally, letting the warm light fall down upon her face. She looked towards their resting place with great eagerness; but thought that it was best not to mention it to Dera, until they had come to it. Dera had not spoken for a time, and had become so engrossed in the aversion of death by mountain plunge, that Heidi doubted whether it would be a very good idea to break the silence. So they went on, and all was peaceful – until Heidi screamed.

  Quite all of a sudden, she slipped. She heard the tumbling of the ice, which was disturbed by the sliding of her feet. It seemed she had only just cried out, when she began to fall, and then to slide. A moment later, she found herself hanging off the side of the mountain.

  “Heidi!”

  She looked up at Dera, who was kneeling at the edge of the ridge. It would have been easier for Dera to help her, had she simply been dangling from the side of the ledge; but she had slipped some yards down, and was holding onto a small piece of protruding rock. She looked to the left; and saw that they had been only about twenty yards from their destination of wide, flat rock. She cast an angry glance towards it now.

  “Don’t just sit there!” she said to Dera.

  “Just – pull yourself up!” said Dera, throwing her hands into the air. “Just – just climb, or something!”

  “Climb what?”

  “I don’t know. Can’t you – can’t you float back up, or – or –”

  “I can’t levitate, Dera!”

  “I saw you do it once.”

  “I was on the ground, then. And I only went up six inches.”

  “That’s better than nothing.”

  “I’m thirty feet down!”

  Dera stretched her out her arm, quite as far as it would go – which was, of course, not nearly far enough to take hold of Heidi’s hand.

  “I can’t reach you,” she said.

  “I did not expect for your arm to be thirty feet long, Dera.”

  “You have to climb a bit.”

  “With what?”

  “Look at the rock. Are there places you can grab onto?”

  Heidi looked all about. “There’s one place,” she said. “But it’s too high.”

  “Hold on,” said Dera, scrambling to her feet and sliding out of sight.

  “Dera! What are you doing?”

  “Hold on,” she repeated. “Half a moment.”

  “Dera!”

  “I’m coming!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking for rope!”

  “We don’t have any!”

  “You had some yesterday, tied to Eriah’s saddle.”

  Yes, she had.

  “Do you see it?”

  “No. It’s not here.”

  “Check his saddlebag!”

  A moment, and then another moment; and then, “I found it!”

  Heidi let her forehead fall against the rock. Her feet had found a shallow niche.

  “You know,” she said, “it would be very much easier, if you were the one down here. At least I could help you.”

  “Don’t wish me off the side of mountain ridges! It’s in very bad taste, I’ll have you know.”

  “I wasn’t saying that. I just wish . . .”

  She had been about to say, “I just wish that Jade was here.”

  “Stop wishing, and start climbing,” Dera barked, throwing the rope over the ledge.

  But it was not long enough.

  “Oh, no,” said Dera.

  It was still snowing, and the flakes were falling against Heidi’s face. They settled thickly into her lashes, making it difficult for her to see. She shook them away – and looked up at the rope. Almost twenty feet! It was impossible.

  “You can do it, Heidi.”

  “I can do it,” Heidi echoed; though she was having a considerable amount of difficulty believing it.

  Dera pressed her stomach flat against the wet ridge, lowering the rope as far as she was able (not that this helped very much.)

  “Come on,” she said. “Come on, Heidi. I’m right here.”

  Heidi began to climb. She moved slowly, but surely. Yet after she had come some way, she was obliged to halt. It seemed that even the tiniest niches she had been making use of, had simply disappeared.

  “What’s the matter?” Dera asked.

  “There’s nowhere to hold. I can’t climb any higher.”

  “You have to try.”

  “I have been trying! But I cannot continue to do so – without a place to put my hands!”

  “All right, all right. I hear you.”

  The rock face leading up to the ledge was practically sheer, and had no creases or indentations to speak of. There was no way to pull herself up any farther.

  She hung her head, closed her eyes, and tried to still her thoughts. Jade had been teaching her how to do this sort of thing (well, maybe not exactly this sort of thing) – but she had not been having much luck w
ith it. When she said that six inches was the most that she had managed – well, she had not been exaggerating.

  She clutched desperately at the rock. She pressed her body flat against the mountain, and turned her face away. She felt a tingling in her feet, and in her legs. She loosened her grip on the rock, letting herself float up past her handholds. But she felt a panic starting up in her chest. It was quite exactly what had happened before, each and every time she tried to rise. A few inches; an onset of immobilising fear; a short drop to the grass.

  But there was no grass, now. No short drop, now. She came close, once, to looking down; but saved herself just in time.

  All was well – at first. But she was moving too slowly, and she could feel herself beginning to slip back down. She pushed quickly with her feet against the rock, and practically jumped. It looked, for a moment, like she was going to make the end of the rope. Her fingers brushed it, but could not latch on in time.

  If Dera had not instinctively lowered herself, just a little farther down, and let the rope drop several more inches, Heidi would have been done for. She grabbed it at the last moment; but held such a very short length of it, that it was already beginning to slip from her hands.

  “Climb!” Dera shouted.

  She lifted herself just a little higher into the air. She drifted ever so slightly up – just enough to get a firm hold on the rope.

  Dera laughed with relief.

  “Don’t go giggling yet,” said Heidi. “You can do whatever you want – when you get me out of here.”

  Dera tugged, quite as hard as she could on her end of the rope, while Heidi planted her feet into the rock and walked, in a sweaty and complicated fashion, up to the ridge. When she reached it, Dera took hold of her arms, and pulled her over the ledge.

  They both lay on their backs for a few minutes, breathing heavily and staring unseeing into the sky.

  It had finally stopped snowing.

  ~

  The continuation to the ground passed less eventfully. They lay down for a while on that flat part of the pass, sleeping one at a time so that the other could keep watch, and ensure that there was no more falling off of ledges. They rested for a few hours, and then made at it again, moving a little quicker this time in the bright sunshine, what had come to replace the heavy snow.

  They were so grateful to be free of the mountain, they laid themselves flat on the ground at the bottom of the pass. The horses followed with less enthusiasm, watching them as though they had finally lost what sense was left in their heads.

  “Thank the skies,” said Dera, peeling herself off of the ground, and then spinning around in a circle with her arms outstretched. “I thought we would never make it.”

  “I certainly thought that I wouldn’t.”

  Dera stopped twirling to look at her. “Oh, Heidi – if anything had happened to you, I just don’t know . . .”

  “Are you saying that you would miss me? I didn’t think you cared.”

  Dera set her face. “If this is what I get, when I try to be nice to you – then believe you me, I will never do it again.”

  Heidi laughed, threw her arms around Dera, and took her into another round of spinning. “Don’t be so grouchy,” she said. “We’re alive! Isn’t that enough for now?”

  “Since I am fairly sure that it is all I’ll get – well, I suppose it’s going to have to be.”

  Heidi did not respond; for she was busy looking off into the vast whiteness that lay before them.

  “Where do we go from here?” Dera asked.

  “Straight ahead, I suppose.”

  “But we don’t even know where we’re going!”

  “We’re bound to get somewhere eventually.”

  “For the moment, I would like to find somewhere to sleep. So long as you have no objections – which I probably wouldn’t listen to anyway.”

  “You’ll hear nothing from me,” said Heidi, climbing up into Eriah’s saddle. “I don’t think we’ll be finding any inns around, but there must some place dry nearby.”

  Dera’s stomach growled. “And food,” she added. “How much food do we have?”

  “Enough.”

  “How much is enough?”

  “If we eat only a little, twice a day, we should have enough for a few weeks.” She reached into one of the packs; removed a waterskin, and shook it. “We’ll have to look for a stream –”

  “A few weeks!” said Dera. “We won’t be out here that long?”

  “I don’t know.” She took a long drink, and then passed the skin to Dera. “We’ll find out soon, I think.”

  Dera said nothing as she mounted Dillyn. She fell into step beside Eriah, and glowered at the world. She had grown sulky again.

  They continued over the empty flatlands for some miles more, until they came to a place hedged by deep forests on either side. Though the air there was still dreadfully cold, they passed into the woods on the Western side; for those to the East (separated from their sister trees by open, snowy fields about five miles wide) seemed darker, and less hospitable to travelling guests.

  They had been riding for almost six hours, since their arrival on the foreign side of the mountains. As they entered the wood, which dwelt upon land that sloped somewhat downwards, Heidi looked back and saw the mountains clearly still, looking much smaller – no longer towering, but merely hovering over the hollow horizon.

  They did not go very far into the forest. They stopped when the air grew somewhat less frigid, and the biting winds could no longer reach them from the coverless space without. The trees of the wood were those whose wings of green needles are unaffected by winter. Heidi looked up to see that their canopy was thick and protective, allowing only a few holes of light to shine down into a snow-free world of near-darkness.

  They laid their inadequate beds between the upraised roots of a giant tree, tying their horses to thinner ones beside it and falling straight down to the ground in exhaustion.

  “Before you go to sleep,” said Heidi to Dera, “I want to ask you a question.”

  “What?”

  “Can you still feel eyes upon us?”

  “I feel prying eyes; but not seeing eyes.”

  “Have you been able to see anything of Jade?”

  “I would have told you if I had.”

  After only a minute or two, Heidi could hear the deep and steady breathing of the sleep Dera had found. She tried to close her own eyes and follow suit, but felt for some reason compelled to sit up, and lean against the tree. She looked out into the fields beyond the forest. She could see their shining whiteness, and could in fact see the dark-green, nearly-black grimness of the Eastern wood.

  She took her eyes from those trees, and turned instead to the ones that encircled her, standing tall and silent so far above. She sharpened her ears, but could not hear a sound; any creatures who called that wood their home were nestled far deeper within it, quite as far as they could get from winter winds and poking humans.

  After an indeterminable amount of looking and listening, and of seeing and hearing nothing, Heidi finally allowed herself to lay back down. Her weariness had lodged itself so deep within her bones, she could not help but fall asleep for a short while. But she woke repeatedly, feeling sure that she had heard footsteps upon the ground, and whispers in the wind. After a time, she resigned herself only to lying still, eyes sometimes closed and eyes sometimes open, while Dera slept on beside her.

  If she had had any idea at all where Jade might be, or what she might be doing, she would have been able to sleep at least a little more easily.

  She had only a day’s gain upon them. How far away could she possibly be? Heidi shoved her hands beneath her head, and sank back to waking dreams of finding Jade, somewhere up ahead in those endless spaces of snow.

  ~

  But Jade was in fact much farther from those woods (called, unbeknownst to any of them, the Enmil and Endril forests – Eastern and Western sides, respectively) than Heidi had hoped her to be. She had not
stopped as the others had at the inn, and the weather had been kinder to her when she traversed the mountain. Her horse was faster, too. Buck had always been quicker than the others.

  She had proved that to Heidi in countless races; but Heidi would only laugh, and say that Eriah had stumbled at the end of the quarter-mile. Jade would always smile and concede, gaining more enjoyment from the sound of Heidi’s laugh, than from any acknowledgement of defeat.

  Jade reached down to pat Buck’s neck, as she had been doing repeatedly for hours. She was feeling terribly lonely.

  It had been almost four days since she entered the second wood. (In other words, passed from the Enmil and into the third wood in that vicinity, called the Enodil.) It took her two days to reach the boundary of the Enodil, which forest was even thicker than the Enmil. The paths were almost impossible to follow, and she took countless wrong turns, wasting a bit of daylight with each course she had to correct.

  Though she of course knew nothing of Heidi’s suspicions concerning the Enmil, she would have agreed wholeheartedly. She often heard, as Heidi had even across the miles that separated the Enmil from the Endril, soft whispers that echoed in her ears. Each time she heard them, she looked all about, always more certain than the time before that someone moved just behind her – waiting and watching. She never saw anything, but that did not quell her concerns and suspicions.

  She had avoided the open lowlands that lay between the forests. In the light, against that backdrop of pure white, she would have been all too visible. She hoped, for as long as possible, to remain unseen – and if she proved incapable of that, to at least seem inconspicuous.

  The lay of the land changed significantly once she passed the forests. It was less flat, and rose and fell in gentle slopes throughout which a substantial amount of tree-cover could be found. It was not the kind of shield which the forest had provided, but it was at least a decent enough place to sleep, without fear of being seen.

  The Southern boundary of the Enodil was about fifty miles past the place where Heidi and Dera lay sleeping – and Jade was a whole two days’ distance past that. The Snowy Mountains lay far behind, and an exceedingly tall mount stood far ahead, its peak seeming to stretch up towards the sky. It was more blue than grey in colour; and, dwelling more to the South, was free from snowcaps.