 Immediately, there was that vertiginous rushing sensation again, and that sickening feeling of being in two places in once. Then she was… …falling?...
But this was not the same weird accelerated sensation of transitioning to the other side; she was actually falling. Through the air. Toward the –
The air exploded from her chest with a wordless grunt, and then she was rolling down a steep, rocky embankment. Pain blossomed in her left side as she rolled over a rocky protrusion, and, scrabbling at the ground beneath her, she seized something stony and firm that arrested her downward motion with a sudden – and painful – jerk.
She lay on her back, breathing hard, and realized with a start that the sky was pitch-black. No wonder she hadn’t been able to tell how far above the ground she was.
The test!
Sabine went to bring the pendant up to her hand and recoiled. The stones had all faded to a uniform white. She clicked the two center stones apart, together, apart again.
Nothing.
Her heart sank, and she wished she’d thought to look at the stones the last time. The overthrust, in the afternoon light of day, would have been a better situation to find this out.
All right, she thought. One of two things is true here; it’s either broken, or it needs time to recharge.
Either way, I’d better figure out where I am.
That turned out to be more complicated. She was, as far as she could tell, at the edge of a low mountain range. She’d been lucky to fall onto this particular rock wash; a few dozen feet to the left or the right of where she’d landed, and she’d either have had her back broken on the ridgeline or plummeted to her death over the side.
She exhaled, rubbing her shoulders. She once again found herself in the simple cotton shift - apparently the default garment here, for girls, anyway. But where last time, it had sufficed in the warm rays of the afternoon sun, she now found it skimpy in the brisk mountain wind.
Get down, she thought. Get down, or get shelter.
The rockwash, however, wasn’t cooperating. It was little more than a semicircular pad of dirt and loose stones that formed an inlet of sorts to the progression of the mountain around a larger curve. There wasn’t much of an exit point; walk a dozen feet in either direction, and she’d be up against smooth, dark stone. Sabine felt along the entire length of the inlet rock wall for a cave or depression she could use to shelter against the wind, but found none.
Returning to the edge of the rockwash, she discovered that it dropped away sharply, but only for a short distance, to what looked like a possible trail below her. It was perhaps a seven-foot drop to the surface below, but in the dark, she couldn’t be sure of the angle of the ground below. Nor was there anything useful here to assist her in the descent.
She lowered herself to her knees and swung first one leg, then the other over the edge. Sabine strained her eyes to make out any more of the surface below, but the darkness swallowed all details. Taking a breath, she eased herself off the side.
The first painful impact hadn’t even registered with her before two more followed closely behind. Her outstretched palm struck a sharp rock just as her elbow encountered another, and as she rolled toward the elbow injury, she put her forehead directly into the face of the rock wall.
Sabine wasn’t even sure which one to rub first, but she started with applying the palm to the head, then the elbow. She wasn’t bleeding from any of the injuries, and she didn’t think she’d broken anything.
But OUCH, she thought.
Running a hand along the darkened ground next to her, Sabine found the source of the other two injuries; the rocks here were jagged, fist-sized hunks of some substance that flaked sharply.
I’m a long way from the Oregon beach, she thought, remembering the smooth, round stones she’d skipped with her father on so many beach trips. Why couldn’t I land on those?
At least it might make a good weapon, she thought. She extended a hand to grab one of the jagged rocks and was surprised that she could not find it in the dark. Her fingers came to rest again and again on smooth, almost -
(ocean-beaten?)
surfaces.
What the - ?
Confused, she scrabbled along the rock wall but could find none of the jagged rocks that she’d landed on. Sabine sat back for a moment and collected her bearings. She hadn’t moved more than a foot in any direction since she’d landed. She could even feel the indentation from the sharp points of the rocks in her palm and elbow. She backed up until she was in a decent approximation of her landing position and extended her hands again to both sides.
Nothing.
She sighed. All right. Fine. She grabbed a stone that fell easily into her palm – ouch – and bounced it lightly in her hand, testing the weight.
Better than nothing.
She rose, painfully extended her arm to stretch her elbow, and decided that it was nothing that she could help at the moment. Looking from side to side, Sabine discovered that – injuries aside – she’d greatly improved her options. She was now on a trail of sorts that sloped down and to her right. Upward, it bent out of sight around the mountain perhaps twenty feet on. Downward, she could make out nothing beyond the same distance, other than the trail continued on.
Downward it is, she thought, hefting her stone.
She’d hiked plenty of nighttime trails with her father and her grandfather, stargazing expeditions from a campsite, her father trying to hide the fact that he’d secreted a Thermos of cocoa in his daypack for later. She’d perfected a good surprised look when he’d produced it, usually just after she’d begun to shiver. Sabine could still feel the warmth of his fleece pullover when he’d casually doffed it and tugged it over her shoulders; still warm from his body, redolent of wood smoke. She’d shrugged the sleeves down over her hands as improvised mittens, drunk deeply from the Thermos cup, and gone back to the eyepiece for another view of the black velvet night sky.
Sabine shivered now, too, and missed that pullover.
One foot in front of the other. She had no idea what time of the night it was; one of the moons overhead was nearly full tonight, the other a sliver. On the overthrust, she’d noticed that the trees had been in full leaf, and fruiting, and she had to assume that seasons didn’t change fast enough here to put her into any colder time of year. Sabine hadn’t had time to think about or guess at a temperature, but she’d been comfortable in the white shift. Judging by the night temperature, it couldn’t be much before midnight. She’d have to be careful with her footing. The trail widened out in front of her, but remained rocky; as it broadened into a semicircle, she realized she’d arrived at a switchback. She turned the corner and saw that the trail continued downward, at a slightly shallower grade. On an impulse, she squatted down and gently felt forward on the trail.
Her fingers found jagged edges as she pushed cautiously through the rocks, and came to rest on a sharply pointed stone.
Picking up one of these stones, she felt over it with her right hand as she turned over the smooth stone in her left. They weren’t a thing alike; the smooth stone was old, worn away, fully rounded over its entire surface. This other one was almost certainly of the type she’d fallen on.
Interesting, she thought, and flung the rounded stone away into the darkness below.
And instantly regretted it.
A double thump from her left let her know that it had bounced twice down there, the first time off of other rocks, and the second in some sort of foliage. And that’s when she saw them; dozens of pairs of glowing eyes, no more than fifty feet down and twenty feet ahead of the trail she was on.
She froze. The eyes flashed off in the darkness, and there was the sound of running paws from below, coming up the trail.
Up. Towards her.
Sabine turned and ran up the hill, around the switchback, and tripped. Catching herself, she put on a burst of speed toward the uphill side of the trail. She was sure she’d passed the point where she’d dropped in from above, and she forced herself to slow down now; this was unfamiliar ground.
The trail upward was rockier, and she picked up her feet as she went. Tripping for real might be deadly; she had no idea what was down there, or how fast they were. As she ran, she saw the trail widen out again before her, and prayed that it was another switchback.
It was. She took it at full speed, skidding through the loose rock, and wishing she’d listened to her old swim coach now, the one who’d wanted her to do steeplechase for cross-training.
I swear I’ll give you twenty straight days if I get off this mountain, she thought grimly. A glance over the side of the trail confirmed that they were on the trail below her. She had an idea. It might not work, but continuing upward wasn’t much of an option; she was eventually going to run somewhere there wasn’t a good exit from, and that was going to be it. So she listened for the exact moment that they’d all turned the corner behind her and were scrabbling for their footing.
Then she went over the side in a single, explosive motion, and was off and running downward again, their upturned muzzles following her with expressions of surprise. She wasn’t sure how much time she’d bought; she only knew that she’d needed to change course.
And oh, dear god, they’re wolves, she thought.
Sabine was flying now, her third time over this terrain, skidding through the known switchback and then trying desperately to maintain her speed over new ground. She also knew she’d have to gamble more, and began to cut off switchbacks when she was able to make another safe jump.
Slowly, surely, they were gaining again, and now they’d begun to follow her off of the switchbacks; she could hear them landing with soft grunts just a few feet behind her now.
Sabine picked up the pace, knowing that if she fell, it would be over.
She hit another loose wash of rock on the next switchback and touched a hand down, but recovered her balance. Running with abandon now, she realized that her next mistake would probably be her last. Worse, she was beginning to slow down. And now, it was getting darker.
Darker?
She’d been able to see further down the trail on the switchbacks above, the occasional scrub tree looming skeletally from the side of the trail, and the stars clearly visible above.
But now, Sabine found that she couldn’t make out the end of the path. And that darkness was…getting closer?
She was trying to make sense of how that could possibly be she ran, at full speed, into something impossibly large in front of her, a firm wall of muscle and motion, and then she was falling, unable to catch her balance, over the side and down onto the trail below.
Whatever it was had shoved her, hard, out of the way.
She rolled to a stop on the trail below and cupped her elbow in her hand. Now she was hurt; she could feel an ooze of hot blood on her cheek, and she’d slammed her elbow painfully into the rock wall on the way down. She scarcely had time to put her palm to her cheek when she realized that more dark shapes were moving past her, up the trail and around the switchback. She saw a flash of dull-grey metal and heard a whistling sound from above her, and she ducked instinctively at the terrifying sound. That metallic shriek culminated in a dull, meaty thwack, as a whimper, then another, and then the sound of a full-scale battle erupted above her. She shrank against the rock wall and cradled her damaged arm.
A furry mass of blood and fur fell from above, impacting the ground beside her in a spray of gore, and she cried out and recoiled in horror and surprise. She slid away from it before realizing that the dire wolf was quite dead, its snout twisted at an impossible angle to its body. She pushed it further away from her with one tentative foot and pushed herself back against the wall again, willing herself to be smaller, less visible.
Less vulnerable.
Then, as fast as it had begun, it was over, and then a big muzzle was looming over her, and from somewhere above, an enormous paw was extended. She took it, more out of numb reaction than any real sense of active thought, and rose to her feet. “I’m sorry,” the bear rumbled. “We got here as quickly as we could, but apparently, not fast enough. Kerilen?” He waved his other paw, and a smaller black bear came forward from behind him bringing a waterskin with a leathern cup attached. The larger bear popped open the waterskin and poured the cup full. “Drink this,” he told her. She did so, without even thinking, and while her pains remained, they were instantly dulled. She looked up at him, amazed.
“S’aakhu,” he replied to her unspoken question. That word again. She started to ask what that was, then closed her mouth. |
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