“We’ll take a break soon.”
So steep was the hill, when Eli turned to check her progress, he did so with one leg straight and the bent at the knee to accommodate the difference in heights between one foot and the next. Nick was between them, crawling on all fours, though he seemed to be having fun rather than suffering.
Mara, who was not having any fun at all, waved a hand to indicate her continued survival, signaling to Eli there was no need to wait. Once he’d turned and continued on, she stopped, one arm slung around a tree to share her weight, and gasped for breath. Her complex ruminations on faith and Davy hadn’t lasted past lunch. At this point, she’d have welcomed a band of outlaws. If they were attacked, she would lay down at their feet and let them kill her. At least if she was dead, her feet would stop bleeding into her boots and her lungs would stop burning.
“We’re almost to the top of the hill,” Eli called out, grabbing a small tree for leverage and crouching down to snag Nick by the jacket when he hit a patch of loose dirt and began to slide backwards. Nick giggled. Giggled.
Mara’s lungs were going to explode.
She extended her break just long enough to see Eli tuck her son beneath one arm like a sack of flour and carry on up the hill. Then she resumed her slog, using the scrappy trees to drag herself up, her palms on fire, scraped raw by the continual effort.
By the time she reached the top of the hill, there was little of her left but burning limbs and chafing, sweat-soaked clothing. She dragged herself the last few strides to flat ground, sagged to her knees, and then slumped to her rear, leaning back against her pack without unstrapping it.
“Mama!” Nick’s excited voice was insufficient warning, and she let out a strangled ‘oomph’ as he threw himself onto her belly. “Mama, I climb!”
“I saw, baby,” she choked out, stroking the hair back from his face and leaving a streak of dirt behind on his forehead. “You were so fast!”
A water flask appeared to the left of Nick’s head, Eli’s face hovering above, grim and sweat-streaked. “You alright?”
“Oh, fine,” she wheezed, accepting the flask. “Great. This is easy.”
Her hands ached as she screwed the cap off the flask and took a deep, hungry swallow of the cool water. Nick bounced a little, driving the air from her lungs, and then was lifted away. Grateful, Mara reclined against her pack and sipped at the water until her will to live returned.
When her body finally stopped shrieking long enough to let the world drift back in, she looked around, finding herself atop a massive slab of black granite. She sat up straighter. Eli stood some distance away, at the edge of what appeared to be a sheer drop off, pack discarded, Nick in his arms. He was pointing at something in the distance.
Mara shrugged out of her own pack, plucking her sodden shirt away from her back. Her legs shook as she stood, but her knees held her and she joined Eli and Nick at the edge of the rock.
“Oh my.”
Before her stretched a vista unlike any she’d seen. Or, rather, any she ever expected to see. The Loftland firs, while majestic, were talked about in stories, drawn in books. But all anyone ever said about Ashfall was that it was a forbidding place best not visited.
But this…
They stood at the top of a ridge, much farther up than she’d have guessed they’d climbed, considering how slow they were traveling in deference to her struggle. Ahead of them, the ground formed steep, jutting hills, like sharply creased wrinkles in a heavy length of fabric. Here and there, pushing up like mammoth shoots of grass from the ridges and peaks, stood columns of stark black stone. Some formed broad plateaus atop the hills, others thin, protruding like chimneys from the slopes. Cascades of black stone coated the hillsides beneath the monoliths, disappearing into the treeline.
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The trees themselves seemed to have borrowed their color from the rocks, their needles bluish-black. Mara had noticed, throughout the day, that the thick layer of dead needles on the ground had changed from the rich gold of Loftland fir to a sickly white-gray. Now, looking down from above, she saw where Ashfall got its name.
The entire land looked as if it had been burned, the stone pillars like stalks of charcoal, the deadfall on the ground evoking snowy ash, the trees a scorched black beneath the sun.
“I hate to be unkind,” she said, bracing her arms on her hips, “But I can see why this place was given over to the outlaws.”
Eli grunted in agreement. “I was just showing Nick. Cinder is over that far ridge–the one with two peaks, sort of shaped like a saddle.”
She found the ridge he was talking about. It looked… far. Far enough to form little more than a hazy mirage on the distant horizon, faded and smudged even against the faded blue of the cloud-free sky.
Have faith.
Mara had faith. What she wasn’t certain about was her stamina.
As if sensing her consternation–which he seemed to do quite often–Eli turned away from the edge and nodded toward their packs. “Let’s take a break. It’ll be easier going for the rest of the day. I can take care of your hands and feet before we move on.”
She followed him, crouching by her pack to pull out their dwindling food stores. She passed a wild carrot to Nick, and offered one to Eli, who waved it away. “There’s nothing wrong with my hands and feet,” she said, knowing he’d recognize it for a lie. But her pride was suffering, and now that she’d caught her breath, her little aches and pains were feeling substantially more ‘little.’
The look he gave her was clear–he didn’t believe her. But he didn’t press her on it, perhaps sensing that she was not in the mood to be coddled. Once they’d eaten and had some water, they were back on their feet and moving.
Eli’s assertion that the going would be easier had been accurate enough. That first climb had brought them to the first in a chain of hills, and they stuck to the ridges connecting the chain, with only small descents and climbs as the afternoon wore on.
Mara was just beginning to think she might survive this first wretched day in Ashfall when Eli, walking a few paces ahead of her, froze. He had Nick in his arms, and when her son looked around and belted out a confused, “Wha–” Eli silenced him with a stern shake of his head and a finger to his lips. Mara, who had frozen when Eli did, suddenly wanted nothing more than to have her son in her arms.
Have faith.
She didn’t dare move. Instead, she watched Eli. Watched the profile of his face as he closed his eyes, one finger still pressed to his lips to indicate the need for continued silence. Her own blood rushed so loud in her ears she wouldn’t have been able to hear anything, even if she knew what to listen for. She couldn’t have sensed anything, either. Not with her mind full of panicked fuzz.
She watched Eli and she listened to the pulsing roar of her heartbeat, swoosh swooshing in her ears.
Have faith.
Her hands twitched. She needed Nick in her arms. She needed him close, next to her, wrapped in the protection of her body.
Have faith.
The need to move, to disregard Eli’s silent command and run, to run, had escalated to a scream, her entire body taut with repressed instinct, when Eli suddenly snapped back to life. His eyes shot open and he spun on his heel, stalking toward her.
“Eli, what–” she whispered, words clipped off by his hand closing around her wrist, dragging her off the relatively level path they’d been following along the ridge. Her feet slipped on loose rocks and she almost fell. He released her wrist and grabbed her by the shoulder strap of her pack, hauling her forward and upright at the same time.
They half walked, half-slid, until they abruptly stopped, skidding on black gravel, at the base of a large tree.
“Pack off,” Eli bit out as he released her. With numb fingers, she unbuckled the straps and dropped her pack. He pushed her toward the trunk of the tree. “Climb.”
“What about–”
“Climb. I’ll pass him up to you.”
Leaping for the lowest branch, she swung herself up to straddle it and reached down, accepting Nick as Eli passed him into her arms. He whimpered and squirmed as she tugged him up onto the branch.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, hugging him to her. “It’s okay.”
“Climb, Mara. High as you can.”
Before she could respond, he’d turned away. He grabbed her pack and shoved it beneath a tangle of vines, completely hidden to all but the most attentive eye. Then he turned and stalked back up the ridge.
Have faith, Davy had told her, as if he hadn’t taken it with him when he died.