The Rift - Howard Chris - Страница 27

“Creating the Rift?” I asked. “Your Burning Wheel?”

Yes, I thought. And if it had brought the moon closer, it had created the Surge—the towering, spinning seas that were all that was left of the oceans.

The world had been punctured, made weak and splintered. Left as fragile as the folk left hanging on.

The Healer stood up from her chair, came and checked the wounds on my back and my neck. She probed at the dirt that was packed in my thigh, her fingers reaching inside the wound.

And she reminded me of Alpha. Not the way she looked or the way she looked at me. But I remembered how my pirate girl had tended to me back in Old Orleans, when a fever had spread through my veins. And as I remembered her, the fear swelled inside me. She’d been up on that ridge, the arrows raining down, and I had left her. I’d abandoned her. Again. I’d left them all. Weaponless and stranded in the night.

“There were others,” I whispered, staring up at the Speaker. I stuck a thumb at my chest. “My friends.”

“Yes.” She seemed to smile at my panic. “They are still with the patrol. Last seen near the outer rim.”

“Alive?”

The Speaker waited, like she wanted to see how much I might squirm.

“Alive,” she said finally. “The patrol will return here. And bring your friends before us.”

“When?”

“After hunting.”

“Hunting what?”

She pointed at the salvage around the room, and I sank to the ground, breathing hard as the Healer prodded at the dirt she’d stuffed in my wounds.

So my friends had been seen. They were alive.

But they were so far away. And did they even know I was down here? I mean, here I was, stuck inside the earth, no way to know what dangers they faced.

I worried about Zee without me there to look after her, no one to make sure Kade didn’t get too damn close. And I’d been a fool to trust him, I reckoned. The redhead with the silver tongue. He’d had it in for me—truce or no truce. He’d just been using me to get in with the others and get to the trees.

Maybe I’d gone soft after I’d beat his face bloody, or after I’d learned he’d been hit by the crystal and lost his hand in the fields. But he was after my saplings, and he was after my sister, and I could now see that clearly. There weren’t no room for sympathy. We were all just dead weight to him in the end.

“Where are the trees?” I said, staring up at the Speaker. But the Elder started jabbering on again, and the Healer bundled me out of the room.

I was breathing hard by the time we reached the end of the tunnel. I had to stop and rest, the steam stinging my eyes. But the Healer’s bright face kept staring at me, curious and happy. I mean, her mouth never seemed to quit smiling at all. Reckon I was more used to the way her twin had looked at me—all bitter and pissed and full of scorn.

We entered a cave full of folk working at big patches of fur they’d stretched out on the walls. They were beating the stuff flat and shearing it into sections, weaving the purple thread into clothes. The Healer took me to one side to sort through a stack of their handiwork. Threw some pants at me, a pair of leather boots. Then she handed me a bright pink vest like the one Alpha had once worn. I mean, this one was new and clean, but I’d no doubt it was made of the same material. That somehow a little of this fur had made its way south, even if the mammoths themselves never had.

I checked out my new outfit. The vest practically glowed in the dim light of the cave, and I must have looked a right old sight in it. Still, at least I weren’t naked no more.

Back in the tunnels, we started to pass more and more of the locals. Steam swirled off their clothes, and their faces lit up when they saw me coming towards them. These people sure seemed friendly—except for the Healer’s twin, the one they’d picked to do the speaking.

The next cave we reached was large and well lit, with oil lamps in tin buckets all across the walls. The steam whirled thicker here, and I almost slipped on the rocks, but the Healer put my hands on her hips, making it so I could follow her as she pushed on inside.

Center of the cave, the steam lifted a little, and we reached a small pool, full of mud that looked more like liquid, real silvery in color and bubbling up something fierce. At the edges of the pool, bright against the dark stones, there was a layer of a soft green something. But I didn’t kneel down to inspect it. Not right away.

All I could do was stare into the center of the pool, where my seven saplings soaked up the heat. And I felt a bit lighter, just seeing them again, but I also felt heavier. Because there seemed to be so much resting on those little trees. So many people who wanted them. And I knew I could not get them south on my own.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The trees looked stronger. Thicker. Their stems each as wide as a finger, the buds on their limbs bulging up and swelled out, like the leaves inside couldn’t wait to burst free.

I plunged into the hot sludge, scalding myself as I splashed forward. And I felt a jolt when I touched the first sapling—the shock of a memory, because for a second, it was like I was a nipper again and my old man was holding my small hand in his.

I stared down into the pool, and there, floating in the water and all covered in mud, was the last broken bits of Pop’s body. So much smaller now, as if he’d been almost all used up. I could still make out the shape of his sunken belly and a swollen knot of bark where his chest had been. And his head still resembled a man’s skull, though it had become shriveled and tiny, though roots covered his eyes and nose, and a sapling sealed shut the mouth that had once told me stories and laughed at my jokes. The same mouth that had kept secrets from me and spent so many days hungry and never known nearly enough smiles.

As I held the tree, I felt the loss wash over me once more, and I tried to let it sink in. Pop was the one person who’d known me. My one friend, all those years on the road.

“Safe,” the Healer said, her voice at my shoulder. Her eyes staring at the seven trees.

“You did this?” I whispered. “You fixed them?”

She stayed quiet, but I sensed her confusion. I held a sapling in one hand and pointed up with the other, showing how tall it had grown. Then I pointed at the woman. “You,” I said.

“No.” She put her hand on the sapling, just below mine, and she pointed at the gray, muddy water and rumbling heat. “It is the Burning Wheel.”

The soft green something on the rocks was a sort of moss. Algae, the Healer called it. A living thing. Like the trees, and the mammoths. And that meant it was one more miracle, still hanging on.

The algae was soft and slick, and I smeared at it with my fingers as I sat at the edge of the pool and stared at the trees.

“Eat,” the Healer said, scooping up some of the moss with her thumb.

I stared at the strange goo. Didn’t look like something anyone would go eating, not even in an old world story. But I was so damn hungry that I figured I’d give it a shot. I let her stick her thumb in my mouth, and the green moss fizzled on my tongue. It weren’t so much that it tasted good, but it tasted real, if you catch my meaning. It tasted alive, and it sure as shit weren’t corn. As I sucked at it and let it slip down my throat, my whole body got ripe off the sparkle.