I can’t think like that. That’s a defeatist attitude. Just focus on yourself, and do this to the best of your abilities. Don’t worry about the other people in the test.
I’m a little reassured when I remember how Mom knocked a lot of my wine out of my cup. I probably got a smaller dose than anyone else. I hope that means I woke up sooner. I have a good chance of being the first one to start this test. If only I can finish it.
Taking a deep breath, I look more closely at the cliff face below me. It is steep, almost perfectly straight, but I can see plenty of handholds, and the rocks don’t look too crumbly or sharp. I should be able to make it down without too much problem.
My mood begins to brighten. It is almost as if this challenge was designed for me. I’ve loved climbing since I was little. Though my only wall was the one surrounding the courtyard of my house, where I spent the first sixteen years of my life hidden, that wall was a challenge. Natural stone, with the narrowest of hand- and footholds, it taught me a great deal despite its limitations. Once I was out in Eden, I found my aptitude for climbing served me well.
This won’t be exactly easy, but it won’t be impossible for someone like me.
Mira should have a pretty easy time of it, too. The kids in Harmonia learn to climb with ropes and pitons, but she’s strong and gutsy enough to figure out free climbing pretty fast.
I worry about my mom, though. She’s not as young as she used to be, and though she’s fit, she spends most of her time on low-energy activities, like gathering herbs or studying birds. Still, she’s smart and careful. She should make it down.
Stop thinking, I tell myself. Stop worrying. Be like an animal and just do this.
Then I remember my broken fingers.
Easy as I tell myself it would be, the truth is any climb on an unfamiliar face is dangerous. You have to be in top form to minimize risk. With my hand crippled, I don’t know if I can do it.
But I have to.
I look down at the ruin of my beautifully embroidered tunic, and sigh. The hummingbirds are spattered with dirt and blood and the dark mulberry splotch of wine. I wish someone had warned me to wear something more practical to the Wolf Moon festival. I never dreamed I wouldn’t be able to change. Oh well, I might as well accept that it is ruined, I think, as I tear a strip from the bottom.
I’d like to have a stick to use as a brace, but there’s nothing suitable in the cave. I make do with just binding my two broken fingers together, as straight as I can manage. While I’m doing it, it hurts so much that tears spring to my eyes. After my fingers are immobile, though, it subsides to a dull ache. At least Zander didn’t break my first or middle finger. Without the use of those, I wouldn’t have a chance. This way, though, I might be able to keep those broken fingers out of the way. It will be hard, but my only other choice is to admit defeat. That’s something I’ll never do.
Without another thought I lower my legs over the edge and turn to face the wall. I keep my body neutral against the rock, neither hugging it nor pushing off. At the first good toehold I start to relax. I’m like a squirrel, or a mountain goat—a natural climber.
Before I know it the cave entrance is ten feet above my head. The injured fingers aren’t as much of a hindrance as I’d feared. How do you like that, Zander? I think smugly. The treetops are still fifty feet below me, and the ground who knows how much farther. But this is comfortable. This is where I belong.
I settle almost into a trance as I descend. My muscles are like instruments, and this climb like improvisational jazz. There’s some predictability, some patterns, but the details keep changing. It’s beautiful, really like an art form, and my body sinks comfortably into the effort, happy to be straining and sweating. A fall from this height could kill me, but I’m not afraid. I feel free.
This is what life should be like—a natural life. This exact moment exemplifies everything that was missing inside of Eden. Here it is me—muscle, breath, hands, and brain—against the rocks and trees and wind and wilds. No, not against. The wilderness might be something I seem to struggle against, but it is more like a partner in a wild dance. I try to choose the steps, the direction, but sometimes I have no choice and nature takes the lead.
I breathe deeply of the cool, mossy scent of the rocks, the sharper smell of the forest canopy that is just now even with me. Only another thirty feet or so to go, and I’ll be on the ground. From there I’ll do the other thing I do best—run. I’ll run like a deer, like a wolf, swift and strong through the forest.
I’ve never felt so alive!
Here, down lower, the rocks have vines growing on them. In the determined, tenacious manner of all life, the roots have wedged themselves into the tiniest fissures and grown, anchoring into cracks that have slowly widened over the years. The rocks are looser here, but no matter. The vines have taken hold firmly, so I use them, too.
The thick, flexible vines feel like they were made for my hand. I lower myself another ten feet using mostly the foliage. It’s thrilling, like using Mira’s climbing ropes—so much faster than feeling for each handhold, testing it, searching for another. I swing sideways from one to another, the wind swooshing my hair away from my sweaty face. It doesn’t feel like a contest anymore. It just feels like fun!
I shouldn’t have let myself relax into the fun. The vines gave me too much freedom. That last swing took me too far from the other vines, and there are no good holds in the rock anywhere within reach. Bik! I’ll have to swing pretty far back.
Holding onto the vine with one hand, I push a bit off the rock face and swing myself sideways, reaching with the other hand. I can’t quite reach.
I push again, harder this time, and see the nearest hold is just an inch away. The next one ought to do it.
I’ve already committed to the hardest swing of all when I feel the vine’s roots start to give way.
I scream as the handhold I’m straining for slips out of reach and I’m in freefall. I drop almost a dozen feet before the vine unfurls down to a secondary set of roots. Somehow I manage to hang on as the sudden stop jerks my arm violently. I judder and smack hard against the cliff face, smacking my forehead hard.
For a few seconds I hang there, stunned. I don’t move until blood starts to drip into my eye. Luckily it is my blind eye, so it doesn’t affect my functioning, but it is intensely annoying.
Though the wound is minor, it forces me to take things a little more seriously. Anything can happen to me out here. I could be hurt and trapped in the wilderness for days, slowly dying, with no one ever coming to help. I wipe away the blood, acutely conscious of my own vulnerability.
Blinking away drips of blood that are more annoying than worrying, I make my careful way down the last stretch of cliff face until with absolute relief my feet touch the flat earth. When I think of lying crippled on the rocky earth, my broken body prey to any passing predator . . .
It is all I can do not to kiss the ground.
I press the wound for a few moments, and luckily the bleeding stops. But it also makes me think about the victim I’m supposed to be rescuing. I know it isn’t real—it will just be someone pretending to be hurt—but I have no doubt my treatment will be graded in great detail, as if a life really depended on it.
I remember Elder Night’s holographic advice, and think maybe I should try to find some of the healing herbs I’ve been taught about. When I first started exploring the forests and fields all of the plants looked the same to me. Mostly, I was so overjoyed at actually seeing real live plants that the fine details were lost on me. Now, I can recognize some of them. Not nearly as many as most residents of Harmonia, though. Mira, or even Zander, could probably heal anything with plants they could find within arm’s reach.
I set out as best I can figure in the direction marked by the holographic map. There were lines indicating a stream, I think. If I can find that, it looked like it flowed past the target point. I should be able to follow that easily enough. If only I can get there before the others.
/> Before I’ve gone very far I hear a twig snap. I whirl, but see nothing, and though I hold my breath, there is no sound beyond the breeze and the rustling trees. Zander, I think at first. But no, he emerged from one of the other caves ringing this valley and would be to eager to complete his first trial to stalk me.
What if some predator has picked up the scent of my blood? There are wolves out here, cougars, bears . . . Elder Night might say that wild animals seldom attack humans. But seldom feels a lot less like never when you’re alone in the woods covered in blood.
I start walking again, and for a while all is well. Then I hear another branch shift just out of sight. It sounds for all the world like it was crunched under a paw, or foot. This time I don’t stop, but try to vary my pace so if whatever is making the noise is matching my stride to stay hidden, I’ll throw it off the pattern. I think I hear something . . . maybe. I can’t be sure.
“Hello?” I say softly. Of course no one answers.
It is just my imagination. Or a hungry bear. Either way, I didn’t really expect an answer.
When I quicken my pace, though, the faint almost-sound speeds up, too.
If it is indeed my imagination, I have a better—and bigger—imagination than I thought. I break into a run, expecting to be pounced on any second . . .
I THINK SOMETIMES the fear of seeming stupid is all that makes me brave. Like now, I’m running through the forest at top speed being chased by . . . probably nothing? I mean, I definitely heard something, but as someone who spent their whole life without hearing so much as a chirping sparrow, frankly all the noises out here sound kind of threatening. The first time I heard all the ruckus a squirrel can make, I was sure a bear was going to pop out of the shrubbery. Mira had a good laugh about that one. I’d practically climbed onto her shoulders!
Now I’m sprinting terrified from a cracking branch. Come on, Rowan! It’s far more likely it was a deer or a raccoon than a predator. Herbivores outnumber carnivores. Anyway, humans aren’t natural prey for any predators. Any sounds I hear now are probably nothing more than chipmunks fleeing in terror from the giant biped crashing through their home!
This makes me laugh, and I slow, and finally stop.
Nothing reaches my ears but the sound of breeze and birdsong, the faint buzzing of insects, and the sound of my own thudding heart.
Whatever it was, or wasn’t, it’s gone now. I resume a quick hiking pace toward where I guess the center of the valley lies. The underbrush is too thick to run right here, anyway.
Slowing down a bit gives me a chance to look at my surroundings more closely. It also gives a fly a chance to settle on the blood that’s dried to a crust over my eyebrow. I pluck a few leaves of things I recognize, but I don’t think any of it is really going to help me. There’s a plant called boneset, but I can’t remember how it is supposed to help mend bones. Do I feed it to them, or just slap it on their broken leg? If I can find the stream, there might be a willow tree growing near it. Mira once told me that willow bark is good for headaches and fevers. But I think she said it had to be made into a tea, and when I find the victim there won’t be fire nearby, or water, or a pot, or a cup . . .
This is useless, I decide. I don’t know enough to compete with the natural-born. I know to hold a broken bone still, apply pressure to a wound . . . and that’s about it.
Abandoning my hunt for herbs, I move more swiftly now, getting used to the tangled forest floor. The trees are huge, far bigger than the camphor tree in the Underground. Some have broad, dark green leaves, and I recognize them as oaks. Others, standing alone with little clearings around them, are the kings of the forests, the mighty redwoods. Elder Night told us that to the north of us, many days’ journey, are a kind of redwood that gets even taller. But these already seem impossibly huge. Just looking up at them makes me dizzy.
I find that the ground is more clear under the redwoods than under the other trees, so I chart a zigzagging path that takes me from giant to giant. It might be a little bit longer in absolute distance, but I feel like I’m moving more efficiently. At least I’m not getting snagged on brambles at every step.
From the lightning-fast view of the schematic, it looked like it would only be a couple of miles to the center of the valley, but after an hour I still haven’t found my goal. The foliage is so dense that it could be twenty feet away from me and I might never know, if the supposedly injured person didn’t cry out.
Did I pass the center? I’m disoriented, and I have to take a quiet moment to calm myself and reorient my thoughts. I stand with my eyes closed, my hands at my side, listening, feeling, sensing the way Elder Night taught me. Become one with the forest, and it will tell you its secrets. I open my eyes, and take in the world around me.
Details come to me that were lost in my earlier rush. I remember gradations of color in the foliage. In some places the trees seem a slightly richer green. Of course, trees growing closest to the stream are going to be just a little bit greener and healthier. I can’t see the water, but I can tell where it is.
In that moment of stillness I hear a step. Though a little part within me flinches, I have a new connection to the wilderness around me and I can tell at once that it isn’t a human step. I’m not afraid. Very carefully, I turn my head and see a deer step clear of a bramble patch.
She sniffs the air, but I’ve lost whatever civilized smell I once carried from Eden and I smell like her world now. She’s not afraid either, but accepts me as another animal, not a predator but a peaceful creature like herself.
I remember the first moment I caught a glimpse of the outside world, when the earthquake shut down the man-made desert and I reached the edge where I could see a flower-filled meadow and a forest. A deer had stepped into the clearing, the most magical thing I’d ever seen. Even after months in the wilderness, it’s lost none of its magic.
She looks behind her, makes a gentle sound, and a dappled fawn trots into view. Less dignified than its mother, it dances on impossibly elegant legs until it trips and stumbles near me. When it gets its spindly legs back under itself, it sniffs my leg.
Tentatively, I reach out a hand and stroke its white-spotted coat. I’m mesmerized. Never have I felt such a part of nature.
Then another sound interrupts us, this one unmistakably human. With wide, startled eyes the doe bounds away, her white tail a beacon for her fawn to follow. In an instant they are gone.
I turn, and see Zander.
Then, before he can even threaten me, Mira comes into the clearing.
“What a nice surprise,” Zander says. “I can take out two Eden scum at the same time. After this I’ll just find your mother and . . .”
My fists ball up, but Mira is much faster. She makes it look like a beautiful dance as she steps nonchalantly up to him and without apparent effort throws him over her shoulder and slams him on the ground.
“It’s all in the hip,” she notes to me as she keeps hold of Zander’s wrist. She twists it when he tries to stand, and puts her foot elegantly on his throat. “Move again, and I break it. I go for bigger bones than fingers.”
Fury and fear vie on Zander’s face. He wants to fight, but he won’t risk being disabled for the tests.
“Now, when I let you go, you’re going to scurry along like a good little bunny, and you’re going to leave my friend alone. You saw how easy it was for me to do this, right?” She tweaks his wrist, making him wince. “What do you think will happen if you try to retaliate? I’ll just leave that to your imagination.”
She lets him up and steps back. He stands unsteadily, rubbing his wrist, obviously yearning to retaliate. Wisdom prevails this time, though, and with a foul curse he runs off into the forest.
“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” I gush.
“Admit it, when I told you I could fight you had your doubts.”
“Er, maybe. I certainly never imagined anything like this. It was . . . beautiful.” I never thought I could see fighting as beautiful.
“I know where to go. Come with me.”
“No,” she says firmly. “I’m not a cheat.”
“We can use any resources we find in the wilderness,” I point out. “Well, you found me!”
I want to get the top rank, of course, but there’s no way I’m going to abandon Mira. She still refuses, but I have an idea. “Here, I’ll draw you a map. Then we can race each other there. We’re so close you’d find it in a few minutes anyway. This makes it more friendly, and fun.”
“But I know you really, really want to win.”
“So do you. But I’ve learned to never turn your back on your friends, no matter what. Anyway, it’s not just about getting there. We still have to treat whoever is there. And I won’t help you with that!”
Mostly because I probably can’t. Mira’s pockets are stuffed with an assortment of herbs I can’t begin to recognize. She’ll probably know exactly what to do for the patient.
She nods, then hands me a stick and clears away leaves from a patch of forest floor. “Draw away!”
I sketch the way to the target and show her the right angle to keep the sun over her shoulder, and when she has it down, I scribble out the map with my toe.
“Be careful,” Mira says. “Zander is out here, too, and if he catches you alone . . .”
I grin at her. “He has to catch me first. And so do you. Go!” And I take off at top speed toward the rendezvous.
FOR A WHILE we run companionably side by side. But this is a race, not friendly exercise. The river has to be just ahead, and I think the site will be to the right once I cross. So I veer away and in a moment she’s out of sight. The foliage changes gradually, and I know that any moment I’ll reach the stream.
Rebels of Eden Page 7