by Sylvie Kurtz
With nothing to stop the pull of gravity, he went right over the edge of the cliff.
* * *
“SABRIEL!” Nora, flat on her stomach, every muscle trembling, crawled to the edge of the granite slab and peered carefully over the edge. Sabriel hung on an arm of rock jutting out from the sheer side of cliff with only the pitiful hemlock sapling to give him a handhold.
“I’m okay,” he said
“You’re bleeding.” The blow or the fall had cut his cheek, blood painting him a warrior-stripe of red.
“Just a cut.”
“Just a cut doesn’t lose you a gallon of blood so fast.”
“Head wounds always look worse than they are.” He moved slowly and shook off the pack. From the inside, he unwound a rope. “I’m going to throw this rope up to you.”
With an awkward sideways throw, he launched the rope up the cliff.
Grimly, Nora wrestled with the rope that came snaking up at her. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I’m fine. I just need to rest for a bit.” He attached the pack to his end of the rope. “Nora, listen to me carefully. You’ll have to go to Mount Storm and catch up to Tommy before he gets there. Otherwise, the Colonel will get him.”
“I can’t leave you here.” The way he hobbled awkwardly on his left foot as he threw the rope up, figuring out he’d hurt his ankle didn’t take a genius. Was it broken? Would infection set in before she could come back with help?
“You don’t have a choice unless you want to lose Scotty,” he said.
She couldn’t risk losing Scotty. The fast closing of her throat had her taking a too-big gulp of air. “I need you.”
“You’ve been leading all day.”
“Because you were there to correct my mistakes.”
“You know the songline.”
She shook her head, not bothering to wipe the tears as she furiously worked to free the pack so she could tie off the rope to a tree for leverage and pull him up. “I can’t leave you like that.”
“Give it to me, Nora. Give me the song.”
“What if you go into shock? What if you fall off that ledge?” What if he died?
“Give me the song, Nora.”
She kept knotting the rope around the sturdiest trunk she could find. “‘Pinball Wizard,’ ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me.’ ‘Stones in the Road’ lead to a ‘Landslide.’ ‘All Things Must Pass’ until you’re ‘High and Dry’…” She gave him his song, verse by silly verse. “‘Divided Sky,’ look ‘Heaven’s Right There.’”
“Look where you’ve been,” Sabriel reminded her. “Make up a line, then focus on where you’re going. For Scotty.”
“I’m sending down a rope.” She dribbled the rope so it wouldn’t lash him on its way down.
“Honey, you don’t have the upper-body strength and I don’t want to have to go fish you off the side of this cliff, too.”
For an instant, she was sixteen again, watching her mother drive away, her gut twisted in a knot, hoping the car would turn around, knowing that it wouldn’t. And she could not do this to Sabriel. Could not turn her back and walk away when he needed help.
“Only you can reach Scotty in time.” Sabriel’s voice was gentle, too gentle, and it made the tears flow again. “That was the whole point of this exercise, wasn’t it? Finding Scotty?”
Reality crashed down on her as if another ghost tree had fallen. He was right. She had no choice. He could survive where he was. As a Ranger he’d suffered through worse. Heck, he’d lived in these wilds for a whole summer, evaded the Colonel and his trained men for a whole summer. He’d lived through the Colonel’s revenge.
Scotty couldn’t defend himself, and she wasn’t sure enough of Tommy’s state of mind to take the risk that he could protect their son. She would come back once Scotty was safe, and she and Tommy could pull Sabriel up.
Her conscience chafed. You’re doing to him what you swore you’d never do to anyone.
“You don’t have much time left before the Colonel’s men catch up.” Though Sabriel tried to hide the urgency in his voice, it climbed up rope and vibrated against her palms, bringing the whole nightmare back in vivid three-dimensional color.
“You’re a sitting duck where you are.” Her voice cracked.
“There’s enough scrub here to hide me.”
A few dead hemlocks clinging to the cliff’s side? He was trying to calm her down, to give her a reason to go. The truth was that if the Colonel’s men caught up to either of them, she and Sabriel would be killed.
Torn in half, she dragged up the rope.
“I’ll be right back,” she said through the mist of her tears. “And I swear, if you die before I get back, I’ll kill you.”
He laughed. “That’s my girl.”
She’d put him in danger. And now she had to make it right. She had to find Tommy and Scotty. Fast. She had to bring them back to free Sabriel.
In the bear bag, she lowered the first-aid kit, most of the food, the stove with the barrel filled with water.
“Keep it,” he said, pushing the bag back up. “You’ll need it.”
“I don’t have time to haul it back up. Besides, I can’t carry a pack that heavy.”
“Nora, don’t be a fool.”
I already am. Because losing him would hurt. And she was still going to leave him wounded and bleeding. Scotty had to come first. She shouldered Sabriel’s pack, swallowed hard and turned her back to the cliff.
“It’s almost eight miles to Lightning Point,” he said. “It should take you about seven hours to get there.”
Seven hours on her own in woods that might as well be an alien planet. She gulped.
“I’ll come back.” She curled her hand tight around the pack’s straps. “I promise.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
The first step away from the cliff was the hardest. She wanted to cry. Hold it back. Choke it down. Concentrate.
The wind mocked her.
Please, please, give me the strength to help Sabriel and to help Scotty.
She focused on the songline and took another step and another, the angry whip of wind battering her as if to test her courage.
She’d never feared monsters under her bed, in her closet or knocking at her window. No, the monsters on the other side of her bedroom door were enough to keep her wide awake at night, building playlists the way other children might Lego. She’d survived then. She could do it now. For Scotty. For Sabriel.
The trail descended through spruce and hardwoods to a steep slope she had to cut with switchbacks—“Pinball Wizard.” There, she found Tommy’s next sign—“Don’t Stand So Close to Me”—a wall of pebbles pointing her toward a narrow ravine, and she cheered her small progress. “One down.”
Too many more to go.
Trees thrashed like mad harpies, prodded by the rant of the wind filled with chaos.
I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared. She jabbed the ground with her heels and kept heading down the gorge. “No, you’re not!”
Yes, you are, but it doesn’t matter. She was not going to give up. Scotty and Sabriel depended on her. She couldn’t let them down.
Stay safe, Scotty. Mommy’s working hard to find you.
Stay safe, Sabriel. I’m not going to leave you there alone.
The narrow gorge climbed up steeply to a ridge. “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” Then through woods that broke over a granite slab with broken views—“Stones in the Road.” To a slippery slope that crumbled under her feet—“Landslide.”
In the growl of wind, she thought she could hear the Colonel’s voice berating her. Look at you, you miserable piece of street scum. Tommy could have done so much better than you. You ruined him.
Then Sabriel’s, encouraging her. Keep going. Follow the songline. That’s my girl.
The twin blasts of wind had her swinging from desperation to elation.
Focus. Focus on what you’re doing right. Focus on where you’re going. Focus on Scotty.
>
As she walked, she bolstered her confidence with all the reasons she had to be grateful—Scotty, Sabriel, water in her pack, dry clothes, healthy feet. “I will not fall apart. I will find Scotty and Tommy. I will warn them of the Colonel’s men. And I will find Sabriel again. I am a survivor.”
Maples, beeches and oaks gave way to red spruce and opened up to a granite ledge with lush caps of moss, lichen and lowbush blueberry, then ended abruptly in a cliff with views of valleys and mountains. Night fell. Cliff faces, exposed slides, mountain capped with metamorphic rock, made granite bald islands in a sea of forested peaks. The wind called like wolves, a howling, hungry beast.
She stopped to rest for a bit. How many miles had she gone? She’d lost her watch in the river and couldn’t tell how long she’d been walking. The beauty of sky and stars choked emotions in her chest until a veil of clouds stole both.
She didn’t want to be here, alone. Falling back on old habits, to go deep into her mind where she went at night when the ghosts crawled around her head, was tempting. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She wanted to curl up. She wanted to just let this nightmare pass.
And what? Let the Colonel win, let him get Scotty? Let Sabriel die after all he’s done for you?
Out here, there was no one to help. All she had was herself. And if she failed, three others could die. With determination, she rose, grabbed a branch, fashioned a walking stick and put one foot in front of the other.
She remembered the pace Sabriel had kept, resting—rationing her strength just as she was her water.
Hunger took over, filling her with an intense need to stuff herself. She became intensely aware that all she carried with her was one of Sabriel’s energy bars and a three-quarter empty bladder of water. She had to hang on to both as long as she could. “It’s not like you’re starving. You had lunch. And when you get back down the mountain, you can eat all you want. Anything you want.”
To hell with dieting. To hell with all the Camden rules.
As hard as she tried to push away thoughts of food, her mind filled with the forbidden chocolate death dessert she’d indulge in when she got back. She was going to take a half-hour shower, blasting hot, then linger in peppermint bubbles for another. She was going to sheath herself in cashmere and silk and she was going to drink a gallon of hot tea in front of a roaring fire.
“Before or after the chocolate death?” she mocked herself, glad Sabriel couldn’t see how close she was to falling apart.
Sabriel. There was another puzzle. What would she do about him? She’d come to depend on him too much, but the thought of letting him go opened a rip in her heart.
Her boots dislodged small stones that rattled like teeth. What was that noise? There it was again. Footsteps? The Colonel’s men? No, nothing. Nothing but the wind and her imagination.
Hoohoohoo, hoohoo, hoo. An owl, just an owl.
“Nothing’s going to hurt you out here. Sabriel promised all the animals were more scared of you than you are of them.”
She reached the next point and played through Sabriel’s song, looking ahead for the next clue and couldn’t find the boulder shaped like a moose head minus one antler in the dark—not even with the moon’s light coming in and out of the clouds. Had she taken a wrong turn? Misinterpreted a clue?
This wasn’t happening to her. She wasn’t lost in the White Mountains, searching for her son. She was at home safely in her bed. They both were. This was just another nightmare, and she’d wake up any minute now to the soothing green walls of her room.
Except that her aching feet, her screaming thighs and her sandy eyes made this nightmare much too real. She wanted to scream, swear, belt out all the forbidden vocabulary that had once seemed vulgar and now seemed appropriate.
She lashed her walking stick against a tree trunk and it broke. “Wow, now that was really effective, Nora. What next? Throw a tantrum? That’s a waste of energy. Just keep going.”
The next crest faced her with yet another endless tableau of mountains. Searching for breath, she rested both hands on top of her thighs.
She had no idea where she was, if she was heading in the right direction, if she’d ever find Scotty. She was both hot and cold. Her nose an icicle, her torso bathed in sweat. And under it all, a layer of numbness kept her from feeling anything at all. Decades from now some poor hiker would come across her bleached bones.
But what else could she do except keep going? She had to find Scotty. One step at a time. Remember the song. She had to get back to Sabriel.
She developed a pattern. Twelve steps forward, look behind and look ahead, then forward one foot in front of the other.
“One step at a time. Remember the song.”
The slim saddle between the mountains carried the moans and whispers, as if a legion of ghosts shadowed her walk, waiting for her to stumble so they could feast. Her gaze followed the line of clouds growing angrier as they tumbled closer.
Her eyes burned, her muscles cramped, her joints protested. Exhaustion—physical, mental, emotional—dragged her down. She would not cry. Never again. She was strong.
The moan of the wind, the simple rugged beauty of her surroundings, became her friends, her touchstones, that rhythm of nature unmarred by her chatting gave her strength to keep going.
She reached Tommy’s next sign—a bird in flight, pointing her north—and looking out at the vastness of the mountains around her, something broke.
The air became charged with energy, coming off every tree, every rock, every atom of the sky. Like the hardening chocolate shell cracking on a scoop of vanilla ice cream until the melting confection oozed from the inside out.
Before her, all possibilities unfolded.
At that instant, peace flooded through her, and she knew with a deep certainty she would survive. She would find Scotty and Tommy. She would lead them back to Sabriel. And they would all get off this blasted mountain safely.
And she would never again let the Colonel dictate how she or Scotty should live their lives.
She would tell Sabriel that she cared for him, that once she got on her feet and settled somewhere with Scotty, she wanted a chance to see where their relationship could lead.
Coldly rational, she turned back to the woods, to the song that would lead her to Tommy and Scotty, then back to Sabriel. That would lead her to her true home.
She spotted the next sign—a flat table of rocks. Two more lines. She was almost there.
A crunch of leaves.
She spun around.
Pain split her skull.
Then darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
As soon as Nora left, Sabriel dug through the bear bag she’d dumped on him—the little fool—and found the small roll of duct tape he kept in the first-aid kit. Balancing himself carefully on the rocky shelf, he taped his sprained ankle and wrist.
Nora could do it. She could find Lightning Point. She’d learned fast and was motivated. But not knowing how fast the Colonel’s men were moving tore him apart. Climbing off this cliff would be hell, but he didn’t want to leave her alone any longer than he had to. Bad enough his mind ticked with the minutes flying by, messing with his concentration.
He found the first fingerhold and tested his bum wrist. Pain streaked up his forearm. Nothing he couldn’t take for, what, seventeen, eighteen feet? He’d climbed higher, shinnying up the maple, trellis and drainpipe to the third-story window of his parents’ brownstone as a teenager. The important thing was that he could get his wrist to hold his weight.
He tested the sprained ankle and blanked his mind, focusing on the cliff wall in front of him. The climb path opened up with clear handholds and toeholds. All he had to do was take them one at a time. Slow and easy.
But Nora, with her big, brown eyes and sweet mouth, intruded. The thought that Boggs was hunting her, that Boggs would deprive her of her child, that Boggs would kill her, hammered at him, weakened his grip. He had to reach her before the Colonel’s men did. He’d promised to keep he
r safe.
Hang on, Nora.
He pulled himself up on the toehold and reached up for the next fingerhold.
Sending her out alone had ripped him to pieces, but he’d had no choice. He couldn’t have her wait while he climbed out, not with the Colonel’s men so close. And he couldn’t risk her harming herself trying to help him. But if he lost her…
Don’t think. Just climb.
As he hauled himself up another foot along the granite cliff, something shifted inside him. When had this happened? When had he started thinking that she’d be around after this was over?
Sure, he liked having her around, liked her questions, liked the way she caught on fast. And he liked the smell of her, the taste of her, the whole neurotic, tenacious package. And damn if he didn’t like the way she looked at him with those big, brown eyes. Worse, he really liked the way she kissed him, fit around him, made him forget about fences. Adding a room or two on the cabin wouldn’t take that much more work.
Panting, he stopped, hung on the rock like one of the blasted spiders he hated, forced himself to clear his mind. He couldn’t let himself dwell on Nora, on his feelings for her, or he’d end up at the bottom of the ravine and useless.
One breath, two, and the dread dimmed enough for him to continue to climb. He would get to her in time. He would consider no other alternative.
Lost in the concentration of the climb, he didn’t notice Boggs until his shadow dropped down to cover Sabriel’s last fingerhold.
A worm of a smile twitched Boggs’s mouth. Malevolence filled his eyes. He lit a cigarette, dragged on it until the end glowed red. “I figured something like this happened. No way a tough guy like you was going to let a woman find her own way in the big, bad woods.” Boggs pointed the cigarette at him. “Chivalry, that’s your weakness. Killed your wife. If you’d let her handle her own crap…” He lifted an eyebrow. “But you had to be the hero.” He took another drag and puffed a cloud of smoke. “Killed your career.”