Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  Just get them out of here so I can call for help.

  “Thanks a lot, Laurel,” I said, trying to whip some sincerity into my voice. “I can feel them guiding me already.” I gestured to the sticky, piney places on my hands and forehead.

  Laurel beamed. Ulrike did not.

  “We’ll leave you to it, then. Don’t worry.” Laurel paused to place a bony hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be journeying today, so if you have any questions, or need help, just concentrate on my energy.”

  “We come back with search party,” Ulrike said, running search and party together in a roguish portmanteau.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Thanks again. Bye, Laurel! Bye, Ulrike!” I turned away from them and decided to walk up the trail a bit. I listened to their egress, to twigs snapping under their feet and the clatter of pebbles that rolled out of their path. Ulrike’s backpack was light, but the jug of water was pulling my arm out of its socket. I figured I’d consolidate the one into the other, but not before I took a drink—Don’t forget, Van, I told myself, it’s the desert.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I was feeling optimistic. I didn’t know much about cell phone reception, but reaching the highest ground I could get to was probably the best idea. I thought briefly about looking for Mom on my own, but quickly dismissed it. Ulrike was right—I had no woodsmanship and would almost certainly get lost. I aimed to stay as close to the trail as I could. I’d find some kind of marker to tell the park rangers about, and then, once I had a location to give them, I’d climb up—and hopefully only slightly away—from the path to get a signal and make the call. I just wanted to make sure the authorities showed up before Laurel’s search party.

  The path wasn’t well maintained. Piles of brush blocked the way in some places, and the ubiquitous agave plants spiked out into the trail. Every once in a while, I passed a small pile of rocks covered with chicken wire. I figured that they were markers of some kind, but there was no information on them: no numbers, no coordinates, nothing. I was definitely on a trail, so there had to be a beginning or an end, some place I would find a plaque or a name. Maybe I would run into some real hikers. That didn’t seem likely though, as Laurel and her group appeared to have selected this particular location in the canyon for its remoteness.

  I decided to walk a little more, but if I didn’t reach the end, or some other trail soon, I’d make the call. It was getting hot, and I’d already stopped twice for swigs from the water jug. I was covered in sweat, and the plastic was so slippery in my hands that I almost dropped the jug and lost my entire water supply. It was then, I guess, that I realized how vulnerable I was alone on the trail. I had to make that call—I knew I wasn’t going to find anything helpful. I struck out from the path in the direction that sloped up.

  When I could just barely see the trail, I tripped and fell too close to an agave plant and tore open my hand on the spikes. The blood ran fast at first, and I pressed the wound to my shirt to make it stop.

  Jesus, what if there are mountain lions and they smell my blood? My body began to hum with panic. Just get to a place where you can make the call, I told myself. I pressed my bloody hand to my chest and climbed up as fast as I could, without tripping or falling down on my face. I could feel the blood seep through the fibers of my shirt and felt the wetness over my heart. I stopped and looked around; I had no idea where I was. Shit, shit, shit. What if I faint from blood loss? I wondered. I pulled my hand away from my chest and looked at it carefully.

  The bleeding had slowed down, but the wound stung when I held it in the air. The compression definitely helped, but I didn’t have anything to bind it with. I grabbed for Marine’s phone and switched it on. A dour 4% blinked out at me and a tiny “no service” frowned out from the top right corner of the screen.

  I turned off the phone, pressing the power button too hard, so hard I was surprised the plastic rectangle didn’t snap under my fingers. Drops of sweat gathered behind my ears and at the back of my neck. I swiped them away with my not-bleeding hand.

  Stop being dramatic, I told myself. You aren’t really bleeding anymore. I wondered if maybe there was some first-aid kit in Ulrike’s backpack, or even an extra T-shirt. I unzipped the bag with my good hand and took another drink. I noticed that the level of water in the jug had gone down to almost half. How had I drunk that much? I looked for something, some secret pocket maybe, but there was nothing really: just a pen, a compass, and a protein bar.

  I zipped Ulrike’s bag closed and kept climbing up. When I let my injured hand swing by my side naturally, it started to drip blood again. Little red drops fell from my fingers and into the dirt. I folded my forearm back over my chest, like I was giving a pledge. It wasn’t easy to stay balanced walking like that, with Ulrike’s bag banging against my back.

  My legs were starting to hurt, too. The muscles in my thighs and calves cramped up almost as soon as I hit an especially steep patch. Just keep going until you can’t go anymore, then turn the phone on again. The pep talk didn’t work. I had to stop right away. I had to try again. I eased off the backpack and stretched my arms. I pulled out Marine’s phone and said a prayer into it. Please God, please anyone, please phone, please satellites, please, please, please.

  I turned the phone on, this time as gently as I could. The battery flashed out 2%, and one, tiny, goddess-blessed, beautiful bar winked out at me. I dialed 911 and pressed the phone to my ear, walking up the grade just a bit more, trying to coax a little more reception out of the phone. After a sickening silence, I heard a stuttering ring.

  “Nine one one, what is your emergency?” A woman’s voice crackled on the other end.

  “Yes!” I shouted. “Thank you, yes!”

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, hello! I’m lost on a hiking trail!”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello? Hello! Can you hear me?”

  “Hello? I can barely hear you.”

  “I’m lost on a hiking trail in Sedona, but I don’t know where! My mother and I are lost!” I shouted everything, hoping that all of my urgency would make the reception better.

  “Hello? Can you repeat that?”

  “Yes! I’m lost on a hiking trail in Sedona!” I waited for the woman’s voice, but didn’t hear it again. “Hello?” The phone was dead in my hand. I screamed out into the canyon. The sound that came out of me didn’t sound like something that could come out of a person. It was the sound you would expect from a furious dinosaur. I threw Marine’s phone down toward the trail, hoping that if it landed somewhere other humans were, they’d try to figure out where it came from. I knew that the likelihood of anyone finding that phone—or Mom, or me—was practically zero.

  I hated Laurel for starting this whole mess, and I hated Marine for bringing Mom into it. I hated Alex for going back to Vegas, and I hated Mom for being so much trouble. I even hated Ida for not being awake. I hated myself most of all for hating the rest of them, for not being smarter or more elevated or whatever. If you were Mom, in her right mind, you could get out of here. What would Mom do? I wondered.

  Mom didn’t have any woodsmanship either, but she was resourceful. I tried to pretend to be Mom. I traced back the way she made decisions. Always, she started with nothing: silence, stillness, darkness. So in the tangle of branches and leaves, and plants that could make a person bleed, I sat down and closed my eyes. Even just not moving anymore felt better. There was something so desperate about my hike up to get reception. Being still was like a bizarre and morbid reconciling, a well-here-we-are-and-this-might-be-it.

  Think about what you do have and what you do know.

  I had the water at least, which was good, except that I’d been gulping it down like some dehydrated buffalo. I had Ulrike’s compass, which was great, except I had no idea where I was or what direction the camp or parking lot or civilization was in. I had a protein bar, which, again, was great, but seemed more like prolonging the inevitable. Don’t worry, you’ll die from dehydration before hunger, said a voice in
my head, sounding suspiciously like Ulrike. Had she said that to me? Was I already going crazy from thirst?

  Just take a deep breath, I told myself. There’s plenty of air. I had Alex and Marine—they were going for help. I’d stupidly told them not to call the police, but at this point I would have gotten an I-love-cops tattoo, that’s how badly I wanted to see the police. Surely Alex and Marine would understand how things had gotten out of hand when they came back to the camp. They would know better than to listen to me. If they got back to Vegas that night, checked on Ida, rallied the troops or whatever, and left the next morning—They could be back in Sedona by tomorrow night, I told myself. See, it’s really not so bad. You won’t die here, probably. But Mom. She was a different story. She’d been fasting for days, and I had no idea how much water she’d had.

  Something muddy and powerful pushed up at the backs of my eyes, something that told me to forget about Mom. I could just leave her here; it would be a lot easier. I’d find my way back to the camp, or to a road. I’d go back to Vegas and go on tour with Carol and Joanna. Ida would be fine, fully recovered—Ida would be all the family I needed.

  For a minute it felt good, to think like that. Like Mom gets what she deserves. But the truth was, if I left her there, Mom could die. That would make me a murderer. If Mom had any chance of being saved, I was it. Even if Laurel’s search party eventually found her, they could be too late. I couldn’t just sit in one spot with my water and Ulrike’s power bar and wait for help. I’d have to find Mom, get some water to her as quickly as I could. But how would I do that? I stood up and considered my options. If I climbed up farther, maybe I’d spot Mom. Maybe I’d see her ridiculous robe flapping in the brush.

  My other option was to walk down, to try to find the trail again. More wandering and getting lost even worse. I knew, of the two ideas, this was the inferior, but something deep in my blood seemed to push me in that direction with a million little red cell hands.

  The way down was steep, but there were incremental, raised waves built into the rock. I looked for places that were more bare to put my feet. I didn’t want to fall face-first into any other carnivorous plants. I resolved not to drink more from my dwindling water supply—I would save all that was there for Mom. My route skewed to the left and an open swath of rock and gravel. The trees and bushes had thinned out, and the view that opened up in front of me was really magnificent.

  Cliff sides rose up out of the canyon like frozen swells of water, all bubble smooth, all looking like they could reanimate any second and crash down in rusty waves. My mouth was so dry. Even my eyeballs felt dry.

  I desperately wanted to drink, but instead filled my lungs with the thin, high-altitude air and rested my good hand in one of my back pockets. I felt a smooth lump in the denim fabric over the curve of my butt. An image of Carapace’s crystal flashed behind my eyelids. I pulled out the tiny stone and held it in my palm—a dark, dull ruby.

  I didn’t know if I was delirious, but I felt a point of pain on my skin where the stone sat. It was dense and hot, like the glowing end of a heated knitting needle pressing down the center of my palm. For some reason, I wasn’t alarmed. It calmed me down in a there-is-something-beyond-you-that-is-going-on-right-now way. I closed my fist around it and had a crazy thought. I’m going to let this crystal guide me. It was nuts. I knew how nuts it was, but I did it anyway.

  I closed my eyes and waited for that blood-pull. But the directions from the stone weren’t like the directions from my instincts. There was a feeling in my fist, like a white-hot arrow shooting forward and slightly to the right. It was as clear and tangible as the arrow on Ulrike’s compass buried deep in the backpack.

  I opened my eyes and followed it—I couldn’t see it or anything, it was more like I could feel it, like a magnet. I felt the place where it faded away, too, and closed my eyes, gripping the crystal in my fist again, waiting for the next arrow. This time it pointed down again and only very slightly to the left. I followed that one, too. And when they ran out of charge, or I got to the end of the arrow or whatever, I checked in with the stone and the next one. I had no idea how many of these arrows I followed. It must have been dozens.

  I wasn’t paying attention to anything around me—I wasn’t looking for clues Mom had left behind, or for the trail. All of my attention was on those arrows; they seemed like my only real resource. When I got my last arrow, I knew it would be the last one. It didn’t lose charge. If anything, it gained momentum as I followed it. It got stronger, hotter, brighter as it pointed and flashed: Over here! Over here! Over here!

  The very last arrow didn’t lead me to the trail, and it didn’t lead me to Mom. It led me to a dead end: a smooth, copper-colored cliff wall. There must be some mistake, I thought as I pushed against the stone. There had to be a crevice or secret passage through a cave or something. Waves of nausea coursed through me, and I held myself up by digging my fingertips into the rock.

  I pounded my fists against the stone until my hands hurt—especially the bad one. The cuts from the agave plant opened up again, and I watched stamps of my own blood multiply on the coarse gold surface. I threw the blood-red nub of crystal against the wall and sank to the ground. I must have been crazy, I thought, looking for magic from some phony, Laurel-originated thing. I screamed out, one of those grating, back-of-the-throat screams. I was shaking and dizzy. I looked at my hand. It was bad—a hot, throbbing pain spliced between my fingers, and underneath all of the blood my skin was red, like a sunburn.

  I had to figure out where I was. Maybe I’d been walking downhill all along. Maybe the trail was nearby. I felt a chilling certainty that it wasn’t. I’d led myself to a sandy pool of open space. On one side, a thicket of pine trees created a dense green barrier. The rock face made up the other side. They curled in toward each other to form an empty, shallow oval. I stepped back to get a better look at the rock face, which, funnily, looked like an actual human face.

  A square copper chin rose out of the dirt and eased into a thick pair of lips. There were symmetrical dips in the center, where a kind of nose jutted out. I stepped back even farther to see if there were eyes, too, but there weren’t. A narrow ridge protruded in the center of the forehead area, like two gathered brows. It was a masculine face, definitely. I got out only one coherent thought: weird—before it happened.

  A word boomed from those giant stone lips—a single word, like a crack of thunder—VAN.

  Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit pulsed through my body with every pump of my heart. I wasn’t made up of muscles and bones and blood; I was just atoms of terror, blinking an incredulous, tremulous rhythm.

  Was I supposed to answer? I didn’t think I could say anything—not even help, not even holy shit. Instead, I looked up, trying to get the whole face into the lens of my vision. Was I imagining it? I didn’t think so. The mouth was open. A slice of space between the rock lips had cracked into existence. Or, I was losing my mind. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, too distracted to realize I was using the injured one. I could feel the blood, hot and sticky, where I smeared it over my face.

  Other than the opening in the mouth area, the stone face was unchanged. It was quiet for a few minutes, so quiet that I was certain I’d been daydreaming or hallucinating. I wasn’t sure what to do. Keep looking for Mom? Take a rest? Was I already dead? I opened Ulrike’s backpack and unscrewed the water jug’s cap. I swallowed the smallest possible sip, and it felt pretty real. Okay, I thought as I replaced the cap.

  VAN, again, that otherworldly thunder cracked through the canyon, echoing around me in waves I could feel lap over my skin. GIVE US YOUR HANDS.

  What? I figured I was probably dead at that point, so I might as well go along with it. I put my hands up against the face, gently this time. I didn’t have a second thought about it. It was like I knew exactly what the face meant.

  CLOSE YOUR EYES, it boomed.

  My eyes were closed before I made myself close them, like these instructions were the most natural thing in
the world. Like I couldn’t resist following them. Like breathing.

  When you close your eyes in the daytime, it doesn’t feel truly dark. The light from the sky, or lamps in your room, will seep through the skin of your lids. Your eyelids will begin to flutter, too, so much so that it gets hard to keep your eyes closed. Neither of these things happened to me. It was like my eyes were sealed over with tar—a heavy, immovable blackness. Opening them again did not feel possible. It all looked and felt black, like there was nothing.

  Then these little drops of light started coming at me, bright light, too—like stars dripping out of a clear, black sky. They fell slowly, the consistency of syrup. I couldn’t see my body, but I could feel each bright drop as it hit my skin. They didn’t burn or hurt. Each drop felt like a fingertip press, about the same pressure you would need to push an elevator button.

  I couldn’t hear any sounds outside of me, but the running of my own body was deafening. I imagined it was what a baby hears inside of its mother. The double thunk of my heartbeat was much too loud. It was like I’d gone all tiny and was just a speck inside of myself. The sound was heavy, too, the same way the voice from the face seemed to have physical substance.

  I almost forgot about the dripping night sky behind my eyes, until one drop grew and swelled as the others fell normally around it. First it was the size of a golf ball, then a watermelon, then a pony, then a house, then a mountain, and it kept coming—not quickly, still at that leisurely syrup pace—until it dropped right onto me. But I wasn’t really me anymore. I was just that speck, subsumed by organs and tissue. The giant amoeba-star-glob fell onto and over the shape of my body with a sickening, lurching slurp. I couldn’t see anything then, just brightness. I definitely couldn’t hear anything. I felt myself opening my mouth to try to make some kind of sound, but nothing came out. Everything came in. All of that syrupy brightness filled my mouth and pushed down my throat. It streamed in through my nostrils. I tried to clamp my mouth closed, but it was too late. The light kept moving in and through.