It was the focus he loved. The immediacy. Everything else fell away as he found the next grip, foot placement, pressure, twist. He thrilled in the balance, his balance, rotating around his center, he tucked and pushed up inch by inch, working through the puzzle of vertical motion.
At fifty feet the crack widened to a three-foot chimney. It was easy to breach the gap, jamming hands and feet on either side. He looked down, straight down the narrow chute, struck by the beauty of rock and fissure. The world cracked open below him.
I am the chimney.
‘Simply experience it.’ Again, the thought felt like his grandfather speaking to him.
A hundred feet up, the cold drove Alphonse out of the split. He swiveled, grabbed a frag on the face. More trickles of water. Straddling the corner, one leg in the crack and the other out, he gripped, shimmied to the next hold, and the next.
I am the cliff.
This was the zone.
His thighs burned but his knuckles were stiff with cold, and he stopped to clench his left hand a few times, then his right. Sangal lay on the distant coastline, his home, his past. He recalled days when he was young and some small pain, a child teasing him or a split lip, would bring his mother running, and she’d cry, “Alphie, be strong. You’re all I have.”
Such truth in her words then, and she’d raised him, true enough. Why were they so different now? He spun the question round and round, like a shell on a musing string. Surely his mother understood her own father’s idealism. He remembered her agreeing with Stavo. Had it been sincere?
The crack was pinching off now, and he needed his rope. He hooked the end to an anchor, spooled out a length, and clipped it to his harness.
A tricky spot jutted ahead. Part of the route navigated a small buttress, and he studied it. Then easy, exuberant, he held the rope and leaned back from the near-vertical cliff, planted his feet on its face and cried out in joy. A warm wind swirled up from the trail, caressing him. He yelled again, straight up.
Water streamed freely down the face, and the glare on the spires was bright. Ice. The morning suns lit it afire, but this route ended on the southern face. Yes, that was clear.
Three hundred feet. His right foot found a two-inch ledge, and a toehold for the left was there, a narrow crack that hugged his foot. His grandfather had protected these ranges, this very climb. Stavo would’ve done more but for a group of councilors who struck back, saying his laws threatened economic advancement throughout the provinces. Those councilors had seen to it that Stavo served time. Alphonse had never gotten a straight answer on why, from anyone.
A powerful popping erupted above. A sheet of ice broke and hurtled down. Alphonse screamed and hugged the cliff as blocks and shards of ice careened past him, glancing off the face, shattering and spraying apart in slow motion.
They hit the ground; the crash resounding through the cliff and into his chest. His focus shot upward. He held still, barely breathing. “Miere,” he muttered. At this distance the sheer volume of ice above was impossible to gauge, or whether any loose rock sat up there too. Fingers cramping, he thought again that if he died out here he’d have no one to blame but himself. The thought chilled him.
But I know how to climb. Three feet or three hundred, physics didn’t change. This cliff was not technically challenging. Find the zone.
The rock, rough and damp, smelled of moss and sulfur. He fused his thoughts into it, imagined he was the cliff, timeless. It felt for a fleeting moment that he was. And with that stretch of unbroken being, his chest relaxed. Then his arms, his legs.
Alphonse took the next toehold and clipped into another anchor, attached another length of rope to the harness and held quiet, finding ledges, pushing on. Soon he’d meet the buttress and could swing around it.
He reached for the next anchor.
The hook slipped, and his heart leapt upward. He overcompensated, grabbing too quickly with his right hand and gripping too hard with the left. “Miere!” The frag came free and his foot slid. Alphonse was in free fall. “Miere! Autore!” His harness caught, he swung out, time slowed again, then sped up as he swung toward the cliff. He cushioned the impact with his legs.
The next anchor pulled out of the face with a second sickening lurch. He was in free fall again, yelling. The harness caught him. It yanked up against his buttocks and the rope’s contortions threw him away from the face, again.
Alphonse careened back toward the cliff, and with his arms over his head, he twisted sideways and rammed into it. Something cracked. He howled at the impact. Something had sliced into his right thigh, but whether the cracking had to do with another anchor above, the rock, or one of his own bones, he didn’t know.
Yelling still, in raw rage, on the next inbound swing he caught himself with his good leg, clamped his hands around frags, and held fast. Breathing hard with tears drying on his cheeks.
Three hundred feet above the trail and seven hundred feet below the summit, Alphonse clung to the rock with a shooting pain in his right thigh and warmth seeping down his leg. Hugging the cliff, he screamed, wordlessly, into the Martire Arels.
Finally, he looked down. The front of his thigh was gashed, four inches, a ragged hot slash. His trousers were drenching red.
Alphonse’s focus narrowed in. He needed to descend before another anchor failed or more ice broke off or the red patch soaking his trousers grew too large. He clawed over to his mounted line on the cliff face. The new goal . . . back where he started. Down. His thigh throbbed, moist and hot.
Swearing in agony, Alphonse lowered himself one-footed, his right leg awkwardly held out. At the chimney, he unclipped, left the rope, and jammed back down. At fifty feet the chimney narrowed, and he came out of the chute twenty feet off the ground.
He eased down and hobbled from the spires, choking on his breath. He grabbed the pack, pulled it over, and worked the tent out. Pitched it and crawled in. Found bandages, a tube of ointment. Blood everywhere. He pulled his blanket around himself, sweat chilling on his face.
The immensity of what he’d left in Sangal. Everything back home, the machine grinding onward, the industry, his mother.
Alphonse choked on his breath. Summiting Tura—gaining wisdom? His sobs came harder. Nothing had changed, except now he was badly hurt.
A wrenching realization, his stupidity for throwing away a council seat, turning his back on a path that could have led to real power. If he’d had more time to think about di Les’s terms, he might have found some way to live with them. The man had been so clear that Stavo’s work must be undone, but there might have been some way around that.
* * *
Daylight returned. The bandages had stiffened, and his wound throbbed. Alphonse limped to the trickle of water running down the spires and wetted the strips. He teased them off, swearing as they pulled free. The wound was shallowest near his knee, and deeper into the meat of his leg.
He needed a doctor.
It was over eighty miles to Sangal, but Nasoir’s western settlements were no more than twenty. He struck camp and hobbled down the Tura trail, switching back and forth, and back, and forth, eventually taking the western fork heading further inland. Further west.
Alphonse managed several miles that day and several more the next. He curled into his blanket each night, dizzy and feverish, and his thigh swelled larger and hotter.
On the fourth day he started down the final flank. If he made the tree line, he could boil water.
Chapter Seven
Terrence and Nathan argued the entire way back to the farm while Myrta sat with her eyes closed, trying to steer her thoughts away from the visit altogether. It had gone so horribly wrong, the whole day, and the memory of that man’s hand on her wrist felt branded into her thoughts.
That night in her room she lay under the blanket her aunt, Ardelle, had sent her. When Myrta was small, they’d visit Ardelle and Un
cle Ephraim in Collimais. Ardelle always gave Myrta gifts, and she told stories Myrta hadn’t heard before. That Myrta had been born at the inn, same time as cousin Odile. “The other girl,” they used to call one another when they were little.
Myrta pulled into a ball under the blanket. That man, at the de Reu stead, the one so different from any steader. His words kept repeating in her thoughts. “We’ll take you with us . . .”
She couldn’t curl any tighter. “Stop, stop it!”
Below, the front door creaked, and Terrence and Celeste’s voices sounded up the stairs. Celeste spoke. “The system must have been impressive.”
“Ain’t convinced.”
“We don’t need it, Terrence.” Chairs scraped on the kitchen floor. “Why was everyone in such bad temper tonight? Were there problems at Reuben’s?”
“Good system. Not perfect, mind, but it’d see us through drought no problem.”
“Love. I’m not asking about the irrigation, I’m asking about the children.”
Terrence grunted and there was a pause. He sometimes took a while to answer Celeste’s questions, especially if it was something he might think she didn’t want to hear. “Myrta collapsed. Jack tended her.”
“Collapsed?” Celeste’s voice rose. “Did she faint?”
Myrta rolled onto her pillow and pulled the blanket over her head.
“I said collapsed. Her color went off, and Jack took her t’ the house. One of those Renico folk got close, set me off.”
Celeste’s voice rose further. “Renico? Renico was there? At Reuben’s? I thought the system was installed. Why were they there? They shouldn’t be there.”
“Settle down, Celeste, it’s maintenance. ’Sides, we’ve no reason to worry. That fella stepped over a line, is all. I set him straight.”
“They shouldn’t be there,” Celeste repeated. After a long moment she said tensely, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Terrence, you’re right. We’ve no reason to worry.”
* * *
The next morning, taking the milk to the cheese house and still plagued by the memory of that man’s voice, Myrta startled at seeing Celeste already there working on the warped press.
Celeste’s face was taut. “Terrence tells me you had a spell yesterday.”
She gritted her teeth and set the pails on the workbench. This was the last thing she wanted to talk about.
Celeste folded her arms across her chest too tightly, like her face. Where she gripped, the knuckles on her hand stuck out in little anxious knobs. “He said people from Renico were there. What happened?”
Myrta busied herself. “Nothing.”
“Did they bother you?”
“No.” The man had looked at her so intently, like she was more important than even her papa, and he said things a steader would never say.
After a few moments Celeste turned back to the press, unscrewed the rods, and slid them to the side. Myrta tied her hair back, washed her hands, and went to the next room to pull down the curd.
When she returned, her mama had lined up the threaded rods into parallel lines, one right next to another. “We need to discuss this.”
Myrta threw the curd into a bowl. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She clanked a pot onto the stove.
“Myrta—”
“Georgie liked the herbed cheese. I think we should make more of that.” Myrta poured milk into the pot and some of it splashed over the other side. “Less of the plain. We can try dill. We have both. Chives and dill.” She pulled a cloth from a drawer and wiped the spill.
Celeste’s voice grew gentle. “Dear child—”
“I’m fine.” Myrta scrubbed at a stain on the workbench. It had been there for years and wasn’t going anywhere. She scrubbed at it anyway. “I’d like to go to first market. We have cheese. I think I should go. I think I could sell all of it. Please.”
“Was the spell as bad as that?” Her mama’s brow had knitted into a hard lump.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
Myrta threw the towel down. “All right, yes, it was bad. I threw up. I thought I’d have to ride home like that. Yes.” She turned away. “I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m doing everything you said to do.” Myrta choked on her breath. “What if I’m getting sicker? What if I need—?”
“You aren’t.”
“You weren’t there. Papa was so angry—”
“Don’t worry about him.”
“—He’ll never let me go anywhere again. Everything was spinning. I threw up!” Tears ran down inside her nose, and the view outside smeared into a mess of farming and dirt.
Her mama tried to hug her, but she shook it off. Quietly, Celeste said, “Why don’t we try something new?”
Like Myrta was a recipe. Change the dill to fennel, maybe that’s better. Like that warped press, fixable if they took the bad part out and put in a different part.
She wasn’t a recipe. She was sick.
“You’ve done your exercises?”
“Yes, Mama. Yes. Every day.”
“Maybe the irrigation was louder than you expected. Maybe, with the excitement of travelling, it was too much. Maybe you didn’t sleep well the night before, and it all added up.”
“That’s not it!”
The leaves outside quivered in a breeze so light it touched nothing else. That’s what her spells were like, they were like that. “If I get sick from such little things, how can I go anywhere? Anything might set me off, a tired child or a loud aut. If Papa installs a system, will I get sick here?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You’re better today. I believe if you take ten minutes to relax in the morning—”
“Morning exercises too? They don’t help.”
“The exercises certainly do help. Doing them when you’re at risk, any time you leave the stead, we can stay ahead of this.”
Through her teeth, Myrta said, “I can’t spend all day rubbing my temples, thinking quiet thoughts, and imagining that I’m falling asleep. Think about it, you’re making no sense at all.”
“One step at a time.” Celeste’s voice grew firm. “Morning exercises, and nighttime, and any time you leave the stead.”
Lips pressed tight, Myrta turned to the stove. Her breath shuddered through her, and she poured more milk into the pot and blinked moisture from her eyes.
“Myrta. Those city folk from Renico. Did they say anything?” She was fiddling with the press again. “About your spell?”
“No.”
Celeste had once called it a family trait, said it could get worse and would have done so years ago if not for the exercises. That staying relaxed kept it in check, like how some farmers kept turkeys in little pens so they would stay weak. Whole seasons would pass without a single spell, so she’d always believed the exercises mattered. But now the spells were coming more frequently and getting worse too.
“They didn’t say anything? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” It wasn’t true. That man hadn’t taken his eyes off of her. Blinking furiously, she stirred the pot. Why had he paid such attention to her? She didn’t want to think about it.
As the milk started to steam, she muttered, “And I didn’t like the babies either.”
Celeste laughed, nervously at first, but it soon gave way to an easier sound. “I knew if we waited long enough, we’d find something you and Terrence agreed on.”
Unable to help herself, Myrta smiled.
“The exercises are very important, Myrta. You simply must keep on top of them. Promise me.”
She nodded, and Celeste left.
Myrta finished setting the cultures. Outside the window, rows and rows of tilled soil filled her view. Soon, beards of sprouts would appear, turning the fields to green, matching the maple and oak leafing out. She stared at the brown and green and b
lue in balance. Nature taking care of itself. Like a song or a story.
More exercises. But they aren’t helping, not anymore.
Nature in rhythm. Unfolding on its own.
Maybe I just won’t do them at all.
Chapter Eight
Alphonse stood on a barren cliff. The sunlight was brighter than before. The ocean held a greenish patch.
“We’ve watched for a billion years,” Stavo said.
“I can’t breathe.” It didn’t distress him.
“There’s no oxygen.”
The spot of green drew Alphonse in, and he shrank as before. This time he became a simple cell, a blue-green bacterium in the ocean. “Grandfather. Why does this happen?”
“The best way to learn history is to live it.”
Alphonse did, as a cyanobacterium in ocean waters. He used carbon dioxide for food, and sunlight gave him the energy he needed to turn it to sugar. From the sugar he grew and divided, becoming two, then four, then eight. As he turned the carbon to sugar, he felt a searing pain through his membranes and molecules. “It hurts!”
“The pain is oxygen—your waste. It is reactive. You must expel it.”
He did, and the oxygen diffused into the water. Over time, the oceans became replete with it, but the air did not. And yet his waste oxidized the others, the simple cells that were not like him, and as it did they died. “Grandfather, I’m killing them. All of them. I . . . I’m killing everything.”
“You’re simply growing. You don’t mean for your waste to change the chemistry of your world. It’s a simple lesson, but one we don’t always learn.”
* * *
His thigh burned with a searing pain. Alphonse hiked, if one could call it that, down the trail toward the western foothill towns. His knee didn’t bend properly, and he needed to roll onto the outside of his foot to keep on. He probably looked like a drunkard, with his scraggly beard and filthy clothing.
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