I might even have said I deserved what I got, had I known with any certainty what that was. My last memory was of a strange smell in the air and an internal stirring like the feeling of being secretly watched, then I was swept up by some strange and violent force. The only experience I can name that comes close to matching it was when I was six and nearly drowned. My coda had camped near a beach, and a wave surprised me while I was playing in the surf. I fancied myself a good swimmer, but no matter how hard I fought, my struggles amounted to nothing, and if Papa had not come and dragged me free, I would surely have been carried out to sea. It was the same feeling there in the valley, of being seized by something immeasurably stronger than myself. It took everything I had just to sputter a warning to Naomi and the others before the surge of it overwhelmed me entirely.
My present state was, overall, not nearly so dire as I would have expected, given the events leading up to it. I bore no unaccounted-for cuts or bruises, and what new tears my coat and trousers showed were consistent with a hard fall on rough ground. There was good evidence my clothes had at some point been on fire, but I supposed a little singeing about the hems and collars wasn’t bad for a girl who had recently been exploded. My pistol was wedged uncomfortably beneath my back, my rifle basking in the grass a short distance away. Both were loaded and functional. I was short one boot, which turned up after a brief search on hands and knees. My hat, duly charred, had lodged in a tree’s lower branches and was easily brought down with the help of a few handy stones.
Once I had established myself as fit to move, I set out for the Ridge. It made no difference whether I had been here an hour or a century—Naomi and the others were making their way back to the breached mountain wall when I saw them last, and if I ever hoped to find them, that was where I had to begin. I forced myself to avoid any conjecture as to what might have befallen them, knowing such thoughts would quickly give way to panic.
The valley’s terrain was unchanged as far as I could see. The trees and rivers, hills and marshes, were just as I remembered them, only now they were alive with the song of birds and insects celebrating what was by all appearances a fine summer evening. The rain, already thin, soon ceased completely, and as the air cooled, I quickened my pace. Of the tribal hordes that had previously infested this territory, there was now no sign but a few cold fire pits and abandoned latrines. The sky was making its way past orange to red when over the treetops I saw the mountain ridge rise into view, glowing in the low light.
I do not know what made me look back then. Perhaps there was some sound I did not consciously perceive, or a flutter in the air; perhaps it was that same sense of being watched. Whatever the reason, as I stood measuring the distance left to the mountains, I glanced over my shoulder and beheld something exceedingly strange.
Small, thin clouds were stretching upward from the horizon, twelve of them, all perfectly parallel, all moving in unison, as though some great twelve-fingered hand were scratching its nails across the glowing sky. I am no amateur when it comes to cloud-gazing, but near as I could say, this variety was entirely new, and drawn swifter and straighter than seemed entirely right for Nature’s handiwork. I was prepared to count the sight yet another perplexing phenomenon of this bizarre place, an occurance akin to blue thunder or moon babies, but as the needly clouds moved overhead, they suddenly abandoned their forward course and shifted to a widening, circular pattern, like the vortex of a whirlpool. Each coiling cloud now appeared to have something at its tip, a sharp little thorn ripping through the air. They had described several of their widening loops before I understood these were no idle designs but a spiraling dive, one that would bring them down on me in a matter of seconds—a thought that hardly had time to form before three of the smoking pillars peeled away and came crashing down into the forest, directly between me and the Ridge.
The ground shook as though from some heavy impact, the air splitting with the sound of shattered trees. After that, eerie silence. I had thrown myself to the ground, expecting catastrophe, and enjoyed a few moments in the slick mud wondering what on earth had happened before the woods around me burst into pandemonium.
First came the war trumpets. That was the word that formed in my mind, “trumpet,” though the sound might as easily have been named a roar, as of a dragon or some other beast of old mythology. The reason I thought of a trumpet was that there seemed to be a message bound up in its sound, like the bugle calls of my coda’s scouts. These trumpets spoke of battle joined, of unstoppable victory, of no hope or mercy for the enemy, namely me. The blast rumbled over me, bringing with it fear out of all proportion to anything I could hear or see. I am quite certain I would have dropped my rifle and run from the sound as fast as I could go had I not spotted other figures doing just that, coming toward me through the trees.
Almost before I had time to raise my gun, I was facing down a pack of Leafcoat fighters, bows and hatchets drawn. There were eight of them, enough to take me easily. I might have dispatched one or two, but for a nice set of guns like mine, Leafcoats will trade four or five men and call it a bargain. But these only looked me up and down and hurried on, parting as if I were some inanimate obstacle. The trumpets sounded again, and the fear they summoned up nearly sent me following in the Leafcoats’ wake. The woods were thick with fleeing forms now, all flushed from hiding places nearby. That must be what the trumpets are for, I thought: We are being herded.
I chose a route perpendicular to the running crowd, following the direction of the Ridge. My hope was to find some way around whatever was making that terrible sound, but I made little headway before the ground beneath me began to vibrate, a familiar rhythm, though on a scale I had never thought to encounter: footsteps. Something huge was coming my way. I hid myself in a bank of scrubby bushes, curling among the thorns and brambles. I expected at any moment to be ground into the dirt, left a pudding of blood and bones topped with a hat, but the footsteps passed in a flurry of swishing brush and snapping branches, and the trumpets calling terror back and forth soon grew dimmed and distant. I waited until the woods were quiet, then I spooled up the last frayed threads of my courage and ran.
The Ridge, I thought, I had to make the Ridge. The notion had come to me that if the mountains were the boundary of this valley, perhaps the things in this place could not travel beyond it, like a ghoul forbidden to cross running water.
I nearly got there, too. The Ridge was high overhead, glowing in the brilliant sunset, only a small stretch of trees between me and the base of the mountain. And then, so close behind me that the sound tickled the hairs on my neck, one of those awful trumpets sounded. The message had changed. The martial aggression was still there, but now it demanded surrender, proclaimed there would be no escape. I turned, slowly, and faced the thing calling to me.
I did not rightly know what to name it, other than “giant.” Its rough shape was that of a man, albeit broader in proportion than average, a blunt head set low on wide shoulders. But it was clearly no man. The scraggy trees growing below the Ridge came hardly to its waist, and though it was only a silhouette against the falling sun, the smooth, hard lines of its frame spoke of some covering much tougher than skin. The only feature I could discern in any detail was its face, though it resembled a human countenance only by its situation at the front of the head. There was no mouth, no eyes, only twisting patterns of glowing red running from crown to chin, the color an exact match to the fiery sunset, an intricate design that curled back on itself like tendrils of smoke. It reminded me, more than anything else, of looking into the grate of a brazier hot with coals. The war trumpet sounded again, and the red glow deepened, like a scowl.
The giant had crept up silently, appearing as if from nowhere. I thought of its brazen trumpeting, the crashing of huge footsteps, and felt certain now all that was merely for show, intended to drive me into some trap, though I could not have guessed the reason. The giants of Papa’s stories, with their accustomed hankering for human
flesh, were as far from this hard, polished creature as a cart mule was from the mechanical wagons of the townships. But if it wished me to run now, I was happy to oblige.
My first step as I fled was strangely slow, heavier than it should have been; the second was still more ponderous, and on the third, I stumbled. Everything about me had become unaccountably heavy, my limbs taking on the weight of wood, then stone, then metal, until it was a struggle even to remain upright. I went to one knee, fighting to keep my head pointed toward the giant.
I had no doubt it was responsible for the sudden weightiness of the world. I remember thinking this creature had worked some spell or other magic on me, then dismissing the idea as foolish. As it turned out, I was more right than wrong, but just then all I could say for sure was if this kept up, I would break under my own weight. The brim of my hat sagged over my face, my hair hung limp, my cheeks dragged against my jaw. I could hardly lift myself enough to crawl. And so I did what seemed the only thing left. I set my rifle across my leg, its barrel digging into the meat of my thigh, pointed it at the great dark bulk before me, and fired.
Whatever result I expected, it was only a tiny fraction of what actually occurred. My shot landed high of center on the creature and burst into a great globe of flame that lit up the dark woods all around. In the flash of light, I saw the giant was covered in a carapace of interlocking plates, all glossy and in places scriven with symbols I cannot quite discern. The pressure bearing down on me lifted at once, and I succeeded in escaping about ten yards into the forest before an invisible force struck me to the ground. I had the distinct impression of being swatted, like a fly. I rolled, turned, and saw the giant approaching. On its chest, where my rifle blast had hit, a circle of embers glowed like the bowl of a lit pipe.
I stood, fired again. My aim was better this time and the resulting explosion took the giant full in the face, though it seemed the world’s newly returned lightness was not fully to my advantage: The rifle’s kick was about enough to remove my shoulder. The giant, meanwhile, was neither slowed nor deterred by the new pipe-bowl mark burned into its head.
Again I was felled by some invisible shock, and this time, I ended up some twenty feet distant, with the vague impression of having tumbled from the top of a very high tree. My body rang with pain, the worst of it centered about my leg, which no longer conformed to the usual and expected proportions. Something sharp and jagged had torn through my trousers, and I could guess with reasonable certainty that this was my thighbone.
There was no way I would make the Ridge now. The mere thought of standing brought soupy black pain swimming behind my eyes. My rifle was gone, but I had somehow kept hold of my pistol. I held it low, so that it wouldn’t jump from my hand, and fired until it was dry. Even then I didn’t let up on the trigger, for whatever good it might have done me. The last picture I beheld with any clarity was of the giant standing over me, sparks dancing like fireflies around its dark shoulders.
TWENTY
RAE
The world went hazy then, and I cannot say for certain whether I became insensible from pain or whether the giant worked another of its tricks on me. Whatever the cause, for a time I lost track of the world, and when I found it again, I was sitting alone in a plain gray room.
The place was small, probably ten feet across, with floor and ceiling and three walls all made of smooth stone, the edges rounded like a bowl set on end. Where the fourth wall would have been, the room opened onto a hallway of the same gray stone, all filled with fuzzy light that came from nowhere in particular, the way sunlight will on days covered in low clouds.
In the hallway, a man dressed smartly in black stood watching me, arms crossed. I say man because of his size—he was tall and muscled like an ox—and his bearing, which was authoritarian and disapproving, as though he suspected me of trampling his prized azaleas—though in truth he could not have been much older than I was. He had short, bronze-colored hair combed back from his forehead, features straight and deeply drawn, high cheekbones and a sloped nose that made me think of a mountain lion, an impression that only deepened as his eyes narrowed at me behind his silver-rimmed spectacles.
“Where am I?” I asked, still quite groggy.
My question had no effect on him that I could see. He only continued to watch me, appraising, over his silver rims. I was preparing to repeat myself when he spoke up in the strangest voice I have ever heard. It was low and rumbling, a bass far deeper than I would have expected, and echoed in a way that seemed wrong for my small room. It reminded me of the voice Papa would use in his stories when he wanted to impersonate a demon or monster. Even stranger, though his words came to me in English, they did not quite match the movement of his lips, as if the sound had changed between there and my ears. What he said was “How did you gain access to the valley?”
I sat there a moment, blinking, then I said, “Who are you? How did I get here?”
That rumbling voice came again. “How did you gain access to the valley?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He did not appear to have heard, only went on watching me in that same appraising way. At last, he said, “You will remain here until you answer.” He raised a finger, the way you might to hush someone who is about to speak up, and just like that, he vanished.
I spent several moments staring at the place the man in black had occupied before I understood he hadn’t truly disappeared but rather that something had appeared between us. There was now a lid to my bowl, a fourth wall where before there had been only empty air. The new barrier was quite solid, as I confirmed by rapping at it with my knuckles, but not stone as I had imagined, or, in any case, unlike any stone I had ever encountered because when I pressed a hand against it, the surface seemed to dissolve. The wall itself was still there, smooth and cold beneath my palm, but it had become clear as glass or flawless ice.
If it wasn’t already plain that I was a prisoner, this wall, invisible and immovable, provided the deciding evidence. To make matters worse, my cell, as I now considered it, offered only the sparsest of accommodations. Of particular note was the lack of a bed or anything resembling sanitary facilities. The clothes I had worn into the valley were gone, replaced by a shirt and trousers of some loose, white fabric, comfortable but wholly unsuitable for outdoor wear. A metal ring, about as thick as a finger, hung around my neck, just tight enough that I couldn’t take it off. Far more surprising, however, was what I found beneath my clothes.
I had paced half a dozen circles around my little enclosure before it occurred to me that I should not have been able to walk at all. I grasped at my thigh, then undid my trousers for confirmation. My leg was completely healed, straight and strong as ever. Further inspection turned up not a single mark of the battering I had taken in the valley, as if none of it had ever happened. I might have concluded this to be the literal truth—that I had imagined all of it, from the misty summer evening to my battle with the giant—until I discovered that a small cut on my finger, left the night before we arrived at New Absalom by the sharp edge on a can of beans, was also gone. It was as if every little hurt on me had been washed away, down to the chapping at my lips and the rough, cracked ends my boots left on my heels. All that remained was the collection of scars down my right side, what I’ve come to think of as my unlucky half: thin slices on my ear and neck from a boulder I thought the perfect cover from Dixieman gunfire until it began exploding into sharp little shards; the double-sided puncture through my upper thigh from a Seventy-Sixer’s arrow that pinned me to my horse; the knife mark in the shape of a fishhook along my collarbone; and two star-shaped bullet holes above my hip from two equally ill-fated trips through the bridgelands.
I could only assume my captors were responsible for my much-improved condition, which made their oversight in my accommodations all the more perplexing. Surely, people ingenious enough to mend my leg would have thought to provide me with a bed or a toile
t.
I was mulling this over when from one of my walls there came a small bubbly noise, like a single drop of water. I stood back, and the wall began to bulge outward, unfurling like an opening flower until it became a narrow, rounded shelf supporting a steaming bowl. The bowl contained a kind of gruel, vaguely orange in color, and in case there was any question as to its intended purpose, a practical if somewhat bulky spoon was provided as well.
The sight of food brought my hunger to life. Reasoning that my captors likely had at their disposal numerous methods of killing me far easier than poisoning, I tucked in without further hesitation. The gruel was better than it looked but needed salt. When I had finished, I set the bowl and spoon back on their shelf, and, at once, all three melted back into the wall.
I turned my attention then to the small bench that constituted my only article of furniture. Thinking of the miraculous arrival of my supper, I began poking and prodding at the wall and was eventually rewarded by the same water-drop tone and the sight of the bench melting away into the surrounding stone. I pressed a finger to the wall again, and the bench reappeared, this time long enough to support a sleeping body. After some experimentation, I discovered I could rearrange my cell into several different configurations, one of which did indeed include a toilet.
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