“No trail name, yet, huh?” Sierra flashes a grin. “That’ll come.” And she continues her cheerful advice. “Rim to Rim is twenty-three miles, total. Start off at North Rim—less tourists! You can leave your bike or car there at the trailhead and there’s a shuttle that’ll take you back when you come out on South Rim. Or vice-versa. It’s seven miles down to Cottonwood, where you can camp the first night, then another seven to Bright Angel Campground at the bottom. There are plenty of people there so it’s no big if you do it on your own. I have a couple of times.”
She is so friendly and unafraid. So Normal. But Cara is always wary of strangers, and loathe to get into any conversation that requires her to reveal any detail about herself. Too risky.
“Do you have a backcountry permit?” Sierra asks. Cara hasn’t even heard of one. “You’ll need one,” the girl says. She takes off the small pack she’s wearing, roots through it and comes up with a folded sheet of paper. “Take mine.” She winks. “I always make a copy.” She extends the paper. “Put it on your tent when you camp and the rangers won’t bother you.”
Cara takes the permit. “Thanks,” she remembers to say.
“No worries!” Sierra says. “I’ll see you at the river. Namaste!” she adds with a wave, as she starts off down the trail into the twilight, gone as quickly as she appeared.
Cara stands for a moment, dazed by the encounter. As she turns slowly. She has a fluttery, excited feeling.
All her life she has been told what to do. By random people, by road signs, by clouds, by songs, by the moon. There are always signs.
She looks at the pass, like a Golden Ticket in her hand.
Of course she will go.
That night she purchases supplies and fills a small backpack with provisions. Trail mix, dried fruit, chocolate bars. She adds the portable water filter system and compass she keeps in the car. And as always, the hunting knife.
She will not be taking the longer trail that Sierra suggested. She cannot run the risk of being so predictable, nor of running into her on the trail and the girl wanting to hike together, to strike up a friendship.
Instead she camps in her car on a highway pull off concealed from the road, then leaves her car on the South Rim and picks up the trailhead there at first light.
Her first view of the vast mouth of Bright Angel Canyon comes through fir trees and aspen, quaking aspen with its round, fluttering leaves, ferns and wildflowers. Beyond the trees are miles and miles of mesa-like sculptured cliffs.
The sight is a jittery thrill.
The brush in front of her moves, and she catches her breath. A white-tailed deer lifts its head and holds her gaze for a few seconds before it goes delicately back to grazing.
Cara turns and steps forward, to begin the descent through two billion years of the earth’s history.
The first length of the trail is surprisingly developed, the path wide, smooth and defined by carefully built sandstone walls, and low boulders lining both sides of the trail. The path soon narrows and plunges. She adjusts her pace to brace against the jarring decline and hard ridges of earth. It is so steep that even going downhill, in the cool of the morning, her muscles are working hard enough for her to break a sweat.
Just beside her, the cliff drops hundreds of feet, with no railing between a careless hiker and certain death. The danger is nauseating and exhilarating. She veers a little closer to the cliff wall, breathes in crisp, clean air, and continues into the rainbow vista of rock.
There are other hikers on the trail. She passes a few, every five minutes or so, couples and trios, some loners, laden with bulging backpacks and walking poles. They nod and step courteously against the rock wall to let her pass. Either her quick pace or the set of her face keeps the others from conversation beyond an occasional “Hey” or “Good morning.” But the smiles seem genuine and she finds herself becoming less tense with every encounter. People are so focused on their own descents, on the overwhelming views, that they pay her little attention.
We’re all here for the same reason, she realizes, startled.
Beauty.
The endorphins come in a rush, and now she is floating on the sensation and colors.
The sun shimmering in liquid waves on the rock. Massive formations towering around her on all sides. The stunning reds of the Canyon, always contrasting with the green. The heat on her face, the smells of the rock and the scrub. The lightness of her own body.
Her thoughts go to the girl, Sierra. She wonders if she can ever be as happy as that, as light and free. So at peace with herself in the world.
Sierra has obviously done this hike, doubtless many others, on her own, many times. So it is possible to live like this: bold, unencumbered.
Maybe it means… maybe it’s a sign… that she can escape the darkness that has shadowed her for all of her life since The Night.
She feels lighter than she can ever remember feeling.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe this is the road.
She is so overcome with the ecstasy of beauty she wants to run, to burst free of her skin and become one with all her surroundings. She is careful, though, always careful, knowing that a twisted ankle can cripple her, leave her to the mercy of anyone who comes by. Hospitalization is out of the question, a guarantee of discovery.
She hikes over rock, over sand, past huge tumbled boulders, so many of them oddly square. There are wooden bridges across parts of the trail and over chasms. Sometimes the path narrows to just two or three feet to round a cliff wall, the trail dizzyingly close to the sheer cliff edge. She is aware of her legs shaking from exertion and hyper-attention.
The sun climbs in the sky and heat radiates from the walls. She has lived much of her life in the desert and the intensity of temperature is a pleasure. In the mid-day hours, when the sun is highest and hottest, she finds off-trail places that conceal her. The heat has the added advantage of deterring hikers from the full hike, meaning she sees people only infrequently now. She passes a few guided groups, one mule train carrying tourists and supplies, and takes note of how fast they are traveling, so she can always know how far or close she is to them.
Lower, parts of the trail tunnel directly into the rock of the cliff face, descending through redwall limestone.
It is like burrowing into the beating red heart of the earth.
The brush along the trail becomes more intensely green, shaded with white-barked birch, and she encounters more and more streams, running water by the trails, then glimpses below of the wide Colorado River.
She stoops to fill her empty water bottles, to process with her filter overnight.
Now the trail is sandier, softer, slowing her pace. Her back and legs are feeling the strain of the day. Her footsteps seem drunk, swaying. Her shadow is long in front of her as she makes her way through a copse of towering pines.
A short walk through a dark tunnel through rock, and she emerges into the sunlight.
And stops in her tracks.
In her exhaustion, and the contrast from dark tunnel to brilliant sun, she sees a shadow. A skeleton in the shape of a girl.
Ivy.
Then her eyes adjust to the sun and the vision is gone.
She catches her breath, and moves on, crossing the sturdy, fenced bridge over the mud-brown Colorado River. The surrounding cliffs are towering, mythic, jagged edifices striped with bands of red and pink and white.
And then she is at the bottom. Phantom Ranch.
In the daze of the day’s hike, through the endorphins and lingering effect of the constant mind-altering vistas, the ranch seems exactly that. A phantom, a mirage of civilization at the bottom of the canyon.
She walks on meandering paths through long green grasses, under gentle birches curving overhead in a canopy.
Ahead is a small common dining hall of river stone and rough-hewn wood, with a chalkboard menu of food for purchase.
She moves tentatively to the doorway and gets a glimpse of a crowded room. Her ears are assaul
ted by sound: loud conversation and raucous laughter. Many of the groups at the long tables are drinking.
She backs away from the doorway, hoping no one has seen her, and hurries on, past aspen trees, feathery white tassels of pampas grass and more of the prickly pear cactus, crossing another sturdy wooden bridge above a red rushing creek into shady, grassy Bright Angel campground. She catches glimpses of one- and two-person tents in between the short twisting oak trees and scrub. The sites are well-used, some of them with battered picnic tables and tent areas defined by sandstone slabs.
She moves past these, drawn to the sites along the river itself. She finds an empty one with its own picnic table, an unexpected luxury.
She sets up her tent on the pinkish sand in a circle of scrub, far from any campers, but in proximity to a group with several women hikers. She finds a thick stick to use as a pole to hang her pack out of reach of animals.
Then she sits, or rather collapses, on the ground.
She lies back flat and stares up sheer cliffs to a pointed peak, like a bishop’s hat. Her exhaustion is like a heavy blanket, settling over her.
She stays without moving for hours, listening to the rush of the stream, the aspen leaves rustling in the wind, watching the sunset, hours of psychedelic light washing over the sky and rocks.
The night grows darker, and the sky erupts in stars.
All of the world seems to move around her.
She is seeing millions of shooting stars. Lights flying past like snow flurries. Every pore of her is open to the cosmos. Her stomach doing rollercoasters.
And there is something more. A presence.
She is not alone. She is not alone, and she is loved.
When she wakes, the moonlight is nearly blinding. She can feel it, white hot and burning on her skin.
Ivy stands in the stark canyon shadows, watching her.
The skeleton girl she met at fourteen. Abducted, raped, doused in gasoline and set on fire, left in the desert to die.
Cara avenged her, killed her rapist, and helped Ivy leave her world of pain.
She lies back in the sand and closes her eyes. And she feels Ivy kneel beside her, and curl up to sleep beside her in the sand.
In the morning, she opens her eyes to blue cliffs under hazy blue sky. As the sun rises, the pinks and oranges are mirrored in the river.
Ivy is gone.
But Cara’s stomach is heavy with dread.
She is washing up when she sees her again. She straightens, looking out across the river.
Ivy stands on the sandy bank on the opposite side of the water, half-hidden in the fronds of tamarisk and mesquite. She is not alone. There is a crumpled bundle at her feet.
And Cara knows she has not escaped. There is no escape from It.
She makes her way across the bridge to the other side, down onto the rocks beside the river.
Ivy has vanished. But the bundle is there. A huddled girl under the small, shrub-like trees., sitting half in and half out of the water, hugging her knees and rocking herself.
A wraith in torn hiking shorts and camisole.
So changed, it is a few stunned moments before Cara fully recognizes her.
There is nothing about her of the glowing hiker she encountered at the top of the Canyon. There is deadness in Sierra now, a deadness Cara knows too well.
She does not have to ask what. She knows what people look like when It has finished with them. Years ago, It held her in its scaly hands. She has been as close to It as anyone has been and survived. She has seen It all her life since that night. She knows Its touch. Its foul breath, Its glittering eyes.
The monster has infiltrated this sacred canyon. It has found this girl and her life force is all but drained from her.
Cara crouches beside Sierra at the water’s edge. Her voice is hollow. “Who did this?”
The girl turns her head clumsily, but doesn’t speak. Her body seems disconnected from her brain.
“What happened?” Cara cries.
“Nothing happened,” Sierra says flatly.
Cara has seen this before, too. People who have encountered It often say it, denying any attack, any trauma. Their minds drop a protective shield on memories.
At any rate, she doesn’t need to be told. She can see the blood drops forming like sweat on the girl’s brow, rivulets of red streaming slowly down her arms, dripping onto the rock.
She has seen the blood, time and time again in her life. Oozing from girls coming into foster care. Dripping from girls—and boys—in The Cage. The girls in the group homes who go out one day and come back with the dull look in their eyes and the scratches on their souls. Girls like Laura Huell. Like Ivy Barnes.
She pulls herself together, asks slowly and clearly, “Is It here?”
Sierra doesn’t ask what she means. She shakes her head quickly, looks up toward the pale trail cut into the rock wall above them. The fear on her face is sickening.
“Stay here,” Sierra whispers. “You stay until…” She shudders through her whole body.
“Until what?” Cara asks, but she is almost certain what Sierra is going to say.
“Until they’re gone.”
They. The girl didn’t have to explain it. Cara feels a wave of fury. “How many of them?” she says flatly.
“Two,” the girl whispers.
“Where?”
The girl’s voice is dead. “Ribbon Falls,” she says.
Cara takes Sierra’s arm, and points across the river, making her look. “Cross the bridge. Go to Shadow Ranch.” Then she turns the girl to face her and stares into Sierra’s eyes until she can see the girl look back.
“I was never here. Do you understand?”
After a moment, Sierra nods.
Back at her campsite, Cara walks in an aimless circle, then falls to her knees on the sand and tears down her tent, blindly shoves her equipment into her pack.
She burns with the white-hot rage of the violation. Of the girl, of the canyon, of the safety of any woman or girl in it now. She knows the attack was a deliberate crushing of that bright, strong spirit, the light in the other girl. Her bravery, her freedom, her daring to take the canyon and the trails and the world on her own terms.
Sierra will never feel safe in nature again. The beauty of the canyon has been forever destroyed for her.
And Cara is wild with fury at the obscenity of it.
Ribbon Falls are a side trip, on the ascent to North Rim. So Sierra’s attackers are on the trail Cara intended to climb today.
She yanks the zips of her pack closed and stands, following the trail signs to the South Rim.
And Ribbon Falls.
The moon is still in the sky, a full white disk against the blue, and the clash between faint sunlight and strong moonlight makes weird, elongated shadows on the trail and the canyon walls.
The Canyon is not so warm, now. It is still, its breath suspended in anticipation. The crunch of her boots on the sand is at times nearly deafening.
Her breath is hot in her lungs from the climb, but the steady upward rhythm is easier than going downward.
The sun climbs, too. And with it her rage grows.
She knows now there will be no escape. She cannot drive away from It. It will always find her. And if there is no escaping It, then she will fight. To the death. She would rather face It once and for all than spend her life running.
She comes to a fork where a wooden trail sign indicates Ribbon Falls, 2 miles.
She stops on the path, staring at the sign. A choice. Her last chance. She could continue, go up to the Rim and out.
She takes the turn.
In the slot canyon, the air is cooled by the water and greenery, twenty degrees less than on the sunny upward trail.
But there is a deeper chill in this crevice. Her body temperature has dropped, her breath is short from adrenaline. She is so tense she is shivering.
She slows on the rock path, to keep her footsteps quiet.
Her pulse escalates at a
faint rustling ahead. She stops still, her back against the rock wall…
Water rushing. The sound of the falls.
Which means the end of the trail is coming. Sierra’s attackers will be close, now.
She moves forward, every cell in her alert.
Around another curve, the falls come into view, white water cascading down a sprawling rock face and tumbling into a spreading pool forty feet below the trail she is on.
She looks out over a pile of gigantic boulders, and a thicket of green in a semicircle around the base of the falls.
She eases forward to scour the territory below for a glimpse of a camp.
There is no sign of the men she is looking for. Her heart starts to race. They could be anywhere. Behind her on the trail, concealed between the enormous rocks, watching her from somewhere on the cliff above….
She catches a flash of orange in the greenery below.
Then it is easy to spot them, camped in a sandy circle in the sage. Two one-man tents, set some distance from each other. It’s an illegal set up; the only park-allowed camping is in spots with fire circles. There is no fire circle here.
Good. That much less chance of a ranger coming this way.
She stays where she is for long minutes, scanning the boulders below her, finding a ledge above the thicket where she will be able to watch without being seen, then mapping out the path over the rocks that she will take on her way down.
When she has her route fixed in her head, she begins the descent. The boulders are rough and easy to climb. She takes her time, but the small sounds she makes are drowned out by the constant churning of the falls.
She gets to her chosen ledge without incident, and it is high enough above them to keep a lookout. She makes a bowl in the sand to sit in comfortably, with her back against the warm granite of a boulder… and the hunting knife in her lap.
She holds it, turning it in her hand, learning its weight, its heft, its curves.
Beyond the thicket, the falls cascade in a soporific rush. She tunes out the falls and focuses below.
Shadow Moon Page 6