by Crissy Moss
I led her up the path, winding back and forth over the trail. The flashes of lightning lit our way, not that there was much to see. Just the craggy walls of the side of a mountain and a cliff on the other side. No overhang, no cave opening, and no trees to shelter us.
The lightning flashed again, and I jumped, pulling the reins a bit tighter than I had intended. Gracy yanked on the reins, pulling me into her side. She was at her wit’s end with the storm clouds approaching, and I couldn’t blame her. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the clouds roiling low against the horizon. Each flash of lightning showed them moving fast. Closer.
Light seeped over the edge of the horizon, staining the clouds a deep red. And from the light I saw something dark and sinister among the clouds. Something that grew as it winged closer to us on the side of the mountain.
I shivered as I realized the great beast was headed in our direction. And there was nowhere for us to go.
I pulled on Gracy’s halter, trying to drag her up the cliff side, looking for anything to give us shelter from the great beast—but finding none.
Turning back to look over my shoulder, I saw a great shadow detach itself from the clouds. Light from the morning sun glinted off wings that stretched across the sky. With a beak as long as I was tall, the creature opened its mouth to let out a deafening screech that caused the lighting to boom and the thunder to clap.
A thunderbird. Here. And coming straight at us.
Gracy whinnied, her eyes going round and froth bursting from her mouth. Stamping and pawing, she bucked against the reins, trying to break free. I could feel the fear radiating off her in waves.
I couldn’t look away from the thunderbird or shake the fear that ran like ice down my spine. The wing span stretched across the sky, trying to blot out the sun.
I shrank away, trying to pull Gracy back against the mountainside where we could hide among the fissures and crevices there. It was useless. Gracy was stamping and pawing at the ground, shaking her mane as she threw her head back to wicker at the approaching bird. She knew the creature on the horizon would see us as little more than a tasty snack, and she was acting appropriately.
The crevices weren’t large enough to fit a full-grown horse inside, either. Every time I tried to pull her into a depression in the rock, she reared back, bucking away from me. The rain-slicked mountain trail made my feet skid in the mud, and my hands slid along the leather halter, shredding any chance I had of keeping my grip on her.
Behind Gracy I saw the darkness descending upon us. I could feel the wing beats, smell the wet feathers and electricity in the thunderbird’s wake.
Massive claws wrapped around Gracy’s middle, and then she was up, in the air. I held on to the reins for a moment. I felt my feet leave the ground, and I couldn’t keep my grip any longer. My fingers slipped, the wet leather thong scraping away from my hands, and I fell with a thump back to earth.
I scrambled up quickly, the rain pelting harder, the trail getting thicker with mud every second. Still, the claws I expected never came.
I looked up to see the thunderbird retreating from the pass, taking the worst of the storm with it. Gracy thrashed in its claws, littering the mountainside with my few belongings.
And just as quickly as it had come, the thunderbird disappeared over the edge of the mountain, taking Gracy and my belongings with it.
I squeezed into a shallow crevice, avoiding as much of the rain as I could, and huddled there. Shaken, alone, cold, and wet. Mud caking half my body, and I couldn’t stop shivering. Whether from cold or seeing my only companion stolen from me, I wasn’t sure. Did it even matter?
With nothing left, and nothing to cling to, I gave into the despair and cried myself to sleep.
Grasslands
Once the storm cleared, I was able to pull myself up from the mud and salvage what little was left of my belongings. Half of my supplies had been strapped to Gracy, including most of my food. A few things had fallen free in her struggle: an almost empty bag of hardtack, a knife, and a solitary waterskin. The cooking pot and the longer knife were nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, I kept Winifrey’s book with me at all times, so it was still safe, though some of the pages were now mud spattered.
Once I retrieved my meager belongings, I gave one long last look toward the horizon where the thunderbird, and Gracy, had disappeared. There were clouds and the faint echo of thunder but no sign of the giant avian or my faithful companion.
I looked back down the mountain, into the valley below. Dark forest stretched out across the valley, the wide river winding through its center and Lake Ravlor nestled at its heart. Small puffs of chimney smoke hung over the sleepy village, and I could see sails from the ships running down the river. They all looked so small from here. Like ants, ready for me to squish beneath my fingers.
I turned my back on it. On my home. On the man I once called father. On James and on every friend or relative I once had. They no longer meant anything to me. Gracy had been the very last thing holding me to that life, and now she was gone, too. Eaten by a giant bird on the spine of the world.
I made my way up the slope of the mountain to the next crest…and gasped.
The world stretched out before me, a green field of waving grass far brighter and wider than anything I could have imagined that reached out to the distant horizon. Fluffy clouds floated across the deep blue skies, and small rivers wound through the plains. To the far south, I thought I could see the darker greens of forest, but I couldn’t be sure. It was too far away.
The world was so big, and even from there I could not see the sea or the island where Kemoor lay.
A feeling of utter loss rushed over me. I sat down on the edge of the world and wept. I wanted to pretend that leaving everything behind didn’t matter, but it did. Standing there at the crest of the world, looking down on the plains, I couldn’t deny it.
***
Eyes, bright blue and filled with ice, looked down at me from the highest mountaintop. A cloak of snow and ice furled out around the apparition, a fierce wind screaming around him. I could feel my blood crystallizing in its wake.
From somewhere deep inside, the fire lashed out against the cold. It wrapped me in a cocoon, warming me, fighting back the winter. The ice-blue eyes began to melt in the sea of fire, but they did not fade away nor did they turn in fear.
“Who are you?” I screamed, but the wind whipped my words away before they could reach their target.
He turned, ignoring me, but winter stayed. A deadly gift left wherever he traveled.
I woke with a start, still feeling a chill seeping through me. Were my dreams trying to give a face to the misfortunes befalling me? I shrugged it away.
There were no lucky stars, no fairies of misfortune to turn over my tent. Just life, and nature, teeming around me. I just happened to walk my pony up the wrong mountain. Gracy was gone. Just one more moment in all the gloom of my short life.
I kept moving forward, not allowing myself to wallow in pity for very long. As much as it hurt to lose Gracy, it was simply one more thing in a long line of misfortunes, and my plans hadn’t changed. I had to get to Kemoor if I wanted to learn more about myself. That meant getting down off the mountain and finding a settlement, perhaps a caravan, so that I could make my way to the island.
Going down the mountain proved to be much easier than going up had. Though I’d lost Gracy, and with her half my supplies, I didn’t have to worry too much. There were berries on the slopes that were easily identifiable by Winifrey’s book and more of the pine needle tea, though there would be no tea without a pot to boil water in. I also managed to find some edible, if not particularly tasty insects inside dead logs. I don’t think I’ll ever get the taste of smashed grubs out of my mouth.
The mountain path descended into a scrub-covered hillside. The hills went on for miles, it seemed, before giving way to the shimmering plains of grassland. I studied the world beneath me with interest every morning, trying to find hints of some sort of civil
ization. Towns, rivers, or trails marking their way across the fields, even a line of smoke. I searched for anything that would give me a path to follow because once I descended from the mountains there would be nothing to guide me.
Every morning I searched, and every morning I turned away in disgust, seeing nothing but a waving sea of grass greeting me.
How did anyone find their way across the plains without something to guide them?
I could go directly away from the mountains, and continue across the plains with my back to them, until I could not see they disappeared into the distance. But what then? And how would that get me closer to civilization?
Keep going east, I told myself. Kemoor lay in the east. Somewhere.
Winifrey’s book had a section on prairie grains, flower bulbs, and tubers that could be found in the grasslands. At least I wouldn’t starve. But water? I wasn’t sure, still unable to see the hint of a river. I reminded myself that there could be rivers and streams tucked between the hills that I couldn’t see, but that didn’t make me feel better.
On the third day, the land became hillier, the gentle rise and fall of the shrub-covered landscape proving I had emerged from the mountain pass. A few lone trees struggled amid the landscape, but it was relatively barren compared to the forested valley I’d come from.
That night I camped amid a small clump of trees. The ground was soft, a blanket of dry leaves and grass creating a straw mattress for me to lie on. With so much tinder around me I did not dare to light a fire, instead wrapping the last woolen blanket around me and falling into an exhausted sleep.
***
I woke to the gentle sounds of grass waving in the breeze.
In my exhaustion the night before, I hadn’t noticed that I’d made it to the edge of the plains. Shrouded in the darkness, it wasn’t surprising. There was nothing to mark the edge but an endless expanse of long, waving fronds. From a distance, it looked like a yellow sea twisting in the wind, but up close I could see patches of flowers, game trails weaving through the sea, and thin areas where rocks and pale earth poked through the shroud. A veritable carpet of small changes that you could never see from afar.
I set out across the plains that morning, my back to the mountains.
Travel was easy enough. The ground was level, so I didn’t have to worry about tripping down a mountain or expending energy to climb up it. There were few thistles and brambles to impede me. Each night, I bent the grass into a comfortable bed and wrapped myself in my blanket.
I rationed the last few pieces of hardtack and chewed on handfuls of the pine needles I had collected before descending the mountain. Without a pot, and a good source of water, I was limited on what I could eat. But I wasn’t starving yet.
Though winter was approaching and the plains were open to breezes, the sun seemed hotter here. With trees so few and far between, there was little shade to rest under, but occasionally when it seemed the sun was too hot I curled beneath the grass, like a rabbit burrowed in her warren.
The farther into the foothills I went, the fewer trees I found. The shade became harder to find, often taking me off course slightly so that I could reach a lonely clump of trees, not that I was sure where I was headed. But the copses of trees also had insects, and sometimes bushes filled with dark red, almost black, berries or other edibles.
Berries were a worrisome thing. I knew some of them were bound to make you sick, while others were good to eat. It wasn’t always easy to tell the difference. But I found a few in Winifrey’s book that were easy to spot. Berries that grew on thorny bushes that were hard to get to, with red and black berries that grew low to the ground.
Then one evening I found an entry about edible flowers on the plain. There were pages and pages of wild flowers in pink, white, yellow, and blue. Some had roots you could just pull from the ground and eat; others had leaves you could brew or flowers that were edible.
The next morning, I tried identifying some of the many flowers growing among the tall grasses. Some had entries that said they required cooking or brewing, making them unusable. But a few had flowers I could pick as I walked through the grass, and I popped them into my mouth like berries. I also found two that had onion-like bulbs that I could eat. One was bitter, and I quickly spit it out, but the other had a nutty flavor that I enjoyed.
Eating flowers and the occasional grub or berry wasn’t enough to satisfy my growing hunger, but it did make the hardtack and water last a little longer.
The roll of hills steadily gave way to flatter land, making it harder to find a marker to keep my path straight. But I could still see the mountains behind me. Each day they grew fainter. Eventually, the rains would come, and then whatever marker I had would be gone as well.
I was surviving, making my way closer to the banks of Lake Ravlor and the collegium there. Each day was a little easier than the one before as I learned new things from Winifrey’s book.
But it was the water that worried me. Since coming to the plains, I had only found one spring burbling up from the rocks. I still hadn’t found a river or creek. I refilled my waterskin and gorged on sweet spring water. It gave me a little more time, but only a little.
To compensate for the lack of water. I sometimes gorged on the berries, picking as many as I could carry in my little bag. Their juice sustained me for quite some time. I sucked dew from the grass and leaves in the early morning. And I carefully rationed the little bit of water I had left.
I needed to find a river—and not just for the water. Where there was water there was bound to be people.
My biggest fear, however, lay in Kemoor. I feared that I would walk right past and keep walking without ever seeing it.
If I had had a map then I wouldn’t have worried so much, but I only had the whispers of childhood memories. Kemoor lay in the east, past the shimmering grasslands. So, I kept walking, ever eastward, toward my goal.
Demon
I lost track of time in the plains. While in the mountains, each day had been marked. It had to be so that the coming winter would not catch me off guard. I counted the mornings and felt the passage of time as the leaves changed colors and the air grew cooler.
Here, in the unending grass, it almost felt like the days were starting to run together. The nights seemed longer, and there were few trees to mark the passage of time. Just the unending golden grass.
The grasslands were deceptive. I found it hard to catch my bearings, and the mountains were beginning to get hazy in the distance.
Each morning, I woke as the sun began to warm the plains. I crawled out of my blanket and folded everything back together. A quick breakfast of berries and a small piece of hardtack, and I was ready to head back into the grasslands.
Something about the grasslands had been peaceful. The wind whispered through an endless seawith nothing but the land and the sky to witness it.
How long had I been on the plains? A week? Two? Three? Not a month yet, but every day brought me closer to winter and I had yet to find a settlement of any kind.
Late on one evening, I saw a dark smudge against the far horizon. Clouds, and with them rain, and possibly lightning. I didn't know if thunderbirds ventured off the mountaintops, but I felt sure that I was far enough from them to avoid the giant bird if it did. Even so, I started looking for some shelter just in case.
I scanned the horizon looking for the telltale dark green of trees against the ever-present golden grass. To the south I caught sight of it. A smaller cluster of thin saplings, with a few larger trees at the center, but enough for some shelter.
I made camp under the spreading oak canopy, just in time for a soft shower of fall rain to patter me. I huddled close to the largest trees, the leaves above sluicing off some of the water away from me, and pulled my blanket closer to me.
It was going to be a long night.
***
I woke to the dappled sun shimmering down through the leaves—and an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.
After months o
f traveling alone, I was surprised by the feeling. It was as though someone was watching me.
I cracked my eyes open, almost expecting a face to be looking down on me. It must have been my mind playing tricks because I saw nothing but the green leaves and blue sky above.
I packed up my few belongings and chewed on my breakfast of berries and a small piece of hardtack. But the feeling kept growing.
Someone, somewhere, was watching me.
It didn’t matter, I told myself, pushing the thought away. If a person, or creature, was really out there watching me, I still had to keep going. And they didn’t want to be seen.
It was likely I wandered into some animal’s territory, and it was just watching until I left.
Or was there really a person out there? Could I be close to finding civilization?
I started glancing around, peeking over my shoulder and looking up into the sky to find what had been bothering me, but nothing seemed amiss. The sky was clear, the winds low, and the plain as empty as ever. That didn’t stop the feeling creeping up my spine, or the desire to bolt. After a while, I started wondering if I had been going mad from my solitude, but that would have been easier. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of something in the grass that I finally realized the awful truth.
It wasn’t watching me. Something was stalking me.
I don’t know how I knew it, but I could feel the eyes of something slithering through the grass. I tried to find a high point and watch for the creature or person but one high spot amid the fields looked like any other.
Occasionally, I caught glimpses of dark shadows moving within the stalks, but I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t a trick of the wind, or of my mind. The breeze whispering through the tall grass could cause any number of shifts in the landscape.
Still, my mind was convinced that something was out there watching me. I kept my knife in hand and walked with caution.