The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 28

“It’s good,” I said, and the woman beamed. Then she tugged off my pink vest and set to working fresh mud into the holes the arrows had left behind.

The mud was warm and foamy in my skin. And I just sat there, letting the Healer work her magic as I scooped up more moss to eat. I’d say it was like something out of a dream, only there weren’t no dream I’d come up with that even came close. Guess the insides of the earth can be even stranger than the inside of your head.

But just like the inside of my head, this place was loaded with questions. And the few answers it had given me just made me want to ask something more.

The Speaker told me the mud bubbled in pits and pools all throughout the Kalliq’s maze of tunnels and caves. It was because of the Burning Wheel, she said, as if it were something sacred, though I reckoned that was just the name they’d given the Rift.

The ground heated the mud and water and helped brew the moss that collected on the sides of the pools. And so the silvery mud had become these people’s medicine, and the moss was their meals. They scraped up enough of that algae to feed the whole tribe, adding meat to their menu when a mammoth stumbled and fell in the mountains, or if one died of old age.

Had been a long time since a mammoth had fallen, and the last dried bits of meat had been chewed off its carcass. But I did wonder what that beast’s flesh might taste like. I mean, this algae stuff filled you up, all right, but before long, I was craving some crunch.

One of those mammoths died, the Speaker said, the people used every bit of it, whittling weapons and tools from its bones.

Tusks, she called their horns—made out of ivory. Stronger than bone and sharper than teeth. And that long snout, the Speaker called that a trunk. Said the mammoths used to be able to pick up a blade of grass with it, or pull apart a whole tree. Back when there’d been blades of grass and trees to go pulling at.

Anyway, if a mammoth died, it was like it kept on living, the way these people didn’t waste none of it but put it all to good use. They made blankets from the tough hide, burned fires and lamps with the oily fat. And they sheared off fur when they needed it, weaving it into clothes. So a mammoth meant more than just a creature to marvel at or something to ride on. And the Kalliq fed those things the biggest portions of algae in return.

That all being said, you can see why it was a shock when I found them drowning one of those beasts in the big gray pit.

The circle of sky at the top of the crater was pitch black with night, and the mammoth had come back from patrolling with a gash on its side and a limp in its leg. The Elder was overseeing things when I got there, which is to say she was chanting softly as the Kalliq prodded the mammoth into the pit with their spears.

I thought the whole thing was sick. The poor animal trying to scrabble free as they forced it deeper, moaning as the mud rose fast against its busted-up legs.

“What the hell?” I yelled out, my voice lost beneath the wail of the drowning mammoth. I’d only been around a couple days. Still a stranger. And hell, maybe I always would be, but I had to say something.

The Speaker grabbed me, stuffing her hand on my mouth and pulling me away from the action. “For the Burning Wheel,” she hissed, sour-looking as ever.

“Are you insane?” I shoved her hands off me. “For the Rift? You’re gonna kill this thing?”

“Sacrifice,” she whispered, turning back to the pit.

The mammoth moaned even louder as the mud surged up its neck. It flailed its head this way and that, until its trunk was the only thing left, poking up out of the mud, twitching about and still breathing.

Until the poor thing was full spent and done.

Each day, I’d check, but each day, there was no news of my friends. No updates about the patrol they were with or when they’d return. No scouts who might have seen them coming back from what the Kalliq called the outer rim.

I’d just have to be patient, the Speaker said, when I pestered her about it. Then she’d scowl at me until I left her alone.

But it was hard to be patient. And the stronger my body got, the more anxious I grew.

I kept picturing Kade with his arms around my sister. I imagined him telling them all that I was dead and they had best forget me, and somehow Kade always seemed to have the right words to say. Something smart, or kind, or something funny. And what was it he’d said to me, about a man having needs? Well, I had needs of my own and didn’t know what to do with them. I yearned for my pirate girl, and it burned me up through the night. I’d fall asleep thinking of her, imagining her body against me, remembering how I’d kissed her when she’d returned to us in the snow. But then I’d wake up from nightmares where it was Kade she was kissing. Her fingers gripping the short red hair on his skull.

Still, it was a break from the nightmares about Hina and my mother and the fields full of locusts. Or the ones where Sal’s head kept exploding in flames.

Don’t know how I slept a damn wink.

And it went on like this. The waiting. The fear. Some days, I’d follow the ledges that spiraled out of the crater, making my way up that chimney that led to the sky. Trying to clear my head as I watched the cold light of the world get bigger, winding my way upwards, until finally I’d reach the top and stare out at the peaks that towered above.

I could see the Rift glowing in the sky beyond the peaks to the south.

I’d spy groups of Kalliq venturing out across the ice or coming home down the side of the mountains. I’d see riders atop mammoths lumbering through the glistening snow.

But I was starting to be a jangled mess of crazy. Hoping each new day that the patrol would return with my girl and my sister and my broken Soljah. Hoping they would be brought down into the crater, so the Elder could give them to me.

Because she’d hand them over, I reckoned. I pretty much had the run of the place, after all. Though the Speaker seemed loath to admit it, the Kalliq had a sweet spot for their skinny new guest.

It was obvious I was to be looked after and looked up to. I was to be kept safe and made healthy. These people had mammoths and moss and their mud, and that was worth more than anything I’d left behind in the dusty world that lay south. But I’d given them something the Kalliq had only heard about in tales told by the Elder. I’d given them something they’d only seen in pictures, faded imprints locked inside the salvage they hunted beneath the ice.

The Chief had given them the mammoths, they said. Before the Darkness descended. Yeah, it was some GenTech science that gave them that miracle.

But it was Banyan that gave them the trees.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I found the Healer knelt in the muddy pool, using copper wire to splint two of the trees together, giving them strength by binding them side by side. They’d grown a little taller since I’d last been down in this cave. They’d gained a good six inches, turned a darker shade of green.

“Looking good,” I said, startling her, but even getting spooked made that woman smile. I sat on the rocks, watching as she checked the roots that ran out of the base of the saplings and plugged into Pop’s shrunken remains. “Those trees were froze up and broken before you came along.”