The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 29

She could hardly understand a word I was saying, but she got my drift, all right. Someone else would have tried to deny it, or else gobbled up the praise. But not the Healer. She just beamed at me as she tended the saplings, happiness radiating out of her.

And she looked so peaceful and beautiful. Not like Alpha was beautiful. Not in the way that lit a fire in my bones. It was more like I admired her, I reckon. The way she had something to do and gave all her focus to doing it. Because I remembered that feeling, your hands keeping your brain busy, your heart full.

I scavenged up a hammer and chisel, one long strip of wire that was sharp as a razor, a rusty old ladder, and that’s about it. Then I threw a fur cloak over my vest and headed up to the top of the crater, where the ice sparkled blue-white and was near hard as a rock.

With the wire in two hands, I could scrape the ice into blocks if I took my time over it, and that’s how I started. Worked on that for five whole days. Prep work, really. Making the ice into these thick pillars—a whole section of them, about thirty yards wide, right at the base of the chute I’d slid down with the tank, using the last bits of slope to my advantage, creating some elevation to play with later on. I was at it each morning as the sky grew light, and I worked till the sun disappeared.

And at night, I’d crawl into the warm cave they’d given me, down there amid the slumbering Kalliq, and I’d sleep deep and proper. No more nightmares. Too exhausted from one day of working, too excited about the next.

The fifth day, I went up top with the same tools, along with a couple of old knives folk had gathered up for me. The Speaker wanted to know what I was doing up there, but I just told her she’d have to be patient. And then I pushed on up the steps and switchbacks, spiraling up the rock ledges until I busted out into the cold.

I stopped and stared at the peaks, straining to see if any patrols were returning. Hoping for a glimpse of my friends. I quit breathing and stayed quiet, listening for a sound in the distance, the moan of a mammoth or the click-clack chatter of the Kalliq.

Couldn’t see nothing that weren’t snow, stone, and sky

Couldn’t hear a thing but silence.

I thought about what the Speaker had told me—about stars falling, rocks as big as worlds, shattering the earth and leaving it in darkness. Leaving us with the Rift and the Surge, the huge moon and the swarms of locusts. Leaving the ragged tribes of people who’d hung on after the twenty years of night to stake their claim in the rubble.

And then I did what I’d always done when the world seemed callous and too old and empty.

I started building.

At each wide pillar of ice, I worked with my hammer and chisel. Setting up my ladder for the tall stuff and chipping away at the frozen powder, then etching it with knives.

I worked till noon, then past noon. I worked till I was sweating in my furry clothes. Toiling and crafting. Carving at the ice with my tools, as if revealing what had always been there, making something new by taking something away.

Creating a forest from the frozen landscape.

I built trees I hadn’t thought of in ages. Icy leaves like blown glass, shot through with color. Spruce and ash, redwood and oak. I remembered trees me and Pop had come up with. Made the prettiest Pickle Fir you ever did see. And I even made up some new trees before I was finished, naming them for the people I’d lost, and the folk that were missing.

I built one for Alpha. Made one look like Crow. And almost before I knew it, I’d spent nearly a week working, and I’d gone the last day without eating or drinking or even stopping at all. I was hardly even thinking, just feeling my way, lost in my rhythm, up and down the ladder, back and forth with my tools. And when the sun dropped that day, my forest was tall enough you could walk beneath the canopy, wide enough you could wind through the trees.

And it was then people started to appear on the rim of the crater. As the stars began to twinkle and settle in for the night. A crescent moon rose, splitting the dark sky like a smile, as the Kalliq emerged, cloaked and hooded, clambering up from their tunnels and caves. Their voices were hushed, if they even were speaking, and they walked among the trees in huddled groups of three over here and four over there.

I heard the snuffle and snort and stomp of a mammoth, and turned to watch one scramble out of the crater, the Elder high on its back.

The old woman was helped down from her mount and led into the forest. And I just stood there in the middle of the trees, the hammer and chisel at my feet, the knives in my hands.

The Healer and the Speaker appeared at either side of their ancient leader as the rest of the folk made a wide circle in the forest, surrounding the three women and me.

The Elder gazed into my eyes like she might stretch open my soul to stare deeper inside it. And she spoke straight to me, as her breath steamed and shone amid the crystalline trees.

“The Elder wishes to know why you do this.” The Speaker managed to hold onto her usual scowl, but even the ugly way she spoke couldn’t put a hole in the moment.

“Just building,” I said. My belly was empty and my arms ached, but I could have kept on with the carving and sculpting all through the night, I reckon, it felt so damn good.

“The Elder wishes you tell her why.”

“’Cause that’s what I do,” I said, and I remembered what Jawbone had told me, back inside that pirate city on the plains. She’d said that you either are something or you’re not. And it occurred to me that Pop had been right when he’d said I wasn’t a fighter. And maybe I wasn’t meant to be a lover or a brother or a son, either, in the end.

“I’m a tree builder,” I said, and the Speaker translated it for me, but the Elder shook her head, then said something back.

The Speaker made a grim sort of face and stayed silent. But the Healer spoke up. She was a better one for translating it, too.

“Tree King,” she said, and all around me, the Kalliq started to cheer.

And I’ll be damned, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The patrol entered the far side of my forest. We heard them before we could see them—the sound of something huge shattering my work. And the Elder’s beast must have sensed its pal in the distance, because it snorted and wailed, rearing up on its hind legs. And then the Kalliq broke out in voices all around me as we ran through the ice trees.

At the edge of a stand of redwood, we stopped and watched the returning mammoth crush the tall trees beneath it, spraying us with icy shrapnel and slush.

“Alpha?” I called. “Zee?”

I stared at the cloaked figures on either side of the beast. But when words I could understand came back to me, the voices came from up high.

“Where are you?” Alpha called, sounding nearly as stunned as I was. “Banyan?”

“I’m here,” I yelled, running to the mammoth. Bodies rushed around me, the tribe reuniting. And one by one, the riders atop the mammoth tugged down their thick hoods and shook their heads at the stars.

There were six of them up there. Two strangers.

And four that I knew.

“I told you he’d be here,” Kade called to the others. He waved his stump at me. “You can’t get far without your right-hand man.”