The Rift - Howard Chris. Страница 45

The Speak It Mountains is what the Speaker had called them. And it did seem like they were speaking, the wind making strange shapes and sounds as it danced through the peaks overhead.

These mountains were smaller than the ones we’d climbed in the snow, thinner and more twisted, though still a good quarter-mile from the top to their tips, and packed real close. So I was glad we didn’t have to cross that maze of gullies and spires.

All we had to do was walk underneath.

I stood on Namo’s shaggy stomach, peering out across the water, where the peaks were reflected. And the reflection made them look even more like mountains, seeing as it turned them the right way up.

I looked up to the peaks, then gazed down at their gleaming reflection, and it looked like two different worlds, instead of just two different views. I stood there thinking that was how we built the world around us. All from our own perspective. Even GenTech, even Harvest. They all had their reasons. It was a hard thing to grapple with and know what it meant. And I wished Zee had been there to help me think it through.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

As we traveled beneath the mountains, their peaks reached even lower, sometimes reaching all the way to the ground, so we had to steer around them, twist inside them. Getting caught in the wind now. And the further we wound our way through those dangling cliffs, the more fierce the wind seemed to howl.

We kept to the widest gaps, following the broadest routes between the hanging spires, so we could steer Namo alongside us, his long fur flying in the gathering wind.

And when it got too dark to navigate the rocky claws of the mountains, we set Namo down to rest again in the water, threading ourselves in the fur of his belly. Once more feeling his warmth and the rhythm of his breathing, pulling matted old coats over us to keep us from the wind, and not even speaking as we hunkered down for the night.

I opened the pack and felt the trees, making sure the stems hadn’t gotten any more broken and that the healing mud was still slippery from the water Alpha had tended them with. Then I dug out the moss I’d gathered from the tunnels. It weren’t glowing so much now, it was crumbled and flaky. And I passed some to Alpha, then split some between Crow and Kade.

We all chewed it down, though it left a rotten taste, powdery on the tongue. Then the fatigue pressed me flat, and I put my hands on my ears, trying to block the sound of the punishing winds.

A splashing sound woke me. And when I scrabbled around for the pack, I found it was missing—figured it must have fallen off the side of the mammoth, and the sound of the pack hitting the pool had been what had woken me up.

I reached down and groped through the darkness, trying to find the pack with my fingers, and when I realized the wind had stopped, I felt my body begin to unwind with relief.

But then the wind started up again, and it was even worse than before.

Almost sounded like it was made up of voices. People whispering. Thousands of them, all speaking over each other and confusing the words. The sound crept inside me like tiny fingers, wriggling in through my ears and spinning my brain.

But it weren’t really voices. Just the sound of the wind. Told myself I was imagining things. Or maybe I was still sleeping. Dreaming.

I hurried down into the pool to search for the saplings, the cool water coming up to my thighs, and I felt it seeping through the remains of my clothes, caressing my bones and my skin, and it all felt much too real for a dream, I tell you that much.

But then why could I still hear those damn voices?

I put both hands over my ears, blocking out the terrible chorus of whispers, and I waded through the dark, splashing about. Couldn’t find the pack anywhere, though, and just where the hell was it? Had the wind blown it clear across the damn pool?

Soon I was crashing around and getting desperate. I called out to the others, but they’d never hear me with the wind raging so loud. And that wind was playing tricks on me, turning me in circles. Got so I couldn’t even find my way back.

I started running fast as I could through the water, my hands still clamped over my ears. And by the time I stopped, I was lost in the darkness, and completely alone.

I began to scream for the others.

“Wake up,” I kept shouting, almost like I was shouting it to myself. Almost like I was still back there, sleeping on the side of the mammoth’s belly, and this me that was out here wasn’t out here at all.

Something half-solid hit the side of my leg.

I had to take my hands off my ears to reach down into the water. And then I found what I’d stumbled upon—the pack. But as I pulled it out of the pool, I realized the pack had come open and the saplings were floating free of the plastic, their limbs soggy and all matted together.

The wind sounded more like voices than ever now. Tumbling and urgent, and really freaking me out.

And I tried to shove the saplings back in the pack, pushing the good Kalliq mud back in place at the bottom, but as I groped in the dark, my hands got too slick. And every time I got the pack tied back together, it all just kept coming undone, and the saplings would start falling back out.

I held the shrunken last bits of Pop’s face with my fingers as the saplings rattled and shook in the wind. It was as if the wind meant to snatch the trees from me, tug them away. But then, out of all the wind’s whispering voices, one voice whispered louder than the rest.

“Banyan?” The wind curled the word around me. “That you?”

“Pop?”

“It is you.”

“Don’t.” The word was sharp on my tongue. I thrashed around in the water, staring all around me but swallowed by shadows, blind in the dark.

“You’re gone,” I called. “You gotta leave me alone now.”

“No.” The voice trembled against me. “Not gone. Not yet.”

I screamed into the wind, but it blew the words back at me, and they hit me and shattered everything I wanted to say.

So I tried again, even louder.

“What do I do?” I cried, as if the question had been chiseled inside me and to speak it now meant prying open my heart.

“You know.” The wind wailed back. “You already know.”

“No.” I held the stump of trees before me, Pop’s remains at their base like a broken skull. “How can I know without you here beside me?”

“I am beside you.” The wind rushed through the thin, coiled saplings, shaking them so hard, I thought it might tear them apart. “I’m right here, son. I’m here.”

“No, you ain’t, damn you. You left me alone in that wagon. And look at what you left me to do.”

The wind shredded the stone and clawed at the water, like a storm had broken out inside this black hole.

But now the wind was just noise. No more voices. No words.

“Wait,” I shouted into the empty bluster and fury. “Come back.”

I held the crumpled trees against me, clasping them to my chest as I knelt.

“Come back here,” I whispered. “Pop. I miss you. I miss you so much.”

The winds quit and the world turned silent, leaving just the sound of my sobbing and a wheeze in my chest. And I had to be careful not to break those saplings, I was hugging them so awful damn tight.

I tried to untwist my muscles. My breathing ragged as I tried to keep steady. And when I stared down into the pool, it was like there were lights on beneath it.