Most times, when I’m airborne, things slow down. It’s my body’s own safety mechanism, the adrenaline working to make sure I survive whatever I’m trying to do.
Not this time. This time, things speed up.
Almost immediately, I can tell I’m moving way too fast. I’ve overcompensated, overshot the jump, and the only thing on the other side is open air.
The branch knocks the wind out of me. I hit it so hard that I keep moving, somersaulting over the top. I have just enough presence of mind to bring my hands down, wrap my fingers around the wood, and then everything goes upside down. I get a momentary look at Harlan, his mouth open, and then I’m hanging, swinging in the wind.
My swing goes too far, and one hand comes loose.
This time, everything does slow down.
One hand. Four fingers and a thumb. That’s all I’ve got between me and a fifty-foot drop. I can feel the grip on my thumb sliding away as the swing pulls it around the branch.
But swings go both ways, and this one doesn’t travel quite far enough to pull me off. As I come back, I throw my free hand up, grabbing hold of the branch again. Slowly, I come to a stop. When I look up, I see a dozen animal faces staring down at me, saliva dripping from open jaws. The wolves are barking, harrying each other, not sure what to do.
“Are you OK?” Harlan is shouting, over and over again, the words blending into one another. I don’t answer–not yet. Instead, I move along the branch towards the cliff. It creaks and bends, but it feels like it will hold. Twigs jab at my cheek, spiky and intrusive. Now that I’m down here, the adrenaline has started to ebb, and an awful worry has replaced it. What if the rock is smooth? What if I can’t find handholds?
But the rock is cracked and fissured, and there are more shrubs dotted here and there–none with long branches, but they should be enough. I move carefully, placing my feet first, positioning them on a convex piece of rock. Then I jam my fingers into one of the fissures, bending my body so that my legs can take the weight. At the back of my mind, fear is trying to grab hold, but I won’t let it. Not this time. If I can climb a surface on Outer Earth, I can climb one down here.
“Riley! Help me!”
I look up. The wolves have forgotten about me. They’ve turned their attention to Harlan, crowding around the tree below him. He has to jump. It’s the only way.
“It’s OK!” I shout. It still hurts to speak, my throat stinging from whatever Harlan sprayed at the wolves. “It’ll take your weight.”
“I can’t do it.”
He’s still in a panic. Not good. If I don’t get him down here soon…
Leave him.
The voice speaks from nowhere, and this time it’s so forceful that I can’t ignore it. Leave him. You can find Whitehorse on your own. He’ll only slow you down.
I actually feel my hand start to move, as if I’m about to make my way down the cliff. I clench it deep into the fissure, horrified.
I’m not leaving him. I won’t do that. He’s only here because of me–he might have offered to take me to Whitehorse, but I was the one who ran for the trees, the one who led us here. More than that: he’s not physically equipped for this. I’m asking him to do something that even I found nearly impossible, and I’ve been a tracer for years. Wherever that horrible thought came from, I can’t give in to it. I have to help him.
Going first wasn’t enough–I’ll have to talk him through it.
“It’s closer than you think,” I say. “I know you can make it.”
Harlan moans.
“I’m going to move further out of the way.” I slide along the cliff, hunting for a hold. “We’re going to go on zero.”
“Can’t do it. Can’t.”
“Yes, you can. We’re going to get down there, and then we’re going to go to Whitehorse. You’re going get me there safe, and I’m going to tell them you were with me every step of the way.”
I don’t give him the chance to back out. I just start counting. “Three… two…”
Harlan jumps.
I’m looking at the branch, so I don’t even see him do it. Suddenly there’s this scream, and then a thud as he slams into the branches. He hits them exactly as I did, toppling head over heels. But he doesn’t have my instincts, and he doesn’t grab hold of the branch as he goes over.
I rip one hand out of the crack in the rock, lunging for him. My fingers grip the collar of his coat.
Then gravity takes over, and he nearly wrenches me off the cliff face.
He slams back into the rock, roaring with pain and fear. I grit my teeth, plant my feet, do everything I can to keep my other hand buried in the cliff. I can feel the skin tearing off my fingers.
Somehow, Harlan doesn’t fall. He finds one hold, then two, then he’s being supported by the cliff. My hand is clenched so tightly around his coat that it’s an effort to actually let go.
“Still with me?” I say, trying to inject a little humour into my voice. I’d almost forgotten about the wolves, but they’re howling and barking, furious at the loss of the kill.
Harlan grunts. It’s good enough.
“I think we’ll be OK,” I say. “You need to go first, all right? Just take it slow. I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”
He stays frozen for a long moment, long enough to make me think I’m going to have to talk him into it again, but then he starts making his way down the cliff, inch by inch. I wait one breath, two, then I follow.
More than once, I get stuck, dead-ended in an area without any holds. I have to backtrack, climbing up the cliff, and somehow those are the worst parts, the times when I come closest to letting gravity take me. But soon we’re thirty feet above the ground, then we’re twenty. There are more shrubs now: scrubby, insubstantial things clinging to the rock. We grab them as close to the roots as we can, clenching them in our fists. At ten feet above the ground, I take my deepest breath yet, and drop.
I’m used to landing on hard surfaces, and the soft ground catches me off balance. I tuck into a roll, feeling dead leaves and frozen, clammy dirt under my hands. I come up onto my feet, gasping.
Harlan is just below where I was on the cliff. I consider telling him to jump, but he might not know how to land properly–he could crack an ankle, or worse. I direct him, pointing out the holds, talking him down until he’s a foot above the forest floor.
We’re in a large clearing, on the edge of another part of the forest. Huge boulders lie scattered across the ground, as if they fell from the cliff long ago. When I look up, the wolves have gone.
“Harlan,” I say. “I am so, so sorry. It was the only thing I could think of, I…”
Harlan is making an odd sound. He’s standing, hands on hips, gazing up at the cliff edge, and he’s laughing. Actually laughing.
“You like that?” he shouts. “Try to mess with old Harlan, eh? That’s what you get! Hope your stomachs are rumbling good and proper, you bastards. Can’t catch old Harlan, not in a million years. That cliff goes for miles in each direction. You’ll never find us.”
He collapses in howls of laughter again. I take a few deep breaths, feeling my heartbeat get slower and slower.
“What was in that thing?” I say, when Harlan subsides. My tongue is dry and heavy in my mouth, and it’s hard to speak.
“What thing?”
“The spray can. The stuff you used on the wolves.”
“Oh, that?” A dark look crosses Harlan’s face. He digs the canister out of his jacket, staring at it like it personally betrayed him. “Bear spray,” he says. “Guess it doesn’t work if there’s more than one wolf, right?”
“Bear spray?”
“Should never have traded for it in the first place,” Harlan says. “Goddamn useless piece of shit. Now, if I was younger, I’d go back and find the guy who traded it to me and bust his head in two.” He raises his voice again, shouting at the clifftop. “Just like I’ll do to the next mangy rat-eared fleabag that comes anywhere near me! You hear?”
He grins. “Come on,” he says, the volume of his voice returning to normal. “Whitehorse ain’t far.”
He limps off, heading for the trees. I follow, the wound in my thigh throbbing like a broken tooth.