JAWBONE
Screams ring out—but I don’t know if it’s the other boy or me. Scrambling sideways, I leap for the handholds on the cliff wall. Gods, they’re filled with snow! I scoop them out and weakly start hauling my body up the quest trail, trying to reach the cliff top where Mother and Father can protect me.
The other boy no longer pants, but I know he’s still there. When I glance down, I can see a blackness methodically moving beneath me.
Wait for me.
“Leave me alone!”
Reaching over my head, I sink my fingers into the next handhold and struggle to pull my weight up. Keep climbing! It’s snowing hard. Giant drifts must be piling up against the cliff far below.
Wait for me. I know the way. I’ll show you the way.
My hand slips out of the next handhold, and I cry out as my body swings outward, but I have good footholds. I manage to brace myself enough that I can dig snow from the slick handhold, and grip it tight. Gods, the blizzard is getting worse. I can’t see anything now.
Feeling for the hole that will tell me I’ve found the next handhold, I try to listen for the other boy. It’s a mistake, and I know it the instant I make it. I lose focus. Just as I grab the handholds, my feet slip from the footholds. The Ice Giants let out a deep-throated belly laugh that pounds through the heart of the mountains.
Gasping, I flatten my body against the wall and dig my fingers deeper into the handholds while my toes rake for purchase.
Is my spirit helper watching? Maybe judging me? This could be a test of courage.
“Please, Flame Bird, help me!” I cry out.
I’ve given every bit of strength I have to this climb. My soul has been so emptied of arrogance it booms like a big pot drum. Surely by now the Flame Bird knows I’m worthy?
In the north, a thunderous roar rises and works its way south through the glacial fissures. It’s deafening.
I grip the handholds hard as the roar builds and the cliff shudders so violently it’s impossible to search for footholds.
There’s a faint snap when the ledge beneath my left hand cracks off. As my body swings outward, my right hand smoothly slides from the handhold. I’m so tired I don’t even panic as I go over backward.
Is this real? Am I falling?
I’m lying on my back, staring at a vast canopy of swirling snow. Somewhere out there mastodons trumpet, and I hear the far-off growling of giant lions. It’s pleasant to listen to their melodies while cold air rushes around me.
As I pass the last place I saw him, I try to see the other boy clinging to the cliff . . . but he’s not there. Did he fall, too?
Maybe none of this is real? Maybe I’m deep asleep in the camp and dreaming. That’s why my fingers continue to curl over ledges that vanished moments ago, and my feet brace hard against darkness that feels like the cliff. My mind doggedly insists I’m not falling. It’s the world that’s moving. Not me. Has to be a dream . . .
Then a powerful gust flips me onto my belly, and my arms spread like a condor soaring. The ground is rising toward me, just like in our Beginning Time stories of First Woman. After the Jemen created her, she fell through a hole in the sky. Ancient wolves saw her falling and began digging holes to pile up snow to make a soft place for her to land.
I’m weightless, flying . . .
What a view! When the snow gusts, I see wavering glimpses of the shore below. Arms of zyme crawl over the snow like the distended veins of a dark green monster. Is that the zyme hissing, or wind whipping past my ears? I twist in midair, trying to see home—the sea cave where Sky Ice Village nestles—but I can’t. They must all be asleep anyway, wrapped in warm bison hides with streamers of snow falling through the smoke holes and melting upon their peaceful faces. Is Little Fawn worried about me? I’m worried about her and my other little sisters. Will they be all right without me to guard them?
Chunks of ice the size of my family’s lodge tumble no more than an arm’s-length to my right, torn from the cliff by the ice quake. They’re so close I can smell the distinctive scent of the Ice Giants, old and musty, like mammoth carcasses that have been frozen in darkness for a thousand summers.
I am falling. I’m sure of it now.
Inhaling a burst-your-lungs breath, I splay my fingers and try to drag air.
Inexplicably, I flip to my back again and find myself eye to eye with huge boulders somersaulting right above me. They resemble the black boulders that create the parents’ shelter, and it occurs to me that Mother and Father may be falling, too. Perhaps the entire cliff shattered in the quake?
“Father?” I scream. “Mother? Mother!”
The instants pass like centuries. I practice the things Father told me to do if I fell: bring my knees up, curl into a ball so that I roll when I land, forget about the brokenness inside me. Keep rolling. Keep breathing.
Across the canvas of my soul, I imagine plunging into the deep snow, rolling across the shore until I stop, then rising and dusting snow from my pants. Father and Mother will land softly beside me, and they’ll run toward me, smiling. Father will tell me how proud he is that I almost made it to the top. It will be enough, Kujur, he’ll say, you’ve proven you are a man of great bravery and strength. Laughing, we will walk home together and I will be able to live like a respected man among the Sealion People.
My chest aches with hope.
Why hasn’t my spirit helper come?
What did I do wrong?
. . . Something’s happening below me.
Can’t get air now. Light’s fading.
The snowy ground darkens as though a gigantic shadow flaps through the storm.
Then a voice cries out, and my name soars upward on a gust of icy wind. It’s a long drawn-out wail that rises and falls like an eagle’s shriek.