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000.174.05.21.12

Something crawls around my neck and up my left arm—a blazing serpent, licking blisters on my skin. Stretching. Igniting. Hammers on my head. Hammers. I can’t breathe. The serpent tightens, turning red-hot then black. My Numbers scream.

My eyes snap open. Awareness follows an instant later. The world is twisted, upside-down and confused.

No, I am confused. I shake my throbbing head. The hammers don’t stop. The burning around my arm and neck isn’t a snake, it’s my rope, twisted three times around my suspended arm like a candy cane stripe, holding all my weight.

My blurry eyes struggle to focus on the stretches and crinkles in my exposed skin, straining against the rough fibers. The end of the rope is caught around my shoulder pack, coat, and hair. I’m lucky I wasn’t hung.

A groan reaches my ears. It comes from my own choked voice. Choked. The rope rubs like a dull saw on my neck. My senses awaken and with it my survival instinct. Things seem clear now. The scraggy rock face scratches my shoulder blades, my feet dangle like wind chimes below me. Blood trickles down the creases of my left cheek. My right arm clutches a handful of my coat and vest over my heart.

My heart.

I’m alive.

Why?

The pain in my arm takes precedence over the questions in my head. I grab the rope and pull up, loosening the tension. With my free hand, I spin myself to face the cliff and unloop the cord from my neck and head. The slack releases the rope from my shoulder pack and I rotate, unraveling my body. Now my feeble strength holds me up.

Several yards above, the taut rope stretches over the edge of the cliff. Is it caught in the closed door? All desire to free fall and plummet to my death disappears.

If I climb down, the rope will have to remain here against the cliff, abandoned. I could climb up, though—shimmy to my left until the ledge fans out to solid ground. I should at least climb back up to the closed door and leave a note for the next Radical, not that they have much choice against a plunge.

My feet scrabble for a hold, but the rock face slants away from my body. Using both hands, I pull against the rope. My elbows bend a fraction of an inch. Muscles tremble. I kick against the stone, but drop back against the cliff. Limp. Weak. Flimsy.

Already, my arms fight for strength. I need to make a decision. Soon. Climbing up isn’t going to work—not with my pathetic muscles. Reid was right. I’m too skinny, too frail.

Below me, ragged rock and crumbling red dirt plunge into the misty clouds. There must be a bottom. I can always find a trail to hike back to the top. Maybe the Newtons are down there. They might have climbed.

The blood flows back into my throbbing arm. Needles sweep through my skin. I lower myself a few inches. Hand-over-hand, I descend the rope. My body is so heavy. I mustn’t fall now.

My arms quiver. Once I start, I go faster—faster than my body’s ready to handle. The grain in the rope fibers burns my hands. My own weight pulls against me. A few minutes later, my feet kick the air and scrape rock pebbles into the abyss. I’ve reached the end of the rope.

I hang for a moment, tempted to drop and hope there’s a canyon bottom somewhere within two hundred feet of the mist. I take a deep breath and peruse the rock in front of my face. The cracks are defined and thick. I could fit several fingers in them. Rock bumps and crevices stretch below me. Somewhat promising.

The transfer from rope to rock is precarious. My boots are clumsy and I scuffle for a foothold, but my fingers clamp the rock with muscles I didn’t know they possessed. I hold my breath, feeling fifty pounds heavier without the rope as a lifeline. If my fingers don’t hold me, every bit of my body will plunge to the canyon bottom.

I try to peer at my feet, but my forehead hits the rock. “Okay, rock wall. Cooperate now. I’ve never done this before.”

Climbing down proves much trickier than I expected. My fingernails scrape against rutted stone and gather dirt and grime. Some split and snap backward. I wince. My head is heavy and dislikes balancing on my aching neck. The blood from my forehead snakes down my neck into the collar of my shirt.

I straddle a small rock spine and hug it with my knees and elbows, locating cracks and bumps with the eyes in my fingers. My thumb snags a spider web. A large crevice to my right runs deep into the cliffside shadows.

My downward movement slows as I enter the cloud. The silence turns eerie now that the light is more hidden. A tiny ledge provides a few minutes of rest. My forearms tense, shaking. I continue. Mist thickens. I grip the rock in a moment of panic. What if there isn’t an end to this descent? What if this canyon was caused by an earthquake and split the Earth so deep that it’s an endless abyss? How long do I descend?

I peer back up. Mist. Below me, mist. Dare I keep going?

God, I’m afraid. My arms shake. I close my eyes and inch downward. The rock is cold against my fingers.

Mere minutes later, the cliff base meets piles of giant boulders like they’re old friends. My foot tests for stability, then I rest my full weight on a boulder—and collapse against the rocks. Sweat soaks my vest beneath my pack and my sticky hair clings to exposed skin. My shoulders whimper beneath my pack and I adjust it before crawling to the next boulder.

I squeeze down in a crack between two boulders and meet hard dirt with tiptoes. The bottom. Bluish-grey mist blurs the shadows of scraggly trees fifty or sixty yards ahead and silence rests on the air.

I survived.

I step from the rocks into the openness of the canyon floor and slip on a stray chunk of rock. I flop to the ground with a yelp. My tailbone meets an unrelenting stick. I yank it out from under me and throw it. It clacks against something else. With a squint through the mist, I recognize its form.

A long, white bone.

Human.

Ahead, my foot rests on a small human skull staring sideways into my eyes. I gasp and kick it away. I scramble to my feet and scan the canyon floor with hitched breathing.

Skeletons surround me like a lifeless welcoming committee. Their pieces stretch across the visible space to the sparse forest ahead. Spiders in eye-sockets, web-strung nets between ribs, scraps of torn clothing, pale elbows and knees bent upward and backward, scattered fingers clawing the earth—Halloween spread on the ground like a human carpet.

This would have been my grave. This is what I would be, had my rope not stopped me—empty Numbers lying with other empty Numbers.

I scream.

My fists squeeze over my eyes and I stumble backward, back to the cliff, to the boulders. Pounding. Pounding. My heart won’t stop. It won’t slow. My legs shake beneath me. The bones rattle.

I open my eyes. The ground is shaking. The bones clack like a morbid symphony. Mist starts to rise, sunbeams peek over the cliff ledge and sift through the cloud. The treetops across the open graveyard move in drunken sways. Earthquake?

The shaking continues, growing stronger. Bones clacking. Clacking. Growls. Snarls. Yapping. Howls.

I retreat in slow motion, too terrified to look away from the forest and run. Where can I run? Where can I climb? What’s coming?

My pack hits the boulder and I stop, holding in any sound or air that might break loose. My nerves trample my skin like a stampede of hysteria. I fight it until my eyes land on what plows through the trees to meet me with wide open jaws, bristled grey hair, and manic eyes.

Wolves.

Enough wolves to tear me in more directions than I ever want to travel. They slow to a menacing advance, paw over paw, lips twitching for blood. Behind them, three bears—two black and one grizzly—sit on matted haunches. Hesitating in the trees, a line of coyotes waiting for the wolves to move aside. Leaning backward over the boulder, me. Paralyzed. But the dinner guests know as well as the meal that there’s no way out.

I imagine the beasts charging—it will take a second. There are so many, I’m bound to die quickly. But a quick death is as far as my optimism goes.

Run? Freeze? Yell? My impulse is to flee, but I can’t bear to turn my back on death. Why didn’t I let go of the rope and die from impact when I had the chance? I survived for this?

The wolves stare at me, unblinking and unmoving apart from their ragged breath. I stare back, stiff and weak-hearted. Time stretches, swallowed by tense silence. Seconds remain before one of us moves. What can I do? What do wolves fear?

I don’t know. I’ve never known. I’ve never even gone camping let alone encountered wolves in a canyon. Reid would know. He would survive.

No. Reid’s not here. It’s just me and I’m not Reid. I never have been. I never will be. I no longer want to be. I’ve survived a dive off a canyon and a climb of torture. Wolves, bears, and coyotes still trump the two, but I feel uncharacteristically determined to die with a fight.

I inch my left hand toward the ground, slower than a cat stalking a mole. My raw fingertips brush over a smooth, cold bone. It’s long and thick. A femur.

Just what I want.

In the moment my hand grasps my weapon, the leading grey wolf blinks and breaks from the pack like a stone from a slingshot. I screech and swing the femur. It catches Grey under the chin and he releases an angry yelp. He skids among the bones, regains his footing, and leaps once more. I duck, turn, and scramble up one of the boulders, banging my knee against the stone.

I flip onto my back and flail my heels, catching Grey in the mouth. I scream again and pull my boot from the wolf’s jaws. The femur is no longer in my hand. The roars, snarls, and yaps double in ferocity. Every ounce of fur and drool charges.

The coyotes head toward my surrounding boulders and the wolves follow Grey straight for me. The bears are slow on the uptake, but their roars shake me from the inside out like ravenous kettledrums. I’m on my feet in a flash then scramble up the boulders and leap from the highest one toward the cliff. I thank God with every particle of gushed oxygen that I land on a tiny cliff ledge on the canyon wall.

I reel backward for a moment, but my right hand clings to a crack. My pinky keeps me from falling, curled like a bolt inside the crevice. A peek over my shoulder reveals Grey crouching, settling his shoulders for a spring.

“Stop!” My shout is in vain.

He sails through the air with a mighty launch. I squeeze my eyes shut and cower against the lumpy cliff. One hundred pounds of fur and muscle smash my face into the rock. Grey’s jaws clamp around my left arm and claws rake down my leg as he scrambles for balance.

I ball my right hand into a fist inside the crack. Every muscle tenses in obedience to my frantic brain. Why can’t I stop screaming? Grey’s teeth rip from my arm and something sharp swipes across my back. I fall from the ledge, but my fist anchors me to the rough stone. My eyes spring open. Grey’s mass hits the ground with a deadly thump. I release the air of relief.

God, please let him be dead.

The other wolves, coyotes, and advancing bears seem less daunting . . . until Grey regains his footing. He looks up with a snarl and circles back toward the boulder.

God, please . . .

It’s all I manage. The scratches on my legs burn like branding irons. Blood drips over my hand in the crevice. God must be listening extra hard today because, five yards above and to my right, is an overhang with a defined lip. I ascend.

My legs and left arm quiver against seeping, sticky warmth, yet I climb. My limbs find mysterious strength to pull me up—defying my previous weakness. Handholds appear like sprinkled miracles and the overhang seems nothing more than a minor challenge. When I crawl onto the ledge, the miracles don’t stop—it’s not a ledge, it’s a tiny God-thumbprint pressed into the rock face.

I scoot under its angled roof and dare to dangle my legs over the edge. My dinner party paces below among fragments of clothing and skeletons, waiting for me to jump. I’d rather starve in this haven, picked to the bone by spiders, than face the beasts again. Some of the material beneath their paws looks familiar, as if a little Newton girl wore it once.

I look away and curl against the cavern wall, entwining my blood-slicked fingers around my ankles to hug my knees to my chest. By this point, my tears, heart, and lungs remember how to function. Shaking sets in like a spring drizzle and grows until I’m drenched in panic and freezing sweat. My eyes squeeze against the burning pillaging my body. Tears slink down my face, but they taste of relief.

“Mother?” I crave her firm hands of care. I hurt. I hurt. I’ve never hurt like this. “Mother!”

My heart beats rhythm against my knees—solid and invincible while at the same time chilled and feverish. This awareness of life lifts my head from my knees. I stare through a watery film to the opposite wall of grey stone. Wild tangled hair sticks to my cheeks, my neck, my wounds, my blood.

I wanted this. I wanted life. I wanted a second chance, and God is giving it to me. Granted, my second chance twirls among a pinwheel of rabid, starved animals inside a crater, but it’s a second chance nonetheless. God wouldn’t allow me to survive a death-plunge only to be devoured, would He?

The thin cross ring spins easily under the pressure of my forefinger, slathered as it is with blood. God is all I have now. Mother’s not here. Reid’s not here. The name Parvin is a clean slate without the chalk marks of passivity. Today, my name marks a new beginning wrought with blood, loneliness, and fear.

My pack slides from my shoulders and I rummage through with my right hand, wiping tears with my left, smearing blood and sticky hair across my face. I want to pull out the nanobook Skelley Chase gave me and beg for rescue, but there’s too much blood on my hands to experiment with it. Besides, my betrayer wouldn’t help me and I don’t want the reading world to know I wanted to give up so early.

My hair clings to wounds. When I pull it away, the strands slide against my raw skin like paper cuts. I rummage for a ribbon to tie it back, but my fingers find Father’s smooth dagger first. I slide off the wooden sheath, wrap my hair in my free hand, and run the dagger in a sawing motion through the sticky strands. The slicing sound is pleasant, rhythmic.

I feel no remorse for cutting my hair, though I regret using my bloody hand to hold it, now having to pick each loose strand from the thick red coating of life. What’s left is still long enough for a small braid. I find a ribbon and, as I tie my hair back, a sense of assurance secures itself among the ribbon.

Now the wounds. I close my eyes and assess. I encounter pain first on my face, then my neck. Blood and grime covers too much of my skin for me to locate gashes or deep cuts—my raw, torn fingers have little feeling in them anyway. Instead of feeling around, I pinpoint the strongest pain: my left arm, my back, and my legs—all bearing gashes from Grey’s teeth and claws. A shudder pulses down my body and I glance over the cave ledge.

The beasts are gone.

I scan the tree line. No shadows. No haunting eyes. My wariness increases, but I cannot allow myself to dwell in paranoia. The pain in my back is sharp and thrums with furious beat, harder and harder. With a grunt, I remove my coat and curve my right arm back, brushing shaking fingers over my vest. There are no holes in the thick material, but it is soaked and sticky. I peel it away from my skin and a zing shoots through my nerves. Three defined gashes pour my life onto the stone.

I know little of healing or care for the body. How much blood loss is too much? Though I’m not a healer, I’m not ignorant. I need bandages, water, a fishhook, and a fire. I’ve seen Mother do stitches plenty of times.

Bandages I can make, and I have my leather water pouch, but no wood for a fire. My mind rests on the needle in my pocket-sized sewing kit. I didn’t think I’d need to use it on myself.

I shudder. I can’t reach the wounds on my back, but my thighs and calves bear similar lacerations that could heal with some fishing twine. Too bad I’m stuck with regular sewing thread.

A sigh escapes into the breeze. I could have prepared so much better, but I was distracted by my death. I didn’t weigh other possibilities. I didn’t count on miracles.

I didn’t count on surviving.

I give my head a small shake, and the rope burn on my neck screams. I ignore it as best I can.

Get to work.

Father’s knife becomes my hero, slicing away the grey layer of my skirt and cutting long, even bandages. I dampen one rag enough to wipe blood away from my calves and off my back. Snowdots sprinkle the air again, dancing with more energy than before. The chill slows the bleeding.

For now, I use bandages—the needlework will have to wait until courage catches up with me. I tie cloth strips as tight as my weak arms and stiff fingers allow. The wool scratches against my wounds like sandpaper.

My leggings are torn in several places, but still hold together. I refrain from cutting them. Instead, I pull their shreds over the bandages to help hold them in place. My left shirtsleeve is almost rent in two from Grey’s teeth, so I rip it off and wrap my arm.

My back is the most difficult as I struggle to cover the entire wound. For good measure, I smear a little of Mother’s burn paste on the bandage to keep the gashes from stiffening too much—at least, that’s what I hope it does. I also lather it on the uncovered rope-burn portions of my left arm and around my neck. It’s slimy and uncomfortable, but it will encourage healing.

When the last knot is tied, my body succumbs to dizziness and fatigue. I knew it would come, but I admire my own stamina—I never knew I had any.

I spread out the two remaining layers of my skirt and curl beneath them. The sun no longer shines in the snow-dusted canyon. Wind picks up and my bruised knee throbs against the bending. I attempt to rest on my side, but the pain rolls me over to a different position. Grunting, gasping, and tender turning bring me to my stomach—still an uncomfortable state, but the least painful so far.

My head rests against my shoulder pack. The bump from falling against the cliff-face throbs, but what can I do? I throw the worries aside and spare a moment to register this is my first time ever sleeping outside, even though it’s daytime.

I’m camping. I’m alive. I can do this. Yet I still start to cry. I hurt, far deeper than physical wounds. How could Skelley Chase do this to me? How could my family allow it?

God? Are You even here?

I Am.

Imagined? Felt? Heard? It doesn’t matter. His response soothes my sorrow. As my mind’s-eye slow-dances with the sandman, I dare to believe for a moment that I might survive.