ONE STEP. THAT’S ALL it is. One awkward step, taken because her eyes were following a hawk drifting on the updraft coming from the dry valley below rather than watching her feet as they should have been, and Kara is falling.
She’s always heard that at a moment like this, when death is suddenly and imminently certain, your history reels out before you and you’re able to spend your last moments reliving the high points and chewing over regrets. Turns out that’s not exactly true, but time does slow to a crawl in an interesting way as she drifts down past the narrow cliffside trail she’d been traversing and toward her date with the valley floor a thousand feet below. Her fingertips brush the cliff’s edge as she falls, but even if there had been something there to grip—a stray tree root or a nub of rock, say—between the weight of her body and the extra thirty pounds of her pack, with just that one hand there’s not a chance in hell that she could have saved herself.
The contact is enough to set her body rotating, though, which affords her a panoramic view of the valley below and the granite cliff rising up to meet the trail. She’s in northern New Hampshire, three days into what was supposed to have been a week-long trip. It’ll be another four days, maybe five, before anyone misses her, before anyone thinks to come looking. She’ll be long gone by then, she thinks. Dead and scavenged and scattered to the winds, probably.
That thought is what’s running through her mind when she finally rotates far enough around to see the ledge rushing up to slap her back into the world.
THE SUN is touching the cliff’s edge twenty feet above her when Kara comes back to herself. Her first thought is astonishment that she’s still alive, and her second is a wash of relief that she’s not in any real pain.
That relief morphs quickly into panic when she realizes that the reason she’s not in any real pain is that she’s unable to feel anything at all from her shoulders down.
She’s lying on her back, sprawled across her shattered pack, head lolling and arms splayed. She can turn her head from side to side and lift it briefly, but as far as movement goes, that’s pretty much it. She lets her head fall back and squeezes her eyes shut against the sun’s glare. It would have been better, she thinks. Better if this ledge hadn’t been here. Better if she’d just fallen all the way to the valley floor and splattered there like an overripe tomato. How long will it take her to die here, baking in the sun by day and slowly freezing by night? A day? Two? Longer? Will it be exposure that does her in, or blood loss, or thirst?
If she just had the use of her arms, she could roll herself off of this stupid ledge and finish the job.
In the periphery of her vision she sees the hawk drift past. It seems to look at her for a brief moment, head cocked to one side, before folding its wings and plunging downward, chasing something down on the valley floor.
Thanks a lot, she thinks. Asshole.
IT’S LATER, with the temperature dropping and the valley fully in shadow, when Kara first hears the voices. They’re too faint and indistinct for her to make out words, but it’s a man and a woman speaking, and for the moment at least, they’re coming closer. She draws breath to scream for help, but her mouth and throat are dry as a month-old bone, and all that comes out is a sad, wheezing cough. It’s enough, though, because the voices stop, and a moment later she sees a face peering down at her over the edge of the cliff. She tries to speak again, and this time manages to squeak out a faint, Help.
The face pulls back and the voices start in again, still indistinct but now with a tone of urgency. They can’t be search-and-rescue, can they? Nobody would have had any reason to call them to look for her, and even if they had, it hasn’t been anywhere near long enough for them to get here from the nearest trailhead. So probably just some random hikers. The stretch of cliff above her is sheer granite. Without rope and climbing gear there’s no way for them to reach her, let alone to render any meaningful aid.
Maybe they can drop a rock on her and put her out of her misery?
She’s chewing over that thought when the face appears above her again—a woman’s, she sees now, with white-blond hair pulled back in a braid that hangs down over one shoulder, pink eyes, and ghost-pale skin.
“Hold tight,” the woman calls down to her. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
Kara has a brief flash of hope then—maybe they do have gear with them after all?—which is quickly replaced by horror as the woman turns and lowers herself boots-first down the cliff and begins to climb.
Kara spends the next five minutes expecting at any moment for the woman to either drop down onto her and shove her into the void, or maybe just plummet past her and down to the valley floor. She does neither, though. Instead she moves slowly and methodically down the cliff, supporting herself with toes and fingertips on irregularities in the rock face too small for Kara to see. By the time she steps onto the ledge and crouches down by Kara’s side, her partner has started his own descent.
“Hey,” the woman says. “I’m Rowan.” She gestures toward her partner, now halfway down the cliff face. “That’s Asher. We’re here to help.”
“You’re s-and-r?” Kara whispers.
“Not quite. We’re ridge runners. The Conservancy pays us to look out for hikers in trouble. Looks like you took quite a fall, huh?”
“My back,” Kara says, then has to stop to cough. “Can’t move. Broken, I think.”
Asher steps down onto the ledge now. He’s shirtless, and his chest is crisscrossed with a network of scars so broad and vivid that Kara finds herself wondering first what happened to him, and then how in God’s name he’s still alive. Rowan stands, and the two of them put their heads together and begin a fierce, whispered conversation that ends with Asher saying, “No, Rowan,” and Rowan shaking her head and replying, “It’s the only way she’s getting out of here alive, Asher. We have to offer.”
Rowan crouches again. Asher stays standing, arms folded across his chest and jaw set. “Hey,” she says. “Look, I’m not gonna lie to you. You’re in really bad shape here. We could probably get a search-and-rescue team up here sometime tomorrow, but even if you lasted until then and they were able to get you out, which I kind of doubt, you’re not ever gonna get your arms and legs back. You understand?”
Kara tries to speak, falls into another coughing fit, and settles for a nod.
“So here’s the thing. We can help you. It won’t be easy on you. It’s gonna hurt like hell for a while, and it’s gonna change your life forever—but we can make this all better. We can make you whole. I just need you to tell me that you want me to do it.”
“She can’t give consent,” Asher says. “She can’t consent to something she doesn’t understand.” He hasn’t even finished talking, though, before Kara wheezes out a yes, and follows that after a gasping breath with please.
She half expects Rowan to roll her off the ledge now, to give her a quick, clean death. She’s prepared for that, more or less. She’s not prepared for what actually happens, though, as Rowan leans down over her, brushes a stray wisp of hair back from her face, and gives her a deep, lingering, tongues-entwined kiss.