Chapter 9
There’s not much more to the trail, because it ends at solid rock. Well, not quite solid. There’s a weird hole near the top of it, in an odd zigzag shape, like a lightning bolt.
Is that natural? I type.
“Could be,” Tara says, but she sounds unsure.
“Doesn’t look natural to me,” Arrow says. And somehow, they’re both right. It’s way up above our heads, on a nearly sheer surface. If it was carved, there’d have been machinery or at least scaffolding to do it. I’ve never seen the humans here do that, but–
Could be a Land thing, I type.
“A what?” Arrow says.
“Spackle thing,” Tara says, then gives me a shrug. She frowns and goes closer to the rock, putting her hand on its surface. She looks closer and closer still, running her fingers along a little rise. “How well do you know these woods, Arrow?”
“Pretty damn well,” he says. “Why?”
She frowns even more. “Do you remember this rock?”
Arrow frowns back, though to be fair, he hasn’t smiled at all since we ran into him. “Of course I do.”
But then he frowns even more.
“Yeah,” Tara says. “Same here.”
What? I type.
“That’s right,” Tara says, “you grew up farther downriver.” She pats the rock face. “I remember this rock always being here.” She looks at Arrow. “But I also don’t.”
“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah, exactly.”
Exactly what?
“It’s like . . .” Tara starts, but then stops herself.
“Like part of my brain is saying, you can’t know every rock in the forest, but then another part is like, you’ve been through here hundreds of times in your life.
And was there always a rock here? Did you maybe just not notice?
Because I remember it being here. But I don’t ever have an actual single memory of it being here. ”
I don’t understand.
“Me neither, really,” Tara says.
“She’s not wrong,” Arrow says. “This rock has been here all my life. But it also wasn’t here a month ago.”
You’re not making any sense.
“Look at the rock face,” Tara says. “How clean it is.”
She’s got a point. There’s no lichen on it, for one, and there’s lichen on everything on this planet. The Land make most of their clothes and materials out of it. It’s the most abundant natural renewable resource we’ve got here, so of course humans don’t bother using it at all.
There’s none on the rock. There’s also no discoloration, like you see on most rocks. Places where birds might make nests or go to the bathroom or kill each other and just basically stain it, like any rock you’d see in the woods.
This looks like a rock that’s been here forever, because how could it have just shown up? But it also looks like something brand new.
What the hell?
How can it be new but always have been here? I type.
“I don’t know,” Tara says. “How can a burning god come out of it?”
And look, I type, going around to the side of it, where there’s another burnt-out path. It heads straight in the direction of our farm. This has to be where they come from.
“So where did it take my goddamn sister?” Arrow says. He looks up at the zigzag hole. He steps back, gets his bearings, then he puts his hands on the rock and starts climbing.
“Arrow!” Tara says, alarmed.
“Not stopping,” Arrow says, not stopping.
And what can we do, really, except watch him climb? It’s a pretty sheer rock face, but he’s finding enough fingerholds to grab. I never realized how strong Arrow is. He scrambles up fast, and soon he’s above our heads, getting closer to the zigzag mark.
“Be careful,” Tara says.
“Of what?” Arrow says, grunting at the effort.
“I don’t know. Just general carefulness.”
“It took my sister,” Arrow says, pulling himself up even farther. “It needs to be careful of me.”
Which are big words and I think we all know it, but if you’re climbing into maybe the mouth of a god, then you’ve got to make yourself as brave as possible.
He’s almost to the zigzag hole now. He has to stop for a second, balancing himself. He shakes one hand, as if in pain.
Are you okay? I type.
“Just the burns from last night,” he says.
Then he reaches up and grabs the bottom of the zigzag as a handhold.
And that’s when the screaming starts.