38. Sam Scree
Sam: Scree
Some have told me that the scree are spirit eaters, some have said that they are invisible hunters, and some have said that they are mere pockets of wind. Their understandable terror of the scree prevents spirits from examining the beings—if so they are—more closely.
—Wister Amsel, A True Account of Explorations in the Realm
I hadn’t crossed the Weer since my last journey as a roper.
But now, with Clementine beside me, I could venture beyond the wall.
She walked ahead, slowly but steadily, and I held the rope at her waist. All around us, the misty expanse of the Weer remained uncommonly still.
No buffeting currents, no wisps of wind slashing by; I knew it wouldn’t last.
In all my time in the spirit realm, I hadn’t seen the scree.
But I’d heard them: their distant whispers wormed through the dense air, almost indistinguishable from the more mundane breezes of the realm.
Corbin once told me that they might whisper your name, luring you closer to the wall, but this had never happened to me.
Beyond the wall, they become corporeal, and so I’d stayed cautiously behind the wall to avoid any encounter.
Once, and only once, I saw a spirit who strayed beyond the wall into the Weer, desperate to reach one of the portals, and she succeeded in taking twenty steps into the Weer before a sudden screaming pocket of wind came upon her, knocking her to the ground.
She lay there, struggling, for a brief minute before the wind carried her up and up and up toward the hazy light.
I lost sight of her for a moment in the fog, but then I saw her, far up and away, a mere speck, and moments later her net of knots and stones came tumbling back downward.
It fell to the rocky ground with a muted clatter, empty. The spirit had vanished.
Every spirit knows that it’s folly to go through the Weer without the company of a living soul. I held on to Clem’s rope tightly.
Her footsteps were dragging. I could see this now, although my mind had wandered momentarily.
She had difficulty lifting the heavy boots.
For a living person, walking through the realm is like walking through water, and the portal was still far away.
Though I never walked to the Keel House portal as a living man, I knew the distance would be four hundred to five hundred paces; all the portals lay at such a distance from the wall.
We’d only just passed two hundred. “Let me go in front,” I said to her.
“Hold on to my net, and let me pull you.” She nodded listlessly.
I stepped around her and held on to the mooring line.
I felt the faint tug of her hands on the net, and I began making my way toward the mooring post. I counted my steps.
Two hundred and seventy-five, two hundred and seventy-six.
My ears were attuned to the silence around us, for I feared the arrival of another Oaring.
At three hundred I stopped to look over my shoulder.
Clementine’s eyes were half shut. “Clem,” I said loudly.
I couldn’t turn to shake her without dislodging her hands.
Her eyes sought mine. “You must stay alert,” I said, almost shouting.
“Don’t lose sight of where we are. Only a little more than a hundred paces left.
We’re three-quarters of the way there.” She didn’t reply.
Worried, I plodded on. I reminded myself of how difficult that first journey through the Weer had been for me.
How had the spirit, Eva, managed to carry me through?
I couldn’t remember most of it, only the feeling of Eva pushing against my back and the insistent sound of her voice in my ear: Keep walking, Sam.
Keep walking. She was a small thing compared to me, but she’d taken me all the way to the portal.
Surely I could do the same for Clementine.
Three hundred and sixty-one. I felt, or perhaps heard, a tremor somewhere in the Weer, something that disturbed the stillness all around us. I turned to look over my shoulder at Clementine, and a horrific sight met my eyes. She was gone.
“Clem!” I called into the fog. As quickly as I could, I began to retrace my steps back down the mooring line. “Clem!” I called again. The fog was too dense. I could see nothing.
But now I heard something—a distant wail, like the high whistling of the wind or the shriek of grinding metal. It was the scree.
“Clem,” I called desperately, now as terrified for myself as for her.
The sudden gusts of wind lifted the fog, and I saw her thirty paces away, crumpled to the ground beside the mooring line.
“Get up, Clem,” I shouted at her. She raised her head—she was still alive.
But I couldn’t close the distance fast enough.
The scream had grown loud, painfully loud, and then the pocket of wind hit me.
Just before it came upon me, the scree fell silent. I felt a blow, but nothing like my collision with the carriage as a living man. No—this blow was an embrace.
Abruptly, my vision was filled with light.
I lay on the stones, looking up at the beautiful, impossibly beautiful pale blue so many miles overhead: bright and warm and tender.
The scree wasn’t a physical being, I realized dimly; it was a spirit—pure spirit, with no flesh or casing to encumber it.
It tugged on my consciousness, saying, Come, come this way, without any need for words.
I felt a surge of desire to comply, and then delight at giving in.
What delight! I had such a sense of calm and contentment that I hadn’t experienced since arriving in the realm—no, since well before that.
Before the Society, before Commonwealth, before Saddle Street.
When had I last felt so happy? In my mother’s arms, as an infant?
I couldn’t recall, but I knew the feeling was wonderful and familiar.
I gave in to it, surrender and happiness coursing through me.
Then it was broken. Something appeared in my line of vision, blocking the lovely pale light. A gruesome thing of metal and flesh and floating hair. “SAM!” it shouted. I struggled to push it away; I wanted nothing to do with this creature. “Sam!” it shouted again. “Sam, you must get up.”
I didn’t want to. Dying had been effortless, but this, this was excruciating.
All I wanted was to remain in that blue embrace, far from all this.
What could possibly entice me back? Something, there was something…
an unease, a thing I could not let go. Sam, someone said, distantly now, unseen.
I felt a tug: a physical tug—someone pulling on my net—that was also a longing, an inner tug.
What was it? Clem, I realized. Clem was my sense of unease. I could not leave her here alone.
I seized this conviction like another mooring line.
Inch by inch, I pulled myself out of the sweet, soporific embrace.
I thought about Clem. I clung to her voice.
As one does when attempting to force oneself out of a dream, I forced my eyes open.
Above me, I saw a vague shape. One thought connected with another.
The mass of metal and flesh resolved into a being. Clementine.
The scree was gone. Clementine was there.
She had somehow gotten to her feet and reached me.
She put her hands on my cheeks, and her hands were cold, terribly cold.
“Sam,” she said. “I can’t get back without you.
” Her face was inches from mine. I saw the salty residue of tears on her face and wondered, vaguely, when she had wept.
Her eyes, looking into mine, held nothing back.
They had accepted fully what her words had expressed.
She would return to the portal, or she would expire in the realm; only I could determine which it would be. I could not let her down.
With all my force of will, I reached out to the mooring line and pulled myself upright.
Clementine was still lashed to the line.
I put my arm around her waist and placed her arm over my shoulder.
“Hold on,” I said. “We’ll go together.” And in that manner we walked, step by step, closing the remaining distance to the mooring post. By the time we reached it, Clementine’s eyes were closed, and I was dragging her.
I untied her from the mooring line and carried her to the portal.
Then I took her face in my hands as she had taken mine.
“Clementine,” I said. She opened her eyes a fraction of an inch.
“I need the case.” Her eyes closed, but she slid her hand upward toward her trouser pocket.
Then her fingers fell away. “It’s lead,” I said to her.
“I can’t touch it.” She shook her head slightly, the barest shift from side to side.
What did she mean? She couldn’t do it? She wouldn’t?
Gingerly, I pulled at the opening of her trouser pocket.
I could see the rectangular lump in the satin lining.
What would happen if I touched lead? Would it burn me?
Turn me to dust? Or would my fingers simply fail to grasp it, sliding through like mere air? I thrust my hand into the pocket.
The case lay in my hand: a small, dainty box made of rosewood.
I blinked, not comprehending. Then I realized—it was Clem’s jewelry box.
Wood, not lead! Of course! Clem would never keep her sister’s shroud in a lead box, denying her access to her own liberty.
I choked on a laugh of relief. “I have it,” I said.
“But this part you must do.” I leaned down close.
“You must take the shroud. I can’t.” Her eyes flickered.
“Do this and we are done. We open the portal, and this will all be over. Only one more step, Clementine.” I lifted her hand and put it against my heart. “Pull. Pull off the shroud.”
She opened her eyes. I was suddenly aware of how we were standing.
I was holding her close, and she had her hand on my heart.
My face was inches from hers. We would never be like this again.
Once my shroud was gone, I would be entirely altered, more spirit than man.
I knew, as I held her, that the moment would never return.
“Pull,” I said to her quietly. She blinked.
Her hand stiffened against my chest, and she pulled her hand away with a grasping motion.
Her motion was the merest gesture, lacking any sense of conviction.
But then I felt the shroud come away, and suddenly my whole being was lighter, freer, almost weightless.
Clementine’s hand hovered; the shroud undulated gently, threatening to slip away.
I released her and she tottered unsteadily while I gathered the shroud myself, tugging the diaphanous substance into the open case.
As I grasped madly at the folds, it didn’t feel like a part of myself—it was only a flimsy, slippery thing.
Finally, I succeeded in packing the shroud into the box.
I closed the lid and put it back in her pocket.
Then I threw off my net of stones and tangled rope and knocked on the door. “We’ve done it, Clementine,” I said to her. “We’ve returned.”