Chapter 20 Shit #2
No, she decided. It would not. Nevertheless, she forced herself upright, ignored the new aches in her back and knees, and resumed the climb.
It was steeper now. The ridgeline was so close she could see the change in color where the rock turned from dark gray to a near-white dusted with snow.
Alina fixed her eyes on the point where the two met and aimed for it, letting the pain in her feet and legs become a mantra, a rhythm to measure the miles.
When she reached the top, the wind caught her full in the face and nearly knocked her over. She steadied herself with both hands, leaning into the gust, and looked out.
On the far side of the ridge, the world dropped away in a dizzying plunge, an endless sweep of stone and shadow, studded here and there with gnarled trees and the thin ribbon of a river far below.
The sky was enormous, pale blue smeared with wisps of ice-cloud, the sun climbing higher but not yet strong enough to melt the frost that glittered on every surface.
For a moment, she just stood there, panting, her body shaking with exertion and the simple shock of having survived this far.
In a corner of her mind, she noticed that she was still able to see the beauty of the world and be touched by it.
For the first time since running from the Caves in a blind rush, her thoughts slowed and her emotions settled.
A strange calm set in. She looked around and saw the barrenness that lay beneath the beauty.
With clinical detachment she noted that there was no food to be found here and worse, no water.
She wasn’t dressed warmly enough by far.
The landscape stretched on as far as the eye could see—no building, no sign of habitation. No shelter for the night.
She remembered something Marta had once told her, late at night in the palace kitchens, when Alina had confessed to being terrified of open heights.
“It’s not the falling that gets you,” Marta had said, pressing a sticky-sweet bun into her hand.
“It’s the moment before, when you realize you’re all the way up and there’s no way back.
” There was indeed no way back now; only forward.
She would have to see where it would lead her. Or where her journey would end.
Alina smiled at the memory—sour, but not without its own warmth. She reached into her bag, found the hunk of hard bread she’d brought, and took a bite. It was nearly inedible, stale and gritty, but it sat heavy in her stomach and gave her the illusion of comfort.
She allowed herself a minute—just one—to watch the sun edge over the next ridge.
To let the light, weak as it was, soak into her bones.
Then she put the bread away, wiped the crumbs from her hands, and started down the far side of the mountain.
The path was even less defined here, but that was the point.
No one would come looking for her. Not here.
Each step felt like it might be the last one she could manage, but she kept moving. She owed herself that much, at least. To keep going, even when there was nothing at the end but more cold and more stone.
The world was empty, and so was she. It was a relief.
She walked on, the cold stone accepting no trace to mark that she had ever been here at all.
The mountain spat her out onto a plateau that was more dead than alive, little more than a scrape of yellowed grass and ice-streaked mud, flat as the belly of a butchered animal, wind howling across it in a constant, guttural roar.
The sun was high now, its light pitiless and sharp-edged, but the air was colder, the kind that cuts past skin to find the thinnest blood vessel to freeze.
Alina trudged forward, every muscle in her body locked in protest. The wind snatched at her hair, yanked tears from her eyes, and sent the hem of her jacket flapping like a tattered flag.
There was nothing to break the monotony: not a tree, not a bush, not even a stray sheep or the black dot of a distant bird.
Only the wind and the endless, ankle-twisting slog of ground that wanted to swallow her whole.
She walked because there was nothing else left.
She kept her head down and her thoughts on the next ten steps, then the next.
If she looked ahead, the flat horizon stretched so far it made her dizzy.
The sun blinded her from above while the wind battered her from every other direction with not even a second of respite.
Every so often, she would stumble on a patch of loose scree or an outcrop hidden beneath the yellowed grass, barely catching herself before pitching forward.
Her palms were raw, her knees stiff from the long descent and the shock of the cold.
Hunger and thirst gnawed at her, but she ignored it, afraid that even a single pause would let the chill creep in and claim her.
She’d been walking for what felt like a lifetime when the ground changed.
The grass grew sparser, the mud underfoot giving way to a strange, glassy crust that cracked and hissed with every step.
She slowed, uncertain, the cloud of her breath ripped away by the gale.
The wind was even stronger here, whipping across the surface and sending shards of ice skittering ahead of her like the scatter from a shattered glass.
She moved with more caution, boots crunching on the thin crust, her hands out for balance.
Her mind, always her worst enemy, began to make up stories about the plain: how it was haunted by the ghosts of lost travelers, how the wind here could peel the flesh from your bones and leave you nothing but a memory.
She tried to laugh at her own foolishness, but the sound was ripped away by the gale.
Ahead, the land dropped away. Not sharply, not a cliff, but a slow, deceptive sloping, the ground curling down into a wide, shallow basin at the center of the plateau.
Alina hesitated at the rim. She could see, even from here, that the hollow was ringed with bands of bare rock, black and gleaming where the sun hit it just right.
The wind funneled down into the depression, making the air there seethe and tremble.
She could go around it, but the basin stretched for miles in either direction, further than she could see. Crossing it was her best option.
Alina set her jaw and started down.
The footing was worse than she’d feared.
The crust broke beneath her boots, each step a risk.
At one point she hit a patch of ice and slid five feet before regaining her balance, arms pinwheeling, her bag adding to the imbalance, making it even harder to stay upright.
At the bottom, the wind was so strong she had to lean into it, hands splayed, eyes squinted to keep out the grit.
That was when the ground betrayed her. Without warning, it caved under her left foot, dropping her half a leg’s length before she could catch herself.
The jolt sent a spike of pain up her calf and knocked the air from her lungs.
Instinctively, she threw herself backward, only to have her other foot slip and send her sprawling onto the frozen surface.
She lay there, stunned, cheek pressed to the slick, cold earth.
The wind pounded at her, flattening her against the ground.
For a moment she was a child again, helpless in the grip of a world that had always been too big, too wild, too hungry to care.
It didn’t escape her notice that she very easily could have broken her ankle and then what?
An injury like that was a death sentence out here.
Surprisingly, panic set in. She had thought she’d accepted that she might vanish out here in the cold.
But confronted with immediate danger, her survival instincts kicked in.
The crust beneath her groaned, the sound vibrating up through her chest, and she realized the basin was riddled with hidden cracks, each one waiting to swallow her whole.
She scrabbled to her hands and knees, desperate to find a patch of ground that would hold, but every move made the fissures widen, the surface shudder.
The storm was a howling, clawing beast now, and she could feel the old, familiar fizz of the Gift in her veins, the electric charge that signaled something terrible was about to happen.
She tried to stand, but the crust caved under her again.
This time, her body reacted without permission.
The Gift surged, a hot, white thread twisting up from her ribs to the top of her head.
The air around her crackled; her hair lifted and splayed out in every direction, each strand charged and alive.
The world went silent for a split second, then thunder cracked through her skull.
A shockwave pulsed outward from her chest, flattening the grass for a dozen yards in every direction. The crust beneath her liquefied, then refroze in a sheet of splintered, frost-rimed glass. The wind, caught in the backlash, stilled for a single, breathless instant.
And then it was over. Alina collapsed, limp, the Gift spent and gone as quickly as it had come.
The ringing in her ears was deafening. Her arms and legs twitched with aftershocks, tiny spasms that wouldn’t stop no matter how hard she clenched her fists.
Her head thudded with a pain that was almost comforting in its intensity.
She lay there, cheek pressed to the cold ground, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Eventually, she rolled onto her back to stare up at the sky, which was too bright and too blue for the violence that had just ripped through her.
Her chest heaved, heart knocking at her ribs like it was trying to break out.
She flexed her hands, saw her blue-red fingers trembling, and wondered if she would ever be free of this, of the outbursts and the destruction that came with them.