CHAPTER EIGHT

Grit

Qello listened for sounds of the trader through distant brush, but only the 'roark, roark' call of ravens and whispers of the voices of the forest returned to her. Oh, Muma. Where might you be now? She lifted her legs and put her bruised, cut feet onto the ground. Pain stung through them both and climbed up her body, but she forced herself up. She could see across the distance, that the trader had left two leather bundles with ties attached and wrapped around them. It took a while to adjust to the pain, but she tiptoed and hobbled her way to the stump.

Another chunk of the cake was hidden inside one of the wraps and a little wood carving inside the other. Qello stared at its face, then unwound the shoe ties. She examined the shape of the leather wraps, then hobbled back to her shelter. She laid the patches out on the ground and piled the moss and dry spongy wood, that the trader had left, thick into the centre of the leather. Then, putting her feet onto the moss piles, she stuffed more padding around them and wrapped the hide up round her ankles and legs—cords criss-crossing in expert precision from years of knotting and twisting grass twine.

It still hurt Qello to walk, but the pain was gradually lessened through numbness and from wearing new wraps. She needed a spot for relieving herself. She was extremely thirsty and she crouched in the trees, then made her way to the river for water. After she drank and threw spray onto her face she limped back to the deserted camp made by the trader. It was silent, with only the roar of River behind her. It was odd now that All seemed so silent and empty. Qello gathered her things.

By late in the day when the trader returned, the yellow-haired girl had long disappeared.

Qello had since gone to look for her new path, continuing southward up the mountain. She gave no thought to the man. She simply looked up at the hawk circling above. You are a saving. Thank you for coming back!

Qello's course went nearer to River and the hawk landed on a higher tree that hung out over the water. He twisted his head and watched her. She wondered if he knew how precarious his perch was now, so close to becoming part of the debris down below. Her insides ached as she re-visited the horror and clenched herself tight to block it. Have to find a way, Muma. I'll come.

The hawk's eyes were intense. He took the girl in with an intelligent thought or was it as much as contemplation? He fluttered down to sit on a smaller branch, nearer to Qello. They watched the direction of River together for a moment. Something upstream in her mind seemed to pull at her.

Hey! She turned to the serious bird. Look at me, she said in her mind. He did look—so Qello thought—or had the bird, upon hearing her noise now as she moved, turned his head to simply look for what made it? Say you want to join me—I gotta go on, now.

Qello's hike up the river was much more difficult. It helped, if she didn't pause at all, for then the pain didn't have a chance to return so soon to remind her—exacting its vengeance for stopping.

By mid-afternoon sun, Qello had eventually reached a natural clearing and was mostly upon it, when something seemed somehow familiar to her. She cried out and abruptly sucked her breath in. "Ahhh-uggah!" With horror, she realized she had backtracked only as far as she and Luu had already climbed two days before.

Visions of churning water filled Qello's mind, things went grey and then black, her knees began to buckle. She fell forward and threw up—collapsing, at last, onto her side. She found herself in the bleakest remnants of Luu's partly built camp. The dark forest waited. A mouse scuttled by.

When she revived, Qello saw she had churned up undigested fruit bread. She felt it hadn't been long since she fainted. She got herself up, feeling still dazed, but as if some other force now owned her; she scrambled nervously the short way above her high rock island, again, and peered down onto the very last spot where her mother had been unlacing her boots. She remembered the scene, mere days before. Even now, retracing her memories, knowing the outcomes, she couldn't see that there had been any warning. In all she felt and reminded herself they had been happy and tired—naively unaware of such a close danger. The roar and the water had hit them from nowhere.

Qello couldn't stop tears. Her mind had gone blank and her stomach longed to again be rid of its contents. She gasped, choking for air and sobbed. She was almost too overwhelmed to breathe, but then, she saw, on the floor of the forest, a dark shape that she felt she knew—a distraction from her thoughts. Her pack was still up on the bank. It remained above her mother's last platform. It had become lodged between two of the trees. Something real and tangible remained! A sign.

Water had soaked the outside of the bag and leaked into a pool at the bottom, but most of the pack was still dry. The horn and her mother's hiking stick were further into the clearing, untouched, beside the rocks Luu had ringed, and the reluctant fire, lifelessly smouldered, even days past. For a moment Qello had hope, but the horn was stone cold, cold as the Impenetrable Mountains of Aulde. The moss that covered the ember, dislodged—the ember extinguished. The horn seemed now useless to her. She touched the carvings on its outside and thought of her own grandmother, she'd never known, the Scrimshaw Master from Krokeet, who had made this. How hard this must be! All of these designs and these figures. This woman made such a thing the work of her life in the Binderland hills, where she willingly lived all manner of hardship.

Qello was fortified by the strength of this woman—creating intricate beauty from barren surroundings. She slipped the thong of the horn over her head and reached for her small drum. The special stick she used had come off its attachment cord and was gone, but with thick soggy crusts she found in her bag and quickly put into her stomach, new energy returned for her climb to go on. Qello now had more of their life remnants to bring back to Luu, as soon as she found a way to cross. Rapidly onward she climbed, but reaching quite a way up, she suddenly peered back. I should go back for the embers! Will they stay lit in the horn? Thin threads of smoke from Luu's last fire showed in spots through the trees. The coals still smouldered behind her. Perhaps there are more firekeeper chunks—alongside the fire, or some other embers I can use and try to keep them lit with the horn.

Should I go down? Qello decided she would, and began to turn round. Her coordination was rapidly leaving. I don't have the strength—I will slip on loose stones. She looked with regret at the dwindling smoke and gave a sad grunt. She altered her course to keep moving upward.

I can survive a night without fire. Qello often did so out in her 'nest' in Orkin's Great Forest, but there she had furs and wool, set all about her just the right way—so into them she could snuggle. It will be fine! Surely the moss I can gather will work somewhat. And I'll make a shelter construction, like the man, Joe had done—at least a small size, enough for the night.

The hawk kept watch as she climbed and, occasionally, Qello would see it winding slow circling passes over her head—whispering voices of leaves in the trees. Show me, she thought. Show me how I can get across! She searched further. And, still, something pulled her onwards to a point high ahead. She worried how far above her mother's fallen body she was, now, at this height. Is she in pain? Is she moving? Are the sky-people trying to stay with her?

The roar and the gloom echoed. Any option to get herself into the water and float across to the other side or to go downstream, didn't exist—not from the height Qello had already climbed, nor with the pace of the turbulent, jumping waters of spring, hurtling down from their melting lakes high up the mountains. She surveyed the dark, craggy river course straight up ahead.

Every once in a while, an opportunity seemed to appear above her. Again, this time, as she almost reached it, its illusion revealed—rocks making shadows and spaces had given her hope, but when she drew closer, the outcropping looked different—all hope disappeared. Qello stared and squinted into the sun, the boulders above grew bigger—the biggest, high up, where trees crowned the ridge line, looked more impossible the longer she peered.

Her legs were normally strong, but they began wobbling. And then she finally saw something!

As much as she could make out of the river's edge from the rocks, there appeared to be an ultimate high point, or did that brim too just dip and dive again after that, only to deceive her one more time? Whenever she paused and felt—for the sound of far crashing falls, it had seemed to fade away. But from here, it was softer and closer, now. That sound feels like the top.

Qello was using her own voice in her head to propel her, her energy long ago spent. Any fuel she had been given from cakes or the bread was very much gone, and the preserved meat and cheese in the pack was still with Luu, soaked, maybe lifeless—dissolving.

Qello looked to what she prayed was the way. This has to be it! Keep going! Barely watching her feet anymore, she couldn't take her eyes from the top. Commanded by the steepest terrain, she no longer had thoughts. She moved by placing each foot, in front of the other, into a space in the rocks or the roots on the cliff, with her eyes and her mind, not her muscles. Her grip was no longer holding, but each time she swung back, she caught herself. As much as she slipped, she went forward again.

Many times she gave up and paused. She was feeling as cold as the mists from her River. Strength was leaving her faster. She began to shake and then more to shudder. Her fingers wouldn't grasp or tighten. She felt less and less of anything. Her mind became aimless and drifting, regardless of force. She saw her mother's face often, arising from rocks, the spectre of her form in the mists and her voice, even more often, inside her mind, calling Qello to come a little bit closer.

One more boulder, then another, and another—up and around, skin tearing on fingers. She was almost giddy, amused by the awareness that it barely hurt now. She climbed to the largest, flat boulder without even caring. It reached back, giving her strength. Her head topped the rise, then her waist and her knee.

In a last desperate shove of her body up—to the side and onto the top, Qello found herself at last flopped onto the largest of rocks she could ever have scaled.

She peered at a part of the crest that, with her mind drifting, seemed to be floating away, as she looked at it sideways. Almost level, the shimmering grass meandered a while, off in the distance, and then, sloped further, toward a much higher mountain. Qello lay flat and spent on top of the mound. She couldn't react. Her body was ringing. It pulsed as she lay unable to move. Each beat within beat sounded like it would expand and crush her insides.

A few moments of nothing but the rush of her heart and stillness, then the world spun around her. Hissing stayed in her ears. A hawk screamed, a plaintive cry from above, beyond view, and was deprived of attention from poor Qello Orkin. She could not move, even to hear him.

Qello blanked out for a time, but then lifted her head. It swam, but once her breath arose in her chest, she could see that the rise was more or less flat—moss and bare rock at the peak of a deep, dark cavern—so narrow, itself on the landscape, it was almost concealed. She had mounted the top. Only the crashing of River spoke to her of the heights from which her waters dropped back down inside its carved out space of a heart; dancing, frothing and spraying in secret. The Gorge—Devil's Dive, at last, she thought and yet did not know how she knew—the thing that she knew.

≈≈≈

The good news: Qello's made it to the top of the mountain.
The bad news: 
She's got a long way to go, and Luu's fate still hangs in the balance.  Now her mind is keeping secrets from her.  It's almost too much for one little yellow-haired girl.
Let me know any predictions you have by commenting below. If you've got any suggestions, I'd love to hear those as well.

Invite others along for Qello's journey by voting for this chapter or recommending it to a friend.

Qello's lost, alone, in strange new territory. How long can someone, in her shoes, er... wraps, hope to survive by herself in the forest?

Read on in Chapter Nine | Crawling.