Out of The Woods (28 page)

Eden ran down the steps to embrace Halley, clapping her small hands. “You won! That was so cool!”

Halley smiled, but it was not a smile of conquest. “I didn’t win. I just put him back where he belonged.”

“You mean…”

Halley nodded and massaged the small hollow near the base of her skull. “It’s not over. The battle between Trance and I will never be over.” She gazed out into the distance.

“But…what will you do?”

“I’ll be vigilant. I’ll have to be conscious he’s there, stay stronger than him.” Halley looked back at her. “I guess I mean I’ll have to keep my eyes open.”

Eden glanced around at their unsafe position on the stone staircase. “Halley?” she said.

“Yes?”

“It’s just that…”

“What?”

“Speaking of keeping eyes open…it’s just…I’m a little scared. That’s all,” Eden finished, gesturing at the drop.

Halley felt tension flow back into her tired muscles as she re-awoke to precariousness of their position. They were at least five-hundred feet up, on a narrow stone staircase, with no shelter and no ropes. To slip meant death, or worse, impossible injury. It was hard to force her body to relax, to soften her joints, but it was essential. She took a deep breath and focused her mind.

“Okay. Listen,” she said, forcing her shoulders down. “Here’s what we have to do…”

Eden frowned with her eyes but paid close attention.

“Keep the weight on the balls of your feet, and keep your knees bent, see, like this.” Halley demonstrated. “Now lean your body just a little in towards the solid rock, so you’re angled away from the drop. That’s it – that’s the way! That will make you more secure. Okay? Let’s go…”

They climbed for the best part of the afternoon. The sun was warm, and the gentle breeze was just enough to wick away their sweat. They reached the top of the camel-colored steps, and Halley sighed with relief, moving out onto a wide ledge that was sheltered on both sides by large outcroppings. They were safer than they’d been on the stairs, and this was a huge comfort. Still, Halley instinctively bent her knees, lowering her center of gravity towards the wide ledge, towards safety. Only then did she look outwards and down.

“Wow,” Eden said, entering the ledge and looking out as well.

The view was tremendous. The river was a thin serpent winding its way across the landscape. It nestled between the foothills which marched towards the mountain range. Beyond lay the immensity of the yellow grass plain. Just visible was the edge of the woods (
I can see it again,
Halley noted, with some surprise), though most was hidden by heavy cloud cover. Perhaps it was raining in the forest; the thought was restful, mist on trees.

Halley lifted her eyes. The sky, with its gradations of deep blue, aqua, and light blue, was awe-inspiring: thin white clouds; circling eagles; an immensity of nothingness.

“Wow,” Eden said again. “Hey…look at that tiny bird…”

The bird was being tossed about in the wind, its small brown wings flapping furiously. The eagles were keeping it in the center of their wide circles. On one wheeling spin, however, the small bird was tossed free of its shelter. It spun about wildly at the mercy of air currents, until it careened onto the ledge.

It was a sparrow.

It’s just a bird. It is no longer my namesake. It is simply a perfect, beautiful little bird. A small wonder.

“You’re a long way from home, brave bird,” she said.

The sparrow looked at her with black eyes and sang a greetin
g. So are you,
it said,
so are you
.

The eagles floating on air currents heard the exchange, and screamed for joy. Halley laughed aloud.
It’s just a bird – I haven’t thought that about a sparrow in years
. She looked upwards; her chest swelled with gratitude for simply being alive on this high ledge.

The sparrow took flight. It fluttered in the air, dancing along the rock wall like it was trapped inside a house and trying to find its way out. Its wings stirred the air as it hovered, and a small clinking sound echoed off the rock face. Halley searched for the source of the sound.

“Is that…? It’s a rope!” she said. Addressing the sparrow, she added, “Thanks, my friend.”

It dropped back down to the ledge, and began to hop two-footed down the staircase.

Halley took her gaze back up the rock wall, evaluating the rope. Its placement looked good, and better yet, it looked new. The carabiners holding it in place were not rusty. She pulled on both ends of the rope at once and was reassured by the answering tension of its anchor-point. A gentle pull on a single end told her that the rope would move freely if not tied off.

“The rope looks good. And the climb doesn’t look too technical. I think we can do this!”

“Looks like fun to me!”

Something in her voice made Halley turn. She looked from Eden to the precipitous drop. Kicking at a small pebble, she watched it bounce away. It moved slowly at first, but with each bounce it gathered momentum, height, and speed, until it careened out of sight, swallowed up by the vastness of space. Halley was adult enough to climb the wall, to take the risk, but she couldn’t let Eden. Eden was just a child. “It isn’t safe. We’ll have to turn back.”

“What? We can’t turn back! Not after coming all this way!”

Eden didn’t see the danger. Halley tried again.

“We’ve got to turn back. We can’t climb that wall without gear.”

“Did you hear that?” Eden asked, looking up.

Halley heard a repeat of the plaintive cry she’d taken to be a birdcall. But it wasn’t a bird, she realized.

“It’s the baby!” they shouted in unison.

The cry came from above. It was slightly muffled, suggesting the baby was still some distance away. But it was definitely up.

“Well?”

“We’ve got no choice. We’ve got to go.” Halley paced back and forth. “But there must be some way to make it safer…”

Her voice trailed off as her eyes fixed on a brightly-colored object hidden in a small gap in the ledge. She walked across carefully, edging aside a flat rock. Hidden in a small cache were two climbing harnesses, a number of locking carabiners, and a Figure-8 descending device. Halley picked up one of the harnesses, turning it over in her hands.

How did these get here? Right where we needed them?

A sudden impulse to drop the harness came over her. It could be a trap! Then she saw the initials, sewn in blue thread: PW. She closed her eyes.

Eden came to stand by her side, and placed a small hand on her arm.

Halley looked at her.

“This was Dad’s. This must have been the place he used to tell me about, in his bedtime stories.” She handed one of the harnesses to Eden, who held it cupped in two palms.

“But I thought that place was just make-believe.”

Halley ran her finger over the initials on the harness she held. “It was real. This is the place.”

“But why would the harnesses be here? He wouldn’t have just left them…”

“Maybe he’d planned on coming back and didn’t want to carry it all up again…”

Halley stopped speaking suddenly. Her hand went to her mouth.

Eden’s face reddened. She looked like she might cry. “And then he died…” she said, looking at the ground. “He never made it back.”

Halley turned the harness over and over in her hands. “We’ll climb it for him,” she said finally. “He’ll make it back, through us.”

“You think?”

“Yes.”

“I miss him.”

“Me too.”

They sat down together for a while, each holding one of the climbing harnesses, lost in their own memories.

“The baby’s stopped crying,” Eden said, after a time.

“You’re right,” Halley replied. “We’d better get moving.”

She got to her feet, and examined the rope. Its newness suddenly worried her. Unlike the other gear that had been sheltered, the rope had been exposed to the elements. If it had been hanging there since her father’s time, it should be more weathered. It must have been put up later. But by who? And where were they? Were they at the top, or – the thought chilled her – had they fallen? She forced herself to dismiss the thoughts.

“We’ve got what we need,” she said.

The harness slipped loosely over Eden’s thin legs, and Halley tightened the straps, making sure it was snug around her legs as well as over her belly. Locking the straps by tucking them back upon themselves, she gave them a hard tug to test them for slippage.

“You sure know what you’re doing.”

Halley didn’t answer. She did up her own harness, and attached carabiners to the middle loops of both harnesses.

“Can you check my harness now, like I did yours?”

“You trust me?”

“Of course.”

Eden made sure Halley’s harness was secure, and then the two of them approached the wall.

“Look – can you see the handholds and footholds?” Halley asked. “That’s the line we have to climb…”

Eden shook her head no.

Halley pointed up to a series of rock outcroppings that looked solid enough to bear weight. “There, and then there, and then there.”

“Oh…I see…” Eden said.

Halley could tell she didn’t. “Don’t worry. I’m going to climb first to test the rope. You belay me, I’ll make sure it’s all safe, and then I’ll come back down, and belay you up. Once you’re safe on top, I’ll join you.”

A cool gust of wind whipped the hair across Halley’s eyes and she brushed it aside impatiently.

“This is really scary.” Eden frowned with her forehead. “And I don’t get it. When one of us is here on the ledge, we can belay the other. If the climber falls, we stop the rope, and that way we stop the fall. I protect you. You protect me. But what happens later, when I’m at the top waiting for you, and you’ve got to climb up alone? What if you fall then?” Her eyes widened. “You’d die if you fell then!” She clenched her fists. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

There it was – in black and white; Halley would die if she fell with no one to belay her. But there was no choice, no other way; they had to get to the baby.

“Come on – let’s get you ready.”

Eden breathed out hard.

After attaching both their climbing harnesses to the rope, Halley got herself ready for the test climb. She checked the knots, flexed her fingers open and closed. “Okay. You’re on belay. Take your feet wide and then take one in front of the other. Bend your knees a bit. That’ll make you more stable.” She looked at Eden. “Don’t forget to breathe, okay?”

Eden gave a tight nod.

“I’m ready to climb,” Halley said. “You ready to belay?”

Eden hesitated, grasping the rope tightly. “I’ve only ever belayed on a climbing wall, never for real like this.”

“I know. But you’ll do great.” Halley touched her shoulder. Remember, I trust you.”

She turned to face the wall, trying not to think about the hundreds of feet of empty space between her and the earth. “Here goes,” she said, reaching a bare hand up towards the rock face. Her heart was in her throat, pounding a rapid pulse. The rock felt cool and slightly damp. This close, she could smell its mineral make-up, the iron and quartz and the streaks of amber.

Quickly driving down with her elbow, she used her back muscles to pull up, immediately reached for a second hand-hold with her free arm, and footholds for her dangling feet. In a moment, she was five feet above the ledge, with the whole world at her feet. Her face was inches from the rock. Staring upwards for a moment, she studied the line she would climb, and reached for the next handhold. The rest of the world slipped into insignificance.

The muscles in her back were powerful. Her fingers instinctively found grips. The rope gave her a sense of security as Eden pulled up the slack. After several minutes of breathless ascent, she stopped. The line up the rock face had ended abruptly. From the ledge, it had appeared to go all the way to the top. She was stuck, hung high above the earth.

“You okay? Why’ve you stopped? You’re only halfway!”

Halley’s body was trembling. She felt nauseous. Her fingers throbbed. The rock face blurred. She failed to convince her body to move. Then, without warning, the rock under her right hand shifted. She tried to take her weight off it. It moved a little more. Suddenly, it broke loose, falling, plummeting towards the ledge below.

“Below!” she screamed, trying to warn Eden.

Then she too plunged downwards, in free fall.