Steps (22 page)

Chapter 40

Mountain Farewell   
(Man)

M
an’s feet found the road, and he dragged behind him the travois he had used in the last flood. Lashed to it was the soldier Fletcher laid atop their supplies, the man lulled to sleep by Woman’s soft songs. Man let the rain wash over him and the soldier without cover, casting glances into the darkened sky, timing the flashes, gauging the shape of the clouds, their color and thickness. Many clouds were smoke. Many more bore rain.

Woman cupped her hand in his as they passed a vehicle. They should leave the road, but when he said this to Woman, she answered, “I will see what remains of my children.”

“There will not be many.”

“The Father has spared these from the Beast. There will be more than none. That is all that matters.” She hiked her rain-skin higher onto her shoulder, protecting her head. Rain ticked off the hide audibly this close, the thrumming of many fingers against it.

Man scanned the forest as wind ripped through it, not a funnel-cloud but something akin to it that walked upright. The wind did not descend from the sky but rose from the ground. The rain slanted as the wind pressed the trees flat and threw aside their limbs, forming for an instant into the enormous, amorphous creature that had wandered the Earth in the Time After, before the Father interceded. The wind-walker crashed through the forest, onto the road and across it, into the far stand of trees without seeing them, because this was the way of the Father. He and Woman were the Father’s first children, and He would protect them.

“Come to me,” Man said to Woman. He had to yell the words over the wind, and Woman ducked against the force of the rain. Man unhooked his hand from hers, wrapped her beneath his shoulder, and put his body between her and the rain. For a while they crouched in the road as the wind-walkers passed, so many of them that Man lost count. They flattened the forest, tossed aside trees and roared down the mountainside, following the road in a haphazard zigzag that laid over the abandoned vehicles and threw tree trunks across the pavement.

After the wind-walkers passed, the rain ebbed none at all, but fell at its soaking slant and covered the road to his ankles.

He kissed Woman on the top of her head. She tasted like rain. “So you will see your children, what remains of them. Come.”

A song found his ears, and Woman’s song of rain parted the floodwaters pouring across the road, and the pavement was laid bare. While she sang, the rain spread into an open curtain, and the road before him stretched as far as Man could see, down the mountainside, through the hills, into the lower valleys and into the plains, from there to the oceans of the east and west, to the coasts in the south and the snows in the north. He was reminded of the Time Before when all lands were one, the entire world visible from the highest mountain, before the oceans parted the lands into lonely shores. It had been like this in the Beginning, as the Father molded the Earth, in the time before Woman, when Man was alone with only the unspeaking Father. Man had been too lowly for the Father to look upon, and so the Father created Woman, and he favored Woman with song, and with the service of Man. The storms of Creation passed, and there had been such a peace that Man had needed only to hunt and graze and make love to Woman, and she bore their children so many that he counted them with the stars.

Woman’s betrayal unleashed the Beast and his armies among their children, and the Time Before ended. The ground-splitters parted the earth, and the sky-drinkers flooded it with the rain. The fire-mouths opened and spewed forth their red vomit, and the plague-bringers rose from beneath the sea. With them the Beast strutted, red-eyed with licking lips among those he had claimed, those he had won, those who abandoned the Father to follow him.

Man turned to the soldier behind him on the travois. The coals in Man’s chest ached, and his thoughts dulled his senses. Thinking was a thing of Woman, and his was the way of the hunt, of hand and fist, not of head and heart. He shook his head to clear his eyes, to clear these memories, to toss away the rain from his cheeks. When he faced forward, he saw the others he had been seeking, those who protected Shelly Lynn. The soldiers with Shelly Lynn marched with their backs to him and Woman, but they would turn, as was their habit from time to time, and they would see him beside Woman, standing at the other end of the rain-tunnel formed by Woman’s soft song.

Woman’s head lifted, and she sang. With each syllable the rain ebbed further, until there was little more than a rain-mist around them. Woman slid back her hood, and she waited. Man waited with her, gazing down the road at their children’s children.

They would turn, and they would see.

Acknowledgements

T
hank you to my editor, Summer Ross, for helping me create this book. Your dedication to detail balances my outright disobedience of the finer points of writing, such as my obsession with run-ons, which Dear Reader will note are distinctly lacking in the final copy of this novel, and yet somehow I still snuck one into the Acks, along with the word
somehow,
which yes, I know is a filler word and is, quote,
Not required and may be deleted,
unquote. You are wonderful. Dear Reader thanks you humbly as well, so that they might not suffer through my rough drafts as you have.

Thank you WiDo Publishing for having enough faith to publish another of my books. I hope to publish many more with you. I encourage readers and writers to seek out WiDo online at
http://widopublishing.com/
or through Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/widopub
.

Thank you to my wife and children for allowing me the time to write. Not all writers are blessed with a supporting network of friends and family. I count myself lucky to be surrounded by people who not only grant me the space required to write, but who actively encourage me to write those goofy stories I tell them about on long trips in the car. Thank you to my children especially, for encouraging me
not
to write a book titled
Werewolf with a Shotgun
. Although I still think there might be something to it . . .

Most of all, thank you Dear Reader. I write first for myself, and then for others. This is how all writers write. We spend long hours revising so that you, Dear Reader, can share our vision. Thank you for dedicating your time to this book, and thank you for sharing in my vision. I count you all as friends, and hope to see you again soon.

You may connect with me on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/eric.trant.9
, or visit my blog at
www.EricTrant.com
.

Eric W. Trant
February 18, 2015

About the Author

E
ric Trant is a fantasy-thriller author who lives in North Dallas with his wife and family. His work blends believable stories into a mixture of realism and supernatural elements, while always keeping the reader engaged with deeply drawn characters, stunning visuals, and constant motion. His goal is to create stories which linger with the reader long after the book is read.
Steps
is Eric’s second novel with WiDo Publishing. Visit Eric at
www.EricTrant.com
.