Read Online Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series by Peter Dudley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Dudley
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7
Hours later, the eastern sky is tinged a pale rouge and the valley has brightened behind us, and I whisper thanks that the snows we thought were coming have held off. Tom, Dane, and Patrick huddle together a little way ahead while the rest of us relish a short rest. They peer at a folded paper that Dane carries, a hasty scribble copied in a rush from the ancient map that Tom exhumed from the Subterran libraries.
“Another half mile, and we should be safe,” Tom declares. “From what we know of the Bomb, the mountain itself should protect us from the Radiation. See how the road bends around these peaks and starts descending?”
Descending. Descending into what, I wonder. The word crawls under my thick coat and skitters all over my skin. That unknown terrifies me, but I am so sick of climbing this mountain and so consumed by ache that anything other than up sounds blissful. Even Dane and Patrick droop with weariness. But it’s better not to think of fatigue.
I turn to one of the little boys nearby. He briefly but gratefully took his turn riding the horse an hour ago, though he’s kept pace with the leaders the rest of the night. “Descending,” I say to him. “Do you know what that means?”
He looks up, startled at my voice. Dawn on the mountaintop is as still as death, silent apart from a light breeze in the tops of the pines and the grinding breaths of the families around me. The little boy scrunches his face, thinking.
“Um... it doesn’t mean falling apart, does it?”
“That’s a good guess, but no,” I reply with a smile. “Perhaps you’re thinking of deteriorating or decaying.”
He’s probably too little to know those words, too, but if he asks what they mean I only have to point to this ancient road we’re following. Over the past three hundred years, it’s been doing both. Sometimes we lose the road, or it’s so overgrown or crumbled with landslides we have to leave it a while and find it again farther up. Most of the time, though, it’s carved a smooth and winding ascent from the valley floor to the mouth of the pass.
“Descending,” I teach, “means going down. Take a look there,” I say, pointing at the expanse of the valley below us. “See how high we’ve come? Tom says we’re near the top, and soon we can start going down the other side. Descending.”
He grins at me, his face brightening just as the thick clouds above us crack and show us a brief peek at the pale blue sky beyond.
When the clouds tumble themselves shut again, the boy frowns. “I wish the clouds would go away,” he says. “I want the sun! It’s cold.”
Dane glances at me, and we share an unspoken thought. Warmth, we would welcome, if only it didn’t come with sunlight.
Dane straightens, folds the paper and shoves it in a pocket, and barks out a command. “Two minutes. In two minutes we move.”
No one groans or begs for a longer rest. Although we can’t see him, we all know that Darius has likely already made the final connections. That one snap of sunlight is either God’s warning for us to keep moving, or the final brush stroke in Darius’ apocalyptic mural. Perhaps both.
Two minutes. That’s all I have left to look at our valley, to lock away a memory. This sight will be lost forever when we stagger around the rocks ahead. I stare out across the view, trying to seal it up in my mind like a secret to be kept safe but never forgotten. Later, I will unseal it and embroider the memory onto a cloth for the children to see.
The road we’ve trekked curls steeply down and away behind us to disappear along the curve of the mountainside. Directly before me is a cliff, a sheer fall hundreds of feet to a steep slope that drops to the valley floor. The valley, a hundred miles long and sixty wide, is an oval punched down flat amid the peaks. We sit in the southwest curve of that oval, overlooking Southshaw’s grazing lands. I can see the village, away past the forest, but I cannot see my own house
Hours later, the eastern sky is tinged a pale rouge and the valley has brightened behind us, and I whisper thanks that the snows we thought were coming have held off. Tom, Dane, and Patrick huddle together a little way ahead while the rest of us relish a short rest. They peer at a folded paper that Dane carries, a hasty scribble copied in a rush from the ancient map that Tom exhumed from the Subterran libraries.
“Another half mile, and we should be safe,” Tom declares. “From what we know of the Bomb, the mountain itself should protect us from the Radiation. See how the road bends around these peaks and starts descending?”
Descending. Descending into what, I wonder. The word crawls under my thick coat and skitters all over my skin. That unknown terrifies me, but I am so sick of climbing this mountain and so consumed by ache that anything other than up sounds blissful. Even Dane and Patrick droop with weariness. But it’s better not to think of fatigue.
I turn to one of the little boys nearby. He briefly but gratefully took his turn riding the horse an hour ago, though he’s kept pace with the leaders the rest of the night. “Descending,” I say to him. “Do you know what that means?”
He looks up, startled at my voice. Dawn on the mountaintop is as still as death, silent apart from a light breeze in the tops of the pines and the grinding breaths of the families around me. The little boy scrunches his face, thinking.
“Um... it doesn’t mean falling apart, does it?”
“That’s a good guess, but no,” I reply with a smile. “Perhaps you’re thinking of deteriorating or decaying.”
He’s probably too little to know those words, too, but if he asks what they mean I only have to point to this ancient road we’re following. Over the past three hundred years, it’s been doing both. Sometimes we lose the road, or it’s so overgrown or crumbled with landslides we have to leave it a while and find it again farther up. Most of the time, though, it’s carved a smooth and winding ascent from the valley floor to the mouth of the pass.
“Descending,” I teach, “means going down. Take a look there,” I say, pointing at the expanse of the valley below us. “See how high we’ve come? Tom says we’re near the top, and soon we can start going down the other side. Descending.”
He grins at me, his face brightening just as the thick clouds above us crack and show us a brief peek at the pale blue sky beyond.
When the clouds tumble themselves shut again, the boy frowns. “I wish the clouds would go away,” he says. “I want the sun! It’s cold.”
Dane glances at me, and we share an unspoken thought. Warmth, we would welcome, if only it didn’t come with sunlight.
Dane straightens, folds the paper and shoves it in a pocket, and barks out a command. “Two minutes. In two minutes we move.”
No one groans or begs for a longer rest. Although we can’t see him, we all know that Darius has likely already made the final connections. That one snap of sunlight is either God’s warning for us to keep moving, or the final brush stroke in Darius’ apocalyptic mural. Perhaps both.
Two minutes. That’s all I have left to look at our valley, to lock away a memory. This sight will be lost forever when we stagger around the rocks ahead. I stare out across the view, trying to seal it up in my mind like a secret to be kept safe but never forgotten. Later, I will unseal it and embroider the memory onto a cloth for the children to see.
The road we’ve trekked curls steeply down and away behind us to disappear along the curve of the mountainside. Directly before me is a cliff, a sheer fall hundreds of feet to a steep slope that drops to the valley floor. The valley, a hundred miles long and sixty wide, is an oval punched down flat amid the peaks. We sit in the southwest curve of that oval, overlooking Southshaw’s grazing lands. I can see the village, away past the forest, but I cannot see my own house
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