01: Dead End

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Our first encounter with a GrassWolf had me losing my balance on a rotten, bending log spanning a pit full of needle-tipped rock spires. Backwards.

Oh, and I was trapped underground after a rockfall, failing to suppress an oncoming panic attack, and holding said predator at bay with nothing but a rapidly burning branch.

So naturally that’s when I stepped on the hand of a guy hanging under it. Arro, knuckles white with the effort to hold on, and my heel popped a finger right out of its joint. He was already biting his tongue in case the GrassWolf smelled him quite literally under its nose, which as you can guess, led to a spurt of blood and a scream like a little girl. And I don’t mean that as some gender stereotype. That boy could sing soprano.

He screamed, the beast screamed, then I screamed and dropped the fire. All three of us watched it fall, our only protection spinning into darkness. Which is when the GrassWolf decided our already straining log could bear its weight. I was cornered over a dark drop on the world’s flimsiest stage, teeth in front, spikes below, and a bleeding scout between us.

But you want to know how we got into that mess? Well, you can blame Scout Chief Tomor.

Ol’ Tomor always said he wouldn’t rest until he’d trained a thousand scouts, and he kept that promise to his last student. Kept it right up to his last breath.

On the day he drew it, I’d joined up with a hunting party to keep an eye on my sister and her new boyfriend. Not that I had any of my business in theirs, but it was the first time Yarr was given the go ahead to lead his own pack of hunters and, well, a pack leader needs to be responsible and I couldn’t count on my fingers and toes the amount of times Maji had got in the way of my responsibilities growing up. She was a terror. And yet, where she’d strong-arm me to make my formative years hell, here she was with her own arm looped through Yarr’s, parroting his opinions on knots to Tomor’s apprentice, Arro.

“The Clove Hitch Knot has a million uses,” she said. “You tell him, Yarr.”

“The Clove Hitch has a million uses.”

Arro threw one exasperated hand to his forehead. “Oh, puh-lease! One little knock and the whole knot comes undone. Name one use you actually have for it?”

They’d been trading rope and knotting techniques for near an hour while we followed Tomor through an overgrown prairie. The tips of wild wheat danced overhead, turning the world into fronds of gold. It was disorienting even without the short stalks springing up every time someone moved on.

“Ow,” I said, as Maji did just that. The stalk whipped back to slap me in the face, and after losing count after the fiftieth time that morning, you’d think I’d have learned to dodge them.

“Ow,” the guy behind me said.

“Ow! Arrgh!! Chief, how long ‘til we’re out of this damned maze?”

Tomor slowed and we all slowed with him. The old man closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Not far,” he said, and walked right on.

“That’s no answer, ol’ timer,” Maji said.

Arro hopped forward, into step with his master and turned to face her. “Hey, trust the ‘ol’ timer.’ If he says it ain’t far, it ain’t far.”

“Yeah, but how far’s not far?”

Tomor chuckled and held aside a clutch of stalks, gesturing to the groups relief at the empty plains beyond. “It’s this far, lass.”

Arro hugged an armful of stalks as well, pulling them the opposite way to widen the exit. It got him a nod of approval from Tomor and an upturned nose from Maji.

“Kiss-ass,” she said, then failed to duck when he let go. “Ow!”

Yarr high-fived him and kissed her forehead as they left the tall grass. My sister had chosen her partner well. It was nice to know I’d have an ally when I picked on her.

“You young’uns watch your step,” Tomor said, tapping the ground with the end of his cane. “It’s all gravel from here on out.”

We spread out to an open quarry and saw something I’d never seen before, or since, not in all my years walking the Unending Valley. It was a dead end – an actual dead end. The valley walls had grown across its half-mile stretch, leaving only a single waterfall to feed the river beneath. For a full minute, no one said anything.

“Are we at the end of the valley?” Arro eventually said. “Does the valley have an end? Are we the first to see this? Is this where The River begins?”

I peered through the hole the falls poured out from and caught a wisp of sky beyond. The shoulders I hadn’t felt tensing relaxed.

“No, it’s not the end,” Tomor said. His shoulders also dropped their hunch. “The valley has no end. But enjoy this sight while you can. I daresay you’ll never see one like it again for as long as you live.”

Yarr pointed to the Valley edge. “The cliffs have grown too fast here. Too fast for the river to wear down.”

Tomor gave him an appraising once over. “That’s very good, young man. You could have made a good scout. The cliffs here are fat from excess nutrients, so instead of flowing through the world, they’ve crystallized here and made a damned wall.”

Maji’s face was pure pride at her man. Yarr pretended not to notice.

“Dammed is right,” I said. “Look at the haul swimming through that little hole. It’s a bottleneck.”

They focused on it. Sure enough, fish and other river critters were fighting and flapping, bursting out to the waters below and churning around in panic before sliding down one of the channels that meandered through a comb of rock islands.

“It’s a literal fishing hole,” Arro said.

I nodded. “I’m calling it ‘The Haul Hole.’”

The hunters marveled at it while they set down baskets and set up nets. Done leading them to water, Tomor split from the group to train his apprentice, which seemed to involve staying back and catching his breath while Arro knocked around the metastasized stone, occasionally returning to help his master up a particularly steep point.

“Hey, old man,” Maji called, “If you need all that help, maybe you oughta retire already.”

“I’ll retire when I’m dead, Maji, and you better learn…” he trialed off and cocked his head.

Maji chuckled and didn’t notice his expression “What, you getting too senile to finish off sentences now?”

“Maji, shush. Everyone, quiet.”

Her sardonic smile dropped and she drew still with the rest of us. For all she teased him, Tomor still commanded respect, and after a few seconds we learned why. A sharp crack echoed through the valley and a large boulder dislodged from the Haul Hole, plunging down beneath the surface and sending most of it across the pack’s faces, Maji included. It sank with a gurgle, melting into a cloud of mud, and soon the water flowed faster after it, clearing the river and restocking it with fish in no time at all.

“Thanks, Chief,” Yarr said, tall enough to avoid the facial splash. “That would’ve broken our net.”

Tomor barely acknowledged the thanks and instead pointed up to the widened hole. “Arro, climb on in through that and tell me what you find on the other side. And you there, I want you to head up that little hill and make yourself useful. Watch the cliffs. I don’t think they’re all that stable.”

“You There” turned out to be “me here,” and I didn’t argue for all I wanted to. When a chief barks an order, you follow through unless your own pack chief says otherwise. With a sigh, I trudged up the hill, pushing aside wheat grass to reach an inverted top. It was like standing on a hairy volcano, a petite natural form and a natural blonde, too. She gave me the perfect view of everything I got to miss out on. My friends and sister took advantage of that once in a lifetime hunter’s dream. They just held a net across some falling water and filled up basket after basket with fish practically volunteering to be caught. It really was a time of plenty.

Above them, Arro fought the currents. He pushed through the hole and clambered in, spluttering and gagging on the torrents as Tomor sat on a rock below, rubbing his knees. Arro yelped once and threw a fish out of his pants. It landed smack against Maji’s shoulder with a wet flop. The others laughed as she screamed at him before dumping it with the rest of her catch in her and Yarr’s overflowing weave.

I was never a fan of leaving fish out to suffocate. No problem killing them for food, but letting them suffer like that? One jab of a spearhead and a fish was dead and ready for roasting. I’d always said if I got caught by some predator, I’d want it to end me fast.

“Look out below!”

Arro, swept along with the waterfall, belly flopped into the river and soaked the hunters. He laughed and swam to the safety of Old Tomor before they jabbed him with their own spears.

I rolled my eyes. “Glad I never had to team up with that jackass.”

Tomor tossed Arro a rag to dry his face off, then, just my luck, led him over to my hill. Their words carried on the breeze.

“…cracks worry me,” Arro said, “but if we build a ramp and join it to some kind of pier round the other side, it could last long enough to get everyone to dry land? Or we might find somewhere the wall’s thin and tunnel through.”

“Good instincts.” Tomor said. “You might just be ready to take the scout trials.”

“Really? Already?”

“Hey, you’re not as dumb as you think, kid.”

“Or sound,” I muttered. “Or look.”

“Hey!” Yarr called. “We’re done!”

I cupped a hand to my mouth. “We only just got here!”

“I know, but all the baskets are full.”

Tomor squinted to appraise the catch. “That has to be enough fish to feed a hundred people. We’re going to feast tonight, boys! And young lady.”

I eyed the baskets with a green eye. “How are we going to transport all that back? Someone’ll have to run back, ask volunteers to help out and—”

CRACK!

A chunk of the arch crashed down into the river, drenching the packing hunters.

“Arro!” Yarr shouted. “Stop that.”

“I’m nowhere near you!”

Tomor looked up, too slow to see a smaller rock smack into gravel and explode into dust. I scanned for where it had come from, searching for small imperfections that might lead to more of those little dangers. Even a pebble was fatal from those heights.

But we didn’t get a pebble. The wall split. The whole damned dammed wall.

A voice from above screamed “ROCKFALL,” but it was almost drowned out by calls of alarm and crackling stone.

Yarr looked up and grabbed Maji. He screamed at his pack. “Run! Run now!”

“Get away from the waterfall!” I yelled, hands cupped to my lips again. GET AWAY FROM THE WATERFALL!”

Yet instead of moving, the hunters froze, eyes drawn up to a web of fissures expanding through the rock. Then the rock exploded. An ocean of water and solid chunks fell across the valley. The hunters, reflexes trained to react to movement, finally fled. Brown, churning froth surged through the hole, sweeping the fish from their baskets back into water. The river widened, flowing slow yet unstoppable over the banks, nipping at the sandals of fleeing men. And my sister.

“Maji!” I screamed. Where was she? “Maji?”

“Zoran!”

Yarr had her, slung across his shoulder as he leapt and scrambled while she kicked and screamed, moving away to higher ground and towards the walls of the valley. He shouted orders to his pack and led them from the danger, leaving me alone with the Scout Chief and Arro. But Maji was alive.

Arro had done likewise for Tomor. The old man hung from his apprentice’s neck, held like a baby in arms as the younger man ran up the hairy volcano. Tomor’s crooked staff dragged, leaving a wake through the fronds. They crested the top as a final blast of thunder tore the overgrown cliffs to the ground. The solid wall collapsed into dust before it reached the valley floor, sending glowing orbs of crystal flying out. They embedded themselves in gravel and mud. Crystals as large as my head rained into the earth as the last tsunami of water churned against a dying tsunami of dirt drowning the plains.

“In here!” I yelled, reaching out to the heaving Arro. He couldn’t see the inverted hilltop through the wheatgrass, didn’t know there was some protection there.

But the mother of all boulders slammed into my hill and the impact sent Arro sprawling and Tomor flying. I lost sight of them in the resulting dust storm.

“Tom…morr…”

Dust choked the air and I choked on dust. Every sound died in my throat and I searched blindly through my pack for something to cover my face. Netting an old bandana across my mouth, I soaked it with my flask, took a gulp through the fabric and breathed easier. Enough. But there was no keeping eyes open in that brown fog, not without wasting another gulp of water making tears. The air was dead. No sound made it through, and I was left feeling around for Chief Tomor by hand.

I found a nose. “Gyarrgh!!”

It wasn’t the scream of an old man.

“Hey, is that Tomors’s apprentice?” I said. Or coughed.

He managed a “Yes” before his own coughing fit took over, and I poured some water onto a hazy shape forming through my squinting eyelids. He confirmed it was his face by gurgling.

“Forget me,” he sad. “Find the Chief!”

“I’ll search this way,” I said, pointing his hand in one direction,” You search the other.”

“I can’t, I’m trapped.”

The haze was thinning and I could make out a clearer silhouette. Yeah, I’d found his face. Unfortunately, that was all I’d found. Aside from his head and one arm, he was trapped under dirt and rocks. A streak of red ran down one eye.

“The plains are flooding!” Someone called. “Keep heading to high ground!”

Arro coughed again. “We’re high enough. Please, find him.”

I nodded and turned to where I thought I’d seen him fall. The air was almost clear again, but still stung the open eye. I almost splashed them with the last of my flask, but caught myself in time. The Scout Chief would need it more than I did.
Except, as it turned out, he didn’t. His staff, swept along by the rising tide had managed to mark the location of its master, sticking up in the dirt like a tombstone. Without it, my half-closed eyes would’ve failed to distinguish his dust-coated shape from the rest of the dusted hill.

The gnarled wood was split, the bottom half buried near his head. A long, carved rectangle lay exposed from within its nest of curled and shattered wood. The man clutching the staff didn’t move, even when my foot collided with his ribs.

“Chief?”

I shook him, gently at first, then harder before splashing the dregs of my flask across his face. But he didn’t stir. The air was almost back to normal, as clear as it would get for days when the others found me. They said I’d been kneeling by his body for hours. Yarr said nothing and simply placed a strip of cloth from his torn vest across Tomor’s face.

That dead end wall that spanned the valley was a jagged, broken mess, turning the half mile width into one continuous waterfall. There was no way past it.

“Did you find Arro?” I asked Yarr.

“Yeah, your sister’s tending to his wound. It’s not bad but it was to the head, so he, uh… he’ll be out for a while. We might have to head back without a scout.”

I stood and shook my head. “I have a bit of scout training, I can lead the shamans here, be back before nightfall.”

He clasped my shoulder and nodded, then turned to give orders to his men. In the blink of an eye, the world had changed. We’d made and lost our haul, lost our mentor, and damn near lost our lives. Kneeling one last time before I set out, I pulled the makeshift sheet down and closed Old Tomor’s eyes.

“Rest in peace, ol’ timer.”