Letitia scrambled into the front. “I don’t think we’re going to make it to Holme Valley before the storm.” Marghe wondered why she was grinning so hard.
The wind grew stronger. It flattened the grass and slid its hand under the sled, tilting it sideways on its cushion of air until it skittered like a bead of water on a hot skillet. As they headed north, outcroppings of gray rock became more frequent and Lu Wai had to ease back on the stick to maneuver safely. Ude woke up, took one look at the sky, and started to tie down the cable coils and clip lids on the storage bins.
They raced over the grass; the rotor hum deepened and the sled slowed as they began to climb a steady incline. Halfway up, the turf was scattered with rocks.
Lu Wai hardly slowed. She took them right over the first few, cursed as she swerved around the boulders. Letitia tapped Marghe on the shoulder and pointed ahead to a grayish red clump of rock.
“See it?” She had to yell over the wind. Marghe nodded. “She’s making for that crag. We’ll ground the sled there, take shelter.” She grinned again. “You’ll get a good view.”
A good view of what?
They both clutched the siding as the sled bucked and twisted and narrowly missed scraping its hull on a jagged overhang. The incline was steep now, and the sled groaned and rumbled, vibrating through Marghe’s bones and making her teeth ache.
They edged past a tumble of broken boulders and between two leaning stacks of sculpted and striated stone; the wind followed them, thrusting its tongue into every hollow and crack, making the rock sing and scream like a crazy woman in restraints. Lu Wai backed them right up against the rock. Then the wind died.
“Do you feel it?” Letitia sounded eager; her head was tilted back as though she were drinking rain.
Marghe began to say no, but then she did. It was like being lowered slowly into water, feet first: the hairs on her ankles lifted, then on her legs, her stomach, her arms, the back of her neck. Electromagnetic disturbance.
“We’re far enough from the epicenter to be safe and sheltered here,” Lu Wai said as she cut the power. In the absence of the wind, the tick and sigh of the plastic settling slowly to the ground was eerie. An insect hummed past in a blur of wings, hovering over the tiny yellow flowers amongst the brown spikes of moss that spilled from the crevices at the base of the rock.
Letitia jumped down and scrambled up and around the overhang. Lu Wai and Ude slid covers over the instrument panels and clipped them down, then began securing the plastic storage bins with all their supplies. They were quick and efficient; there was nothing Marghe could do to help. She hesitated, then climbed up after Letitia.
The technician was lying on her stomach behind the remains of a dead tree that pointed up from the sparse soil like a bony finger. She looked up and grinned when Marghe joined her.
The sky was slippery with cloud massed in ranks of zinc and pewter. Lambent. Marghe could feel the atmosphere curdling, twisting in on itself, pulling the air from her lungs like a fire. She was slick with sweat. The static grew, crawling through her hair until she thought her scalp would creep right off her skull. An ache started behind her eyes and in the hinge of her jaw.
The world lit up like a silent photograph, flat and grainy, limning the tree stark as a charcoal slash against a parchment sky. Lightning exploded like blue‑white cat‑o’‑nine‑tails until sound rolled and cracked and splintered and Marghe could no longer tell if it was the ground shaking or her muscles; she felt deaf and blind and exposed to her core. Electricity and exhilaration surged and hissed over her bones. The storm held its breath a moment and she heard Letitia laughing, whoops and rills and great ringing ululations, and when the lightning cracked again Marghe laughed too; they held each other with heads back, mouths wide and open from the throat down to the stomach, laughing and shaking with exultation.
The storm dropped to silence, leaving Marghe blinking and Lu Wai shouting up at them. “Get down! The wind will hit any minute.”
Marghe looked at Letitia; the engineer’s grin had stiffened to a muscle spasm and her eyes were rolled back in her head. Marghe heard the rattle and scramble of the Mirror climbing the scar. Without letting go of Letitia, she peered over the edge.
“Get her down. Please, Marghe, get her off there right now.”
Marghe took a slow, steady breath, “All right. I’m all right. Letitia’s… If you’re steady where you are, stay there. I’ll see if I can lower her over the edge.”
Lu Wai’s face was pale and indistinct. “Go as fast as you can.”
Marghe wrapped both arms around Letitia’s waist. The technician was stiff and unresponsive but still fizzing with silent laughter. “Letitia. Letitia, can you hear me?” She tightened her grip and half lifted, half trundled her to the edge of the rock. She changed grip, holding Letitia under the arms, and closed her eyes. Breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, in and out, harder now, deeper. In, out. In. Out. She pumped strength around her body. She would pay for this later.
“Hurry, Marghe. Please.”
Marghe opened her eyes, then walked Letitia off the edge of the cliff, holding her up using the muscles in her legs and back and arms. She lowered her as fast as she dared; bending a little, going onto her knees, then down on her elbows until only her back and shoulders and arms held the technician’s weight. She lay on her stomach and hung Letitia down like a plumbline.
Lu Wai reached up and took the stiff woman by the hips. In the quiet, the Mirror’s grunt was loud as she steadied herself and the engineer. “I have her. Get yourself down. Fast.”
Marghe swung herself over the edge, hung for a moment, then dropped. The grass was dry and prickly, the yellow moss flower sharp smelling in the still air. She helped Lu Wai drag Letitia into the shelter between the crag and the sled.
The wind hit like a sledgehammer swung low and slow and easy, thudding into her ribs and roaring over her ears until all she could hear was air. A heavy plate of tree bark flew out of nowhere and smashed down onto the sled; the plastic storage bin burst open and the wind tore the packaged rations to shreds, whirled them away. Her traveling food.
Marghe did not dare move. The rock under her shoulder shuddered as boulders rolled and crashed against its other side. She hunched down into the warmth of bodies. Someone put an arm around her waist; she leaned her forehead against a shoulder. She no longer felt like an outsider. The boiling clouds brought rain that pattered, then drummed on the torn food wrappers.
Marghe woke to the distant thunk of a mallet. A wooden mallet. Her coverlet smelled comfortably of use and herbs, tempting her to stay in bed a while longer, resting the muscles she had overused the day before. Ude’s bed was empty. She looked around, wondering how late it was. The ceiling was low and domed; its longitudinal rib arched from the floor, over her head, and back down to the floor at the other end of the lodge. Lateral ribs of black wood were chinked with wattling and daub, decorated in earth tones. Morning seeped through the weave of the door hanging and filled the lodge with air and sunlight. She sat up. Sunlight.
She swung herself off the sleeping shelf and pushed aside the door hanging.
Beyond the trees, Jeep’s sky was Wedgwood blue. Sunshine poured into the valley, filling it with a light like rich yellow cream, sliding over her skin, turning the hair on her arms to gold wire. She just stood there, letting the sunshine push sweet, warm fingers into her aching muscles.
Under her bare feet the grass was cool and luscious with dew; still early, then. She could see no one, but the sound of mallets floated downstream like underwater knocking, and from one of the stone‑walled barns near the bank she heard the soft hiss and thump, hiss and thump of threshing.