I stared at the dark space that Karla had occupied only moments before, as the wind obliterated the last traces of her breath. I wadded up her skirt and blouse and clutched them to my chest.
“She gone?” said Jeffrey. “Aw man, I’m so sorry. Don’t it suck, never knowing whether the person you’re talking to is gonna vaporize right in front of you? I mean, you could be next. Right? Or me? Or both of us. Neither of us might ever get to Frelsi.”
He babbled on, but I was already gone as well, not physically but mentally, withdrawn into my head, unable to process any of his words.
I relived our last few hours, going over every image and sensation, etching them into my memory, fearing I might forget how she looked and smelled and sounded and felt, the way I had after a month in Brynmawr.
As we crept steadily up that hillside, I fought the urge to leap off the heaving deck and make my way back to that hollow, the one with the pond and the grove and the hanging valley where Karla had promised to meet me. I didn’t have much desire to get to Frelsi anymore. What was the point now?
But it could be weeks before she returned, if the past was any guide. What would I do in that hollow but dodge Dusters all day?
I supposed I might as well bide my time and reconnoiter. See if Frelsi was where we wanted to be or not. I could always make my way back to the hollow later. It seemed pretty easy to find.
Knowing Karla planned to come looking for me on the other side scared the crap out of me. However vicious Edmund and his lot had been with me, with her, there would be no holding back. It was that sort of family. I wished I could have convinced her to stay the hell out of Scotland.
The beams illuminated a wide but rugged path, crossed by ledges and littered with boulders and crevices. I couldn’t imagine any four by four getting up this way. Only the Reapers’ adaptive legs made it passable.
Hours passed. Jeffrey had finally given up trying to chat and now just stared out into the darkness, drumming his fingers on a post. Bern somehow managed to fall asleep on the bench, despite the constant jostling.
We switched back and forth up the side of the mountain until we finally leveled out and joined a more civilized road, this one wide enough for both Reapers to walk abreast.
The stars began to blink out. The sky softened to a steely gray and the first rays of dawn burnished the flat-topped hills across a large valley. With shouted commands, strained and anxious, Master Felix urged his Reapers to pick up the pace.
A river, braided into a dozen, mostly dry channels, passed through the valley below. On the other side, a vast tableland of mesas and pinnacles stretched off into infinity. But these weren’t mesas like the ones you see in pictures of Arizona and New Mexico. These were bushy, green-fringed things, more like those Venezuelan tepuis. Although I had yet to experience it in this place, somewhere, sometime, it rained.
A huge flock took to the air from the nearest mesa, diving over the edge before leveling out and gaining lift. From another mesa, another flock dove and recovered. These were mantids, all of them ridden and all of them heading out to the plains.
But there was something else out there, an entirely different sort of creature soaring high above them. They had pairs of wings perpendicular to long bodies. The way they hovered and changed direction, tacking to and fro, they could only be giant dragonflies.
The crew huddled with Master Felix on the narrow strip of decking that bridged the Reaper’s midsection, between the two elevated harpoon mounts. I leaned back to listen to their deliberations.
“We’ve been spotted for sure,” said the short man. “Against this pale rock, we must stick out like blood on snow.”
“Nothing to worry about,” said Master Felix. “We’re too close to the gates. They wouldn’t dare mount a raid.”
