Eritopia

Good at Geography

Jod and Not-Bear walked further into the Outside. By mid-morning the trees were well behind them and the breeze had picked up. It tore at the clouds above, revealing bits of blue, soon reabsorbed into the grey. Jod was lagging behind the wolf, trying to ignore the ache in his stomach, when Not-Bear turned to him.

'Quick, Jod. Look.'

He was crouching ten steps ahead, looking over the top of a slight hummock. Jod slid up beside him. In front of them the ground dropped away, levelling out at about a hundred paces down. It stretched away, and the opposite side was a long way off. They were staring into a very big hole.

Shrubs and grasses covered the sides of the chasm. Away below them the bottom was hidden in shade, littered with rocks and boulders. Water had collected in shallow pools and puddles among them.

'It's a quarry,' Jod said.

'What's a quarry?'

Jod moved back from the edge and looked around. 'The Outsiders made them. They dug out the rocks and used them to build their city.'

'The City at the End of the World? How did they get the rocks there?'

'Isn't it obvious? What I've been telling you all along. They used animals.'

'Animals? You mean—'

'It's the reason we had to fight in the first place. Before the One War animals hauled the carts that took the stones and rocks back to the city. Many of them died doing it, victims of the greed and negligence of their keepers. After our victory there were none left to do the hauling. These quarries were then abandoned.'

'Are there more?

'They stretch for miles, right up to the edge of the Seven Hills.' He pointed across the quarry. 'That smudge of grey you can see in the distance.'

Not-Bear looked and saw a dark contour outlined against the sky. 'Is that where we're going?'

'Yes.' Jod was scratching his bald head. 'The question is, how do we get there?'

They carried on walking westward, keeping the quarry to their left, the far side always in sight. After a while they came to a corner, where they faced another problem. The ground was split right down to the bottom of the quarry and stretched as far as they could see to the west. At its narrowest this canyon was ten paces across, at its widest thirty.

'I'm sure I could jump that,' Not-Bear declared.

"I'm sure I couldn't,' countered Jod.

Not-Bear pawed the ground in frustration. 'This land is horrible.'

'Stay calm, Wolf. We will find a way over.'

'But how? Who's to say there won't be another obstacle further on, a bigger hole, a wider gap? And we have no food or water.'

There was silence for a moment.

'We could die out here,' Not-Bear said.

Jod couldn't appease him.

'Then you should go down.'

Not-Bear looked at Jod. 'What did you say? Go down? What do you mean by that?'

'You said it.'

'I didn't, that was you.'

'No, it wasn't—'

'It was me,' a voice interrupted.

They both looked down to where, on the sparse grass between them, sat a brown rabbit.