“Lead the way,” I say.
As she jogs up the road towards the Mount, she looks over her shoulder at me and smirks. “Try to keep up.”
“Try not to break your legs,” I reply, laughing to myself.
After we blast towards the Mount for a few miles, Tela cuts off the road to the south. Like a pair of fighter pilots locked in a high-speed aerial display, we fly over hills and streak through valleys. Cutting back and forth in front of one other, we blaze across the empty wasteland. Sometimes we sweep beside the river, sometimes we shoot deep into the Barrens, but we never maintain a predictable path.
Drifting into a mesmeric state, I relax to the tingling sensation of blending my light. Shadowy hills, flashes of light from the crests of waves, and the blurred shapes of occasional trees pass by me. During my time here, I’ve grown accustomed to the luminous maze that fills my vision while traveling at unthinkable speeds. Other than briefly seeing Aven in her true form after she was born, and the one time in the Reflecting Pool with Sash, it’s the closest I ever come to seeing Krymzyn as it actually exists.
Hours fall behind us as we speed through the Barrens. Interrupting my meditative calm, Tela suddenly rockets past my side. As she slows on her approach to a hill near the river, I trail close behind her. When I see her transition to a run, I slip my particles from the beams. After gliding to a stop on top of the hill, we both drink from our canisters.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Two-thirds of the way to the Great Falls,” she answers and then points a hand at the rapids. “This is where we cross.”
I glance at the river, thinking how amazing it is that we traveled roughly sixty-five thousand miles in half the morrow. The river where we are is only about a quarter of a mile wide. The rapids are huge and leap from the surface of the river around a rocky bridge. As I start to return my attention to Tela, I do a double-take to look at the bridge again.
“We’re not going over that, are we?”
“That’s the Stone Crossing,” she replies.
The only way I can imagine the natural bridge could have been created is if hundreds of enormous boulders fell from the sky and randomly fit together in a way that just happened to form a gradual arch over the river. Nothing but pressure from the weight of the rocks pressed together seems to be holding them in place. The top surface is about ten feet wide and more or less smooth, but seams between the rocks can clearly be seen. The sides and bottom of the bridge are an irregular array of rough edges. My first impression is that it’s about as stable as a house of cards.
“That thing will collapse if we step on it,” I say.
“People have been using the Crossing for millions of Eras,” she tells me. “I doubt you and I will cause it to fall.”
As soon as she finishes speaking, a towering wave swells from the rapids on the north side of the Crossing, pauses in the air, and then crashes down on the entire surface of the bridge. A booming clap echoes around us as the water splashes off the rocks.
“You’re right,” I say. “We’ll just be swept down the river by a wave.”
“Keep watching,” Tela replies, “and count in your head.”
Seconds tick away in my mind while I study the rapids. When my count reaches sixty, another enormous wall of water soars into the air and plummets back down on the rocks.
“Sixty,” I say.
“That’s how long we have to get across.”
“Is it always sixty?” I ask.
“Always.”
“Do we travel over?”
“Never,” she says. “Too many reflections from the rapids and big waves shoot across the bridge. Your particles will be taken out over the water and may never return to your body. It’s a lot safer to run.”
“That seems like a relative comparison,” I say.
“What do you mean?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.
“What I mean is, I’m pretty sure nothing about this is safe.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “After everything that’s happened to you in Krymzyn, this is what you don’t feel safe about?”
“I guess you have a point,” I chuckle.
We both sip from our canisters a few more times before returning them to our shoulders. As I follow Tela down the hill to the edge of the Stone Crossing, several more gigantic waves rise from the rapids and smother the rocks. I count between each of them, always ending at sixty.
“We’ll go after the next one,” Tela says.
With our spears locked in our hands, we crouch in what I think of as long-distance runners’ starting stances. I’m not concerned with how long it will take to sprint over the bridge. I could turn a quarter-mile on Earth in well under a minute, and my running speed is probably twice as fast in this world. But I’m a bit worried about my footing on the rocks since the top of the bridge is uneven and filled with cracks. My heart rate doubles by the time the next swell shoots up from the rapids and pounds down on the bridge.
“Now!” Tela shouts as the leftover water from the wave spills over the sides of the Crossing.
We both sprint forward and onto the bridge. Through the soft material of my boots, I feel the roughness of the stones as my feet slam against them. With Tela’s muscular legs propelling her over the rocks, she pulls ahead of me at the middle of the Crossing.
As I race down the back half of the bridge, my foot slips in an uneven gap between
