Tela reaches the end of the bridge and coasts to a stop on the rocky bank. After the new wave crests, it collapses down on the bridge. Water splashes from the top of the Crossing and onto my back at the same time I feel firm ground under my feet. I slow to a jog, stop beside Tela, and gasp for air.
“See,” Tela says, breathing heavily. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Maybe not for you,” I pant.
“Do you need to me to carry you the rest of the way?” she asks.
“Like that would ever happen,” I mumble.
After we grin at each other, I follow her into the Barrens on the western side of the river.
Chapter 14
We travel due west for about an hour and stop an on elevated plateau. The hill itself isn’t very tall, no higher than a ten-story building. The western incline below us is at roughly a forty-five-degree angle to the flat ground below. The smooth, glossy surface is made of reflective rock that reminds me of black onyx. At the base of the hill, a flat, empty plain stretches to the horizon. The dirt is dull, lacking in any luster, and I don’t see a single tree in sight.
“The light that reflects from the side of the hill carries across the flats,” Tela says. “The beams are as pure and strong as you’ll find in Krymzyn. If you can focus all your particles in just a few of the brightest rays, you should be able to increase your usual speed by about thirty percent.”
“Do we start the count at the bottom of the hill?” I ask.
“No,” she answers before pointing to a distant rock. “Start at the Flying Rock.”
As I squint across the plain, I spot a towering lone rock in the distance. Extending from its sides near the top are what look like enormous stone wings spread out in mid-flight.
While once gazing at the stars with my father on Earth, he told me that under the right conditions, the human eye is capable of seeing a flashlight from thousands of miles away. If a person is standing on a mountain on Earth, they can see a solid object three hundred miles in the distance since the curvature of the Earth doesn’t interfere with the line of sight. The “infinite plane of Krymzyn” is flat, and its atmosphere is crystal clear. As is the case now, I’m often amazed by how far I can see here.
“Are the wings natural?” I ask.
Tela nods. “When the rock was formed at The Beginning, they were left on its sides.”
“How far away is it?”
“About two hundred miles. It’s much larger than it looks from here.”
“Where do we end our count?” I ask.
“The Stone Fist,” she answers. “It’s the only other tall rock formation you’ll see across the plain. It’s exactly two thousand miles from the Flying Rock.”
“How do you know how far apart they are?” I ask.
“Someone measured it once.”
“How?”
She returns her gaze to the Flying Rock. “The Flying Rock is exactly two hundred and twelve miles from here.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just calculated it.”
“You can look at something and know exactly how far away it is?” I ask in disbelief.
“Of course,” she replies, turning her face to me again. “Can’t you?”
“I can only estimate,” I answer.
“We know the exact distance. I look at something and instantly know how far away it is.”
“This place never ceases to amaze me,” I say. “So how did someone measure the distance between the two rocks? You can’t see that far, can you?”
“Of course not,” she answers. “But long ago, a Traveler calculated the distance by stabbing spears in the ground. He could see each one from a few hundred miles away. He worked his way across the plain and added the distances.”
“Why would he do that?” I ask.
“So that Travelers could get their count and compare speeds. It’s been our tradition ever since.”
“It doesn’t seem very Krymzyn-like,” I comment.
She shrugs her shoulders. “Travelers have always been a little different.”
“I guess that’s why I became one,” I say.
“You are from another world,” Tela replies. “That’s about as different as you can be.”
I smile at her. “It sure is.”
“Drink all the sap in your canister,” she says. “You want as much energy as you can have.”
We both guzzle our sap until the canisters are empty. Once Tela is finished, she lays her canister and spear on the ground.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Leave your things here. We’ll come back for them.”
“Is that safe?”
“It’s never been a problem in the past,” she answers. “There aren’t any trees around here, so there shouldn’t be any Murkovin. They can’t catch us anyway.”
“I guess not,” I say. “Should we take our flasks with us?”
She nods her head. “Let’s keep them with us. They don’t slow us down much and we’ll want more sap when we’re finished.”
I toss my spear and canister to the ground beside Tela’s things. She and I walk to the edge of the slope and look down at the bottom.
“Everything you’ve got,” she says.
“You, too,” I reply.
“Ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
We explode down the side of the hill. When the beams burst into my vision, they’re pure and brilliant white. With little or no reflection from the ground at the base of the slope, reflected light shoots straight across the plain. As soon as my body jolts forward, I funnel all of my particles into the most powerful beams.
I immediately sense how much faster I’m traveling across the wide-open space. My running motion is smooth and constant while I narrow my vision into the light leading my
