turned toward Colin. “And because you wouldn’t have brought anyone as young as him if that was your intent.”
Arten grunted, giving Colin a brief look. “True.”
Colin felt a twinge of annoyance and shifted where he sat.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t be wary,” the man said, and he touched his sword, within easy reach where he stood back from the table. His dog sat beside him, attentive.
A burst of violent wind rattled the shutters, set the door shuddering in its frame, and everyone fidgeted in their seats. Without warning it began to rain, the downpour thundering into the grass roof. The fire hissed as some of the water made its way under the cover that protected the hole for the smoke, the gusts whistling over the opening. The candles guttered a moment, but none of them went out. Lightning flared, highlighting the cracks between the wood that made up the house, and thunder rumbled through the ground. Colin could feel it reverberating in his feet, in the frame of his stool.
“My name’s Tom Harten,” Colin’s father said, “and this is Sam, Arten, and my son, Colin.”
The man nodded to each. “You can call me Cutter, and this is my wife, Beth.”
“How long have you been out here, Cutter?”
For a moment, it seemed Cutter wouldn’t answer, but then Beth sighed in exasperation. “Oh, just tell them. You don’t have to be so damned suspicious all the time. Not everyone’s out to haul you back to Andover!”
Cutter grimaced. “All right, all right. We came to the coast nearly twelve years ago, spent the last ten in this place.”
“By yourselves?” Arten asked, clearly impressed.
“We’ve had the occasional visitor.”
“Who?” Sam said, leaning forward in his seat.
“Mostly trappers, or single couples, heading out onto the plains because they can’t stand the Proprietors or their taxes and laws and justice. About seven years ago we had a wagon train, like yours I presume.”
“Where did they head?”
“No idea where they were going, but they headed east, following the river like you. I’m sure they changed their plans once they hit the Bluff.” To one side, Beth snorted, then scooped up a handful of chopped onion, cut around the corner of the table, and dumped it into the stewpot. She stirred it briefly, took a sip of the broth, then returned to her table.
“What bluff?” Sam asked.
Cutter shifted forward, relaxed enough he left his sword behind. His dog settled down on the floor, head resting on its forelegs. “East of here, about a day’s walk, there’s a jagged wall of rock rising out of the plains, running roughly north and south. It’s as if the plains got split and the eastern half got shoved up toward the sky. Once the wagon train hit the Bluff, they must have either turned north or south. If they turned north, they may have made it to the upper plains. The Bluff isn’t as steep there, and there are tons of places where the stone cliffs have given way in rockslides. I haven’t explored too far south, but it seems to only get steeper and higher the farther south you go. If you’re headed east, I’d cut to the north once you hit the cliffs. But I wouldn’t head up to the upper plains.”
Colin’s father frowned. “Why not?”
Cutter sighed, and his wife turned toward them, her face stern. “Tell them.”
He waved a hand at her in annoyance. “I was getting there!”
Beth hmphed.
“There’s something strange about the Bluff. Well, not the Bluff exactly, that seems perfectly natural, but the area around the Bluff. A heaviness in the air, a tingling. And occasionally the air above the grass ripples, like heat above desert sand. Like the Borangi Desert back in Andover, where they found that Rose. Except this isn’t desert, and the ripples occur even when it’s not hot out.”
“Tell them about the people.”
Cutter rolled his eyes. “Beth swears she saw people out there, on the edge of the upper plains, looking down on us.”
“Except they weren’t really people,” Beth added, not turning from peeling and slicing a carrot. Her knife made sharp clunks on the table as she cut. “They seemed too short. And I think they had deer with them. Only the deer seemed too big.”
“I think she was just seeing things. Hallucinations, like in the desert.”
“Have you ever gone up to the upper plains?” Arten asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Cutter shrugged. “No need to. I have everything I need right here. Besides, only a few of the people that have gone up there have ever come back down again. Those that have come back don’t seem quite the same anymore.”
“What did they find up there?”
Cutter shrugged. “Hard to say. More plains like this, according to most. A few have spoken about a lake. A huge lake, the source of the river you’re following I presume. And some have mentioned seeing others on the plains up there, but always at a distance. Never near the Bluff.”
Lightning sizzled outside, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the entire house. Everyone from Lean-to and Portstown jumped. Colin leaped up from his chair as another one struck, so close it sounded like a pop, the thunder juddering in his teeth, a cold sensation prickling along his skin, making the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. In the flare of white-hot light, the flames in the candles dimmed, two of them going out completely. The air reeked of something sharp, acrid, and bitter, something Colin could taste on his tongue, like metal. He fought the urge to spit it out.
“One thing’s for certain,” Cutter said, staring at them in the deeper darkness, the fire silhouetting him from behind. His eyes appeared white in the flickering shadows. Neither he nor Beth had reacted at all to the lightning and thunder or to the candles going out. “The storms near the Bluff are worse than elsewhere on the plains.”
6
“There go our plans to follow the river.”
Tom, eyes shaded to stare across the land through the glare of the late afternoon sun, grimaced, but he didn’t respond to Sam’s remark. He couldn’t. He didn’t know what to say. A hollow had opened up in his chest, an emptiness edged with weariness and a hint of despair. But he couldn’t let any of those in the wagon train see it. Not at this point. This was the first setback they’d run across so far. He was certain there would be more. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been forewarned.
They’d reached the top of a ridge of land that curved away to the north and south, like a ripple in the earth, as if the Bluff itself were a stone that had been dropped onto the surface of the plains, creating a wave. Tom stood on the ridge with Ana and Sam in stunned awe. Beyond it, the cliff face of the Bluff sliced through the plains, a wall of jagged white and gray rock, striations in the soil clear, juxtaposed against the gold of the grass, the lighter green patches where copses of trees interrupted the plains, and the deep blue of the sky above. Tom had assumed the river would have cut a path through the rock, a chasm or channel. But he could see, even from this distance, that the river fell from the heights in a huge waterfall.
He shared a look with Ana, saw the wonder in her eyes. “I’ve never seen anything like this in Andover.”
“Nothing this large, certainly,” she said, breathless.
The wagons had drawn up alongside each other, everyone gawking at the immensity of the stone escarpment. Tom saw Colin and Karen standing not far away, hands clasped at their side. Even Walter and Jackson stood mute, the Proprietor’s son’s scowl wiped clean off his face.
Without a word, the wagons headed down the slope, people shaking themselves out of their awe slowly.
They reached the edge of the waterfall two hours later, the Bluff deceptively far away. The roar of that cascading water throbbed around them, mist thrown up in a spume that speckled Tom’s skin with tiny droplets
