Authors: Mark Lavorato
I tried to speculate how much ground they might have gained in total, estimating how long it would have taken them to cut their way along the rim of the canyon to the trail, how far smoke could travel in the wind and still be detected, and how much faster they would be moving with footwear. In the end, I guessed that they were a bit over half a day behind me. From this, I planned to continue upstream until about mid-afternoon, where I would hopefully find a long stretch of rocky shore - or some other land feature that would yield as little evidence of my passing as possible - and then carefully slip into the trees there. It was the best chance I had.
As with the day before, I began moving with the first usable light, running whenever I could. By midday, the land was opening up, the trees thinning ever more, exposing long sweeping hills that rose on either side of the river; hills that were covered with a coat of short, dry grass, and that ended with jagged ridges that notched the skyline. However, when the time that I'd planned to leave the river came, I was never more hesitant to do it. Nothing was the way that I'd pictured it. Firstly, I wouldn't be able to move under the cover of vegetation, and if I'd underestimated them, and they arrived earlier, they would be able to see me from a long way off, scampering over the naked ground between the trees. Also, in this new, grassy terrain, the shores of the river had become muddy for the very first time, and I imagined that regardless of how careful I was, I would still leave behind some kind of obvious indication that I had stepped over the bank.
I kept walking to look for a better place, and ended up searching for much longer than I'd wanted to before coming across something suitable, which was a small, dried up tributary to the river. I filled up my water bottle before I started tiptoeing into it, disturbing as few rocks and vegetation as possible. Then, after walking along this streambed for almost an hour, I found a place where I could climb out of it without leaving a trace, and was finally standing on the grassy slope among the thinly scattered trees.
Once there, I tried to look for the shortest possible route up the valley side, where I would be able to disappear over the ridge. I decided to head for a rocky saddle that seemed quite close, knowing that, though it was exposed and in plain view from the river, once I reached it, there would also be places that I could hide, places where I could watch and see whether or not I'd managed to outmanoeuvre the crew.
The long climb to the saddle was incredibly tiring, and I had to stop to catch my breath in the shade of every low-lying tree, crouching beside it and looking out at the land behind me, hoping that I wouldn't see anything moving beside the water. Once, while I was turned around, I caught sight of a black bird gliding high across the valley, which flew almost directly above me and disappeared over the ridge. It hadn't come close or showed any interest, so I assumed that it wasn't the raven.
I moved on, and as the afternoon turned into evening, I grew increasingly nervous, aware that every step I ascended I was becoming more visible from the river, and that the timeframe of the crew possibly coming into view was getting uncomfortably close. Until, after stopping to rest at one of the last trees on the slope, I decided that the risk of being seen had become too much, and that I would have to wait beneath the shade of the leaves until nightfall, when I could climb the rest of the way under the cover of darkness. I must have sat there for a few hours, drinking most of my water and eating the last of the dried fruit, watching the shadows in the valley swell into a pool of murky dark.
When I felt it was safe enough, I climbed the rest of the way to the ridge, blindly groping along the ground, feeling less grass on my feet and more exposed rock and sharp edges the higher I climbed. And because I had to step so carefully onto things that were impossible to see, it took much longer than I thought it would, and by the time I poked my head above the crest and felt a cool wind drifting up the slope from the other side, I was beyond exhaustion. With the little starlight there was, I could just make out the valley on the other side, which was quite narrow and had a ridge that ran parallel to the one I was standing on. It seemed like the perfect place to vanish.
I felt my way over to a few boulders, tucking myself into a protected corner that looked out onto the valley that I'd come from. I intended on spending the rest of the night there, watching for the crew's torches bobbing alongside the river, and after spotting them, watching them pass by the tributary that I'd used to leave the water, oblivious to the fact that they were losing my trail. And I can't say how long I actually spent like that, alert and waiting; nor can I really remember when it was that I dozed off, or if I'd fought for any length of time to keep my eyes open as the weight of my eyelids became heavier. Though, maybe, considering how tired I was and how little rest I'd had, falling asleep at some point that night might have been inevitable. In the same way that, maybe, what happened the next day might have been inevitable as well.
42
I opened my eyes to the sound of the raven's feathers pulsing air into the ground as it landed, and found myself squinting at a dull, overcast sky. Which is how I stayed for a few seconds, blinking hard, letting my eyes adjust to the light. Then the memory of the crew seemed to wash over me like cold water, and I shot bolt upright, wide-awake, addled. "Shit!" I whispered, quickly scrambling forward to search the valley for movement. But the only motion to be seen was the flickering white of rapids in the distant river, which held to the rocks in the centre of the channel like flame to its fuel.
Having fallen asleep during the night was a serious problem. I had no clue of what I was dealing with anymore: Were they upstream or downstream from the dry tributary? Was I fleeing from people who were hours behind me, or days, or weeks? Could I begin planning ways of eluding them long-term, or was it still just about making a mad dash out of throwing range? I felt like I
needed
to know these things before I could continue - or at least needed to know
something
, something that would allow me to make a reasonable guess, something more than the empty speculation that I'd been running on. Anything.
I heard the raven scatter a few pebbles as it hopped forward on the ground to my left. I turned toward it, stunned, remembering that the sound of it landing had woken me; but more importantly, realizing that it had been there for some unknown period of time, probably circling above me, an obvious dark shape against the overcast sky, its thick fingers pointing out the exact place that I was hidden in the rocks. I whispered another curse and started clambering toward it, hoping that, once I'd scared it into the air, it would fly away from the ridge as discreetly as possible - pass unnoticed into another part of the world.
"Go!" I hissed, throwing a hand into the air as I came closer to it. The raven crouched down, threatening to fly away, but didn't, its head confusedly darting in every direction as it tried to understand the sudden and complete change in my disposition. "Go!" I repeated once I'd come much closer to it, though being careful with the volume of my voice. After seeing that this wasn't working, I called out a third time while pretending to throw something at it, which was what finally caused it to take flight. It jumped into the air, climbed high above the ridge, circled once, twice, and then, on the third time, readied itself to land on a prominent rock a good distance from where I was.
I shot a guilty look out at the valley as it landed, sure that the crew's eyes were on me, that they were all pointing at the ridge, focusing at the rocks that lined it, looking for the slightest indication that this was more than just a random black bird loitering on the top of a hill.
I crawled along the ground, as low as I could, until I had dropped just below the ridgeline, where I began again to hobble toward the raven. But before I'd come close enough to make any threatening gestures, it took flight again, circling a few more times while cawing out. It landed a bit further off from where I'd sighted it at first, and began to hop playfully among the rocks as it waited for me to come after it again. It seemed to like this game.
"No, no, no! Please, please... just... GO!!" I finally hollered. The raven, with the safety of distance between us, made one of its gurgling sounds and sprung onto a boulder with what appeared to be nothing short of elated mischief, curiously cocking its head in my direction.
I sighed, defeated, and yet again, started walking toward it, stepping cautiously on the sharp stones, hoping to get close enough this time to throw something, to finally deliver an unmistakable message. "Please go. I really... I just need you to go. Can you do that for me? Just leave me alone? Because it's this simple: if they see you, they'll catch me, and if they catch me, they'll kill me." Just then, I stepped on a painfully sharp stone, having to suck in a burst of air through my teeth. But I didn't stop limping toward my obstinate friend; my pace was unbroken, and becoming more frustrated with every step.
"You just... you don't
get
what's going on here, okay? I mean - it doesn't matter that you're only some sorry bird that I happened to find, or that I've come to understand a few things and regret a few more, or even that I've abandoned The Goal. None of these things
matter
to them. Alright?" I bent over and picked up some small stones, but let them spill from my fingers, looking for something better. I chose a fist-sized rock instead, testing its weight in my hand as I straightened up, still cautious to keep my head below the skyline.
I took a few more steps and then stopped. I was close enough. "No, you have no idea what's happening here. Not the running, not me, not the crew. Because you can't. Because it's below you, it's beneath anything you are. Which is all the more reason for you to stay away. I mean - don't you get
that
much at least? That you don't belong here? That you don't belong anywhere near us... us vile... fetid..." I broke off, biting my lip.
"So just go, will you!" I was trying to hold myself back, trying to contain myself, but couldn't. So I turned and threw the rock with all of the force I had. "I said GO!!"
The bird jumped into the air to get out of the way, but found itself more in the rock's path than it had been on the ground. In mid-flight, it had to twist its body around to narrowly avoid it, maybe even feeling the rock brush against a few of its feathers as it whirled by. But once the danger had passed, the raven recovered quickly, gracefully turning toward the valley that the crew were in, and sweeping low inside of it, its head pointed forward, flying in exactly the opposite direction of where I was standing. There was no hesitation, no doubt. And there never would be. It had finally recognized me for what I was.
I stood there for quite some time, watching its black shape grow smaller, watching the flapping of its wings become more indistinct, until it was only a dark speck against the vegetation, and until that speck seemed to meld into the green and completely disappear.
When I was sure that I'd lost sight of it, I covered my face with my hands, felt the muscles in my arms flex, my fingernails digging into the skin on my forehead. I let out a scream into the flesh of my palms, then screamed again, and began stumbling forward, blindly, moving away from something, or toward it - I don't really know. I took a few steps and then tripped on a rock, crashing to the ground with my hands still pressed against my face. There was pain on my right side, which seemed to be exactly what my body needed to finally let itself cry. And it did.
I don't know how long I lay there, shouting out those long, muffled sobs into my hands, I only know that I didn't have any control over their coming or going, that I wasn't myself - or maybe that I was just too much of myself all at once. Too much frustration. Too much shame. Too much understanding. And it all seemed to come in waves that crashed against the walls of my rib cage, filling my chest until it felt like I would burst, only to subside again, to suddenly sink away, leaving me empty except for a dark trickling at the back of my throat.
When I finally regained some sense of composure, it happened quickly. I stopped and took my hands from my face, looking around as if someone else had moved me to a new spot on the ridge. I was in plain view, making up part of the silhouette against the sky. Not, I thought, that it mattered all that much. If I had caught the crew's attention, it wouldn't have been my sitting in a conspicuous place on the ridge that would have done it, instead it would have been my yelling, or my hurtling fist-sized rocks into the valley they were in, or my pathetic staggering around through the boulders and screaming into my hands. I sniffled, wiped my eyes, felt ridiculous. And with the air of someone trying to shake off a moment in time he wished had never happened by determinedly moving onto the next, I started to busy myself with looking for the crew again, stepping down out of the skyline and squatting against a boulder, blinking to clear my eyes so that I could make out more detail.
I remember that I was adjusting a few uncomfortable rocks beneath me, my head still raised, searching throughout the valley, getting ready for a long wait, when my eyes ran across a few specks in the landscape that I hadn't noticed before. I stopped, focused, the top of my head going numb. It was the crew. And they were climbing the long slope between the river and myself, tiny figures sifting through the few trees, pressing toward me as fast and constant as clouds.
"Oh no," I whispered, regardless of the fact that it was much too late for whispering. I didn't have the time to guess what had gone wrong with my plan, or whether it was the raven or myself that had given me away. But none of these things really needed thinking about, the only thing that mattered was that they'd found me, and were coming as fast as their legs could bring them.
I scrambled to my feet with the same rattled panic that I'd felt the days before, and turned to face the opposite valley, thinking about the blanket for only a second before abandoning it. I ran through the boulders of the crest, and then down the other side of the ridge, where the slope soon turned into runnels of loose stones and soil, which slid and gave as I jumped onto them. I was moving fast, and for a few brief seconds, could even ignore the fact that my feet were bare. I started taking larger strides, sinking deep into the soft scree as I landed, getting closer to the valley floor with each plunge. But somewhere in the middle of the slope, larger rocks started to be mixed in with the loose soil and pebbles of the scree, and before I could slow myself enough, I felt the skin of my left foot rip open against a sharp edge. I slid to a standstill, and had to sit for a few seconds before continuing on, rocking back and forth like a child, holding my foot in my hands, inspecting the blood on my fingers. But before the initial pain had even subsided, I forced myself to get up again, to continue downhill, to run, to keep running. I stole quick glances of the new valley between steps, looking for ideas of where to go, of what to do.