The Unkind Water

 

Drindl began to walk up the slope along the ravine, but Alpen called out, “Let’s stay on the north side of the chasm. That’s where Mellen is.” They followed the cut in the land until they returned to the beach. Gingerly, Alpen tested the sand with his foot, then bounced securely on the ground and extended his hand to Bebe. “Shall we proceed?” he asked in a formal way, trying to lighten up the tension. He looked past Bebe’s shoulder to the Fae warrior huddled on the beach.

Bebe turned to look back at the prostrate figure. “Did you have to cut her tendrils?”

“She is an active enemy who needed to be disabled or killed. We are at war.” Drindl nodded in agreement.

The stress of their situation was wearing down Bebe’s optimism. The loss of the babes and the attack on her person at the queen’s castle was carving out the foundation of hope she had relied on. She gave Alpen a wan smile, accepted his outstretched hand and walked with him up the slope of the beach.

When they got to a sapling, Alpen used the sharp flint rock as a cutting tool, taking turns with Drindl as they sliced through the bark. Alpen then snapped the supple limb and stripped the smaller branch shoots growing from the thin trunk. “It will have to do until we find something stiffer,” Alpen said as he made several stabbing motions.

He dressed one end into a point with the sharp rock and handed the stabbing spear to Drindl. Lifting the spear above his shoulder, the young warrior sent the shaft sailing, but it nosedived into the ground after several warriors’ lengths. “The shaft is curved so it doesn’t fly true,” Drindl lamented. “Good for close combat, though.” He didn’t speak his fear that an attacking wolfbear would snap the sapling. He looked across the chasm at the milling herds of Ibik. “They are a more inviting target than we are, don’t you think?”

Bebe asked, “You think a wolfbear can leap that chasm?” Neither Alpen nor Drindl offered an opinion. She pointed out more young trees along the edge of the ravine. “These trees are three, maybe five, years old, I guess. The ground opened up then and tore out the roots of whatever was growing along this divide.” She stepped forward toward the edge of the ground, then pointed to the dead and gnarled roots that poked out from the vertical sides of the chasm. Down in the canyon further up the slope, she saw a toppled tree, its trunk pointing skyward.

“Food on that side,” Alpen offered. “A wolfbear might be able to climb that chasm.”

“I’m hungry,” Drindl said. He pointed to the fallen tree. “Fresh meat in the canyon. Dead wood. We could use the tree trunk to get back up. We need the energy, and the sun will be down in a few hours. We could stay protected in the ravine.”

Alpen studied the cliff overhang above the fallen tree, then looked to Bebe and Drindl. “If one of us is injured and can’t continue, do we swear to each other that we will leave the injured one behind?”

Bebe looked down at the ground, then directly in Alpen’s eye. “The injured person keeps the stake?” They nodded, then entwined their arms in the warriors’ pact. Bebe had only seen it done, not taken part, so she fumbled the ritual at first and they all laughed, grateful for the gaiety that covered the deadly seriousness of their pact.

Being the younger, Drindl offered to go first. Alpen pointed out a route that avoided the steep overhang and handed the stake to Drindl. “Plant it in that slope midway between here and the tree trunk. We can use it an anchoring point on our ascent back up the slope.”  

They watched as Drindl scaled the cliff and settled on a ledge. “Rocks and hard dirt,” he called to them. “Watch the rocks. Some are sharp.” He began his sideways traverse, planted the stake in the dirt, then continued to the fallen trunk. “Stinks from the dead animals,” he called up, then backed down the tree and onto the ground. He looked east up the sloped ravine and west toward the ocean. “No predators that I see.” He motioned them to come down.

Alpen urged Bebe to go next. She was grateful for the stake that Drindl planted as she crossed to the tree, then shimmied down the trunk and joined Drindl. From the bottom, the chasm looked deeper. “Watch the soft pocket near the stake,” she called up to Alpen.

They watched him come down. He stopped before he got to the stake and reached down to pick up something. “Are you all right?” Bebe asked anxiously. Alpen waved back to them, then continued his path to the tree and joined them on the ground. “Sir, I notice your coat is torn. May I interest you in a fresh hide?” Bebe swept her arm graciously to the rotting carcasses. Her gruesome humor helped lighten their mood.

“It sure does stink here,” Alpen wrinkled his face as the smell invaded his nostrils. “There’s a poor beast over there.” He stepped around the dead Ibik to one whose eyes were glazed with pain. Taking his sharp stone, he slit its throat and ended the misery. “The meat might be a bit off if it has been in this much pain, but we know it is fresh.”

With only the sharpened stone, butchering the animal was a practice in patience. Bebe scoured the ravine east and west looking for other sharp stones that could be used as a knife. She showed one candidate to Alpen, who paused in his cutting to inspect it. “Poor grip.” His voice was disappointed, then he turned it over a few times. “A spear point! Dress this side, angle that. I can cut hide strips and we will lash stone to stick. If you could find more of these, we can make several spears.”

Drindl gathered firewood and built a proper campfire. The muscle had been harder to cut so they ate the organs. Famished for real food, Bebe cautioned them to eat moderately and slow. “If only we had water.”

“We have a container for water,” Alpen pointed to the Ibik bladder hanging from the tree. “We can rinse it out in the ocean, then fill it with fresh water when we come to that.”

After the meal, the setting sun turned their sliver of sky visible above the ravine to dark blue and purple. They sat around the campfire, dressing stones that Bebe had gathered. As the stars came out, they had four spear points and a second cutting blade. Alpen hung his hide strips to dry on the tree.

“This is more comfortable than those prisoner quarters,” Drindl announced as he made himself a sleeping alcove in the dirt.

In the middle of the night, Bebe stirred and looking up at the night sky, whose points of light were dimming behind a herd of moving clouds. She thought she saw the head of an animal at the edge of the cliff above but fell asleep. She woke again when she heard thunder rumbling across the waves and drifting into the canyon where they slept. She drifted in a half sleep until the first rain drops hissed in the embers of the campfire. She nuzzled against Alpen’s back and put her arm around his waist. They would find fresh water today and wash away the salt residue.

Listening to the sound of Alpen’s breathing, something tugged at her attention. The light rain, the soft bed of dirt beneath them. She looked up at the heavy clouds above the ravine and a rain drop splashed into her eye. Suddenly she sat upright. “Alpen, get up.” He grunted awake from a deep sleep. “Drindl, now! Get up!”

He sat up looked along the ravine. “What’s wrong?”

“The rain. It will fill the chasm.” Now Alpen was sitting up next to her. She pointed to several dead Ibik flopped together up the ravine. “The rain fills the channel, then washes the bodies down the chasm.” She walked to the branches and grabbed the hide strips Alpen had hung, then grabbed the bladder and paused as the rain became heavier. “We won’t be able to climb the dirt walls.”

The clouded sky had blocked the moonlight and Alpen fumbled in the dirt for the spear points they had made. He paused, his fingers in the dirt, then stood. “Got them! I can feel a vibration in the dirt.” Now he joined Bebe’s urgency. He boosted her up the fallen tree trunk. “Hug the dirt. Call down when you reach the pole.” He heard a sound at his feet and felt a trickle of water. “Hurry!”

Bebe passed the bladder to Drindl, then put the hide strips in her teeth and climbed the leaning trunk. With little vision, she relied on her instinct, leaving the tree after she came to what she thought was the last of the branches. Facing uphill she traversed to her left side, relieved when she touched the staff. “Get off the tree after the last branch group. Go left, slightly upward,” she called down to them. She turned to her right and the echo of sound in the canyon changed. “Hurry! The water is coming.”

She moved left and up the sloped wall of the chasm, feeling the small rivulets of water flowing down from the ground above. She was relieved when she felt the edge of ground and the grass. “At the top. It’s getting muddy. Be careful.”

She lay on the grass, the rain dashing at her fur as she looked down into the clouded darkness of the canyon. She heard Alpen yell that he had reached the staff but the grunts of the Ibik herd and the thunder sounds from the sky drowned out most of his words. “Here, here,” she called as she waved her arm back and forth. She cried out when Alpen hand gripped her arm.

Alpen came up the cliff edge and lay on his belly for a moment, then swivel around. “Drindl!” he called. “Listen,” he whispered to Bebe. “The water.” There was  no mistaking the rush of water now. From below, they heard Drindl yell out as he reached the staff. Alpen felt the water below him flowing down the ground and into the canyon. “Mud! Be careful!” They called out to Drindl again and again, hoping that he could hear their voices over the sound of rushing water in the canyon below.

Waving his arms, Alpen’s hand struck the staff that Drindl carried. He grabbed the shaft, then felt the bladder that Drindl threw over the edge. Waving his hand, he felt Drindl’s hand and helped pull him to level ground. They put their arms about each other and listened to the sound of water rushing below.

Further uphill, they heard the squeal of a fallen Ibik in the chasm struggling to keep their head above the rising water. When the squeal stopped, Bebe asked, “I have the strips. Staff, bladder, spear points?” Alpen and Drindl confirmed that they had everything.

“I left my tunic hanging on the branch,” Drindl said and they laughed.

“We won’t look,” Bebe assured him. In the dark, they laughed.

“We can’t move until it gets light,” Alpen said. He brought his body around until all three heads were together, their bodies splayed out like three spokes of a wheel. “Does anyone know a good joke?”