She stops on a breath. I can see her listenin to her voices agin, her guides. She nods. The time’s outta joint, she says. The world moves on too fast. You’ll hafta do this on yer own. Be very careful.
I gotta go, I says.
Nero takes off from the fence. He circles above, silent scout of the night.
She lets go the bridle. She steps back, huggin her shawl tight around her.
Don’t stop on the Wraithway, she says. No matter what.
G’bye, Auriel, I says.
An don’t lose sight of what you believe in, she says. If you do, we’re all lost.
I nod a farewell as I leave. I set a course due north. An I don’t look back.
Half a league outta camp, Nero circles back. He swoops past me, callin, callin, callin.
I turn to see what’s his fuss.
Tracker comes runnin outta the darkness. He catches up with Hermes.
Tracker. Last seen tied to a cottonwood tree. There ain’t no sign of his tether.
He don’t say nuthin. Not a bark, not a glance of reproach. He jest settles into a steady lope alongside Hermes.
My heart gladdens. Lightens. It swells to fill my chest. What was it Auriel said?
He runs with you now. The wolfdog an the crow. Fit companions fer a warrior.
My crow. An now – it seems – my wolfdog.
He won’t be left behind. I was wrong to do it. I won’t do it agin. I should of known he wouldn’t be tied.
We ride through a land of stony plains. Of rock-bound lakes an spruce-choked forests, where the air stands heavy an chill. A place of the thick dark. The deep old.
The night’s black. No stars. The moon shines white an hard. My every nerve’s hummin. Hermes ain’t easy. If I gave him his head, he’d fly. But, bad as I’d like that, I hold him steady. Steady, always steady. We got a long ways yet to go.
His hoofs drum the ground. The sound falls dull. Muffled. Somewhere in the distance, far, far away, I think I hear the beat of drums. Or do I? Hard to tell. Then nuthin. Gone. Stoneheart country like this conjures up bogeys in a person’s mind. The Wraithway. Wrecker ghosts. Travellers who set off but never arrive.
I know all about ghosts now. Unquiet spirits. They don’t hold no fears fer me. I reach fer the heartstone around my neck an I think . . . I think about Jack. Of how it’ll be when I see him agin. When he’s holdin me tight an I’m holdin him tighter an the heartstone’s burnin my skin.
I think of what we might say. Him to me. Me to him. I ain’t no soft girl. I don’t know no soft words.
Be with me, Jack. That’s what I’ll say. Burn with me. Shine with me.
Nero flies ahead. Tracker runs behind. I check to my left an my right. I’m alert, full of purpose, free. An fer the first time in a long time, I can breathe.
Here. Now. Alone. With none but my own heart fer witness, I’ll say it. Without Lugh, I’m able to breathe.
He smothers me. Chokes me. Pens me in. Tethers me to him with his worry an sorrow an anger an fear.
Once I find Jack, once we’re all together, I’ll find a way to help him. I must. I swear I will. Jack an me, we’ll find some way to help Lugh.
I see no wraiths on the Wraithway. But there’s somethin ain’t right. There’s a deadness to the air. A flatness. It’s a place that ain’t one thing or th’other. Not quite alive, not quite dead. It waits. Like the moment between livin an dyin.
We pass a long line of rusted-out, crumblin cars. One after another, on an on fer a league an more. Nose to tail, all facin west. Like they was headed to the same place at the same time, but stopped fer some reason when they got this far.
Pa used to tell of when he was a boy an the winds unburied a car with four Wreckers inside. They still had their skins, shrivelled onto their bones like dry seed pods. I’m thankful there ain’t no dead inside these cars. The Wraithway’s spooked enough.
When the night’s half-spent its darkness, the country begins to change. I start to see wide, deep gashes in the rock. Scars as big as canyons. The earth’s skin’s bin scraped away. Its body blasted open. Over an over fer league upon league. Nature took no hand in this. The hands of people did. People long since dead. The Wreckers.
I slow Hermes to a walk. By the pale, cold of the moon, I look on their violent work. Their earth hate. The hulks of their great machines. The skellentons of their buildins. The toppled chimleys. The tangled heaps of iron an metal. All rusted. Silent.
No tree grows here. No moss. Not like most Wrecker places, where all of this ’ud be covered up. Hidden by the years, the countless years, of dirt an grass an scrub an trees as the earth gathers in what’s dead an gone. But nuthin lives here. Only fire. Thin rivers, small lakes of fire. Wherever there’s water, it burns. Low an ugly. Slow an thick. It oozes an roils, black an red. Like poisoned blood seeps from a fatal wound.
From the gashed ground, plumes of steam sigh.
If restless spirits ride the Wraithway, they ain’t Wreckers. They’re nature spirits. The spirits of earth an water. Of air an plants an creatures. With every right to ride vengeance on men.
No, Wrecker souls don’t roam the road. This place, this hell, is their home. They’re caught in their rivers of fire, always an ferever drownin. Never, ever to be free. Their voices gutter in the flames. Take pity, fergive me, have mercy on me. Prisoners of their own destruction. Trapped till the end of time.
I hear them call. I make no answer. I turn my face from the murdered land.
We ride into kinder country. The rocky trail softens to earth in places. There’s the open straggle of pine forests an small hills. There ain’t bin no sign of traffic this whole time – no wheelruts, beast tracks, bootprints, nuthin. Looks like Auriel was right. Nobody travels the Wraithway.
When the sky’s still dark, but you can sense the promise of day, we come upon a tipped-over wagon. It’s blockin the trail. I slow Hermes to a walk while we go around.
It’s bin smashed with a vengeance. There’s a few scraps of pathetic stuff scattered about. Well-used eatin tins, a man’s worn boot. Tracker noses an sniffs all around. Nero swoops down on somethin. He picks it up in his beak an shows me what it is. A child’s rag doll.
Leave it, I says.
Whatever went down here, it warn’t friendly. An not more’n a couple days ago, I’d say. The wheelruts still read clear. There’s the hoofprints of a panicked pony. An some other tracks . . . beast, not human, but no creature I ever seen before. Each track’s bigger’n my two hands spread out, side by side. A two-toed beast. The inside toe’s long, much longer’n the outside one. With a nail on it. It looks kinda like a hoof. But it ain’t.
It’s called the Wraithway. Them that take it, rarely make it.
I peer into the trees. The forest broods thickly on both sides of the trail, presses in, dark an unfriendly. Was that a movement, jest there? Tracker stares that way an growls. Maybe it ain’t such kind country after all.
Tracker, c’mon! I says.
It cain’t be far to the Yann Gap now. We hurry on. But Tracker keeps glancin to the right, into the trees on the south side of the trail. We go on another league or so. Tracker seems to relax an I can hear the rush of water up ahead.
Sure enough, a narrow stream cuts across the trail. It hurries outta the trees, gabblin to itself in a nervous rush. Hermes starts to slow as we approach. He tosses his head in complaint when I urge him on. He slows, then comes to a stubborn halt.