A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 45

A Crack in the World

It was subtle, at first – the kind of thing that might have been taken as a regular shift coming on. Then it grew, rumbling, and something about the way it hummed under my feet felt different. I dropped Tanen's shoulders, so very heavy now, to stand straight and feel out the vibrations.

The mounds and hills of rubble began to rattle, dislodging the smaller, looser pieces from the precarious balance. They tumbled down the jutting slopes – the first crumbs of what I could only hope was not the impending avalanche that felt as though was brewing underfoot.

Some piece from behind me hurtled through the air and struck me in the back, and the wind went out of me, sending me to the ground next to Tanen.

When I lifted my head, everything around me had begun to shift. It was all moving, all vibrating in a way that was hard to focus on. I shook my head, as if I could shake that kind of dizziness, but it was no use. The next few minutes were a violent haze of mayhem.

I struggled to get to my feet, but kept getting downed by the unsteady, sliding ground beneath me. I felt like a baby, rising only to fall flat on my face, again and again and again.

And then the real shift began.

It took a moment to realize what was actually happening, but in a moment of clarity I saw it: the walls of the Ravine seemed to widen – and as the water level dropped, that proved it. A great sound like granite splitting cracked over the hum of the earth and tumble of rubble. What had been the relatively calm waters of the clogged river sloshed and slid, now, trying to account for its abrupt new boundaries.

But the boundaries were widening still.

All at once a sound so great that I was covering my ears rang out, and the Ravine was widening at an alarming, steady pace. The earth was cracking, opening up and gulping down the water. The river that had only just been restored bled out in instants, raining down the Ravine walls like so much cast-off rain from a drainpipe, and from the depths of the splitting earth came a great hissing sound as it began to turn to steam. Heat rose from the chasm, heat like I had never felt before. I struggled to distance myself from the lip of the spreading crack, alarmed at what was opening up there, but the shifts were working against me. As I pushed myself backward, they propelled me forward – until one threw me right up to the edge, my momentum very nearly spilling me in.

I threw one hand out to skid vertically down the Ravine wall – the other to cling to the edge of ground that supported me. That's when, half dangling over the edge, I saw it: the great molten essence that was bared far below – the stuff that was turning the water to steam.

My hand burned on the heated wall of the Ravine, and the steam that rose around it. I screamed, scrambling to pull it back, to push myself up away from the precarious position that demanded the contact. As soon as I could I recoiled, rolling onto my back and clutching my hand to me. The nerves of my palm and fingers sang, ravaged and angry.

Visions popped and fizzled, blacking out.

Larger blocks of rubble began to tumble down the mounds around us, gaining speed as they went, tripping past us in dangerous proximity and spilling into the hot, yawning Ravine. As soon as sense returned to me I was forcing myself to move, to crawl toward Tanen, to drag him up so we could get away from this violent shift.

My muscles were screaming, at this point, but adrenaline threw that fact into disregard. I hauled Tanen's body over a good few paces of ground before being downed by another wave of unstable motion underfoot. But I drew myself back up, desperate and determined, and re-established my hold on Tanen's shoulders. The cloth of his shirt chaffed against the raw, burnt flesh of my hand, but it was the smallest distraction in the midst of the clamor that raged all around.

I twisted my ankle on a jut of debris, tripping and carrying onward, dragging Tanen wide around the sharp piece of rubble. The Ravine cracked wider next to us, but I didn't dare detour to higher ground – the hills were coming down just as quickly as the chasm was splitting.

It seemed an eternity that I towed Tanen one rickety step at a time over the shaking ground, as pieces of rubble tumbled past and steam hissed with greater viciousness from the gaping divide. The molten essence of the earth roiled and traveled along the boundary of the channel – a river itself, far below. A river of fire. It ate the rubble that fell into its current, melting it, carrying its liquid ashes out of the city much as the water had been doing. I tried to ignore the growing maw, the current of certain-molten-death that may or may not have been rising. It was just one foot in front of the other, for me – or rather, one foot behind the other, dragging Tanen backward as I was.

I heaved, and twisted, and dug in, doing everything I could to achieve just one more inch, just one more precious margin of ground that would get us closer to some avenue of deliverance. Soon there would be a gap between mounds, something we could slip through before everything came down, or a hill of slabs large enough that they were not yet being disturbed by the quaking earth. Something sturdy enough to support us as we – I – climbed our way to safety.

Margin after margin, however, no pocket presented itself. It was just the same tumbling hills, their discharge growing more frequent. Until, finally, a glance over my shoulder showed a faint beacon of hope in the distance – the bridge, hazy behind a pall of powder, but still intact, somehow preserved.

And, after all, it was an enduring symbol of significance in all this mess, was it not? It could not just be toppled so swiftly after coming into fruition.

With a renewed sense of hope, I heaved with more insistence at Tanen's deadweight. Every muscle in me screamed in protest, but I cared not for their comfort in those moments. I cared not for their well-being or even their capacity. I pushed them harder, refusing to take no for an answer.

It must have been an eternity of close-calls before we reached that arcing platform, but reach it we did. I could no longer feel my hands – except the razed flesh of the one that ached like fire itself where I had been burned – and largely could not feel my arms, anymore, either. I felt it in my shoulders, though – the back-breaking strain of the arduous task I had been forcing on my body since the edge of the city.

We were almost there. Just a little ways further.

The smooth arch of the bridge was no doubt a forgiving change where Tanen himself was concerned, but the arch itself proved just as much of a strain as hauling him over debris. I cursed the incline, digging my back into just getting him to the peak. Then it would be downhill.

My leg muscles took turns between feeling numb, and light – and burning, and heavy. I stumbled even on even ground.

Steam rose past the bridge, hissing and ghostly and humid. Molten fire slid by far beneath, glowing and red, like an angry welt slashed deep into the earth.

And then we were there, cresting the rise of the bridge, and the downward relief on the other side was like the ground falling out from beneath my feet. I fell backwards, my legs jelly, collapsing into a heap at Tanen's head. Dismay at my exhaustion swamped me; it was so much harder to pull myself back to my feet than it was to just keep going, when I managed to stay on my feet – and that, hard enough.

Yet I climbed back up, staggering, and pulled my charge the rest of the way. The mounds of debris were less on this side, only a pile here and there across a plane-like expanse of refined rubble, most of it disintegrated to dusty fragments.

There was one respectable mound that rose near us, vibrating only minimally, and I made the mistake of pausing to rest before we had surpassed it, exhausted and entirely too ready to trust its less impending grunts and groans. It was not to be underestimated, however, and only a moment of apparent peace passed before there was a jolt, and it flung some detached slab at us. I scrambled to get out of range, but Tanen, of course, was not so lucky.

The slab – a disembodied door – sailed through the air and glanced across the ground, where it was sent into a rapid, head-over-heels tumble. It completed exactly three lengthwise revolutions, and then face-planted squarely over Tanen's body, framing him for a scant instant before the door itself slammed shut.

I scrambled up as quickly as I had sought to get away, rushing back to Tanen's buried side. It seemed only natural to wrench open the door rather than overturning the whole slab, but when I did – I found nothing underneath it. Just the dusty, ruinous ground, and an imprint that might have been where Tanen's body had lain.