The hail kept falling as Hymn’s blood froze across the icy stoop. Carolynn saw her face, briefly, in the burgundy mirror as it seeped closer to her boots. She pulled her feet close to her chest, panting warm mist into the air. Hymn’s breathing was labored. He let himself spread across the small outcrop, his face burnished with a sheen of sweat.
Eventually the hail lightened into snow. Carolynn had the foresight to pull up the grapnel. It was a calming motion, winding the rope around her elbow, then the palm, then back again. Over and over. Around and around.
Once she had gathered herself, she stood. The abruptness of the motion caught Hymn’s attention. His red eyes watched her as she knelt over him and untied the satchel from around his waist, pulled it off his shoulder. Then she removed his jacket, its front slick with stain.
With an unusual calmness, Carolynn signed an approximation of the words. “You. Animal. Now.”
He stared at her hands, uncomprehendingly. She shook his shoulder and demanded his attention as his eyes slid into the distance. “No. You are not dying.” She pointed at him. “YOU.” The four-fingered gesture that evoked a standing animal. “ANIMAL.” She smacked her finger against the ‘time’ wrist gesture. “NOW.”
He must have read the words on her lips because his eyes stayed trained on her face, the pupils jittering in their sockets for a moment before he heaved himself into motion. Slowly, painfully, he transformed into his wolf from a kneeling position. The way his body stretched made the wound in his abdomen spit more blood. He grimaced.
Carolynn took Hymn’s jacket and tied the sleeves around his waist so the bulk of the fabric would cover the wound. Then she harnessed the satchel around the fabric to keep it in place. With a pocket knife she fished from the bag, she sliced around ten feet of rope from the end and slipped her foot into her second crampon as she tied it. Hymn laid down and shut his eyes. She spent time fashioning a sling with some straps for her arms.
As Carolynn approached Hymn’s wolf once more with her hastily-fashioned contraption, Hymn growled. Some clarity had come to him; he finally understood her intent.
“I am not leaving you,” she said.
He tottered to his feet and backed away. His hackles rose with his snarl.
“Stop this! Let me help you!”
The great black wolf took another step back, closing the distance with the abyss beyond.
“No!”
Hymn’s foot slipped at the edge but he kept balance.
“You will not die here!” Carolynn shouted. The wind took her words but not her determination. She wrestled him away from the edge by the satchel wrapped around his belly. She used her remaining energy to jolt them both backward toward the cliff face.
Hymn was larger than her. She knew the risks and the rewards. She knew he could bite her and jump off the edge in a stupid attempt to sacrifice himself for her. She knew Hymn would do it if she didn’t keep her arms wrapped around his squirming neck.
“Listen to me, Hymn! Listen to me!” She pressed her forehead to the top of his wide skull. She cupped her mouth to his ear, the only way to make him hear her above the wind’s yowling.
“You will live,” she said, her breath fogging the air between them. He stopped wriggling. “If I let you die here, do you think I could rightly forgive myself?”
She could almost hear his breathing as his lungs expanded against her arm. She had never been this close to him, her face pressed into the thick pelt. He smelled like cinnamon and clay and mineral water.
After that, he was still. He let her strap the rope to him and the satchel. She harnessed him to one end of the grapnel and then to her back. She had to use her legs to lift him off the ground. He was lighter in his wolf form. Less mass, more fur.
She took the grapnel in her hand, secured it, and began her tedious descent.
Each day of travel was longer than the last. Each night was colder. The storm was a ceaseless thing. No food. The only fire was the one burning in her shoulders, her back, her legs, her neck. Maybe everything was burning.
Hymn was dead weight, but he was alive dead weight. She checked on him when she could. Forced him to drink melted snow. Sometimes, she climbed through the night when the weather would dampen. The moon and the stars lit her way. She had her jackal’s night vision to amplify that light, but it was still a dangerous pursuit. As the days passed, she became increasingly wreckless, increasingly tired. Yet another night of travel.
When the sun rose at her back, she blinked in its yellow light. She thought of the spirit at her Foreordination. Follow the setting sun, he had told her.
More and more, she pondered the reasons for it all. Why had they gone this route? It was pointless. Why do all this for the gods, just to suffer through their wrath by day and night?
Pointlessness was a form of hopelessness. Hopelessness was a noun, a modification of the verb hopeless, which had the root word hope. Synonyms for hope in Beverly’s Thesaurus included wish, purpose, and dream.
How she wished to dream of something nice. Not drowning. She could not remember the last time she had dreamed of something sweet and meaningless. That Night character…Where was he?
‘Delirious’ was a funny word. Did it describe her? Maybe. But it definitely reminded her of the word ‘delicious.’ Not that many letters off. Caribou would be delicious right now. Or maybe a haunch of goat with some honey or garlic or some ginger. She should have learned how to cook before…everything.
One of the days, (Carolynn had lost count), she was unstrapping the ropes on a flat surface to relieve herself. She left Hymn in the snow to get some privacy. She wandered away. This is a large stoop, she thought. Her eyes were scrunched in the morning light. For a moment, she stared at the sun, shining like a copper coin on the horizon.
The horizon.
No clouds here; maybe the weather was clearing.
She was in the middle of untying the laces of her trousers when the thought occurred to her: My feet are very flat on the ground right now.
She looked up again—Horizon, flat, no clouds, ground.
What the fuck… She thought, her mouth hanging open. I made it? Hm.
She did her business, kicked some snow over it, and walked back to Hymn.
“Are we done?” Carolynn asked. Her voice was hoarse, and she had smelly, dry-mouth breath from the disuse. But she could hear it.
Hymn looked up at her from his resting position. He snorted, as if in good humor.
She did not feel joy. She knew what that ought to feel like. Carolynn laid down and slept for twenty one hours.