Canyon Red Page 3

  She left a plate of pasta on the counter for him and slipped on her darkest dress, the one with lace that ran down her arms and flared out around her knees. Then she slipped out into the twilight and headed east, toward the canyons where the graveyard lay.

  Before long, she passed Worthing Hill.

  It was a sub-community surrounded by high clay walls most of the way around. It was an actual hill, with the houses tightly packed within the walls on the crest. Somehow gleaming water sprang from the top of the hill and ran down the side in a few twisting rivulets. It gave the appearance of several lightning bolts running down the sides of the hill.

  The clay of the walls was a bright, even scarlet red, made of rare minerals mined from somewhere below the sea. The few houses that peeked over the wall had their rooftops dressed with a type of ivy that looked glassy and expensive and caused the whole hill to have a fresh, minty fragrance.

  If she wanted to, Brosie could have walked up the hill and straight into the middle of the community, through a hallway that ran to its heart. Only those who were “Extracted,” or chosen as legendary out of the Lorn people, were allowed to live on Worthing Hill. But anyone could take this hallway to the middle, where there was an observatory room. What Brosie could see from that room was equal to what she couldn’t stop dreaming about. She’d seen a central square through the observatory glass; people were not often around the square, preferring not to be watched, but sometimes she saw them walking around.

  She didn’t know what was in the rest of the miniature city. She couldn’t see inside the houses, or near the walls, or anything else. But she wanted to very much, and the children of the island played a lot of games in which the prize for winning would be imaginary Extraction.

  Tonight, Brosie wasn’t interested in Worthing Hill. It was only an obstacle.

  For most of the day, she had successfully pushed the image of the monstrous tangerine eyes out of her mind. It was much easier to be brave in the daylight. She could look back at the previous night’s fearfulness and scold herself for being overdramatic. But now that nightfall was approaching, her confidence seemed to drain out of her like rain from a gutter.

  The monster felt indescribably real; she really believed he was somewhere on the island, waiting to send her back to that awful courtyard platform. Every shifting shadow threatened to contain his orange glare; every flutter in the distance could be his shapeshifted form.

  But the sun had almost completely fallen, and it was too late to return home now.

  The canyons were a little over a half-mile past Worthing Hill, and with all of her concern over the monster, Brosie reached the foot of it before she realized she was getting close. She went up by a winding path, which was so curvy it held almost no danger of falling over the side.

  On the way up she saw a tiny crimson butterfly clinging to the foliage above her. They were a rare sight, these butterflies, and she’d heard one of her teachers say that they’d only started appearing in the last couple of years. This was only the fourth one Brosie had seen.

  She followed the butterfly as it dismounted and flew up the path every time she got near. She was amazed that it wasn’t flying far away from her. Indeed, it wasn’t, until she came to the entrance of the graveyard and the small red wonder took off on the wind until she couldn’t make it out anymore.

  The graveyard was deceptively expansive, winding around a few of the rock walls and continuing for long stretches along tiny gorges. These areas were in shadow for most of the day. She knew that Mr. Ackleford had a cottage at the end of one of these passageways, but she wasn’t worried about getting caught. During the day, he scanned the entire plot every few hours. At night, he rarely checked on things at all.

  * * *

  Digging the grave wasn’t working.

  Deeper and deeper she dug, flinging the dirt up and over her shoulder. Yet, no matter how far she dug, she kept thinking of her mother’s words in the nightmare: You’ve brought this on yourself, because of what happened That Night. She tried to pretend that the words were inside the dirt below her, and with harsh grunts she threw the dirt over her shoulder, up and out of the grave. But sometimes, it fell back down on her head, and that’s when Brosie knew she would not be able to get rid of the words.

  She stopped digging, and she remembered.

  On That Night, Brosie was on top of the canyons, looking out over the sea. She had been imagining stories of civilizations that lived below the waters, whose people swam into nightmarish cave tunnels in search of monsters to hunt and bring back to their cities. For those who brought back the most dangerous threats would be given the throne, until the entire process repeated itself the next year.

  Brosie never moved her gaze from the ocean as she tried to imagine an entire civilization of people living deep underneath it. On a night like this, it wasn’t so difficult to believe. The wind was like the tendrils of spirit trees, lifting her hair and cooling her face, and the ocean rolled restlessly, dark and loud, as if to attract attention to its surface and conceal what hid below.

  But her imagining was cut short by a sharp blow on her spine as someone shoved her off the canyon.

  It only lasted a few seconds, but she had a strangely pleasurable feeling as she fell, thinking she was going to join those mysterious people beneath the sea. But just before her body met the rocks that lined the water, something slammed into the back of her head, and everything went dark.

  Later she learned that Ackleford had found her in a nook in the graveyard, unconscious on the grass. He ran down the canyon and into Low Lorn, screaming for doctors.

  When Brosie awoke at the hospital, a little round stone amulet was resting on her stomach. It showed the heads of three men along with their necks. From each neck an arm was outstretched to the next head, with fingers clasped around the next neck in what appeared to be a choking gesture. By the three arms a triangle was formed. Its balance was striking. No one could tell her what it was, or how it got there.

  Two weeks later, Brosie’s mother was gone.

  * * *

  Now, on the floor of the grave, Brosie thought of many things: who might have pushed her that night, what might have happened as she fell, why she was still alive, where the amulet was from. She ran her finger along this last item in the inside pocket of her jacket, where she always kept it.

  But most of all she thought of her mother. Two thoughts dueled in her mind:

  She left me.

  It’s my fault.

  The whole idea of digging the grave suddenly felt childish and embarrassing. How much time had gone by tonight? She should be home, studying, moving on with her life. Not here, in the cold dirt, arguing with no one in particular.

  She moved to climb out, but the grave was too deep. She had dug too far, had not noticed how far down she’d put herself.

  She tried the walls for roots or ledges, but there were none high enough. She stood on them and leapt for the top, her hands always just out of reach of the ledge. She called out for help, but of course no one came. After a while, she gave up.

  Even then, she didn’t panic. What was one night here? Ackleford would be by in the morning. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to stay here for a while, hidden away from the world. And anyway, she had done this to herself. There was no reason to be upset.

  For a moment in her mind, Brosie saw her mother, who approved of her giving up. Even more, her mother was proud of her for it.

  Brosie felt a chill across her arm, heard a shifting in the soil. There was something else in the grave.

  She spun around to look all around, but saw nothing. One corner was hidden in shadow. She kept her eyes on the spot and heard a strange sound, like the blades of a fan approaching. It became louder, coming for her. She was not afraid.

  When the sound was close enough to echo around the walls of the grave, Brosie’s mother stepped out of the shadowy corner into the moonlight.

  Or rather, the person looked like her mother, but certain th
ings were wrong about her. Her skin was greenish, as if it were covered in oak leaves. Her hair was an earthy brown, not red as it usually was. It was thick and braided wildly so that it hung suspended above her neck like loose roots from a cliff wall. It was difficult to see her face, which seemed to blend in with the night. Yet, it was her; she knew it for certain. Her eyes were round and pale orange, impossible to imitate. Brosie had been picturing them for the entire last year.

  Her mother smiled and stepped back into the shadows. When Brosie ran to touch her, she was gone. There was only the earth of the grave. She put her ear up to the dirt and heard the sound of the fan fading until it was gone altogether.

  She laid herself on the ground and stayed there.

  5

  Interlude

  It wasn’t long before Brosie surrendered to the dust. The snow had not reached the grave, and it was surprisingly warm and soft. In her lowly position, red hair shooting out and becoming infused with the canyon soil, she didn’t bother to move. Her forehead was resting on the ground; from above it might have looked as if she were praying to the ancient rock beneath her. But she was playing a reel inside her mind.

  She’s alive.

  Different, an altered version, but alive.

  And though it made her furious, she knew something to be true:

  I want to hear her voice; I need to.

  I hate my mother. She doesn’t want me.

  I love my mother, but I couldn’t make her stay. She doesn’t want me.

  Why would she? I haven’t even tried to look for her. Maybe it’s all a big test and she’s watching me and crying because I dug her a grave and I hate her.

  Brosie felt like the last drop of water drying in a once magnificent pool. But very nearby, though she could not hear it, someone was singing a song of unceasing hope.

  This child, this child

  is coming to us,

  a little hero,

  weak as dust

  but strong as

  an abandoned oxen husk.

  Amen,

  Let her story begin again,

  Amen.

  6

  Brosie’s Song

  Brosie slept in the grave until morning. When she woke up, she stood, disoriented by the unexpected light yet aware that something was wrong. Then she realized it was under her feet.

  Her feet began to feel hotter and hotter. The ground was changing, becoming liquid. It was becoming red, deepening in color by the second and boiling and popping with hot bubbles.

  She leapt up at the top edge of the grave but missed. She remembered the low roots buried against the earth walls; she placed her feet on two of them and was suspended above the boiling ground beneath. At her next attempt at climbing, she slid even further down. A bubble popped just below her ankle and splashed its scalding liquid onto her ankle. She screamed.

  The pain was immeasurable, and though she did not think she had the strength to take another shot at climbing out, she did just that.

  Only the result was the same. Grasp, miss, slip, hold, pop, scream.

  The liquid was rising. It was all she could do to climb a little higher and lift her knees up around her shoulders in the motion of a toad, to keep her feet above the rising hot puddle. But she still couldn’t make any upward progress. The lip of the grave was simply too far to reach. She realized how tired she was. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fall. Maybe the wild liquid would take her quickly. She would only have to completely let go.

  She shuddered, despite the extreme heat. That was not going to be an option.

  The liquid was very near her bottom now. She was out of second chances. There was now only to make one final leap at the lip. She lifted her raised foot even higher, just a few inches, to a thick horizontal root. It was solid, and she was anchored. In one motion of immense effort, she lifted herself on the one foot and shot up at the grassy ground of the yard above.

  Her hands touched the snowy grass . . . and slid right off.

  As young Brosie plummeted to the scalding liquid floor, she had no time to think of dramatic last words suitable for a poet. What a shame, she would have thought, if she could have thought much at all. Instead she had enough time to yell, “Oh,” before closing her eyes and waiting to become a cooked dinner for the coyotes that slept around the canyons.

  Instead, she was caught by strong arms, somehow flying just above the hot liquid—straight towards the wall of the grave. At the moment she should have been flattened by the grave wall, a hole opened up and they flew inside.

  A number of things happened in quick succession: the figure placed her on the ground in some sort of tunnel under the canyon, it threw a clod of earth at the opening in the grave, which was swallowed up before the scalding liquid could pour through, and Brosie was thrown into total darkness. After calling out with no response for a few minutes, she thought she might be alone, that the figure must have left down the tunnel without ever revealing itself.

  Surprisingly, Brosie didn’t wonder why the grave had become scalding liquid. She had had a number of experiences in her life that she couldn’t begin to explain, like the time she broke her skimboard in one of the rivulets on Worthing Hill. She’d thrown it upstream and watched it land on a rock, break in two pieces, float down the rivulet underwater, then resurface completely intact. No one else had seen it happen; no one else believed it. But she had seen, and she believed. From that day, she was skeptical of skeptics. With any new unexplainable thing happened, she would say, “I believe it.” She said it now, here in the dark, and then her mind moved on.

  Most incredibly, her back did not feel boiled, and for that she was thankful.

  The ground was slightly wet with earth and silent, refusing to give away the figure’s whereabouts. Brosie smelled a greenish smell and ran her hands along the wall. Ahead of her there was what felt like a canopy of ivy, behind which was open space. She felt around the walls, which formed a circle of neat, packed earth—too neat to be natural. The tunnel seemed to be man made.

  She walked through the ivy, unable to resist the urge to find out where the passage led—and of course, there was nowhere else to go.

  * * *

  At least an hour must have passed. At first, when she had entered the tunnel, Brosie had very little time for thinking and spent most of her energy trying to feel where she was going. Soon she mastered the art of feeling through the darkness and the walls to guide herself, and she started thinking.

  This was the tunnel her mother had disappeared into. She must have come back during the night, must have been the one who saved her from the boiling liquid. She was here, somewhere. This was probably another test. That was why her mother had left her in the tunnel alone. Could she find her way in the dark, use her brain to navigate the passages? If she was truly worthy of her reputation, she would remain fearless in total darkness.

  But with every step, she imagined the tangerine eyes from her nightmare approaching in the darkness, and small pangs of fear would shoot out from her stomach and into the rest of her. On the outside, she forced herself to show none of this, in case her mother was watching.

  Eventually, Brosie knew there was not much room left on her current path. Totally in darkness, she had found her way here by holding her arms out against the winding, slimy walls, but they were becoming closer and closer together, on a path to eventually meet and block the way. She held her arms straight out so she wouldn’t feel the surprise of meeting the wall with her nose.

  But she didn’t run into a wall, even after a minute of walking. And when she held her arms out to the sides, there were no walls there anymore either.

  She was lost, in complete darkness, with nothing but the ground to feel her way. She was, however, determined not to lose her head, and so she shuffled to the left, holding her arm out and trying to keep her body facing the same way. There was nothing but air there. She tried the right. Emptiness as well. She closed her eyes, and there was no difference in her vision from when they were open. Nothing
made a difference.

  Then, as in a dream, she heard the soft sound of a harp, muffled and far-off but still audible. It was not a heavenly melody in the typical sense. The notes were not light or elongated. It was the most haunting song she had ever known, a melancholy refrain that sounded so honest that she felt a similar elation, she supposed, to the feelings that older girls felt when they spoke of love. With the sad, pleading staccato of the harp, she had a mystery to live for.

  She followed the sound; the music grew louder. She tried a step away from it; the music was much more quiet than it should have reasonably been. Then she followed it completely, hearing the sweet haunt of melody fill whatever chamber she was now in more and more. Soon light pulsed into life, and she could finally see her surroundings. She was no longer in a tunnel.

  Instead, she was advancing over a thin, versicolored bridge that stretched the distance of a small field to a platform she couldn’t yet describe. From the bridge came soft light akin to the glow of embers. Only the bridge and platform were lit up, and if she were judging by sight alone, she might have been suspended in the middle of the heavens themselves, somewhere in the space between planets or entire worlds. She stretched out her arms and felt nothing, nor were there any safety ropes or rails of any kind in her view.

  Oh, but what a beautiful bridge, she thought. She could have stood for hours picking out all the many colors she could think of, for they were not meshed together but were separate flecks all across the bridge, each giving off a bit of light of its own color. The surface was also very slick.

  I believe it, she thought.

  She was wary of falling, but felt a thrilling impulse to walk the bridge at the same time. Carefully, she made her way to the platform, treating the ground like ice, though it was not quite so slippery or cold. Soon she saw exactly what was awaiting her.

  It was a fountain, made of stone and small enough that only two girls of her length could measure from one side to the other. Behind the pool were three pillars draped in ivy. The one in the middle was lower than the others.