Page 82 of Fire in Stone

Wind played with the folds of Ertee’s robe. With her hood down, the loose strands of her hair whipped around her face. She spread her arms wide, the wind instantly catching the voluminous sleeves of her robe. They billowed like a pair of crimson wings.

Did she wish she could fly to her beloved? Free like only birds or dragons could be?

She leaned forward into the abyss of the sky beyond the mountain.

“They’ll kill her,”Ertee had said.

“I’m not strong enough to live without her…”Her words echoed in my mind.

A realization struck me like a lightning bolt. Ertee wasn’t looking for a place to spend the night. She didn’t want to live long enough to see another sunrise.

Dread seized my limbs. I opened my mouth to scream a warning.

The last ray of sunlight flickered and disappeared. The fabric of Ertee’s clothing froze, stiffening against the wind. Her hair stilled, forming a stone halo around her face etched with sorrow.

Some indiscernible part of physics must have shifted when the live body turned to hard stone. While the woman had managed to balance on the very edge of the cliff with her body leaning forward, the statue tipped over.

It plummeted off the mountain, crashing onto the sharp rocks below. Ertee’s reddish stone shattered to pieces, streaming past me in a river of gravel and dust. In the dying post-sunset glow, it looked like red blood against the black rocks of the mountain.

“Ertee!” A sob tore from my chest.

She was gone. There was nothing but a river of rubble left from a woman who was alive and breathing just a moment ago.

My hands shaking, my fingers slipping off the rocks, I climbed down as fast as I could. Once I reached the wall of the courtyard, instead of climbing back inside, I climbed out onto the path that led to the river.

Then, I ran.

I ran, tripping on the loose rocks and slipping on ice as the sky above me grew darker. Clouds crowded over me, smothering the stars above. Staggering down the path, I found my way mostly by touch and following the crashing sound of the river rapids.

Down and down I ran, away from all the death and devastation. I had to get out of this world where people turned to stone before hurling themselves off mountains to die. Where women were chained and muzzled for defending themselves and those they loved. Where nothing made sense. And where I was alone, more alone than I’d ever been in my life.

Tears streamed down my face, the wind smearing them on my cheeks with biting cold. I wiped them with my sleeve, coming to a stop at the water’s edge.

The river roared and churned, its white-crested rapids looking like tormented ghosts in the darkness of the night. Their roars sounded like groans of tortured souls.

Somewhere up this terrifying stream was the portal to my old world. I just had to find it. Then, I could get out of this nightmare.

A steep wall of rock stood in my way up the riverbank. Its edge jolted out into the dark foaming water. The rocks were covered in ice and powdered with snow. I had to climb over to move upstream.

I took the cumbersome robe off, then tucked my skirts up, ready to climb. Splaying my hands on the freezing rock, I paused.

Sorrow was wringing my heart, but a spark of common sense shone in my troubled mind. Climbing the slippery rocks in the dark carried a strong chance of me slipping and falling either on the sharp rocks below or into the icy river to my right. Either way, I’d die.

Even if I made it over the cliff, even if I saw the portal over the stream, without Elex to fly me through it, I’d have to swim for it. I could easily miss it in this strong, icy current. And again, I would die.

What would happen if, against all odds, I got lucky, went through the portal, and returned to the human world?

“You can never land in the same time and place as you left,”Elex had said.

I didn’t want to land at the exact same moment when Chris and his goons showed up at the creek. But would any other time be better?

I let go of the rock and sat on the path, drawing my robe around me for warmth.

Human history was wrought with violence. In its entire timeline, there’d be but a tiny sliver where I could reasonably expect to survive. Any other time was filled with so much danger for a single woman who would appear out of nowhere without status, family, or any means to support herself.

Depending on the place I’d land, I could be burned as a witch, owned as property, sold, killed, tortured, raped… There practically was not a moment in the entire human history when I didn’t risk being raped.

This world might be brutal and harsh, but the one I’d come from wasn’t better. Maybe the future of humanity was brighter. Maybe there was a time on Earth, hundreds or thousands of years into the future from when I was born, when personal safety and respect were guaranteed to everyone. Or maybe there was not. Knowing human nature, I didn’t hold much hope.

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