Page 37 of The Alien Noble's Little Human

18

ZAYA

I’m struggling badly now. An increasingly loud voice in my head is telling me to give up, but I know I have to fight it. It’s altitude sickness and exhaustion. But it doesn’t help to know the cause. The desire to rest is overwhelming.

I lift my foot with sheer willpower to take another step. I fight hard to stay upright, but I still stumble. With relief, I feel Taurek’s arm slip around my shoulder supporting me.

“Thank you,” I say, laying my head against his shoulder. “It’s here somewhere, I know it.”

The way to the roxolite, nestled in a fold at the nexus of several mountains, had been so clear, at least in my mind’s eye. Rylan went through the maps with us. But when we got separated from him, the maps were lost, too.

The physical reality of the mountains, now just identical slabs of rock buried under snow, was more than I anticipated. After finally making it past the Climbers’ Bane over two days, I regained my optimism. We were closer. But once the landscape unfolded before me, the scale made me lose perspective of what I thought I was looking for.

“We’ve been going all day, Zaya. And your color, look at your face.” He touches my cheek as we continue trudging through. “The altitude is getting to you.”

I look up at his rugged features. “But we’re so near. I can feel it.”

“If that’s so, we’ll be just as near after we’ve rested.”

“But there’s no snow coming down. Who knows when it will start again? Shouldn’t we keep trying?”

I scan the area once more. It all looks the same. White snow and black rock in the few places where the powder is scant enough for the slabs to peek through. A cold, harsh, unforgiving landscape.

I can’t pick out a single feature that would tell me where the roxolite deposits are hiding under the snow.

“I feel like I made a mistake by bringing us out here, Taurek,” I admit. “I made us risk our lives for an inkling. We don’t know if roxolite is real. Even if it is, how do we know we’ll find it? It’s like reading a fairy tale and deciding to buy magic beans.”

“Magic beans?”

“This silly story my mother told me. From Earth. This kid sells his family’s cow for magic beans. Something they tell kids to keep them from doing stupid things.”

“What happens to him?”

“His beans grow into a huge beanstalk. He climbs it into the clouds and a giant nearly eats him.”

“Sounds like an accurate description of Cloud Kingdom.” He laughs cynically, and I don’t quite get the joke. Maybe a feud between the kingdoms or something. I continue.

“Basically, he realizes even if they’re magic, that might not be a good thing. Something like that.”

“We have a story like that here. There’s an enchanted pylorx…you know about them?”

“Huge ghastly furry things with wings that fill children’s nightmares? I’ve heard about them.”

“So, this enchanted pylorx tells a Kiphian knight to bury his riches in a cavern. In a week, it’ll double. A week later, he comes and it’s all gone. The pylorx tells him to wait longer. He comes back, still nothing. There’s more, but basically, the pylorx is a thief. The knight realizes it serves him right. Lesson learned.”

“I hope we’re not living our own versions of those stories.”

He turns to me seriously. “Zaya. Those are just stories. This is real. What you said convinced Talan to come to the capital. It convinced me and the Thane. You convinced Rylan. I initiated this mission, and I am responsible for it. I’d make the same decision again. It’s our best hope. I’m sure there are stories where giving up hope is a greater catastrophe than following foolish whims.”

“Do you think this is a foolish whim?” I ask almost inaudibly.

“No. Not at all.”

It might be the altitude, but a part of me inexplicably agrees with him. Maybe I just can’t accept what it means if we learn there’s nothing out here but snow, wind, and death.

“If Rylan were around, there are so many things I’d ask,” Taurek muses. “I bet so much trivia is rattling around that snow-addled mind of his.”

“I know. I figured he was so certain of his knowledge we could count on him when we got there. I wish I would have asked.”

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