Root (42 page)

Karla. Not the prettiest name.

I couldn’t even remember exactly what she
looked like anymore. It had been so long and our contacts had been
so few and brief. But as I climbed that trail, flashes of
remembrance came to me through the darkness.

Asymmetric bangs shielding intense eyes, one
scarred but that one flaw in their beauty rendering them all the
more spectacular. The pixie-like and otherworldly proportions of
her cheeks and chin.

Could it be that face never existed on this
side of life? Might she sport a different visage in Inverness?
People did weave flesh in Root, did they not? Bern and Lille had
both altered their looks and Luther/Arthur’s face was in a
perpetual state of flux. But if Karla had modified her face, why
would she have retained those scars?

I paused to unzip my pack, grateful now for
the biscuits and plums that George’s wife Iona had made me take
along, as well as a bottle of sweet well water filled from their
tap.

It was dead silent out here except for the
wind. For the first time, perhaps in my life, I heard not a single
internal combustion engine.

I looked behind me at the lights of Braemar,
surprised by how far I had come already, how high I had climbed. My
progress encouraged me, but I also couldn’t help wondering if it
would have been smarter to take George’s advice and spend the night
in town, even if it had to be in another nest of cardboard. It was
terribly lonely up here.

The wind came in squalls that whipped across
stands of stunted firs, whipping the bejeezus out of them. I zipped
up my hoodie all the way. Despite my exertions, that air was
nippy.

That wedge of cloud coming out of the west had
consumed a good quarter of the sky. It and the moon were on a
collision course. I stepped up my pace. It would suck to have the
moonlight disappear. The only light source I carried with me was my
Timex Indiglo watch and that wasn’t going to be much
help.

Hour after hour I climbed, expecting to have
reached the top of something every time a surmounted a height, only
to find the trail climbing ever onward. The land rose in giant
steps, steepening and then leveling and then brought to the base of
the steepest pitch yet.

As I hauled myself this rockier stretch, all
trace of forest disappeared other than a few groves tucked into the
hollows like islands. The rest of the land was carpeted in heather
and stone. With no more trees to intervene, the wind was free to
molest me.

I topped a ridge to be greeted by a blast of
hurricane force wind and hunkered down a boulder to catch my
breath. The path, much narrower now, descended. It remained an
obvious strip worn through the heather, but I was getting nervous
about the proximity of that cloud bank to the moon. I had a ridge
between me and Braemar now and not a hint of civilization apart
from a distant pair of headlights across the moor.

The trail relaxed again and began to rise and
I could see the first inklings of the pass that would take me over
the height of the land. It was a massive notch between two
mountains, their shoulder forming a perfect parabolic curve, like a
giant thumb pressed into clay.

The way ahead was clear now. I simply had to
follow the path of least resistance, the lowest lay of this land
through the pass. The slope now was severe and unrelenting. The
only way forward was up.

So far I had come and yet I had the sense that
I had much farther to go. Somehow, it didn’t feel like I was
getting any closer to Karla. I had this vague sense that coming up
this path had only led me farther away. Only topping that rise
would ease the anxiety eating at me.

I found a plodding pace I could maintain
without having to stop every ten steps. And then, like a dimmer
switch the glow washing the landscape faded as the moon dove under
the cloud front. The clouds, not satisfied with this sacrifice,
consumed the stars one by one. Darkness socked me in and my pace
slowed as I took care with each step, feeling the uneven footing
for a solid purchase.

I stopped for a drink at a spring, guided to
it by its trickling. There could have been ice cubes in that water
it was so numbingly cold. A light mist began to fall—just enough to
bead up and dampen the surface of my hoodie. The chill penetrated
whenever I lingered too long. I had to keep moving to stay
warm.

Far above I was heartened to see a faint light
that I hadn’t noticed before. It flickered like a fire. It meant
there were people about, but it was just a far off pinpoint.
Nevertheless, it rallied my spirits and gave me something to home
in on in my climb. Maybe I’d find some amiable backpackers sipping
hot broth around a campfire.

The mists had just been a prelude to a steady
drizzle punctuated with bouts of harder rain. My hoodie absorbed it
like a sponge. Shivers shuddered through me. I could not reach the
source of that light soon enough, and yet as I climbed, it did not
seem to be getting any closer. Were it not for that light, I might
have given up and turned back to Braemar in defeat. But that light
gave me just enough hope to continue on.

The squalls came on and off. The clouds above
ripped open long enough to send the occasional moon and starlight
to show me how far I had drifted off the trail. I came to hulking,
multi-armed mass of blackness at one point, freaked out by its
shape only to find it was a sign post at a branching in the trails.
I traced the engraved letters with my fingers to discover words
that meant nothing to me.

The first set of names—it was hard to
read—something something Bothy—meant nothing to me. But the
second—Lairig Gru—was the drover’s path indicated on that tourist
map. So that was the way I went.

The path rose immediately and would not stop
rising. For the first time since I started, I couldn’t maintain a
continuous pace but had to stop every hundred strides or so to
catch my breath and ease the burn in my legs. But whenever I
stopped for very long, a shivering kicked in that could only be
eased by continued exertion. But as the rain came down harder, I
began to shiver even as I climbed. I knew that was a bad sign, but
I kept on keeping on.

Somehow, that light I had spotted didn’t seem
to be getting any closer. Only my position relative to it seemed to
change. I was swinging around it and rising above it. And then it
began to recede behind me. Apparently, the light was tucked in some
valley I was climbing above.

I wasn’t about to climb back down and cede all
the high ground I had gained. Maybe that was stupid and stubborn,
but I didn’t care. I wanted to get to Aviemore as soon as possible
and I knew that the Lairig Ghru would get me there. I probably
wasn’t thinking straight by that point.

I started getting sleepy. Weird, how those
patches of scrub in the lee of the boulders suddenly looked so
comfortable. They might as well have been memory foam
mattresses.

My thoughts took their sweet time forming up
and translating into actions. Every step took focus and effort. It
was like being on high-powered sedatives. Some little piece of
rationality trapped under all that fog started to panic. I had
matches somewhere deep in my pack. It seemed prudent to try and
build a fire out of the wind. But what would burn in all this slop?
I kept slogging ahead.

Between the squalls, the clouds sometimes
parted and the starlight betrayed the shape of the land around me.
I was in the bottom of a sloping bowl. There was really no choice
of path anymore. The way forward became obvious and inevitable. I
had to pass through that U-shaped valley. There was little sign yet
that it would level off. For all I knew it would keep rising into
the heavens.

The clouds always moved back in and sealed up
the rifts, squelching all light. They resumed spitting their sleet
at me, as if I had insulted them by daring to walk to Aviemore.
What did they have against me? I was just passing through. I meant
no disrespect.

And then the shivering kicked in big time. I’m
not talking about a little shudder you could send away by zipping
up your jacket a little tighter. I’m talking about a full body
tremor that rippled like an earthquake of the flesh. Heat-robbing
moisture had passed through every seam and layer of my
clothing.

That was when the little piece of rationality
sealed deep in my brain realized the magnitude of the mistake I had
made. I was never going to make it to Aviemore, never mind
Inverness. I was going to die on this mountain tonight and it
scared me. I had never felt loneliness so deep. With such a death,
what would become of my soul?

Chapter 38: Faeries and
Ogres

My feet stopped obeying me. I wanted them to
rise and swing and plant but they refused. I just stood there,
sleet slapping at my cheeks, until there was nothing else to be
done but sit down and make myself comfortable.

I settled into a patch of soggy grass, and I
as I sat there, the chill transformed itself into a mild burning,
as if I had rubbed Ben-Gay all over my body. I told myself that the
rain splatting my face had turned warm although frozen specks
continued to sting my cheek.

My panic had subsided. I was sure everything
was going to be okay. I just had to wait out the storm till
morning. I suppose I should have pulled one of the plastic bags out
of my pack and fashioned a poncho, but I let the precipitation have
its way with me.

I slid off the stone I had been perched on and
hunched into a ball, unable to sustain any posture. As I stared
into the darkness, a yellowish glow suffused the landscape, and it
seemed to come from nowhere in particular. It was if my eyes had
spontaneously acquired the ability to pick up light intrinsic to
the stone and heather.

And then down the trail, a string of lights
came around a rise and made its way towards me, bobbing and swaying
as if borne by legged creatures. Hikers with head lamps? But the
lights were dim and they flickered like flames.

I smiled, cozy in my newfound warmth and
looked forward to the parade. As they threaded through the boulders
I could see I was way in my estimates of scale. The things
approaching were Barbie-sized, their lights not much brighter than
burning matchsticks. Little people, on foot or riding in carts
pulled by goats. A faerie caravan.

Those in the vanguard wore armor of tree bark
and nut shells. Jagged crystals gleamed at the end of hollow reed
pikes twice their height. Glowing orbs dangled from twists of vine.
Grim-faced, they lowered their pikes as they passed me, worried I
might attack. But I just smiled and waved as they went
by.

Families rode in wagons made of gourds and
wicker. Elders and cute, little faces huddled under blankets
against the sleet, marveling at my gigantic form. Haggard parents
walked alongside the goats in blinders and saddles, leading them by
tethers or guiding their reins from benches.

Something clattered in the dark of the boulder
fields behind me. A band of squat and shaggy bipeds hopped between
boulders, converging on the faerie’s path. One of them, some kind
of imp I would guess, saw me look. It came over to investigate, its
face bearded like a Yorkie dog’s but bearing a monkey’s inquisitive
eyes. It carried a club fashioned from a knotted branch and studded
with blackberry thorns.

It studied me from behind a cairn, pressing
gnarled fingers to its lips as if telling me to keep silent. I
never intended to heed its warning, but I couldn’t move and I
couldn’t. I just lay there, paralyzed, unable to do more than
watch.

The imp came up to me and grinned.

“
On the way out, are you?” it said,
in a raspy whisper.

I struggled to respond, barely able to
manipulate my lips and tongue, and somehow managed to find and form
words. “Out? What do you mean?”

“
Die in peace,” it told me. “And
mind your own business.” It hopped off into the darkness, rejoining
the rest of its band.

My arms flailed and my legs kicked out. I rose
to my feet, teetering, and called out to the faeries.

“
Imps! It’s an ambush! Watch
out!”

Something stung the back of my knee. It felt
like sharp, little teeth clamping down. I swatted but found nothing
there.

The faeries whirled into action, taking refuge
behind their wagons, the children protecting the goats with pikes,
while the adults male and female sending off flights of pencil-long
arrows from bows half again their height.

The caravan crept along past me, taking with
it its glow and the imps retreated back into the darkness. I
collapsed back into the heather.

What was this? An illusion? A hypothermic
hallucination? Or was it a window into yet another ante-afterworld
visible only to those humans who skirted the fringes of death, like
Root but having no connection to suicide?

Did these domains go serve more than merely
the suicidal and hypothermic? Did the drowned, the gut-shot and
cancer-ridden own their own custom portals to death?

I sank against the rocks, my mind going fuzzy
again, unable to rationalize what I had witnessed any more than I
already had. What the imp had told me was true. I was never going
to see Karla again. Ever. I was never going to leave this
mountainside alive.