Tag: science-fiction

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Dusk fell early in the forest, with the sun lost behind the pines before it set over the mountains. In keeping with his pledge to take his time and be cautious, Christopher made sure to stop and set up his tent before the light faded. He found a little clearing with only a dusting of snow. It was still protected from the wind, but was large enough to allow several feet between his tent and a fire pit.

Despite hiking all day, Christopher felt good. Setting up the tent was straightforward, and he had time to collect some wood and start the fire before it really got dark. He used some of the prepared kindling from his pack. He collected a good pile of dry wood from the surrounding forest before sitting down to his dinner. Alongside another of the jerky and fruit bars, he boiled some water in a small pot and cooked some beans and rice with bouillon for flavor. He finished it with a reward: a small packet of freeze-dried fruit. It was hardly a feast, but it tasted incredible after a day of hiking.

As the cold settled around him, and the warm food settled in his stomach, he found himself overwhelmingly tired. For a moment, he debated whether he ought to keep the fire going, but it seemed like an unnecessary risk in the forest, where stray embers might ignite a bed of needles and give him a forest fire to wake up to.

He gathered clean snow, washing the little pot and then melting enough to refill his water bottles. There wasn’t much else to do. He used a stick to spread out the embers and threw a handful of snow over them. They sizzled and sputtered, leaving him in darkness. He looked up at the patch of sky that was visible among the trees. There were no stars to be seen in the gray-black clouds.

Christopher got into the tent, careful to knock the snow off his boots. It was cold at first, even with his thick sleeping bag pulled up around him and a mat separating him from the cold ground. However, all of the equipment did its job, and his body heat soon filled the little tent. Within ten or fifteen minutes, he was comfortably warm.

His fingers traced the shape of the wooden figurine in the darkness, vague images of its maker swirling in his head. Faces pulled from his imagination, and then from his past, and then a swirling mixture of faces. Finally, a dark place somewhere deep underground, where the faces could not be seen at all. There was nothing but the whispering voices in the blackness. The whispers surrounded him as he slept.

He woke in darkness, as a drip of cold water struck his cheek and slid down into his ear. He instinctively shifted, bringing a hand up out of the warmth of the sleeping bag to wipe it away. Several more drops landed on his face, dislodged by his motion. As he came back to consciousness, his first thought was that his breath had condensed on the inside of the waterproof tent. Maybe the temperature had dropped in the night.

It was still dark. Wind was blowing through the trees outside. He sat up, and his head rubbed across the wet fabric. Cold water trickled in his hair. The tent was small, but not that small. He should have been able to sit up comfortably. Instead, the roof and one side were pressing in on him. He could feel the pressure of snow weighing down the tent fabric.

He unzipped the zipper just enough to stick a finger through. Sure enough, there was heavy, wet snow where there had been little more than a dusting when he had gone to sleep. He considered opening it up completely, going out and trying to clear an area around the tent, but decided against it. He didn’t know how much snow had fallen. It might have been dumped from the overloaded branches above, or it might just be a blizzard outside. Either way, it would come pouring in when he opened up the tent. Better to wait until the morning.

The tent poles were bent to one side. He pushed and pulled them, trying to force the tent back into its proper shape. The floor was damp with the condensation that was running down the cold walls. His sleeping bag was damp where it overhung the sleep mat. The mat would no doubt be soaked. His pack was near his feet, but it was waterproof. He opened it and took out a spare blanket. He used it to sop up the moisture that had collected at the bottom of the tent, then wiped the walls carefully, trying to collect as much as he could without it dripping all over him.

The tent still leaned dangerously to one side. He moved his pack to shore up the half-collapsed side, and adjusted the sleep pads to mostly avoid his sleeping bag touching the walls.

The wind grew louder outside. The trees groaned and creaked. Everything was eerie in the darkness, muffled by the tent and the surrounding snow. Christopher shivered and leaned against his pack as the tent pushed back. He doubted he would get any more sleep that night.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Morning came. Once again, Christopher remembered snatches of dreams. Snow and mountains and a dark, maze-like cave. He ate without tasting his oatmeal. He stretched, feeling only the slightest twinge in his knee. Two packs and the makeshift sled were re-packed and ready by the hatch.

He sat at the table and stared at the map, then at the copied section in his notebook. He jumped as the monotone female voice came onto the radio, spoke a dozen numbers, then disappeared to another channel. There was nothing left to do, but something kept him from stepping outside.

He folded up the map and notebook and stowed them in one of the packs. Then he stood facing the hatch.

It was the feeling that he was leaving for good. This strange place had started to feel comfortable. It was hardly an ideal home, but it was an anchor in this foreign place; this insane, illogical situation that he found himself in.

He might find something better or something worse. He might get lost and die in the wilderness. He was used to a simple, uncomplicated life, as devoid of risk as he could make it. Stepping outside felt like it might be the riskiest thing he had ever done.

The hatch handle rotated smoothly under his hand. It fell into place with a thunk, and the hatch swung open. Cold air and a swirl of fine snow blew inside. The sky was a uniform gray, but it was bright outside. The sled slid out onto the snow, the second pack secured to it. The weight of his main pack settled on his slightly stiff shoulders. Without any sense of having made the choice to, Christopher found himself standing outside the closed hatch, ready to depart.

He took a deep breath and began to walk.

The footprints and sled tracks from his test run were still visible, if a little muddled by the blowing snow. It was cooler and less sunny, although he still had to shield his eyes from the snow glare after the shade of the bunker.

He had found a red burlap sack in the storage room of the bunker, and cut it into strips. One of his pockets was stuffed with them. Once he was far enough away that he could no longer see the bunker entrance, he stopped at a nearby tree and tied one of these ribbons to a low branch. This would be his trail of breadcrumbs in case he needed to find his way back.

The blank overcast turned the sun into a vaguely brighter splotch of sky, so it was difficult to tell how much time was passing, or if he was making good progress. He tried to take it easy, but his stomach felt heavy with the knowledge that it’d be a good two-day hike to the next dot on the map. Every time he stopped to tie another ribbon, he also sat for a minute and drank some water. Every other stop, he ate a bite or two from one of the strange jerky bars and consulted the map. It became a hypnotizing rhythm, and the time passed.

His test excursion had veered further south than the route he had plotted to the dot on the map. This meant that he had to eventually veer away from the familiar and head in a new direction. He wouldn’t walk through his previous campsite, although he could guess when he had reached a new record distance from the bunker and the safety it represented. That was the point where it would soon become infeasible to turn around and make it back before sunset.

He planned his route to take him past a shoulder of rock that jutted out from a much larger hill to the north-east. It was hard to tell from the map, but he hoped that it would give him a good view of his surroundings if he could climb it without too much trouble. As it turned out, the side he approached it from was one long slope, and not too steep. It seemed worth a slight detour from the ideal path for the potential view.

Christopher hiked for half an hour to reach the ridge at the top. Despite what his father had jokingly said about his own childhood, Christopher found that hiking uphill in the snow did not, in fact, seem to build character. It just made his calves burn with exertion. He wondered what his dad might be doing right now, but quickly pushed that thought out of his mind.

The other side of the ridge was not a nice slope. It was a collapsed mess of narrow shelves, sheer drops, and steep rocky inclines. The view was also less than he had hoped for. The main bulk of the hill blocked his line of sight to the north-east, which was to be expected. But the land also rose slowly upward in the direction he was headed, toward the mountain with the split peak. He could see that the area immediately ahead was a rich carpet of dark green: dense pine forest with handfuls of straight white aspen jutting up in their midst. The forest ran uphill before flattening for a while, nearly at Christopher’s eye level up on the hill. It was hard to see beyond that, until his eyes reached the distant mountainsides.

He paused, ate a little and drank, and looked at the map. Despite being more methodical and keeping his pace carefully measured, he was making good progress. Maybe even better progress than his test run. His regimen of regular food, water and rest seemed to be paying off.

He was forced to backtrack the way he had come, down the gentler slope, and then around the shoulder, to the place where the trees began to grow closer together. The air under the trees was still, and he had to open his coat collar to stay cool as he hiked in the dappled shade. The snow clung to the branches above, and that meant the needle-strewn paths beneath were easier to traverse.

He didn’t walk far before he realized that the forest posed a serious danger to him. He had very little visibility within the trees. It was hard to even see the closest mountain peaks for basic navigation, let alone see the nearby contours of the land that he could compare to the map. He could maintain his direction fairly well with the compass as long as he didn’t run into terrain that forced a detour, but he would need to get out of the trees and into open spaces again as quickly as possible to make sure he didn’t slowly veer off-course. He didn’t particularly trust his own survival skills.

The massive alien face came leering at him around a tree trunk before his brain could register it. Huge, liquid eyes above an elongated snout, framed by a shaggy beard and broad antlers. Christopher stumbled back, tripping on the crusty snow and falling backwards over the sled and his pack. The pack on his back naturally rolled him onto his side as he tried to frantically disentangle himself.

The creature was a moose. It peered at him, showing its irritation with a groan and a snuffle. It nuzzled into the decaying needles at the roots of the tree, sniffing for something, then raised its head and gave him another sideways glance before meandering away into the woods.

Christopher, finally managing to get his pack off and his feet disentangled, stared at the creature until it was out of sight, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. He had always thought of moose as cute, often soggy, totally harmless creatures. It had turned out to be harmless, but it certainly seemed huge and dangerous when it was suddenly looming over him.

From his awkward position on the forest floor, Christopher noticed something odd hanging from the lowest branches of a nearby tree. It was a shape suspended on a piece of string. He stood and looked around, just to make sure there were no more giant animals lurking nearby. Satisfied that he was alone, he walked over and stood under the thing.

The object was a little bundle with bits sticking out of it. It was definitely tied to one end of a piece of rough twine, the other end tied to the tree branch. It did not look like something that could have come to be there naturally.

Christopher jumped, then jumped again, just managing to grab hold of the thing. The twine was tied to the thin end of a healthy pine bough, and it bent under the pull, but neither the twine nor the branch broke. Christopher held the thing tight above his head while he fumbled with his left hand to find the jacket pocket where he had his pocket knife. Then he fumbled further, eventually using his teeth, to flip the blade out. He reached up and sawed at the twine until it sprung away, leaving the object and an inch or two of string in his hand.

The object was wrapped in twigs and fibers whose source Christopher didn’t recognize. The twine wrapped round it all, holding it together in a sort of pod. Within the pod was a piece of wood, clearly carved into a crude but smooth human figure. It was, without a doubt, something made by a person. Hanging from a tree. In the wilderness.

Christopher looked around again. The trees seemed darker, closer together. He half expected people to suddenly jump from the shadows. Nobody did.

He wasn’t sure how to judge how old the carving might be. Surely the sticks and twine would wear out and fall apart after some amount of time out in the elements. Surely the figurine would dry and crack. It seemed relatively new, but did that mean it was a week old? A year? Five years? He wasn’t sure.

While it felt like some monumental finding to Christopher, it did nothing to change his plans. He still only had one place to go, and standing in the woods staring at the thing wasn’t going to get him there. He checked both of the packs to make sure that nothing had been damaged when he fell. Then he secured the sled, hoisted the other pack onto his back, and set out again, looking for a good place to set up camp before it got dark.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The bald hill that God-Speaker had set as their target turned out to be larger than it had looked from a distance, but it was a very long, gradual slope. They came across no more rivers, only shallow streams that could easily be jumped or crossed with stepping stones.

Finds-the-Trail and Far-Seeing still walked together, as they always did, well away from God-Speaker. Unusually, they barely spoke. Braves-the-Storm walked by God-Speaker’s side, also saying very little, but that was more expected.

As they finally approached the top of the bald hill, Braves-the-Storm sighed deeply and said, “You did a good thing, saving him.”

God-Speaker looked over at the older man’s rough and weathered face. He stared ahead.

“I didn’t think. I just did it.”

“You acted like a leader,” Braves-the-Storm said, “but I worry that it will only make things worse.”

God-Speaker frowned. “Why would it make things worse?”

Braves-the-Storm sighed. “Think about how he must feel. He is a young man, a hunter who has always been fast and strong. His spear flies straight. He catches his prey.”

“All the things I am not,” God-Speaker said, almost to himself.

“I know things have been hard for you,” Braves-the-Storm said. “I have watched you for many years.”

God-Speaker felt a sting at the corner of his eyes, and a tightening in his chest. Just to hear this from Braves-the-Storm felt like it opened up something inside him.

Braves-the-Storm pursed his lips. “He has not felt that feeling before. The taste of it will be bitter. We should hope that he learns from it. But to him, who sees himself as the lynx or the lion, it may feel like being outwitted by the rabbit. He may not appreciate what you did for him.”

God-Speaker blinked. He had been so lost in his own thoughts that he had never even considered this. It showed the old man’s wisdom that he could see through the eyes of other men.

“You are a good leader,” God-Speaker said.

Braves-the-Storm shook his head. “I told you already, I am too old. I may not have it in me to climb another mountain.”

With those words, they reached the flat, bare top of the hill. It stood guard over a valley between two snowy peaks. Between them, the people could see far into the distance. Beyond the valley were a few smaller peaks, and beyond those was a huge swath of ice, glowing a deep blue in the sunlight where it shone through snowy patches.

They could also see beyond the ice. Stretching to the horizon was a wide land, green with grass and dotted with trees and lakes. The sun shone down warmly on those distant fields.

But off to the right, nearly hidden behind closer peaks, was a mountain. It had a jagged, uneven peak, as though it had been split. Its sides were streaked with black. Black smoke rose from that shattered peak, rising and mingling with gray clouds that squatted over it in the otherwise clear sky.

“That is a place of evil spirits,” God-Speaker said. But then he looked beyond it again, to that wide open land, free of ice and snow.

“That is the way we must go.”

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The next morning, as the people ate smoked fish and young roots, Black-Eyes-Staring, one of the older children who would soon be a man, pointed across the water and shouted. The light of the rising sun illuminated the far shore and a cluster of trees on the basin slope. Prowling out to the water, they could see a group of huge striped lions. As if in response to the boy, one of them raised his head from the water and roared. It was the sound they had heard in the night.

God-Speaker saw that Far-Seeing and Finds-the-Trail did not say any more about the wonders that awaited across the water. They said nothing as they ate, eyes squinting against the sun after a tiring night watching for eyes in the darkness.

Braves-the-Storm soon set them to work with the long tree trunks. The people lined up along one of the trunks, setting one end into the divot dug the night before, and raising it up as a group, as though they were going to plant it back into the earth. As carefully as they could, they let it fall across the river, with the strongest of the men assigned to the end of the trunk that was in the trench. They held it down as well as they could, and the far end of the trunk struck the soft dirt hard enough to put a dent in the ground on that side too. They tested it, and it seemed to stay in place reasonably well.

They did the same thing with the second trunk, although this one bounced against a rock on the far side and landed well apart from the first. Several people had to carefully roll it until it lay firmly next to the other trunk, both of them wedged into the trench on the near side of the river.

Braves-the-Storm had them tie the logs together with a long strip of good leather, a precious resource. Far-Seeing, who was good at balancing along ledges and fallen logs, took another strip and walked across. He moved carefully, not quickly, and had no trouble reaching the other side.

“It’s slippery,” he said. “It’s already wet from the night dew and the spray from the river. The bark isn’t rough enough to grip well.”

He tied the second strip of leather tightly around the logs on the other side, and adjusted them as well as he could so they wouldn’t roll or move. Then the people had to cross, one by one. Some crawled, others walked. The youngest children were given to those with the best balance, and the children who could walk went hand-in-hand with another to guide them.

God-Speaker had to carry the stone god and his pack. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the bridge and considered walking, but he saw how slick it was and decided to slide across in a sitting position, balancing his heavy load with his legs dangling over the water. He could feel his heart pumping, and he scraped his thighs on the pine bark, but he made it across.

Last to come was Finds-the-Trail. He untied the precious leather strap from the logs on his side, to take with him. Then he stepped out onto the logs. He looked sure-footed and confident, but the logs were now slick with moisture. God-Speaker and Far-Seeing held down the logs on the far side as he stepped out over the fast-flowing river.

God-Speaker envied Finds-the-Trail and Far-Seeing. They were strong and agile, while God-Speaker always felt as though he were fighting against the clumsiness of his own body. God-Speaker watched Finds-the-Trail’s feet as his toes gripped the log. The muscles in his ankles and legs flexed as he walked. He wasn’t fast, but he looked confident.

God-Speaker noticed the piece of loose bark a moment before Finds-the-Trail stepped on it. It slid from the log as Finds-the-Trail put his weight on his left foot. His left leg went over the side of the log, while his right knee slammed down, throwing all his weight after his left leg, over the side of the slippery little bridge.

Finds-the-Trail managed to grab the bridge with his right hand, leaving more than half his body hanging over the edge. Even worse, the log he hung from was rolling and twisting over the top of the other log, no longer held in place by the strap. The toes of his dangling leg brushed the freezing water rushing below.

God-Speaker saw what would happen. One log would roll over the other, and Finds-the-Trail would tumble into the river. It would wash him far out into the lake. Even a short time in that cold water would sap a person’s strength. God-Speaker saw what would happen, and he imagined what it would be like to live in a tribe without Finds-the-Trail. The moment seemed stretched and thin. He heard the others suck in frightened breath, start to shout.

Next to God-Speaker, Far-Seeing was fighting to stop the logs from turning. Nobody else was close enough to do anything. God-Speaker pushed down on his own side of the bridge, pulling his legs into a crouch under him. Then he threw himself out onto the bridge. Without his weight on the end, it flipped completely. He landed hard on his chest at an angle, his legs hanging out over the opposite side from Finds-the-Trail. He clasped hands with the hunter as he slid off the log. God-Speaker felt that Finds-the-Trail’s grip was stronger than his own, but it was enough to hold him until other hands pulled them both back onto solid ground.

God-Speaker lay in the moss and soft grass, a rock pressing on his spine, breathing hard and staring up into the blinding blue of the sky. His stomach was streaked with red scrapes from the pine bark. Finds-the-Trail landed next to him, but jumped up as if he had been burned. He stood over God-Speaker, and stared down. God-Speaker saw different expressions flit across his face in the span of a moment. Then his face went blank, and he turned and walked away.

God-Speaker lay where he had landed. He heard the sounds of talking among the people, but they meant nothing to him. His mind was as empty as the cloudless sky. A bird soared in a lazy circle far overhead.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The next day, the people packed their things and broke camp. God-Speaker made signs to the river and spoke quietly, standing apart from the others. He knew now that he was not really leaving her. He had seen how weak the barriers between the worlds could be. He could reach out and find her, if he had the skill. Still, it felt like a goodbye.

It was easy travel along the lake shore, a relaxing change from the hard scrabbling through the mountains. Their surroundings made it clear though, that this was only a break. There were more mountains in their path, regardless of the direction they chose. The sun was bright in the sky, and the snow on the slopes was melting. There were puddles in every little depression, and little rivulets running over the rocks everywhere. They crossed several small streams that had clearly only just started to carve their way through the soft dirt, growing moment by moment.

It came as little surprise then, when they came over a low hill and found a real river. It was at least as large as the river they had followed to the basin, the river of Makes-Medicine. It came over a great rushing falls far up the slope, visible by the cloud of rainbow mist, but barely a whisper of the rushing water to be heard from their place far below.

This river was not just from the spring snow melt, although it clearly had swelled in recent days. It followed a path carved deep into the rock, and it had a wide mouth that spread out well above the current lake shore. The level of the water was several feet below the lip of the river’s gorge. The water was deep and dark, and rushing fast. At its narrowest, it was too wide to jump, and though it was shallower closer to the lake, it was many times wider there. Though the weather had been warmer in the basin, it would be dangerous to wade through. Even if nobody was taken by the current, the mountain water was freezing. Pieces of ice came floating down, crunching against the rocks and showing the speed of the water.

“There,” said Far-Seeing. “Not even a day of good travel before our way is blocked.”

He squinted and shielded his eyes from the sun, looking across to the far shore of the lake. “It looks like easy terrain on the other side.”

Braves-the-Storm looked in the opposite direction, away from the lake and up the slopes of the basin, toward the falls. “The trees are better here. There is something we could try.”

The slope was soft rock, layered with rich black dirt and green with moss, grasses and shrubs. It was enough soil for a decent number of pines to find places for their roots to take hold. There were a few that rose straight and tall. They could provide enough wood for a few days of fires at least.

“Let us stay here for tonight,” Braves-the-Storm said. “This is a good place to camp, on the hill. We could not get back to the old camp before night anyway.”

“But we will go back?” Far-Seeing asked.

“Of course,” Finds-the-Trail said, leaning on his spear set in the soft earth. “We agreed to try this way and see if it was passable, and then go around the other way if it wasn’t.”

“Another day of travel will only make more rivers of these little streams,” Braves-the-Storm said. “As long as we are here, let us try to make a bridge.”

The people were used to traveling, but they usually went around obstacles like this, rather than crossing them. Many seasons ago, when they traveled along the shore of the endless ocean, they had made small boats. Now, the knowledge of making them was lost to all but one or two. They had some knowledge of bridge-building too, but it was a rare thing to build a bridge to only be used only once, and the people rarely stayed in one place for long.

While some of the tribe gathered wood for fires, and several of the hunters went off in hopes of finding more game, Braves-the-Storm directed God-Speaker and several of the older men to the straightest, tallest trees, and they took turns chopping with their broadest stone hand-axes. The trees were as thick as a hand’s length, from fingertip to wrist. It was fairly soft wood, but it was still hard work to chop through, and they had to be careful that the tall trunks didn’t fall onto anyone. By the time they were done, their hands and tools were sticky with sap.

As night fell, they dragged the two trunks to a flat place near the river. Braves-the-Storm had them dig a trench in the dirt near the edge of the river. Then they rested and ate.

The hunters came back without having caught anything, and God-Speaker could hear Far-Seeing and Finds-the-Trail complaining about the time they were wasting on the wrong side of the lake, and speculating about better hunting across the water. Everyone else, however, seemed happy enough to have good food to eat and less freezing weather for sleeping.

That night, there were strange noises in the distance: roars and yips. The fires were kept burning bright, and several of the hunters stood guard with their spears in hand. Nobody heard anything come close, or saw any predators’ eyes reflecting the firelight in the darkness. Still, it was a potent reminder that even in this seemingly peaceful valley, the world was dangerous.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The hunters and the fishers came back to the camp within minutes of each other. God-Speaker was feeding the fires, half lost thinking through his visions. The sun was behind the mountains, but still lent its light to the sky and the tallest peaks.

The hunters had stalked around the dam, and brought back a giant beaver and two of its young. The adult was as large as a black bear, and took three strong men to carry, slung across poles made from saplings. The hunters were more tired from hauling the creature than from the hunt; it had been felled with two well-thrown spears. The beaver young were much smaller, but still large enough to make several good meals.

The fishers had also done well. One of the nets had broken, losing most of the catch, but it could be fixed. The other two had come out of the river thick with fish. After weeks with hardly any fresh food, the prospect of so much made the people giddy. There was a flurry of activity. Some of them cut fillets of the fish and prepared them to cook or smoke on simple wooden racks. They scooped the roe from the bellies of the silver fish and passed them around. The bones and bits of leftover meat were put in waterproof skins and covered with fresh water. Then the people used fire-heated rocks to heat the mixture into a soup. Meanwhile, others flayed the huge adult beaver and the smaller young and butchered them with sharp stone knives.

God-Speaker volunteered to go back along the ridge and find clean snow and ice in the shadowy places where spring sun had not yet reached. It gave him more time to be alone with his thoughts.

The people cut up the meat and offal and wrapped it in skins filled with the clean ice and snow to keep it fresh and free of flies. It also lessened the smell of fresh meat, which could draw scavengers and predators, hungry after the long winter.

That night, they feasted on fresh fish, fish stew, and the organ meat of the beavers. The mood was festive. The fires were stoked with the deadwood strewn around the basin, and it sometimes burned with hisses and hints of strange colors, reminding God-Speaker vividly of his vision.

The hunters told stories of hunts in years past. The fires burned low and the moon fell behind the mountains, leaving a clear sky of bright stars. Braves-the-Storm spoke quietly about the journeys of the tribe through strange lands that the younger people had no memory of. He talked about the open sea in storm, and wild, crashing waves peaked with white foam. He spoke of icy shores in deep winter, and the booming of cracking ice underfoot. His low voice and the steady rhythm of his words were a sort of primal music.

They slept well, tired from hard work but full and happy and warmer than they had been on the mountain slope.

It was cooler the next morning, but still comfortable when wrapped in furs. There was plenty of work still to do, smoking meat and fish to preserve it, and taking in another, smaller haul of fish. The fires had to be fed, and the people now needed to go further and further to find wood. There were bits of old driftwood and long-drowned trees, but the only living trees in the basin were young saplings.

God-Speaker busied himself gathering wood and helping with other tasks here and there as he saw need. He had no particular skill in butchering animal or fish, or in preserving the meat or preparing the hides. Like any member of the tribe, he knew enough to participate in those tasks, but he had no names given to him for skill in these things as others did.

The people stayed at camp that day, but talk turned to travel again. As they took their mid-day meal, Braves-the-Storm sat near God-Speaker, Far-Seeing, and Finds-the-Trail. He chewed a piece of fish and nodded to God-Speaker.

“We followed the river to her ending, and she has given us a great spring bounty. We have new strength and we have good weather. We must give thought to the journey ahead.”

“We have only just arrived here,” Far-Seeing said. “Are there no more fish in the river?”

Finds-the-Trail smirked, but he said, “Fish are as good when your belly is aching from hunger, but I want more game to hunt. The animals are hungry after the long winter. They will come to the open water, but we will have to walk the shore to find them.”

Braves-the-Storm nodded. “There is the problem of wood, too. We cannot stay here and keep our fires lit. Already we must walk a long way to find wood. We might find another place like this further down the shore, with fish or game, and more trees.”

God-Speaker was hesitant to speak up, but he felt a tightness below his heart. The stone god hummed next to him.

“When we first came to this place…I had a vision,” he said.

Braves-the-Storm frowned. “Why did you not speak of this?”

“It was not urgent. There was much to do and I thought it could wait.”

“What did your vision tell you?” Braves-the-Storm asked.

God-Speaker pointed across the lake. “There is a hill there that looks like a bald head. It stands in front of a wide valley between those two mountains. If we travel along this side of the lake, we can climb that hill and see what lies beyond. My vision guided me toward that place.”

“That’s it?” Finds-the-Trail asked. “Go to the top of a hill and look around? I could have told you that the best place to see your surroundings is from a high place.”

“It is warmer here, near the lake,” Far-Seeing said. “Now is the time to stay and gather what we can. Fill our packs.”

“We can travel along the shore and still hunt and fish as we go,” Braves-the-Storm said.

Far-Seeing looked out across the lake. “There is another thing. Over along the opposite shore, I see more trees. The land looks like it makes shallower slopes. The streams from the mountains look small and easier to cross.”

He pointed down the shore on the left side of the lake. “This side looks more dangerous. There are fewer trees and that river looks much more broad.”

God-Speaker frowned. “It will take many more days to go around the other way to the bald hill.”

Braves-the-Storm took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “The streams from the mountains will run faster every day. Crossing rivers will be dangerous. We should avoid that if we can.”

God-Speaker’s vision had not been specific. How could he translate vague feelings into urgency?

“I do not know. I do not want to leave the river either. But I am called to that hill. If the rivers are growing with the melting snow, it may be easy to cross now, and impossible in a few days.”

Braves-the-Storm nodded. “You make a good point. Perhaps we should try the shorter path, along this side of the lake. If it proves unsafe, we can go back and try the long way.”

God-Speaker nodded in agreement. The two hunters frowned, but they didn’t argue. The matter seemed settled, for now.

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Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The mountain steppes gave way to gentler, gravel-strewn slopes. The people continued to follow the deep gorge carved by the river as it fell through a series of falls. The air grew warmer, and soon the mist coming off the rapids and falls landed wet on the rocks around the canyon, instead of turning to ice.

They came to a rock shelf, and standing at the edge they looked down into a huge basin: a low point between the many mountains all around. The river fell over the cliff in a roaring falls, then cut across the flat ground of the basin toward a lake pooled at the center. However, before it could reach its destination, it was blocked by a pile of felled trees. This dam had backed it up to form a smaller pond. From there, it cut a new, shallower path around the blockage and found its way by a longer path toward the larger body of water.

A murmur ran through the people as they gathered on the ledge. The dam meant there would be giant beavers who had wintered in this warm valley. However, other streams glinted along the slopes around the basin. The lake would be growing daily as the spring melt from the mountains funneled down into the basin. It would cover the dam, and possibly fill the entire area. The beavers might already have fled the rising waters.

They had to leave the river and walk along the ridge until they found a place where a slope gave them access down. Once they reached the basin floor, travel to the beaver pond was easy. The ground was thick with green growth, thanks to the rich soil surrounding the lake.

They stopped to make camp in the early afternoon within sight of the beaver dam, but distant enough to avoid spooking the creatures. The hunters prepared their spears and crept off to hunt. Some of the people made fire, while God-Speaker and several others went to look at the river and get fresh water.

The river cut easily through the soft earth of the basin’s floodplain, but not through the layer of rock beneath. It was wide and shallow here. As they approached, God-Speaker could see the gleam of fish in the water. Some were small and silvery, others were larger, with pink flanks. The people filled their water skins, then returned excitedly to the campsite. As soon as there was word of fish, they unpacked nets made from braided animal sinew, carefully maintained for opportunities such as this.

Swims-in-Cold-Water was the best net-maker, and she examined each net for any broken or brittle sections. She rubbed them with a fresh coating of precious animal fat to ensure their suppleness and prevent the water from drying them out.

Hunting was the purview of the young men, but fishing was something that most of the tribe could participate in. Older men and women without young children, as well as the children verging on adulthood could all participate. The most limiting factor was the number of nets. Most of the remaining people gathered the nets up and went back to the river. Even if they couldn’t all participate, they could watch.

God-Speaker remained behind with Strikes-Flint and Cuts-Hide, the mothers of the youngest children. He found an area of soft moss and new grass where he could sit away from the noise of the children playing and meditate with the stone god. He looked out over the still water of the lake and the spring colors around the basin, up to the white peaks just starting to verge into the orange and purple of the setting sun. The colors spread across the sky.

God-Speaker listened as Makes-Medicine had taught him. With his inner voice, he asked for her guidance. They had reached the end of the river. Soon, he would have to leave her.

The stone god did not speak with words. It had rarely spoken to him since Makes-Medicine died. It hummed with life, sometimes so soft that he could barely perceive it, sometimes an almost violent vibration. That humming told him things, showed him things. The colors of spring and the colors of sunset blended and mingled. He was surrounded by color. There were no edges, no barriers between one thing and another. No barriers between one world and another. Sky and earth and water and even the invisible world of spirits were intermingled.

It was always this way, God-Speaker realized. Everything connected to everything. It was only his own weakness, his own mind turned in on itself that prevented him from seeing more than a glimpse here and there. He wondered if this revelation came from Makes-Medicine, or the stone god, or if it was simply a fact of the world that he had discovered by accident.

Makes-Medicine would be there in the spirit world. He could reach out to her, just as he could reach out to the stone god. He didn’t need the physical presence of the river or the stone. If only he could see this way all the time. If only he could believe in the permeability between one world and another all the time.

He wondered how long he had been in this state. Time had no meaning here. Even as he wondered, he felt it beginning to slip away. He wanted to hold on, but he couldn’t. He was afraid that this was some unique moment that he would never be able to recreate, but he sensed that fighting it would only cause it to dissipate faster. He let it fade slowly, savoring. As the world reformed itself around him, one thing stood out.

On the far side of the basin, just to the left of the lake from where he sat, there was a gap between two distant peaks. Blocking that gap was a wide, round hill with a bare top. It looked like the top of the bald head of some great giant almost entirely buried under the world. God-Speaker saw that the bald hill would be the perfect vantage point to look out at the world beyond those two mountains. This, he knew, was the direction the people must travel.

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