Chapter 218: The Rope

They stood among the last of the stones and looked at the wall. The wind blew out of it, cold and wet, and pushed at their faces.

"Well," said Garen at last. "That is a wall."

"It is fog," said Isolde.

"It is a wall made of fog, dear. I have seen walls with more give in them."

Vina was holding Rishin’s hand with both of hers. She had not taken her eyes off the place where the shadow had gone.

"Grandpa," she said. "Was that the thing?"

"Yes."

"Is it waiting for us?"

The old man looked down at her.

"It is waiting for anyone who walks in there by themselves," he said. "So we will not."

Isolde had rope in her ring.

She brought out a long coil of it, grey and heavy, and dropped it on the stone. A second coil followed it.

"Every match for twenty years," she said, to nobody in particular. "Rope. Every single one."

Garen picked up an end and weighed it in his hand. He looked at Logan.

"Units at the front," he said. "They hold the head of it. They cannot lose a day if they lose sight of us, and they will not mind being shouted at. The rest of us tie on behind."

"Tying on will not stop the count," said Daniel.

"No. But it will stop us walking off in the wrong direction while it runs."

Rishin had been listening. Now he spoke.

"Two by two," he said. "Face to face. One of you walks forward. The other walks backward, and keeps hold of their coat."

He looked round at all of them.

"You will be close enough to see nothing but each other’s face. That is the point. Do not look away from it. Not once. Not to look at the thing, if it comes."

Vina looked up at him.

"I walk backward," she said. "I know how."

Rishin’s hand closed on hers.

"Yes, little one," he said. "You know how."

It took longer to set up than Logan expected.

Halden took the head of the rope. Terry and Billy went beside him, and the rest of the units behind, with Link in the middle of them holding up his iron staff. Hob walked with the family. Daniel would not leave him.

They tied on in pairs behind the units, each pair a few paces apart on the long grey line. Isolde knotted every wrist herself. She pulled each knot tight and then pulled it again.

Garen and Isolde. Helen and Daniel. Bram and Edda. Rishin and Vina.

Logan and Alice went last, at the tail of the rope.

"Hundred steps each way," Daniel said. "Then we change who walks backward. I will count for everyone."

"You will lose count," said Helen.

"I will not lose count."

They walked into the wall.

The white closed over the units first. Logan watched Halden vanish, and then Link’s red flame shrink to a smudge and go out. The rope went taut in his hand and pulled forward.

Then it was their turn.

Alice was facing him. She had a fistful of his coat in each hand, and she was walking backward. Her face was a hand’s breadth from his.

The fog came over them.

It was cold. It was colder than the fog among the stones, and wetter. It went into his clothes and his hair at once. He could not see his shoulder, or Alice’s hands on his coat.

He could see her face.

It was all there was. It hung in front of him in the white, pale and wet and close, with her eyes fixed on his.

He looked at his count.

[ Time remaining: 325 days ]

It held.

They walked.

Logan could not see the rope or the ground or his feet. He could feel the rope tugging forward at his wrist, and the stone under his boots, and Alice’s fists in his coat.

He could hear Daniel’s voice somewhere ahead in the white, counting.

"Forty-one. Forty-two."

"Does it hurt?" Alice asked. "Walking forward?"

"No."

"Walking backward hurts. My calves."

"You are walking like a crab."

"I am walking like a person going backward through a cloud." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do not make me laugh. If I laugh I will shut my eyes."

He did not make her laugh. He watched water bead on her eyelashes, and he walked.

"Ninety-nine," called Daniel. "Hundred. Change."

They changed. It took a long time, turning round on the rope without letting go of each other’s eyes. Then Logan was walking backward, with his fists in her coat, and she was walking forward.

The shadow came after the fourth change.

Logan did not see it. He felt it.

The air went colder all at once, as if somebody had opened a door onto snow. The fog moved round him in a slow push, from his left side to his right. A huge body was passing close by, in the white.

He heard it. It sighed, like wind going over the mouth of a jug.

Alice’s eyes stayed on his. Her fingers had gone tight in his coat.

’Do not look,’ he thought. ’Do not look at it. Look at her.’

He looked at her.

The cold went past. The push in the fog went past. The sigh went on into the white on his right side, fading, until it was gone.

Ahead of them, Daniel’s voice had stopped counting. Then it started again, a little higher than before.

"Twelve. Thirteen."

They stopped when Daniel called a halt.

They could not lie down. They sat on the cold stone in their pairs on the rope, with their knees touching, and they leaned their foreheads together so that each could see the other’s eyes.

Logan slept that way, with his forehead against Alice’s. He woke twice. Both times her eyes were open, and both times she closed them again when she saw his.

When they woke properly, he checked his count first.

[ Time remaining: 325 days ]

"Hob," said Daniel’s voice in the white. It was low. "Hob, it is all right."

Logan knew what that meant. Somewhere on the rope, Daniel had looked at the aurochs’s panel, and it had gone down by one.

Daniel had counted to a hundred more times than Logan could keep track of when the wind came.

It came from behind them, from the stones they had left. It hit the line of the rope like a wave hitting a pier.

Logan felt the rope go slack and then jerk taut. Alice’s fists were torn half out of his coat. He grabbed her wrists and held on, and her face stayed in front of his.

Then he heard Bram.

"Edda!"

It was a roar. It tore out of the white somewhere ahead of them on the rope, and it was full of fear.

"Edda, where are you? Edda!"

Logan heard a girl’s voice answer. It was thin and far away, and it was off to the left of the rope, away from all of them.

"Papa! I cannot see! The knot slipped. I cannot see anything!"

The air on his left side went cold.

He felt the fog move. The slow, enormous push went past them, the way it had gone before. But this time it did not keep going.

It turned toward the girl’s voice.