Veracity (50 page)

Niels, noticing this, walked over to him, carefully watching the ground as he stepped, as not to ruin any of my tracks. "What are you doing?" he asked. His voice, which had sounded a touch impatient, could just be heard above the water.

Aimil continued smiling up at the bird, holding his hand out hopefully. "It's Joshua's," he said, matter-of-factly, and took his eyes off the bird for only a moment to point at the remnants of the cage that were leaning against the back of the hut.

With this new information, Knut, who had circled the hut watching the raven, looked down at the ground for a moment, remembering something. Then his face lit up, and he dashed back inside the building. His quick movements caused the others to begin walking back from the trees, and when he burst out through the door again, they could all see him holding the raven's feather high in the air with the greatest of conviction. Though, no one really seemed to understand what this signified - myself included. Nor, I think, did Knut. True, he had linked the feather on the table with the bird in the sky, but from that connection, he could only be making a haphazard guess. It just happened that his guess was right. He waited until everyone was looking at him before he exaggeratedly mouthed the words 'he's still here'.

With this, the crew clutched their spears again, looking over their shoulders and bending their knees, readying themselves for battle, as if I'd raised a massive army in the few minutes that they'd lowered their guard, and was about to ambush them. They began to spread out once more, only searching more intently this time, a growing circle of busy heads scanning the ground.

My limbs drew in closer to my torso, my body trying to make itself smaller, more discreet.

I watched Knut, as he seemed to be the most frenzied of them all, the most consumed, his lips pursed into a tiny line, wide eyes raking across the grass and dirt, getting ever closer to the place I was hidden.

I started to move my arm, very slowly, reaching back, my hand weaving through the folds of the blanket to get the knife. I didn't know what I intended to do with it. I had no plan, no strategy.

I watched as Knut's eyes fell across the set of footprints that would lead directly to me, saw him follow the tracks until he reached the dirt that had just been disturbed, the soil that had drawn in the moisture of the evening, unnaturally spilling its darkness over the dry. His gaze rose slightly higher, and he squinted directly at me, trying to make out movement, trying to decipher my shape.

I could do nothing but stare at him, stock-still and breathless, feeling the sting of regret that I hadn't slit his throat when I had the chance.

The raven cawed somewhere above us.

Finally, his expression softened into recognition, and he took a hand off his spear and pointed a rigid finger at my face, "He's there!" he screamed. "He's right there!"

My ears rang. It was over.

Instinctively, I stood up. Then I jumped out into the light with the knife in my hand, and twisted my body to throw it as hard as I could in Knut's direction. I remember seeing him fall to the ground to duck from it, covering his head with his arms. Unfortunately the knife widely missed its mark, and I heard it clang and bounce twice off of rocks as I turned upstream. I started to run, huge steps pulling me forward.

They were shouting directions and encouragements to each other as they filed into line behind me, running as fast as I was, or faster. To the raven, we must have looked like a furious procession of swinging arms and plunging legs, a queue of gangly animals with inconsistent coats, who chose to impede their natural gait by holding onto long sticks for no apparent reason. But there was a reason, of course, which became evident when one of those sticks was hurled into the air, landing in the soil just to my left. Another flew over my shoulder, rattling between the rocks on the bank in front of me.

So I wasn't thinking about the trap I'd constructed when I veered to my right and started up the hill; it was simply the only option I had to make myself less vulnerable to the spears. But when I saw the mesh of boulders right in front of me, and getting closer, I remembered, and I had the distant feeling that things were beginning to fall into place.

I ran up to it and grabbed onto the release mechanism, squatting down and pushing the thin log upwards as hard as I could. Nothing budged. There wasn't a creak or a splinter, nor the least bit of movement. I leaned against the corroded wires and took in a few breaths of air, shooting a look down the hill. Toivo was closest, doing his utmost to get to me while I was stopped. The others were close behind, Knut among them, trying to get ahead, hoping to be close to me when it happened, when someone finally drove the knife-end of their spear into my flesh. Mikkel, however, was still at the bottom, and I could hear him barking commands for everyone to stop, to come back; he'd even screamed the word 'trap'. But it was no use, they were caught up in the chase, they had become deaf and blind to everything but blood. Which was fine by me.

I grabbed the thin log again and pushed up with every bit of desperate energy I had, my muscles trembling under the weight, until I heard a snap. I continued to push until I heard another snap, followed quickly by another. The sounds were being made as the reinforcements, which tied the log to the wire mesh, ruptured. The massive rocks began to shift in their dainty cage, and then to crawl forward, rumbling as they ground against each other, until finally, the rusted structure burst open in several places at the same time, and released the boulders onto the slope.

Toivo, who had almost reached me, was the first to recognize the jeopardy they were in. He stopped dead in his tracks, and after pausing for only an instant, spun on his heels and began running back down the hill. He leapt past the others, and there was something so desperate in his movements that caused them to stop and look up. One by one, they focused on the rolling boulders for the same petrified instant, came to the same conclusion, and whirled around to retreat in a wave of flinging hands and bouncing heads, which rode above a cloud of dust and dirt that they were turning up, spears arcing through the air as they were cast aside. The boulders tumbled close in their wake, gaining sluggish speed and digging deep holes into the hillside as they collided with the soil. It was patently understood that if they didn't win the race to the bottom of the slope and scuttle to one of the sides, they would be killed.

I watched the mayhem unfold, stupidly remaining there, feeling somewhat satisfied with the panic I'd caused. I could see Knut's blonde hair through all the chaos, and concentrated only on him, wishing that he would fall, that he would lose his balance and miss the thinning window of time to get out of the way. I pictured him holding up his arms as one of the boulders sunk into his body, and could imagine the dull clatter of his bones cracking beneath his skin. I bent my every will toward this, wishing for it to happen, watching the spinning surfaces of the rocks and hoping, with every ounce of my being, that they would quash the life from him. But, in the end, he would live. They would all live.

I watched them round the corner, shoving and fighting to get in front of one another, the boulders passing just behind them and crashing into the river with watery clunks and wide-fanning splashes.

And all at once, I seemed to wake from the idiotic daze that was keeping me there. I started scurrying along the slope until I met up with the river again, and continued running upstream. When I got to the rope, I didn't turn around to see how far they were behind me; I only jumped onto it and started hoisting myself up. As soon as I'd climbed into the shrubs, I turned and quickly yanked on the line, hoping they wouldn't already be ascending it, as I no longer had a knife to cut it. But it was free of weight, and I hauled it up, hand over hand, as fast as I could. When the entire length of it was tangled in the branches around me, I felt safe enough to look down into the canyon. I saw Niels there, looking up at me, his spear in hand. His expression was neutral, calculating, wondering how I'd accessed the top to tie the rope in the first place, and probably already thinking over ways he could do the same, knowing that they would have to get to that same place in order to pick up my trail. Then he looked past me for a moment, up into the morning sky at my back. I didn't have to hear the raven to know what he was looking at, but it called out nonetheless.

I untied the rope and stuffed it inside the blanket, thinking that at least this way, they would all have to fight through the tangled barrier of shrubs to get there. Then I slung the blanket over my chest, turned into the bushes, and started running for my life.

41

The bushes had grown back quite a bit, and the spines, having healed and replaced themselves, caught and ripped both the blanket and my skin as I passed through them, beads of blood seeping from the scratches on my arms and under my shirt. As I didn't have a knife, I had no choice but to twist and yank out some of the new branches that were netting the spaces I'd cleared, ripping telltale scars along the bark and leaving an incredibly easy trail to follow.

After a long battle, I jumped into the other end of the canyon and began heading up the river. I kept up a good pace, only slowing down every now and then to throw a piece of dried fruit in my mouth and drink from the stream, water still dripping from my chin as I hurried on. When I made it past the giant rock where I'd seen the Creature, I could tell, judging by the sun in the sky, that I was moving faster than I had that day. Which was crucial, knowing that the ground I gained while they fought through the bushes to access the trail was the only thing I had in my favour.

There were times during that first day - while rushing over the rocks, my arms out to the sides to help me balance - that I would catch a glimpse of the raven watching me from a branch that hung over the bank. It would fly away as I approached, but would always reappear later on, a flashing set of eyes over my shoulder, a kind of obscure, recurring presence.

I travelled until after dark, until it had become too dangerous to continue (as twisting an ankle or cutting one of my feet would have slowed me to a crawl, making the chase that much shorter for them). I felt my way to the soil under a tree and wrapped myself in the blanket, staring out into the dark, wild, fidgety. And, afraid of sleeping through even a few minutes of the morning's usable light, I chose to stay awake, to watch the grey rocks beside the river until they had enough shape and definition to step on again.

On the second day, the river began to cut into that other zone of vegetation that I'd sighted when I encountered the Creature. It was just as sparse as I'd thought it would be, and would have made for easy travel were I not so reluctant to move away from the stream. The reason I was hesitant was that, not only was it difficult to find water on the mainland, but the fact that I didn't have sandals meant I wouldn't be able to move nearly as fast as I could on the rounded rocks and stretches of loose pebbles beside the river. I imagined myself heading into the sparse trees, swerving in every direction to try and mislead them, hobbling over the thorns and sharp rocks as they fanned out behind me with their sturdy footwear and well-honed tracking eyes, effortlessly gaining ground. No, I was sure that moving away from the river would put me at a disadvantage in every way; so I decided to continue along it, gambling on the hope that I would come across a better option somewhere along the way. And until I found or thought of that option, I would just have to move as fast as, or faster than they were.

And I have to admit that, on the second night, after finding a tree to wait under in the dark again, I thought that was exactly what I'd done. I was exhausted, having run at a decent speed for most of the day, but was also somewhat smug, leaning back, convinced that I'd managed to widen the gap between us, that the number of frenzied miles I'd travelled would be impossible for the worn-down crew to match. I settled between the roots of the tree, staring in the same obsessive way at the rocks in front of me, waiting for enough light to keep running. As it happened, there was a light breeze against my face, which, after a few hours, would carry with it an unmistakable message. It was incredibly weak and fleeting when it came, but the smell could not be mistaken. Smoke. I couldn't stop myself from swearing aloud when I was sure of it, pounding a fist on the hollow-sounding earth beside me. They had made torches, and were continuing to cover ground through the night.

Yet, I also knew that tracking me - by distinguishing overturned pebbles from the ones that weren't, or finding a barely-missing footprint in the fine silt covering of a rock - would be impossible to do by torchlight. Which meant that the only thing the crew were really concerned with
was
covering ground, that they had no
reason
to track me, that somehow they were confident in predicting where I was going. Maybe this was because they had maps and knew that this was the only watercourse nearby, and that if I ventured away from it I would eventually die of thirst. Or maybe, as they could see from my tracks that I didn't have footwear, they had figured out that the smooth rocks beside the water were the only part of the terrain I could run on, and so would be forced to stay there to move as fast as them. Maybe the only challenge they saw in catching me was in simply closing the distance between us, which, it seemed, they had already found a way to do.

But then it crossed my mind that I could use this certainty of theirs against them, that this might be the golden opportunity I'd been waiting for. Because while the crew were travelling through the dark, it would be impossible to verify whether or not I was still moving along the river; and if, with the first light of day, they realized that there was no sign of me in front of them, they would have to turn around and backtrack to the point where they had last seen evidence of me, having to search over their own tracks for the spot where I'd entered the trees. Which meant that if I could time my leaving the river to coincide with a stretch of it that they would be travelling along at night, it would buy me hours of time, maybe an entire day, and
maybe
it would even cause them to lose my trail altogether.