Pins (14)

 

Abigail rushed to meet them at the opening. Emmett fell to his knees and embraced her. Snow swirled in thick waves around them. 

'Emmett, I'm cold and I peed myself,' she whispered, clinging to his arm.

'It's okay Abi,' he said, kissing her forehead. 'I near did and all.'

He took her hand and they followed Piru back down the slope, towards the brook. As they passed beneath the shadow of the giant metal hoop, he felt his shoulders spasm, and his left knee briefly buckled. Abigail held his arm and watched him with concern. It was hard to see through the curtain of flakes. 

They trudged towards Piru's veiled shape, and hit the point where they'd left the horses and their bags. Piru watched them approach and whistled twice. She ushered them over and instructed them to stand behind her. They stood trembling. Whistles drifted in response from the cliffs around them. Piru removed the small pin from her belt. She knelt and drove it back into the ground. 

Emmett heard the familiar heavy sound, as if someone had shaken out an enormous blanket. Everything was cast briefly in an ash-grey tone. He saw a profoundly complex umbrella shape spider up and over the cave, the cliffs, and the metal ellipse, before dissolving into drifting granules. 

The hieroglyphs engraved on the side of the floating hoop flared red for a moment. Night colours leaked back in, and they saw black threads scoring the air above the ground before them. The shape was restored. 

They cannot get out, Emmett thought. Piru looked at him, as if guessing what he was thinking.

'I don't like that,' Abigail said quietly. 'It's too much of a scare. This is all too much to be takin' in.'

She leaned into Emmett. He could feel her shaking again.

'Emmett, I need to get changed,' she whispered.

'Right,' he said. 'For sure. Miss Piru, are we okay to set up camp here?'

Piru looked at him and nodded. They watched the trembling black threads fade from sight. Emmett knew the strands were still there, unseen. They were standing on the outside of the shape. Eleven more pins, Piru had said. A twelve-pin shape stretching over the cliffs. A huge invisible umbrella. A protected shape. A seal that prevented gates from opening.

'You said this shape had always been here,' he said, leading Abigail to the horses. 'That your people protect it now. Does that mean they've always been there?'

'Who's they?' Abigail said, pulling at his hand.

'That is correct,' Piru said, and pulled blankets and rope from her horse's saddlebags. 'With regards to the span of our knowledge. It is a very old shape. I believe they were confined within it, during a long-forgotten age.'

Abigail stood holding a blanket he'd passed her.

'Who's they, Emmett? What all did you see in that cave?' she said, louder.

'And you don't rightly know what that thing is?' Emmett said, gesturing towards the metal hoop in the sky.

'We do not,' Piru acknowledged. 'It has been there as long as we remember. There is a clear correlation between its presence, and that which the shape guards. But as to its purpose, we do not know.'

Emmett opened his mouth to reply, but Abigail threw the blanket she carried on the ground.

'You all shouldn't ignore me like that! I'm tired of all this witchcraft and riddles you got me dragged into! I'm cold and I peed myself and my Daddy died, and - '

Piru rushed over and dropped down beside her. The brook glistened in the white sprawl beyond them. Emmett's head dropped and he shuffled awkwardly. Abigail's face was flushed and tense, and Piru placed a hand on her left shoulder.

'As did mine,' she said. 'It is a sadness that never leaves.'

Abigail's face crumpled as she spoke.

'How do you live with it?' she said, and tears lined her cheeks.

Piru held her eyes, and then drew her into a hug. Emmett pulled a fresh blouse from Buck's saddlebags, and stood clutching it behind them. He smoothed it out gently as the snow tumbled down.

*

They slept together near the brook, in a tent compromising of canvas slung over black oak branches. Abigail was asleep almost as soon as she lay down, but Emmett lay fretting for a long time. 

When he finally drifted off, his sleep was plagued with dark images. Variants of strange things he had experienced in his waking hours. He saw himself standing in an inky cave again. Dripping stalactites hung overhead. His breath was ragged. When he tried to step forward, a sticky black fluid clung to his boots. He crossed a puddle in the rugged surface, and something scuttled across it. 

The images came to him ill-formed and non-sequential. He looked down and saw a skinny bald figure sucking at a pool of fluid. It lifted its head. Its eyes were clear and lidless. It spat black oil. He backed up and brushed against something as it moved.

A harsh falsetto screech rang in his ears. The walls of the cave were crawling with little bald figures. He slipped and fell. Something scurried over his face and he awoke, shaking. 

Piru was sitting with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, watching him. Through the gaps in the opening of their makeshift tent he could see that it was still night. Wind howled outside, and he pulled the covers close. Abigail was fast asleep next to him.

'I will leave you in the morning,' Piru whispered. 'I cannot make this journey with you, and the People would not have it so. Your path is set and you know the consequences of failure. I do not wish this upon you.'

Emmett blinked. Piru appeared briefly as a silhouette opposite him. He sat up and leaned on his elbow.

'You must be aware that, more than ever, there is no common now for you,' she said, brushing strands of dark hair from her eyes. 'Until your count is rectified, it may pass at times in an arbitrary manner.'

Emmett picked at the blanket. The canvas around them billowed and strained. 

'This Farm,' he said. 'You said it's past a group of islands, off the coast. That's where we're aiming for? You don't have nothing more specific than that?'

'I do not,' Piru said. 'I am sorry. This is only an old story, on the edge of memory. And like all old stories, it becomes polluted with misstruth and embellishment. Nevertheless, this is the faint star that guides you.'

'I ain't got a hope,' Emmett croaked.

Piru spread her hands out and turned her palms over. She sat gazing at them for a while.

'We believe that the universe is divided into three worlds,' she said. 'We, the People, and all others, such as yourself, and your sister, live in the middle world. The world above is populated by higher beings - mystical beings, you might say - such as The Sun, and the Giant Eagle. In the world below, there reside monsters. They pass into our world when the night comes. These worlds are all of them in constant states of change, and in this way perhaps so is time. Be reassured that it is something that comes from nature, even if it appears a strange or malevolent part of nature.'

Emmett puffed out his cheeks.

'I ain't,' he said. Piru smiled and leaned closer to him.

'Then be reassured by your soul,' she said.

*

In the morning they ate a breakfast of dried fruit and sourdough bread and took down their tent. They packed their canvas and bedroll. They watered the horses at the brook and Emmett saddled Buck, tightened the cinches, and fixed the hackamore over his head, tying the mecate to adjust the bosal looser over his nose. 

All the time he was aware of the dark opening in the cliffs to their right, and the giant metal object suspended above it. The short journey into the cave, the underground lake, and the horror on its banks seemed like a dreadful illusion, but the dried black fluid on the sole of his boots said otherwise.

Emmett helped a sleepy Abigail up onto the horse, and mounted behind her. Piru rode the length of the vale beside them. The sun was an amber disc fuzzy through tendrils of mist, and they passed over a white landscape furnished with violet bursts where the sky pilot broke through. The land rose, and they made for a gap in the crags. Through the narrow crack they could see a slender strip of sky, and distant snow-covered peaks. Rock walls soared dizzingly on either side. At their base Piru dismounted and stood beside them.

'There is not much more to say,' she said, and Emmett stifled the impulse to disagree. Abigail leaned down from the horse, and Piru cradled her face and kissed her on the forehead. 

'I would not have you go, little one, but I understand this is the way it has to be.'

'I'm sorry I embarrassed myself yesterday, Piru,' Abigail said. 'I got myself all worked up.'

Piru's eyes moistened. She swung a small buckskin bag over her shoulders and lifted a shell-bead necklace from it. She stood on her toes and lowered the necklace over Abigail's head.

'You are a mighty warrior,' she said, smiling.

'A mighty warrior,' Abigail repeated quietly.

Emmett met Piru's eyes as she turned to him.

'The Halfway Place,' she said. 'The Farm.'

Emmett picked up the reins and nudged the horse.

'Thank you so much for everythin', Miss Piru,' he said. 'I don't know what we'd have done without you, and I doubt we'll rightly ever be able to repay you. But I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I wish you and your family all the best in this here middle world.'

Piru raised her left hand in the air as they disappeared into the crack in the cliffs. For a long time they looked back, but Emmett found his gaze drawn to the ellipse glinting in the sky. It was the strangest sight up close, but from a distance it looked deeply unsettling, like a giant's ring had fallen from a fairytale, or from some great castle in the clouds, and frozen in mid-air. 

The path sloped upwards, and the rock walls pinned them in. As they hit a crest they looked back and saw Piru mount her horse, turn, and descend into the vale, riding fast towards the far side. She faded to a distant dot among the purple-flecked snow.
 

 

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