The Road We Leave Behind

Ivo unwound the last strip of cloth from Mara's arm.

She looked at the dressing in his hand.

“Can I have that back?”

“No.”

“It was a good piece of cloth.”

“It has had a difficult journey.”

He checked the closed edges of the cut, then let her lower her sleeve. The skin was still pink and tender, but he left the bandage off.

“Easy with it.”

“I know.”

“You usually say that before doing something unhelpful.”

Across the bench, Elias started loosening his own wrapping.

Ivo looked at him.

“No.”

“I hadn't asked.”

“Your hand had.”

Elias tucked the loose end back in.

Outside, the square was turning grey with morning. Someone was splitting the last of the firewood into smaller pieces.

Every few blows, the axe stopped.

Then it began again.

Sella gave Orin a short coil of rope from the storehouse.

“Our other one is still at the gate.”

“I remember where we left it.”

“Remember where you leave this one too.”

Mara checked the water flask. Elias checked the copied route.

He had folded Lena's words inside it.

At the clinic doorway, Tavi held up a piece of bread.

“For the walk.”

Elias took it.

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

Sella looked at Tavi.

“Some.”

She broke another piece from the loaf and handed it to him.

Ivo stayed beside the medicine table. They had agreed on that before dawn. Three people could inspect a path; the patients couldn't wait for their medic to return from an expedition.

“If the crossing isn't safe, come back,” he said.

Mara nodded.

Elias nodded too.

It was easier here, with the map folded and the road still outside.

They left by the steps behind the well.

The stream ran below the path, hidden under ferns.

Orin walked first. He tested the ground with his stick where rain had loosened the edges.

Elias kept expecting him to stop.

He did stop, eventually, beside a patch of blackberries.

“Breakfast,” he said.

“We have bread,” Mara replied.

“Then this is an improvement.”

He ate two and continued.

The ordinary pause helped more than Elias wanted to admit.

By the time they reached the lime kiln, the sun had found the ridge.

The kiln was a round stone shell with a dark opening at its base. Beyond it, the path ended at a narrow crack in the hillside.

Four paces across.

Far below, water flashed between the rocks.

On the other side, a stone platform divided into two paths. One climbed toward the survey house. The other dropped to the timber yard.

The house stood above them on a shelf of rock, pale walls beneath its heavy stone roof.

Elias could see the window.

Somewhere behind it were the papers.

Mara touched his shoulder.

“Crossing first.”

He lowered his eyes.

White lines ran between two broken posts.

They didn't call to anyone.

Mara crouched behind the nearest post and listened.

No tapping.

Orin found a crack in the rock deep enough to wedge the end of his stick. He leaned against it, testing.

Elias looked at the white outline.

A wooden handrail. Four boards across the width. The missing section was shorter than the walkway at Rill.

That didn't tell him what was underneath.

“Just a look,” he said.

He placed his bare hand against the nearest line.

Drew a breath.

The boards returned.

Beyond them, everything stayed where it had been.

Stone platform. Fork. Pale house.

Mara looked beneath the rail without stepping onto it.

Then she raised a finger.

Enough.

He let the road go.

“Something?” he asked.

“No. That's why we stop and listen.”

They waited.

From the timber yard came a cough.

A man stood beside a loaded handcart, looking up at them.

He waved once.

Then pointed toward the house.

They used the borrowed rope.

Mara looped one end around the near stone post. Orin tied a loose stone to the other and threw it across. It took two attempts before the coil landed beyond the gap.

The man from the yard came up to the far platform and secured it to a thick root growing through the rock.

He pulled twice.

Orin pulled back.

They tested the line before anyone used it.

Mara went first, clipped to the rope with a sliding loop. She crossed in four careful steps.

Then Orin.

Between openings, Elias sat beside the kiln until his breathing settled.

The man waited without urging him on.

That made Elias like him.

He crossed last, keeping his hand on the restored rail. Both boots reached stone before he breathed out.

The man introduced himself as Beren.

He was broad through the shoulders, with close-cropped grey hair and a patched brown work coat. White dust filled the seams of his boots.

“Where's Sella?”

“In town,” Mara said. “We came for wood.”

“And the survey records,” Elias added.

Beren looked uphill.

“You might want to hurry with those.”

A dull crack came from the house.

Dust fell from beneath its front step.

“The bank shifted in the night,” Beren said. “Took the upper path with it.”

“Anyone inside?” Mara asked.

“The keeper. I went up at dawn. He wouldn't leave the cupboard.”

Elias was already looking at the climbing path.

Mara caught his sleeve.

“Listen first.”

“There are papers in there,” he said.

“There is a person in there.”

Beren rubbed his face.

“I know. He said he'd come down when he had the right bundle. Then the steps cracked. I couldn't get back to him.”

The path reached the house along a narrow stone stair. Halfway up, a section had slid sideways. Beyond it, the keeper stood on a small porch.

A leather case hung across his chest.

He was trying to lower himself onto the broken stair.

“Stay there!” Mara called.

He stopped.

Beren pointed to a dark drainage opening beneath the house.

“The old drain is blocked. Rainwater's been running under the house instead. I told him that wall was moving.”

Another crack.

This time, Elias saw a piece of stone fall.

The keeper pulled himself back onto the porch.

He looked down at them.

“Rill?”

“Yes,” Mara called.

“I have your reports.”

Elias stepped forward.

The keeper raised a thin bundle tied with blue cord.

The man had brought it out.

Lena's account was already in his hands.

Mara looked at the broken stair, then at Elias.

“Can you see anything?”

A pale line crossed the missing steps.

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Three steps. Perhaps four.”

“Don't guess.”

He traced it again.

“Four.”

Orin was watching the wall above the porch.

“Elias. Opening those steps won't hold the house up.”

“I know.”

He hadn't known until Orin said it.

Mara and Beren climbed as far as the solid stair. Elias followed. Orin stayed below, where he could see the whole wall.

Beren brought the loading cord from his cart. They measured it against the climb, but it wasn't long enough to reach the porch. Mara handed it back.

Mara tested the last solid step.

It held.

“If he drops anything, let it fall,” she told Elias.

He looked at the blue cord.

“Elias.”

“I heard you.”

Below, Orin raised his stick.

A long crack had opened beside the porch.

“Now would be useful.”

Elias put his hand against the white rail.

The missing steps returned.

The keeper came down sideways.

One hand on the rail.

The other held the reports.

Mara reached toward him.

“Keep coming.”

The house shifted.

Not far.

Enough.

A roof stone struck the porch behind him.

The keeper flinched. His boot missed the next step.

Beren caught his coat.

The reports slipped.

For a moment the blue-tied bundle rested against the rail, close enough for Elias to reach with his injured hand.

He began to lift his hand.

Then Mara's boot slid off the broken edge of the permanent stair.

She caught the rail with one hand and Beren's sleeve with the other.

Her weight pulled him sideways. He was still holding the keeper.

Elias saw all three of them leaning toward the gap.

He could reach the papers.

Or he could take one step back and give Beren room to pull.

He stepped back, sliding his palm along the rail so the stair stayed solid.

His shoulder struck the rock.

Beren hauled the keeper onto the landing. Mara got her boot beneath her and followed.

The bundle fell.

Elias watched the blue cord turn once in the air.

Then everyone was clear.

He breathed.

The steps vanished.

The porch broke away.

Dust rolled over them.

Mara pulled Elias down against the rock.

They stayed there until the falling stones stopped.

He could feel her hand on his shoulder.

He couldn't see the house.

Beren coughed.

The keeper was making a thin, breathless sound.

Elias thought he was hurt.

Then he heard the words.

“The bundle.”

Mara looked at him.

“You're here.”

“The bundle was—”

“You're here.”

The man stopped.

Below them, Orin called their names, one at a time.

They answered.

Elias answered last.

When the dust cleared, the porch was gone. Part of the roof had fallen into the room behind it.

He couldn't see the blue cord anywhere.

He had known those papers existed for less than a day.

He had already imagined reading them a hundred times.

Mara sat beside him.

“You can be angry.”

“At who?”

She didn't offer him a convenient answer.

After a while, he checked the satchel against his hip.

His own copy was still inside.

It felt very small.

They couldn't move the full cart across in one breath.

They didn't try.

Beren and Mara broke the load into small bundles. Orin helped the keeper down to the permanent platform. The man could walk, though he shook whenever loose stones moved beneath his boots.

They sent him across first, then Orin, who helped him sit beside the kiln. Mara followed to receive the wood.

Then the firewood, a few bundles at a time, pulled over the restored boards with the thin loading cord from Beren's cart.

Elias rested between each opening.

Sometimes longer than the others.

Nobody mentioned it.

By the time Beren brought the empty cart across, the sun was high. He walked behind it; Mara pulled from the kiln side. The wheels cleared the last board just before Elias let the crossing disappear.

After a rest, Elias brought the boards back and crossed last, keeping his bare hand on the restored rail. Only when both feet were on the kiln side did he release his breath.

They left the borrowed safety rope tied in place. Sella would know where to find it.

Beren and Mara reloaded the cart on the kiln side.

There was enough wood for the clinic tonight and tomorrow.

More waited in the yard.

The upper house might never be safe to enter again.

Elias folded the copied route. It still showed a path to a door they could no longer reach.

Beside him, the keeper watched.

“Which report?” he asked.

“The East Sluice closure.”

The man's fingers tightened around the strap of his document case.

“Why that one?”

“My sister left an account.”

“What was her name?”

“Lena Vale.”

The keeper looked at him for so long that Elias stopped folding.

“Did you read it?” Elias asked.

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

The keeper looked toward the ruined house.

Elias took a step closer.

“Please.”

Mara stopped tying the load.

The man set his leather case on the cart. His hands were still shaking, so Beren opened the buckle for him.

Inside were keys, a folded cloth and a small metal disc on a cord.

Not the reports.

The keeper lifted the disc.

A number had been stamped into it. Beneath the number was a name.

Tomas Arlen.

Elias knew it.

The first of the three carriers.

The one with a wife to send word to.

“You were on the list.”

“Yes.”

“But you—”

“Came back.”

Elias looked at the man's grey hair, the lines beside his eyes.

He hadn't arrived here unchanged from nineteen years ago.

He had grown older in the years since he had known Lena.

“Why wasn't it written down?”

“I returned to Vey. I only took charge of the survey house this spring. I didn't know Rill still listed us as missing until the papers arrived last month.”

“All three?”

“No.”

The answer settled between them.

Tomas put the disc back in its cloth.

“Your sister asked for the passage to be closed,” he said. “That part is true.”

Elias waited.

“She wasn't standing safely outside when she asked.”

Mara's hands went still on the rope.

“Where was she?”

“With us.”

The stream ran beneath the road.

Somewhere behind the kiln, a loose stone clicked against another.

Elias turned toward it, then back.

Tomas was watching him.

“She went back for the last man,” he said. “I was the one who carried her message out.”

Elias looked at the folded route in his hand.

He had lost her account.

He had brought back someone who had been there.