The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

Author:Scott Alexander Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2024-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

I brewed coffee in the kitchen, inhaling its rank steam. The shining fence out the window cut through the predawn black. I drank standing up, slowly stretching my legs.

As soon as I opened the mess hall door the wind blew hard off the steppe. Three figures were at the gate underneath the watchtower. Jean-Savile and the night guard were unraveling the chain; the tall man waiting beside them was Quinton. He wore a down jacket with a twice-wrapped scarf, and his bag sat at his boots.

I walked past him to help with the gate. Once it was open, I faced the fence and raised my arms for the search. I felt my rucksack being unfastened on my back, and I steadied my footing as the guard’s hands rummaged to the bottom. Beside me, Jean-Savile searched Quinton’s bag and talked him through the itinerary.

When we were cleared to leave, I opened my greatcoat to show Jean-Savile my service pistol. It was a display orchestrated for the petitioner. Quinton saw the gun but regarded it without expression. I nodded him toward the gap in the fence.

Quinton stepped gingerly into the cleared strip and through the opening. Jean-Savile said good luck, and I followed. The chain dragged as the gate was hauled shut behind us. As we started walking out into the darkness, I heard our footprints being raked from the dirt.

The border lights receded behind the crest of a hill, and from that point onward the path was marked by lanterns. The oil lamps hung from wooden posts all the way across the steppe. The wind knocked them around on their crossbeams, swinging restless light over the raw abraded earth.

I trailed Quinton by a few yards. Visitors were kept always in view. His speed was reasonable for a man his age, and after an hour we reached the beginning of the foothills. The sky had softened to a pale pink. The ground under our boots climbed steadily upwards.

Hemming the base of the mountains ahead was a small birch forest, the only concentration of trees on the eastern steppe. I always took a short break in these woods, so I told Quinton to stop and leaned my rucksack against the terminal lantern post. Unlike the others, this post had a heavy black bell with a rope hanging from its mouth.

We sat on the dirt catching our breath as the dawn lightened the air. From here, the border and the town were invisible behind the hills, and the opposite valley wall was nothing but a filmy blue haze. We ate a snack and drank some water. Quinton had unbuttoned his jacket, and as he raised his throat to the canteen, I watched his small belly lift under his sweater. The body carried death wherever it chose.

I refilled our water in the stony creek that ran through the woods, holding the containers down as bubbles fled their spouts. Insects hovered and swooped over the creekbed, the autumn morning sun shining through their wings. Quinton was inspecting a cluster of tree trunks set back from the path.

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