The Snowy by Dave Schneider

Author:Dave Schneider
Language: dan
Format: epub
Publisher: Waldorf Publishing
Published: 2018-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 38

Lava

NOTCH PLOWED, HEAD DOWN, through deep snow behind the altivaulters.

Abruptly, the altivaulters began to babble.

Notch looked up.

They were staring into the gorge. Jung licked his lips. The female murmured, “Yum.” The young male rubbed his tummy.

Notch saw two creatures as big as trash cans with mottled gray and white shells, crawling along on eight spindly legs. “Arachnids,” he muttered.

“Spiders?” asked Neff.

“Altis must eat them,” said Sparky.

The altivaulters glanced back once before padding around a bend.

“I wonder how they catch em,” said Notch, rounding the bend, suddenly blinded by bright white. “Wow,” he whispered. A vast sweep of snow spread before him. Windblown drifts angled down the pitch like waves, separated by long shadows of deep blue.

“How about skiing those lines?” asked Sparky.

“Awesome,” said Notch, feeling a sudden rumble. Earthquake?

The female altivaulter pointed. Partway up the pitch, lava had burst out of the snow and begun to pour down the pitch, trailing a cloud of steam.

“We’re not going up this, are we?” asked Notch.

Jung pointed at a cliff off to the left.

“We’re going up that?”

Jung nodded.

“There’s a path on it,” said Sparky, thinking about how he had climbed rock faces on a rope belay with his uncle, wearing climbing shoes, but never up a cliff face with leaf galoshes and no belay.

“One slip and goodbye world...or whatever this place is,” said Notch.

The female led them across a narrow stone bridge toward the cliff.

Neff kept to the center of the span. I hate cliffs, and bridges.

As the female turned off the bridge, Sparky glanced back toward the lava. Something drew his eyes further back.

A fangvaulter was coming around the bend, where they had just been. Then another followed. And another.

“Fangers,” he exclaimed.

The female altivaulter quickly dropped into the gorge. Everyone followed.

“Did they see us?” breathed Notch.

“Not yet,” puffed Sparky. “But, so what? We’re leaving tracks. We gotta move.” They began to jog.

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