The Ice Orphan by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Author:Kathleen O'Neal Gear [O’Neal, Kathleen Gear]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2022-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

23

QUILLER

Light drops patter against the black boulders, and water drips through the smoke hole over our heads to sizzle in our fire. I frown upward at the place where the boulders come together in a peak. The sky beyond is empty of the campfires of the dead. Instead, faint zyme light reflects from a ceiling of solid clouds.

“It’s raining!” RabbitEar lunges for the gap, shoulders his way outside, and rushes to the cliff’s edge.

“Do you see him?” I’m right behind him, flipping up my hood to shield my face from the icy drops borne on the gusting wind. Thunderbirds rumble and flash as the storm rolls westward, pulling a black wall of rain with it. When I stand on the precipice, I lift a hand to shield my eyes from the onslaught. I see the dark dots that mark the handholds and footholds on the cliff face, but I can’t see every part of the trail from this angle. “I—I don’t see him. RabbitEar, answer me! Do you see our son down there? Anywhere?”

“No, I don’t see him, but it’s almost sunset, Quiller. By now, he must have made it to the second children’s camp.”

“Maybe, but he could just be holding on somewhere, clinging to the rock. The last time we saw him, he looked exhausted. Did you notice? I thought his arms were shaking. Didn’t you?”

“He was too far away for me to tell. Let’s see if we can glimpse him from different places on the rim.”

RabbitEar’s green eyes are huge as he turns and runs southward along the cliff.

I trot northward, but I don’t see our son hanging to the cliff anywhere. Fearing the worst, I dash headlong to the curve in the rim where I can look down at the base of the cliff clotted with huge rain-slick boulders.

If he fell, I’d see him lying down in the rocks or sprawled on the ground. All I see is rocks and wet sand streaked with green filaments of zyme that have just begun to glow.

RabbitEar calls, “I don’t see him! Do you?”

“No!” I shout into the gale, then whirl to look at RabbitEar where he stands fifty paces away. “But I have a clear view of the base of the cliff. He’s not there! So he did not fall.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Absolutely!”

RabbitEar trots back and I run to meet him at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the slithering trail of dots again.

“Then he—he must have made it to the camp,” RabbitEar stutters. “Do you agree?”

“Probably, but we can’t be certain, so I’m going to climb down and find him.”

“You can’t climb that cliff in this downpour! No one can!”

“But you know as well as I do that he could be beneath one of the bulges and we wouldn’t see him. I’m going down.”

“No, Quiller!” It’s an order. “I’m not risking your life on a hunch. Jawbone made it to the camp. He must have.”

I shake my head as though to will away his words. “We don’t know that.

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