White Mountains by John Christopher

Author:John Christopher [Christopher, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction, Adventure, Young Adult
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2010-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

CI-GÎT

MARIANNE LOUISE VAUDRICOURT

13 ANS

DÉCÉDÉE FEVRIER 15 1966

The first two words, Beanpole explained, meant “Here Lies,” “ans” was years and “décédée” was died. She had died, at my own age, and been buried here at a time when the city was still throbbing with life. One day at the end of winter. So many people. The wood stretched out, laced with the stones of the dead, across an area in which my village could have been set down several times over.

It was late afternoon when we came at last to the southern edge of the city. The transformation was sudden. We pushed for about a hundred yards through a stretch where the trees were thick, the buildings few and completely in ruins, and emerged into a cornfield, waving green spears in the slanting sunlight. It was a relief to be in the open again, and in cultivated land. With that came awareness that we needed to resume habits of caution: there was a horse plowing several fields away, and in the distance two Tripods stalked the horizon.

Clouds came up again as we traveled south. We found a field of early potatoes, but could find no wood dry enough to start a fire to cook them. Henry and Beanpole ate them raw, but I could not. I had little appetite, anyway, and my head was aching. At night we slept in a ruin well away from any other houses. The roof had fallen at one end, but was still supported at the other; it was wavy, and made of a gray material that looked like stone but was much lighter. I spent the night in a series of heavy sleeps, from which I was wakened by nightmarish dreams, and in the morning I felt more tired than I had been the night before. I suppose I must have looked funny, because Henry asked me if I were feeling ill. I snapped something back at him, and he shrugged and turned his attention to other things. Beanpole said nothing, I think because he noticed nothing. He was much less interested in people than in ideas.

It was a weary day for me. I felt worse as the hours went by. I was determined not to show this, though. At the beginning I had not wanted sympathy from the others because I resented the fact that they appeared to be getting on with each other better than I was with either. After I had rebuffed Henry, my resentment was because neither he nor Beanpole took the matter any farther. I am afraid I got some satisfaction out of feeling ill and carrying on without admitting it. It was a childish way to behave.

At any rate, my lack of appetite did not make much impression because we were all on short commons. I was not bothering anyway, but Henry and Beanpole found nothing. We had reached the wide river, flowing southeast, which the map told us we should follow, and Henry spent half an hour at one place trying, without success, to tickle trout up from under the bank.

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