Verses for the Dead

44

It was like being swallowed by Mother Earth herself, with a sudden groaning of soil and jumble of ferns and rush of damp wind. Coldmoon tumbled, his fall arrested when something like a steel cable suddenly grabbed him as the storm of dirt began to subside. Coughing, choking, he spat sand from his mouth and realized it was Pendergast who had stopped his fall, holding him by the arm on a steep slope of sand and earth, which descended into a deep, swirling pool of muck.

With his other hand, Pendergast was gripping a thick root. “Dig in,” he said. “Find a purchase.”

With his free hand, Coldmoon scrabbled against the shifting wall of earth, grabbing another root, his feet managing to locate something to balance on. As the rumbling subsided, the collapsing hole seemed to stabilize, its edges still folding in, dropping ferns on them as they clung to the steep slope.

“Earthquake?” Coldmoon gasped.

“Sinkhole,” Pendergast replied.

With a remarkable display of strength, he was able to reach up and grab a higher root. The sandy dirt continued to crumble away around the perimeter.

Coldmoon followed Pendergast’s example and found another root of his own. He pushed with his feet, ensuring he had a good purchase.

“I can climb,” he said, and Pendergast released him.

The slope was steep but not vertical, with many exposed roots, and Coldmoon used them as hand- and footholds, the soil cascading down on his head and getting in his eyes and mouth, sometimes forcing him back down a step. The sinkhole might have stabilized, but it was nevertheless like trying to climb up an ever-shifting sand pile: a few feet up, then almost as many back down again, as the sandy flanks cracked, crumbled, then fell away. Nevertheless, it was only minutes before Pendergast reached the lip of the hole, Coldmoon close behind, gasping and spitting out sand and dirt. As his head and shoulders cleared ground level, he could see the broken ferns littering the trail now dangling over the far edge of the sinkhole and, in the distance beyond, the dilapidated lodge. The elderly figure on the veranda was still struggling to rise. “Help!” the figure cried again.

A sudden, sharp crack rang through the air. Simultaneously, Coldmoon felt a blow, as if he’d been punched in the back with enormous force. With vast surprise, he realized he’d been shot. There was no pain, but he suddenly lost all strength; his hands released and he felt himself tumbling backward. Seconds later he landed in dark stagnant water that immediately closed over him, and all went black.