I can’t bear this crashing inside me.
I need to escape, I can’t escape.
The cage was built for much stronger legs than mine, and I can’t catch enough breath to scream, even if I wanted to. I can already see the outer wall of Xiosphant, along with the slope of the Old Mother, the mountain that protects the city against the night. Out here, the sky is the color of damp soil. Down at the far end of the Warrens, the slate-roofed houses, factories, and warehouses seem to huddle against the cold.
Maybe they’ll relent at the last moment. Put the lasting fear into me. They could shove me out of this lorry right on the edge of town and let me go with a warning.
But when we reach the big reinforced stone wall, one of the helmeted officers fumbles for a big key and unlocks a thick metal gate, which opens with a weary hiss. They pull me out of the backseat cage by my wrist, and I overbalance, falling onto one knee. The sergeant shoves me through the doorway between dusk and full night, then gestures for the two nearest officers to accompany me. Two large men each take an elbow and steer me the rest of the way through the door, into the coldest air I’ve ever felt.
The Old Mother rises over us, a great dark tooth silhouetted against the black sky.
I’m still wearing my casual flirty café-wear. Jeans made of a thin hemp-and-wool blend, a loose chemise coming down past my waist, and a little skirt pinned around my ankles. And light woven sandals. The cold rips into me, coming off the mountainside. The police wear thick padded suits, heavy gloves, boots, and protective headgear.
But still, the two officers shove me and gesture with their guns, until I climb the sheer surface the best I can, with my frozen hands and feet. I can’t see where I’m going, and every meter or so I stumble and fall onto my palms. I almost lose my purchase on the stone and tumble backward a few times. They kick my leg until I keep going.
A thought forces its way past my firebreak of panic: Bianca will never even know what happened to me.
I claw at the rock, kick it with my bare toes, find handholds and footholds, relying on sheer wretched desperation.
A slow keening comes from the night, as though the crocodiles are baying in anticipation of fresh meat. Maybe they can already smell me coming somehow.
By the time I climb about halfway, I want to quit. What’s the point of even reaching the top? Nobody ever comes home from the night, except for the occasional survivor of a hunting party. But when I stop and sit on a tiny ledge, trying to aim a defiant look behind me, the cops raise their guns.
I take a deep breath and turn back toward the rock face, because I’d rather keep scratching at the mountainside, even lose all the skin on my fingers and the heels of my hands, than just give up and accept the death they’ve chosen for me.
The only warm hope in all this frozen nothing is that Bianca is okay. She’ll have the life she deserves, and maybe she’ll end up in a position to change this city. She’ll forget about me, after a while, but maybe some tiny pocket of her heart will preserve my memory, and it’ll inspire her to do something for others. I can die out here, knowing that she’s going to be amazing. I try to tell myself that’s enough, that it’s as good as a whole life by her side.
The wind stings my face, washes out my sight, and forces me to shed more tears than I can spare.
But some mechanical part takes over and I keep groping for handholds and pulling myself up, meter by meter. I lose all awareness, almost like sleepwalking, and my hands and feet are already numb.
I’m startled when I pull myself up one more time and reach the summit. I find a tiny plateau, where I can stop and drag some frosty air into my lungs. A dozen meters away, a sliver of direct sunlight hits a raised crag, hot enough to sear your skin off with a single touch. Even that one bright spot is too painful to look at.
Behind me, the city is splayed out, already asleep behind thick shutters. And beyond that, the Young Father slices the bright horizon—the smaller, smoother mountain that shields us from daylight.
I stand there on this wide ledge, panting, and try to regain some feeling by putting my hands under my bruised armpits, when the cops grunt at me. They’re eager to get back to the city, to drink their own pitcher of gin-and-milk, next to a fireplace. They nudge me with their guns, and I turn back toward the other side of the mountain.
Ahead, I see… nothing. The night stretches endlessly, a place where light and warmth never come. Out there, glaciers carve through the tundra and storms tear through everything. Storms and megafauna kill anyone who ventures past this mountain, if the cold and disorientation don’t take them first.
The police officers step forward in unison and shove me with one gloved hand each, until I fall face-over-legs into a cold so intense I feel as if my heart will stop.
The night side of the Old Mother bludgeons me, landing blows on my torso and legs, as I careen. I try to find a handhold, get my feet under me, but I overbalance again and again, until I stumble into a sheer drop, a smooth wall coated with ice that burns the remaining skin off my hands as I grope at it. I can’t see how far I’ve fallen, or what’s below me, or how to avoid getting dashed to pieces on the rocks.
I try to push myself away from the rock face with both elbows, twisting and groping at nothing but icy wind, and then I just fall through space.
I land on a layer of snow, hard enough to drive all the breath out of me, and gag on the frozen air that replaces it. My whole back and sides flare with agony, and for a moment I think I’ve broken something. But I force myself to rise onto one knee, spasming, and the worst of the pain seeps away.
I can’t even see the mountain that I just fell down. My fingers and toes go numb, and so does my face, and my lungs are bursting, and my stomach turns. The wind gets angrier, and its scream steals all other sound. All I can feel is a dark vortex inside me as I rise to my feet. I’ve only been in the night for a few eyeblinks, but it’s already killing me.
Everybody says that if you stare into this unseeable waste for too long, you’ll be struck with delirium. If you even survive. But I make myself face it. I stand, hugging myself, and walk into the churn of ice on the high winds, trying to grope my way forward without any sense of direction.
My body collides with something. I feel dense fur, over an even thicker carapace. A single warm tentacle brushes my face, and I realize I’m standing a few centimeters away from a full-sized crocodile.
Her giant front pincer is close enough to crush my head in one lazy motion. I hear a low sound under the wind’s endless chorus, and I’m sure this crocodile is opening her wide, round mouth full of sharp teeth to devour me, bones and all.
SOPHIE
{After}
Back in grammar school, they taught us all about crocodiles, and what to do if you ever meet one.
Don’t try to run, because you’re on their territory, and they can ensnare you in one of those long tentacles before your first stride. Plus they can clear vast distances with their powerful hind legs, each one the size of an adult human. And their strong forelegs can climb any surface and dig through almost any barrier.
You might be able to hide, because we don’t know how they sense their prey, since they can’t rely on vision or hearing in this pitch-dark wind. They may use scent, or maybe they can detect motion somehow. Nobody’s ever hidden from one, but you might be the first.
The only viable strategy is to attack. Crocodiles do have a few weaknesses that a human can exploit. They have soft spots on the underbelly, where the carapace doesn’t extend all the way around. I know where all their major organs are, because I watched Frank the butcher carve one up for some fancy banquet after a few hunters had gotten lucky, returning from the night in one piece and with fresh game.