The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [77]
The farms gave way to forests that had long since been on the receiving end of the woodsman’s axe: field after field of corn stubble became rolling hills of gnarled tree-stumps, all worn and blackened by the weather, as though the last of the trees had been cut down a hundred years ago. The coach followed a dirt road that pulled away from the river and began to work its way in bumpy, shuddering switchbacks up Mount Hood, all around surrounded by those acres of sundered forest, while moss and black weeds tangled their way up and out of the mountain slopes.
Eventually, after hours in the chilly coach, beneath the malevolent sky, the tree-stumps grew fewer and fewer, the ground harsher and colder, so that the evidence of living things began to disappear. Weeds grew sparse and rougher, mosses vanished completely. The stumps remained, but grew thinner and fewer between. Occasionally, a low shrub or tree had escaped the devastation; invariably, it was twisted and gnarled, a clutching claw rearing up from the ground.
These last signs of life disappeared as well, as the coach crossed the tree-line. The road petered out over the permanently-frosted earth, and eventually had to come to a stop.
Beckett led the way out of the coach, climbing down as quickly as possible to stretch his legs and arms; they cracked and creaked as he did so. While his companions left the coach, the old coroner treated himself to another veneine injection from the traveling case he kept with him.
Valentine took two phlogiston lanterns from the coach and lit them, adding to the light already cast by the lanterns that hung from the coach itself. Alan looked up at the sky, and tried to gain his bearings according to the constellations.
“We’re still about…a mile or two away.” He turned upwards on the gentle slope of the mountain. About a hundred yards away was the very edge of a glacier, a vast plain of ice that stretched to the mountain’s summit. Someone had, some time ago, courteously erected a kind of wooden walkway that left the stony slope of the mountain, and served as a bridge onto the ice. “Up that way.” He squinted in the dark, but couldn’t see anything.
Beckett nodded. He had brought heavy, over-stuffed coats, crammed into the luggage compartment in the coach; now, he’d begun to unpack them and pass them out. “We’ll have to climb. And by we,” he added, as he handed Alan a coat, “I mean me and Valentine. I want you and Skinner to stay here.”
“What?” Skinner and Alan spoke almost simultaneously.
“I won’t be able to hear you from here…” complained the Knocker, while Alan said, “You won’t be able to find it…”
“Enough.” Beckett shrugged into his coat. “Alan will point us in the right direction. If the house is up there, we’ll find it. And, no offense, Skinner, but I can’t trust either of you on the glacier. Stay here with the driver. Besides, if something goes wrong, I want at least one of us alive enough to report back to Stitch.”
“Elijah…” Skinner began.
“No arguments. Understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. Valentine, put your coat on, and give me one of those lanterns. We’re going up.”
Twenty-five: Gotheray Castle
As it turned out, finding their way up the glacier was not going to be as difficult as Alan had suspected. Beyond the little wooden bridge, Beckett and Valentine found a number of iron spikes driven deep into the ice, connected by a long, hempen rope. The rope and spikes led up the glacial plain much like the road had led up the mountain: in long switchbacks. The temperature dropped a full ten degrees as soon as Beckett and Valentine stepped onto the ice, and grabbed hold of the guide line. They trudged slowly, exhaustingly across the waste,