Voracious - Alice Henderson [52]
For days I have been tracking the vile beast. I spotted the fiend in an alleyway in Vienna and have been following him ever since. Now I trail far behind, however, the high elevation of this mountain pass robbing me of my stamina. My head pounds, chest heaves. I am not used to moving so quickly, carrying so much weight, or steadily climbing upward across slippery, gray talus slopes and melting snowfields.
The crumbling slope to the right of my path is nearly vertical, leading down to a steep valley far below. On the other side of the narrow, tree-filled ravine lie more peaks, the snowy Alps stretching to the horizon.
I struggle on, stomach rumbling with hunger. Repeatedly I attempt unsuccessfully to rearrange the uncomfortably heavy assortment of objects on my back: a clunky pot, a heavy bag of rice and coffee beans, an unwieldy canvas tent and its splintery wooden stakes. It is really just a lean-to at this point. I had to abandon the wood for its frame when I lost a handcart wheel over the edge of a precipitous section of trail yesterday. Realizing I would have to leave the handcart behind, I piled what I could into the tent, transforming it into a makeshift pack for my back and continued on, trying to follow the creature’s footprints in the mud and melting snow.
Today as I stumbled across the crumbling stones of a rock field, the sharp whistles of some nearby rodents caused my head to snap violently in that direction. I know they are just rodents, watching me from their hiding holes in the rocks, but my nerves are frayed. Any sharp noise has me starting anxiously.
I am not used to such hardship. An English aristocrat raised in the heart of London, whose parents moved me to Vienna at the age of 22, the most arduous task I have ever undertaken before this was stumbling home dead drunk from Herr Grusschen’s pub, the Heart and Feather, on Bär Strasse. One night two rogues tried to rob me as I tripped and swayed over the cobblestones on a darkened street. I brandished my sword, nicked one of the seedy, bearded perpetrators, though more through drunken clumsiness than skill, and managed to drive them off by spewing a stream of slurred obscenities at them and threatening to call for the authorities.
At the time I bragged about the encounter, embellishing the story without mercy, telling my friends about the murderous fiends I had driven off that foggy night.
That life feels a thousand miles away now. I was so carefree, so naive. What did I know then of “murderous fiends”? Nothing. My entire lesson on murder has been taught by the creature, on that dreaded night two months ago when he tore out my love’s throat and nearly ended my own life on the cold, tiled floor of her manor house, as unknowing friends slumbered peacefully a floor above.
The rodents whistle again. I think I am growing accustomed to it. I know nothing of alpine fauna, though it would be nice to catch a juicy, fat rodent and cook it up. I am so tired of rice. My life was once the symphony, the opera, the taverns. I have never hiked this high before. Certainly never carried my own baggage. My feet ache and are covered with blisters, my hands callused and covered with deep, bleeding cracks from the dry air.
July 17, 1763
Mountains above Vienna
Earlier today a rock shifted beneath my feet. Off balance, I leaned forward to compensate, but instead swung forward heavily under the weight of my pack and pitched toward the ground violently. With a painful crunch, I landed face-first in the field of stone, edges of sharp rock cutting gashes in my freezing hands.
I did not rise immediately. I lay there, face pressed against the cold, sharp points, and tried to catch my breath. I am growing so weary, getting clumsy in my fatigue. I have to stop to rest.
It is too dangerous up here to take any chances with exhaustion. I must find a sheltered spot up next to a granite outcrop and set up my pathetic lean-to for the night, even though it is only early afternoon.
I have not been able to sleep.