Induction
by Tom Dillon
A Broken Shores Story
Copyright 2012 Tom Dillon
“All things are defined by their limitations. A kite without a string would not fly, no matter how much we wish it to. Ve is no different. It may seem that an unmediated supply of Ve might be more efficient or provide more power. But just as a kite suddenly freed may briefly soar, it will shortly thereafter crash, as was illustrated by the cataclysm that destroyed the Old World.” –from Ve: A Treatise by Laan Senki
Korsem Island
2nd day of Skohi, 471 AC
Taine should have been there. That was all Emera could think of as she pulled mussel after mussel out of the shallow cave and stuffed them into the mesh sack that was tied to her back. It was nearly full, and she had picked only a fraction of the mussels clinging to the rocks. Instead, he was on a trip to Kinav with his family. She imagined him walking through its streets, surrounded by the colors and excitement of the City.
As she began the climb back up, she felt the weight of the mollusks pulling against her shoulders, but paid it no mind, she had climbed the cliffs since she was old enough to walk. She pulled herself up the rock, fingers crimping onto a ledge here and wedging into a crack there, always moving up. About halfway to the top, she braced her body between two outcroppings and stopped to rest. On the cliffs that provided the outer border of the island of Korsem, she felt like she was between two worlds, as though the winds that buffeted her were opposing forces trying to pull her inwards, homewards, and at the same time pulling her towards the wide ocean, towards possibility. As she rested, watching the deep blue ocean, the wind turned cold, cutting through her thin shirt and chilling the sweat on her skin. It was time to continue.
The sun was still high when she reached the crack in the cliff face that would lead her to flat ground. At the top, the crack was wide enough that she could only just reach both sides with her arms and legs fully extended, but at the bottom, it was only wide enough for her fingertips. It had taken her and Taine the better part of a year to work up to it, finding similar cracks and working on them until they were able to climb the big one. The hard work and scraped hands had paid off, allowing them to find secluded beaches that hadn’t been picked clean. Emera couldn’t wait to tell him about the trove that she had found a hundred meters below.
She hugged her body against the rocks and checked her hands. The strips of cloth that she had wrapped around them were still in place, though certainly worse for wear. Satisfied, she reached up and wedged her hand into a wide spot in the crack, flexing her fingers like she was trying to make a fist, even though she had less than a centimeter of room. When they had first tried to climb the cracks, they had tried to pull themselves up by their hands. It hadn’t taken long to figure out that even wrapped in protective layers of cloth, the only things their hands were good for was to keep them from falling backwards, all of the work was done by their legs, feet turned sideways and wedged into the crack like iron spikes. She pushed herself up, and repeated the process her other hand.
Emera looked back as she climbed, and saw clouds on the horizon. she clung to the rock face like a poorly designed barnacle and rested for a moment to celebrate the good luck, had she stayed much longer she would have been caught out in the rain. The crack was getting wider, so that she could fit an entire fist in, which brought its own challenges, but was easier on the hands. Hand over hand, foot over foot, she made her way up the rock. She reached into a pocket in the rock next to the crack with her left hand, glad to have something to hold onto that wasn’t sideways, and felt a pebble roll out of the way of her searching fingers. She stopped to rest a moment before moving on to the last part of the climb.
She felt movement in the pocket, and then there was a pinch on the top of her middle finger. The pinch turned into a searing pain which spread to the rest of her hand in the time it took her mind to register its panic. A scorpion scuttled out of the hole and on to her wrist, its sharp claws digging into the rough skin of her hands. She watched with a surreal feeling, her mind unwilling to accept the situation. The scorpion stopped on the back of her hand, and Emera imagined that it was looking at her, then turned around and disappeared back into the pocket.
Her hand was slowly but inevitably losing its grip on the rock, muscles relaxing as the toxin spread. She tried to pull herself up, to get some leverage with her legs. She relaxed against her weaker right hand and pushed her feet deeper into the crack. She tried to pump her left hand, but could only watch it spasm. She was less than a meter from a point where the crack widened enough that she could wedge her body into it and rest, and she focused on it until she could see nothing else. With only one hand, she could not work her way gradually up to the hole in the crack, she would have to surge up to it. Her right arm was burning, strength draining out of its muscles. With no other option, she lunged.
Her fingertips caught in the hole and found purchase, but stretched out as she was, her legs provided little support. She carefully removed one of her feet from the crack and traced it up, searching for the right spot by feel. She was getting her foot in when the wind gusted. It wasn’t particularly strong, any other day she probably wouldn’t have even noticed it. The additional strain was simply too much for her weakened right hand, though, and she felt herself falling backwards.
The world seemed to move in slow motion, and Emera could feel her legs instinctively pushing off against the rock, hopefully propelling her far enough to land clear of the rocks at the bottom. Not that it mattered, a hundred meters was a hundred meters. As she fell, the world came into focus around her. She could smell the brine mixed with the rich smells of the forest only a few meters above her, and hear the wind rushing around and past her. She could see the cracks and fissures of the rock, and could feel the strange absence of gravity even as her body heeded its call.
Please, she thought, she prayed. Please, I would give anything, anything. Just don’t let me die today.