Khe by Alexes Razevich Page A

away.
    “ Sweet and merciful creator …”
    The sounds from my mouth were not my words, but the sizzle of lightning, the crackling of fire, the wail of a hurt hatchling. My heart beat against my ribs.
    This is death, I thought.
    And I did not want it. Not here. Not like this. I’d given up so much to live my last year under my own command—I’d not let life slip so easily from me now.
    Long blue ribbons of scream streamed from my mouth, the ribbons stretching on and on, floating upwards and reaching for the sky.
    If I run fast, I thought, death can’t catch me.
    The ground felt mushy under my feet, like wet wood pulp, though I knew the soil was dry and hard. Trees rose up on either side of the path, chanting The Expectation , mocking me.
    I covered my ear holes and ran until I reached my camp. The sled was there, chuckling low.
    “Just a little more,” the sled said.
    I stopped and stared.
    “A little more of what?” I asked.
    “Sweat and blood. Hope and dreams.”
    I knelt by it and stroked its rough sides. “I know you now. I see how you want to be built.
    “Build me strong,” the sled said. “We have a long ways to go.”
    Even as I saw myself working, twining the ropes, lashing the runners, I knew I wasn’t there, but back beside the poisonous bushes. My fingers bled. I mixed my blood with the rhantan sap that bound the sled together.
    On and on I worked, the sled encouraging me, saying, “Yes. This is good.”
    At last, exhausted, I sat back. “Done.”
    “I am finished,” the sled agreed.
    I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I lay face down in the dirt by the stream and bushes. A hand’s span away, a pool of vomit darkened the ground.

Chapter Ten
    Sometimes the river must twist to run true .
    --Praise Song
    I must have slept. Night had fallen. In an oily sky, the moon and stars gleamed too brightly. I could hardly bear to look at them. I closed my eyes and lay still—one arm flung over my face. My skin felt clammy and ill fitting over my bones. A chill wind blew.
    After a while, I opened my eyes, slowly wriggled my toes, moved my legs, and stretched my arms. My shoulders and arms ached. My hands were smeared with dark blood where I’d somehow cut them, but everything seemed to work. I pushed myself up to a sit. The canteen lay a short distance away. Its silvery side glittered in the star-cast light. I reached over, grabbed it without getting up, and drained the last few drops of water into my dry throat.
    It was slow going back to camp on legs that weren’t quite stable. The wind grew mean and icy, whipping the leaves and bending the branches of trees and bushes. The ground was cold under my bare feet. I hugged my arms over my chest and walked bent forward, shrunk into myself for warmth.
    The trees that in my delirium seemed to be chanting mockers were simply trees now. I wanted to touch one, to feel the familiar roughness of bark against my hands, but was afraid that if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to start moving again.
    At the hedge of thick bushes that protected the clearing of my camp, I did stop. My neck tingled. The sled was completed.
    I stood still—afraid to move toward the sled, afraid it would speak to me again. I stood a long time, taking in shallow gulps of air, trying to work up my courage.
    “Go around the sled. It can’t hurt you,” I murmured, not really believing my own words.
    I walked toward my kit, keeping my eyes on the sled as I bent down to gather my cloak and put it on. I felt safer behind the fabric barrier, and foolish. There had to be an ordinary explanation for the sled’s completion.
    “Think, Khe,” I said, and made myself remember everything that seemed to have happened after the fruit made me sick. Most of it must have been hallucination, the chanting trees and the talking sled, but some of it must have been real.
    Maybe something in the fruit gave me extra endurance. There were plenty of substances that did that. We used some of them at