The campground itself was mostly overgrown and worn down by the elements, but there were picnic tables under an old pavilion, and even a couple semi-functional outhouses.
We made our way to one of the sturdier tables.The mood was subdued, everyone picking quietly at their lunches of dried meats and stale biscuits.The weariness of the journey was settling into our bones, and despite the break, an unspoken anxiety hovered over us.
After we finished, we packed up our things, and we started out again.Alphie led us onward, taking a narrow trail of trampled earth.The nearby woods seemed to press in tighter, their shadows growing longer as the afternoon waned.
Conversation was sparse, with only Fae babbling occasionally, or Dougal asking to slow down.The silence finally broke late in the day when Alphie suddenly swore loudly.
“What’s wrong?”Ryder asked from behind me.
We were walking in a single line, with Alphie in the lead, and from where I stood three people back, I couldn’t see much of anything through the trees.
“We can’t get through,” Alphie replied.
“What do you mean we can’t get through?”Ryder asked, and he pushed past Edie, me, and Boden until he could see for himself.“Oh shit.There was a landslide or something.”
Carefully, since I had Fae on my back, I climbed up onto a fallen log at the edge of the trail.From that vantage point, I could see the churned earth spilled across the trail, the tangled mess of branches and uprooted trees blocking any passage forward.There was no way around it that I could see.The hillside was simply too steep and unstable, the mud still damp and slick.
“They must’ve been having a lot more rain in the mountains then we’ve been getting this summer,” Edie mused.
“So what does this mean for us?”Boden asked Alphie.
“We will double back to the campground, and tomorrow we’ll have to cross the river and enter the Revvers territory,” Alphie explained.“I was hoping to skirt around it, but there isn’t any other option.”
At least the walk back toCedar Hollowsomehow felt quicker than it had been getting out to the mudslide.We ate quietly and slept under the pavilion, with me spending the dark hours as alert as I could be.
Morning brought a cold mist that clung to the ground, making the world seem even more isolated than before.Ryder woke up last, even accounting for my brief nap after dawn.He also managed to wake up in an even worse mood than he had the day before, and I was finding him less and less attractive by the minute.
Once everyone was ready, Alphie led us down another path, away from the ruined hillside.The forest looked different in the morning fog.Both more haunting and, strangely, more intimate, as if the world had shrunk to only the trail ahead and our little group.
Before we left, Alphie had assured us that the river wasn’t that far away, and it really wasn’t that long until we could hear it, the sound of churning water echoing through the trees.The air grew cooler and damper, and it smelled of wet stone and earthy moss.The forest itself seemed to hush, quieting the birds and the breeze so that the only noise was the relentless, rhythmic surge of the river.
“This is stupid,” Ryder said, suddenly.“We shouldn’t be going this way through the Revvers territory.We should go back and find another way around the landslide.”
“Rye, there wasn’t a way around it,” Leandro tried to reason with him.“You saw that yesterday.”
“The river is too dangerous!”Ryder shouted.“You can hear it through the trees!We’ll all drown!”
By then, we’d all stopped moving.Dougal and Fergus took the opportunity to have a sit on a nearby boulder, and Ryder stood with his feet planted in the dirt and his arms folded across his chest.
“We’re not swimming across,” Alphie told him.“There’s a bridge across it.”
“Has anybody been maintaining this bridge?”Ryder asked.“It’s probably not even safe!”
“The Revvers maintain it,” Alphie argued back.“And it’s not even that big.The Staulo River narrows as it curves up ahead, and it’s only fifty meters across.It takes a minute to walk it, two if you’re feeling leisurely.”
“We’ll have a look at the bridge when we get to it,” Boden said reasonably.“And if it’s not safe, we won’t risk it.But we can’t do that until we get there.Everyone okay with that?”
Ryder grumbled something under his breath, but he had no real argument against it, so we got moving again.
As we pressed on, the path sloped downward, and the roaring of the river grew loud enough to drown out any complaints that Ryder had.
Finally, the river came fully into view.It was quite high and rapid, reminding me more of a raging flood than the placid water that the S.S.Barbarabelle floated on.Even with that, the bridge was at least half-a-meter above the surging current.The weathered planks were dark with age and damp from river spray, but they looked sturdy enough.
Boden stepped on the bridge tentatively, and when it held, he put on his full weight, then jumped up and down a bit.
“It seems good,” he decided.
“No.”Ryder shook his head emphatically.“No.You don’t know that.”
