My fear began to creep upon me as soon as we crossed the boundary to our land—and I am not even sure where that border is, to be honest. We did not have waymarkers, after all. Upon our arrival in the New World, we had just ridden around a vast acreage of forest, marking trees and calling it all ours. It had almost been more of a joke than real, for how can men own the earth? Aleksey did not see this as I did, of course, as he came from the very essence of the tradition of owning land, but I did not.
I came from a people who more saw the land owning them, and so they had a duty to care for it and it was a privilege to be allowed to live upon it.
So, as I say, an unpleasant tightness began to form in my stomach as we rode beyond the borders of Aleksey’s kingdom, a worm of despair that even my new accord with Aleksey could not dispel.
Aleksey and I were pretty much always in harmony, despite appearances and the fact we derived so much enjoyment out of arguing, but this morning was different. We had found some new bond, I think, in Faelan’s death and our shared grief over this that we had possibly not thought to ever find, both being men. Perhaps it was a bond only those who lose children can know, and we had not thought that to be our lot in life. And although Faelan clearly was not a child to us, he fulfilled some of that role, and so this shared agony at his passing bound us in a way we had not experienced before.
IGENUINELYbelieved at the time, and I still believe this now, that I could feel the power of the falls long before we came to them. I remember looking around at my fellow travelers and wondering that they had not commented yet upon this. I could feel it like a drumming up through Xavier and into me, and I knew he felt it. If Faelan had been there, I would have consulted him, and that he was not put yet another stab into my heart. Aleksey moved Boudica close and enquired in a low voice, “What is wrong? You are pale.”
I glanced over. “Do you not feel it?”
“What?” Clearly he did not.
I had heard tales of men who had experienced the ground shaking beneath their feet so badly that things fell around them. It was hard to believe such a report, frightening to do so, I suppose. But now I did believe. I had also heard from these same men that dogs howled before the shaking and that they had seen strange portents in the skies. I felt like one of those dogs; I wanted to howl.
It was awful, and it got worse as the afternoon progressed. Before nightfall, Aleksey insisted we stop early and thus reach our destination fresh the following morning. He told Major Parkinson that we would go hunting and that if he got a fire ready, we would return with some fresh food. I stood apart from the group, my head ringing as if I had taken a blow and my body so tense and off-kilter that I was actually sick soon after we left the camp. Aleksey watched me with concern. “You must have eaten something that was not good.”
I shook my head. “Can you not feel it?”
“What? You keep asking me this. I can feel nothing!”
“Well, then, I cannot explain it to you.”
“You are tired. You did not sleep after our turn on sentry and not before, either, if I recall.”
“If you remember that, then you must have been awake too.”
“But I am not sick. Do you want to stay here? I will hunt on my own.”
I was tempted to say yes, but he was truly alone without Faelan. Yet another stab. I had never really considered just how safe Faelan made Aleksey. Without the guardianship of his ferocious wolf, he seemed far too beautiful to be left alone in this world. He snorted. I think he caught something of my thoughts. “Come on, then, for I am hungry, even if you are not.”
We caught a moose very easily, a yearling that had probably recently been chased away by its mother. We hoisted it onto Freedom, which unsettled him, and took it back to butcher closer to the camp.
I wished I had dressed it there where we caught it when I saw that I had an audience for this activity. The child, now freed of its restraints, had left the campsite and come to the area a little way away where I had hung the young animal to drain. He stood at the edge of the clearing, fiddling with his little cloth doll, squeezing it in his hand, squeezing, releasing, squeezing, his eyes wide with delight as intestines spilt upon the ground. None of this helped my nausea, as you can imagine, but I was interested to see that once or twice he lay down and put his ear to the ground as if he too could hear what I was. I would have asked him about this, but naturally I was not about to speak to it under any circumstances. I kept my knife in my hand, and I knew exactly where Aleksey and my three horses were. I was taking no chances with this creature again.
We had a very good meal that night, although I ate nothing of it, for the very sight of the food made me sick, and then turned in for a final night’s sleep. We repeated our sentry duty as the night before, although we were this night given an easier shift just before daylight, so we actually did have the whole night to sleep. I think Aleksey engineered this with Major Parkinson, and I did not challenge it. I do not actually remember falling asleep.
I think Aleksey hoped I would be better in the morning, but as my illness was caused, I believed, by what we were going toward, I could not see how this could be. I think he got it after an hour of riding. He suddenly claimed, “This is in your mind, is it not? Like the ship.”
I pursed my lips. “Possibly, but I think the demon felt it too. I saw him last night, listening to the ground.”
“Do not your people do that? You said you could hear a horse over a mile away and got me to try it one day.”
“Well, yes, but that was because it was funny to see you with your arse stuck in the air and such a grimace of concentration on your face.”
He was about to make a suitable reply when his expression changed, and he held out his hand. “Is it raining suddenly? The sky is not… oh! Look!”
I did. A vast cloud rose ahead of us, as if the earth had suddenly been turned upon its side and we were looking at the sky side on. I hissed with some urgency, “Can you not feel it now? Can you not hear it? Aleksey?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I can hear… but we are still many miles from the falls…. Twenty?”
The others had begun to hear it now and comment upon the drumming and rumbling. It was as if a great beast were ahead of us, turning in its den, and the words of the madman returned to me.
IDOnot know what I had expected from the falls. Something like the ones that fed into our lake perhaps? Or the big ones where I had taken Aleksey to see the bears, only slightly bigger still?
I had no idea that the world could be so wrong, so terrifying, so alien to man that I felt as a pond bug must if given a glimpse of an ocean. I could not get my breath as we approached from the tree line. The others were eager, straining to see, to experience this wonder. I did not want to emerge from the security of the forest. But I had no choice. We came out onto a riverbank on a small promontory, and there it was.
Everything was wet. The trees, the ground, our hair, our clothes, the horses—all became soaked within a few moments from the cloud that was not a cloud but the breath of the falls. And the noise. I could not speak nor hear anyone for the thunder. I wanted to put my hands to my ears to block the sound but did not think that would help, for it was not only sound but vibration, and that could not be checked.
