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Her sisters danced around her with their arms raised in celebration as ash rained down from the sky.
“This is more than that,” the scarred woman replied in a voice like a fall of silk—or a rumble of distant thunder.
Then the world around Ellie exploded, blowing into a thousand scattered fragments.
?
Ellie woke to a clatter of dishes and bolted upright in her hammock. Bates flashed her an apologetic look as he opened another mystery can for breakfast.
As soon as they had finished eating, they set off once more along the river. Ellie glued herself to the compass as they steamed against the quick-moving current. She desperately hoped that she could find some indication of the presence of theBlack Pillar, despite Bates’s insistence that they could make their way along the path of the map regardless. If she could confirm that just one of the landmarks from the parchment was real, then she would be far more confident that this entire effort wasn’t just a risky and terrible waste of time.
The landscape grew wilder. Steep foothills rose up around them, draped in rich, green growth. The boat’s engine audibly struggled. Bates took more time to shovel in fuel as he wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.
He looked rough. His clothes and skin were stained with coal dust and mud, while his jaw was darkened by three-days’ growth of beard.
Ellie doubted that she was faring much better.
Halfway through the morning, they reached the first set of rapids—a cluster of boulders protruding from the bed of the river. Bates navigated them carefully through the rocks, weaving theMary Leeover the higher spills of water. He took the curves at a wild pace, but Ellie knew he couldn’t afford to be more moderate. The steamboat had to overcome the current or else risk losing control of their course.
At one point, the boat swung ominously close to one of the stones. Ellie tensely awaited the inevitable crunch of collision, but Bates swept them past into open water.
A second run of cataracts hit shortly after lunch. They were even more quick and hazardous than the first. Bates’s expression grew grimmer as he tightly gripped the rudder.
TheMary Lee twisted through a spin that sent Ellie’s stomach and nerves into a lurch. Bates wheeled them into the turn and glided them along a spill of water that swirled around one of the larger boulders. The flow spat them out of the stretch of rapids as water splashed up over the place where Ellie clung to the bow.
Once they were through, Bates called to her over the rush of the current.
“We hit another one like that, we might want to think about whether it’s worth risking,” he said.
There was still no sign of the pillar.
By mid-afternoon, the heat of the day lay over them thickly despite the cool waters under their hull. Ellie wiped the sweat from the back of her neck as the boat rounded a bend… and the river had ended.
The cobalt road stopped abruptly at a thirty-foot cliff veiled by a cascading waterfall.
Disappointment washed over Ellie as she faced the rushing barrier. The steamboat clearly couldn’t navigate past this. They had reached the end of the line—with still no sign of the landmark they sought.
The timbre of the engine changed as Bates eased back the throttle until they were barely chugging forward against the swirling current.
“That’s it for the boat.” He glanced over at the compass in her hand. “Anything?”
Ellie closed the dented golden case with a sharp click.
“It’s possible I missed it,” she offered numbly.
Bates looked down at her silently for an uncomfortable moment before he turned away to face the waterfall.
“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I can still get us there.”
The flat tone of his words left Ellie uneasy. They felt incomplete, and Bates wasn’t the type who kept his thoughts to himself.
“What aren’t you saying?” she pressed uneasily.
His glance back at her contained a hint of dismay.
“I…” His shoulders sank as he gave in. “Look—this has been the easy part. Trekking through an uncharted stretch of bush on foot is a different bag of worms. We’ll have to hunt and forage for whatever we’re going to eat—probably not always successfully. Track down safe sources of water. Fix up a place to sleep where we won’t find ourselves serving as bait halfway through the night. There are snakes out there that’ll kill you if you step in the wrong spot, an absurd quantity of mosquitoes, carnivorous ants—”
“Carnivorous ants?” Ellie cut in, frowning. She did not recall reading about any of those in her natural history books. She wondered if she’d heard him right over the growing rush of the waterfall.
