feet, leaf remnants falling away and clinging to my skirt. The shadows tasted me, branding my sun-beaten shoulders with cold and seeping up my legs. The dust on my face cowered in my pores.
I scanned the walls for a section that might humor a climb, molding my eyes to each jut and crevice. I felt strangely compelled to keep my distance from the narrowing of the passage, and so turned to weigh my options in the other direction.
Contrary to the bottled-up tendency now at my back, this new perspective yawned into a more respectable canyon. There was even a bridge, or half a bridge, that arched over it before breaking off mid-air. Its rubble lay beneath it.
A bridge will do you no good up there, I thought to myself as I cast about for other options. I shuffled slowly out of place, changing feet, feeling for perspective.
My heel bumped something concealed in the leaves. Curious, I sought it out, nudging away its cover with my toe. A rusty chain took form first, which led quickly to the discovery of the shackle at its end. The shackle was empty, but what I found on the other end was a bit more disturbing. I weeded the chain out of the leaves, following its length until an anchor halted my progress. Brushing away the leaves, I beheld a most interesting substitute for the ball-and-chain method: a piece of rubble from the city.
There in my fingers, the chain sparked.
I dropped it.
And watched the spark thread its way quickly along the pattern of my silken fingerprints. It left them singed, looking faintly tattooed.
Alarmed, as if I had grown fond of the cursed digits, I flexed my fingers, feeling for the slightly prickly strain of web.
It was still there, but raw.
I eyed the chain on the ground with distrust, and moved slowly away from it.
There was a vision in my head now – very faint, for it had been brief – but I could see it, flickering weakly. A man who had worn that shackle.
The purpose of the piece of rubble was clear enough, though I didn't welcome the realization: it was an anchor, which performed the duty all anchors were meant to perform.
It kept something down.
Or in this case, someone.
Why anyone would be anchored to the bottom of this gulley was beyond me. I didn't let myself think too hard over it, if only for the sake of my own composure. I simply moved on, intent on finding a way out.
There was an area up ahead that boasted good texture in the ravine wall. I grew optimistic seeing it, thinking this was not an irrevocable death trap after all. It was just a ravine, and I could climb out. There would be plenty of places that I could. After all, no one would need to be chained down unless climbing was an option.
Still, I picked my way carefully toward the place of interest, keeping to the edges. And I could not help it, there next to the wall; I trailed my singed fingers over the face of earth at my flank.
At first, the visions were dead. They were black. I tasted ash, as the caress only grazed my fingers. But I swallowed the acrid sensation and gentled my touch, and the veil of scored nerves lifted. It rippled over the visions, still, but I could see outlines.
People. The people that wandered this ravine. Whiteskins, starved until they were surely as pale as they could ever desire. Bloodied ankles, dragging the pieces of debris that anchored them to this chasm.
“You want to be beautiful?” I heard a voice question them, an overbearing murmur crowded into their ears. “Pure? Then you will welcome the vampires, and they will make you as white as you have ever dreamed.”
I heard moaning. Distant wailing. Sounds of hysteria.
Human phantoms wandering the ravine, united in the rhythm of dragging one mutilated foot behind them.
Then a flicker much more radiant, right there before me. A darkskin woman, dressed in gold, lounging beneath the bridge.
There was a utensil in her hand, a shaft like a long, thick needle. She drew it to her mouth, breathed in, and let out a breath swarming with termites.
They billowed out, and then shifted like a flock of birds and screeched into the air like bats, and I jerked my hand away from the gulley wall in surprise as they rushed me, breaking the vision.
The area beneath the bridge was vacant.
It was suddenly very important to me that I