A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,67

the unthinkable vast expanse that fell away from the path that I walked.

I faltered, glimpsing the drop. What manner of platform was I on? My wariness returned to me. Prolonging my newfound hesitance, I waited for the blizzard to subside further, seeking enlightenment regarding my course. When the currents spread themselves thin and the tail ends momentarily swirled away, I suddenly found myself halfway out on a narrow projection of ridge. It was a good two paces wide, but it was the immense way the world fell away all around it that rendered that fact irrelevant. I had stood atop mountains of rubble in my days, but could never have been prepared for the feeling of such godly altitude. Surely nothing was this vast except where the gods needed room to breathe. I would plummet for miles – decades – if I fell from this height. And the cliffs, the mountains...they were all so massive at this scale, great hulking giants that towered and dwarfed me like the smallest creature in the world. It seemed impossible that my meek voice would even echo, here; the expanse was far too vast.

Overwhelmed, my mind stuttered back to the form huddled in the snow ahead of me. It lay at the end of the ridge, perched just shy of the edge. The flutters, I could see now, were the edges of a tattered cloak – and a head of hair, at one end. A human. Small and frighteningly still aside from the billowing of cloth and hair. Dead?

I moved forward again, aware of the boundaries it was safe to stick to. Staying the middle of the path, I came upon the form, my breath issuing into the frozen air in ghostly puffs. Pixie-like snowflakes drifted by, dancing like undead fairies in the deathly cold. Carefully, I stooped, watching the form for motion. It was disquieting, the need to uncover its face. I wished it had laid there revealed for what – who – it was, not requiring intimate investigation. Was it a corpse? I had no desire to uncover the face of a dead person.

But the possibility that it wasn't drove my hand, and I reached carefully for the cowl that hid its face. Kinky tresses of brown hair blew against my arm, coarse and soft at once. It was impossible to say what color brown the hair was. Light? Dark? Both, without straying from a solid color? I suppose that was what color it was: impossible brown. My fingers curled around the cloth of the contrasting, simple black cowl, a tragically thin garment considering the elements, and I drew it slowly down, away from the face that belonged to such a mane.

And my first impression of the skin: blue. But it was only an effect of the cold, stained from its original creamy olive color. I took it at first as a mature face, fooled by the hardship and deathly hollowness that haunted it, but quickly realized I was far from the mark. This was the face of a child.

Dread and hope stirred through me in equal amounts. I brushed her hair back from her face and neck, feeling for a pulse. At first there was nothing but the cold of my own fingers pressed against her hollow little neck, but then there was a spark – a vision I forgot to anticipate, thawing through the numbness of my fingertips. I closed my eyes against it, willing myself not to flinch away. Then came the second response, a small, faint beat like a baby bird budging for the first time in its little egg. A tiny hint of a pulse.

I opened my eyes, hope overriding the dread. Now was the time to act, if I wanted to save what was left of her. I did not question where she came from, how she got there, or even where 'there' was. There was time for that later. I bent over her and slipped my arms beneath her form, and proceeded to get to my feet. As I adjusted my weight to lift her, I shifted forward, slightly, and my eyes spilled over the edge of the ridge. I eyed the expanse gravely as I straightened, taking it in one more time from my paramount stance on that pedestal, before turning to spirit my charge back toward the door that had led there. The snow crunched and creaked over the faint gusts that spilled through the heights now, and the door rattled gently against