“What are we looking at, Pik?” Mela’s voice echoes across the chasm. Even standing on the narrow ledge before the drop is a challenge as the water pours from the tunnel behind us until it falls into the depths.

  Splash. She jerks back in shock.

  Clunk. She hears the churn of gears and the snap of rope.

  I can make it. I can see the ropes and how far I need to go. I’m fast enough that I’ll hold my balance and scurry over, but I’ll need to move fast. I’ll need to move without hesitation and there is no way that Luckil and Jeary will have the heart to push across before the wheel turns and they sink away into a watery death.

  I lean close and whisper over the churn of water. “A rope bridge. It turns over after each clunk; it’s all attached to a wheel and we can’t reach it to stop the mechanism.”

  “How far?”

  “Too far for the others.”

  “What about me?”

  My answer rolls across my teeth before it bids its escape. “You won’t hesitate. They will. I think that if I go as fast as I can then I will make it with a little time to spare; it should be possible for you too. As long as you don’t freeze for even an instant.”

  “They’re brave too or they wouldn’t be here, Pik.”

  “Brave enough for this?” I can hear their breathing. All three of them are breathing faster than they should; my eye traces their faces now, showing me their emotions in pale blue. Luckil is the worst; his nerves are shredded after Fren’s death and now his eyes dart about the room sightlessly, spooking at every sound.

  “What then?”

  “You go first. Right after the next turn of the wheel. I’ll help you up and you go as fast as you can; I’ll…try to help the others.”

  “You can’t leave them, Pik.”

  “I’ll be the last across. You keep your knife ready and our landing clear.”

  She tries to steady her breathing but fails. She tucks her knife away into her shirt and leans against me for a moment. “I’m afraid.”

  She smells like the damp of the cave, but warmer, like thick soil wet by the rain and something else entirely. Something sweeter. I resist the urge to breathe her in; a strange urge that I’ll need to examine later, and instead squeeze her shoulder. Her closeness is strange and uncomfortable; but not entirely unwelcome as the cold of the water has stolen much of my warmth.

  Now she’s gone. She asks my hands for guidance to take her to the ropes and I oblige, bringing her right to the edge and holding her back from stepping too far. Together we wait. It isn’t long before we’re soaked again and the mechanism clunks.

  I guide her hands up and her feet down; Mela is a quick study and true to her word she hesitates not for a moment as she pushes her hands along and shuffles her feet as fast as she can.

  My heart beats in my throat as she moves over the canyon; out there the wind is turbulent above the waters. She sways. I gasp as her forward lean reverses, but she recovers.

  I almost leap onto the rope after her as her foot slips, but she recovers that too. It is so long to cross and the latter half of the crossing is upwards as the ropes bow towards the centre. Mela struggles and my eyes dart between her, moving so slowly and so far, and the sluice from where the water will fall.

  Now, she makes it. Her hand touches the end and she cries out and throws herself with abandon from the ropes and across the platform. She laughs and I join and the others are lost.

  Splash. Clunk. Little time to spare.

  “She made it across.”

  “Across what?” Leary asks.

  I pale. Mela and I whispered, we didn’t share the reality nor the plan with the others so they had no fear because they had no knowledge of her crossing.

  “Mela made it across. There’s a bridge and she made it.”

  “Oh, that’s good…what’s it like.”

  It’s hard for me to explain it to them; it takes two turns of the wheel to talk them through the ropes, the timing, everything they might expect, and still they worry and fret and prevaricate.

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  I’m quiet now. I’ve explained all I can. Luckil is going next, his chest puffed with false bravado as I can see the cold sweat beading his brow.

  “Remember. Go fast, but go steady.”

  He nods. “Fast and steady. Got it.” He tries to smile. “You’ll have to tell me how a Heightened can see in the dark once we’re across.”

  I pat him on his shoulder and force a smile myself. “Sure. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “Thanks, Pik. Thanks for trying to save Will, there wasn’t anyone there brave enough to try and you stepped up. I don’t care if you think it was stupid or you’re selfish. I know you’re a good person or you’d have crossed already and left us behind.”

  “Focus on getting over, all right?”

  “Jeary?” She steps closer at his call and holds out her hand. I help them meet and lock fingers, taking a pace back. “I’ve enjoyed spending time together. I’m sorry it couldn’t have been kinder times.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Luckil.”

  “I hope I get to see you again.”

  Splash. Clunk.

  I guide his hands and feet into place and Luckil begins his journey.

  He starts strong; he steps out with purpose and moves out and out until he is fully over the chasm.

  “Where is he?” Jeary takes a shaky step forward and I grab her arm before she tumbles over the edge. She yelps but allows me to pull her back.

  “He’s moving.” I can’t offer her more.

  He’s slower than Mela had been. Unsteady too. The ropes sway and wave under his shifting weight until I my breath catches. He’s tilted back, his legs are out in front, barely holding the rope and his hands are slipping.

  Jeary is crying now. She grips my arm like it is the last line cast into deep water. I watch, hopeful, filling with dread as he struggles to right himself. It’s a monumental effort but he straightens, he leans forward and reaches a place of stability. A moment trickles by, another, he’s moving but he’s slow.

  “No.” I whisper. “Faster, Luckil, faster. Please.”

  “What is it? Has he made it?”

  I shout. “Move faster, Luckil, faster!”

  He tries. He tries and he shuffles his feet and scoots his hands as fast as his Heightened body will carry him and it—

  Splash.

  Clunk.

  Silence.

  It stretches into eternity as we all understand. Mela collapses on the other side; she falls against the wall and places her face into her hands. She knows he hasn’t arrived. Jeary knows too; she knows that I would have spoken of his success, she knows that my silence is condemnation.

  “I can’t do it. Can I?”

  “You’re faster than Luckil. Stronger.” I shrug and it is as if I’ve moved the weight of the world.

  “I won’t make it, will I, Pik?”

  “No.”

  “Then this is it.”

  “No.”

  “You just said that I couldn’t make it, what do you want from me? It’s better if I throw myself in now.”

  I trap her arm with my own and keep her from the edge. I don’t know if she’s serious in her grief or just mad, but I can’t allow her too…why do I think this is my choice? Would it be such a poor death to leap down, to be with someone she knows? Better that than a slow death, picked apart by pincers in the dark or falling asleep and rolling into the torrent anyway.

  I’ve watched too many people die. My heart is calloused, bruised, battered, and made hard to the world through what I’ve been and what I’ve seen and yet…I cannot let her fall to her despair. I cannot lose another even if our journey in this dungeon is fated to end in all our deaths.

  “I don’t want to have to add your name to my list, Jeary. I want you to stand on your own feet under the blazing sun and speak your truth from your lips. You’re too slow. You’ve done nothing wrong but your body is not ready for a dungeon as punishing as this. So, let me be your legs and your arms. I’ll carry you.”

  “Even you’re not strong enough to carry me.” She sniffs, she’s softened as if a string holding up her spine has been cut. “I’ve seen your arm, you don’t have a mark. This is beyond a Heightened. We’ll both die.”

  “We won’t.”

  “We can’t both die, Pik, because I’m afraid and weak.”

  “Don’t think you can make my decisions for me. I would rather fall with you than to succeed alone.” For all my callousness in my speech with Heric, I know that I cannot trample on others to achieve my dream. How will I stand in heavens blazing light and hold my head high knowing that I did less than my best?

  She’s brave. I forgot this the same as I did for Luckil. They both stepped forward to certain death just maybe to save the life of another. She can’t find words and I don’t want to hear them as she climbs onto my back. She crosses her arms about my neck and wraps her legs around my waist until she is as tightly secured as we can make her without rope.

  I stand ready.

  Splash.

  Clunk.

  The rope is rough and wet against my palms; the lower rope is the worst against the slickness of my leather boots. They slip. With Jeary heavy on my back I struggle to find my balance in these first moments, having to lean precariously far forward as our combined weight bows the lines.

  I don’t think. I move. Back hand and back foot slide forward to greet the front, then I shift my weight back and slide my front hand further and my foot to match.

  The wind whips at me out here; it comes from below carrying the sting of spray and it takes every ounce of warmth from me, and saps too my will power. Jeary holds tight and whispers the same kind of prayers that Heric mutters to himself. I believe in heaven as a place, I will make it there one day, but they believe it as a concept and I sink into that thought as I move.

  Slide. Shuffle. Slide. Shuffle. Quicker and quicker as I get into my stride and I move and move.

  “Faster!” Mela’s voice cuts through the roar rising from the water. “Move faster.”

  I am going as quickly as I can. I’ve got it wrong. My eye shows me how far I am and I know that I won’t make it at my pace. The water is coming.

  I choose.

  I stop. I wrap a hand into the waist of Jeary’s trousers, bunching the fabric in my fist as I sway on the ropes. She cries out but her words are lost in the wind. One effort. All I have.

  Jeary sails through the void, over the chasm, and bowls Mela over as she crashes onto the far ledge.

  Splash.

  Clunk.

  The world turns.

  The twisting rope is so violent that I am flung outwards, horizontal to the rope. Snap as my grip holds and something in my shoulder tears. Now I’m hanging, hands on the lower rope that used to be the upper and nothing beneath my feet except empty air then water.

  I did it.

  I held on.

  The next moments are agony as I drag myself, hand over hand with a shoulder that protests every motion until my fingers meet the mechanism and I drop onto the sodden ground with a grunt.

  I make it.