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CHAPTERTWO

It is dawn and Dawsyn did not submit to sleep.

She carved and carved until her calluses bled after all. Now, a small kitchen table occupies space, complete in her cabin. She goes to the hearth and collects the cast iron bowl that sits warming on the fire. Cringing, she dips her hands into it, the water hot but not scalding. She watches her stale blood swirl into cursive and sighs at the relief. With practiced fingers, she pulls out the splinters one by one. It is a ritual. She sings softly to herself, a small verse her grandmother favored.

Make your soul unto itself,

Break the bone and cure,

For when you lie within the mouth,

The cost will be no fewer.

Seal your eyes and sleep,

Still your lips, cease your breath;

Lie where sorrow dares not be,

Free from hands of death.

A morbid verse but better than the quiet. This cabin that is now hers was once too full and too loud and too much for her. But now, it isn’t enough. She has learned the might of silence. It is the prelude to fear. It is the absence of company. It is the moment before the monster takes you into his claws. She abhors it.

And how silent the Ledge is today. There are no voices to be heard beyond her door. Her home is a prison without need for high walls and chains. How meaningless those would be here. Dawsyn was born on this mountain, on the Ledge, so close to the sky that she has never glimpsed the ground.

The Ledge is nothing more than a precipice, a flat cropping upon the mountainside. The hostages who live there never leave, for the Ledge is perched against the edge of a great Chasm, dividing the mountain in two. A Chasm so deep, the bottom cannot be seen. Its edges are as deadly as its fall. Her friend Klaus once stooped to retrieve a fallen log and slipped several feet to the Chasm’s mouth… and in he went.Watch the Chasm. He hadn’t been all that close, but the edges are rimmed in ice and snare the feet of any who venture near.

The people of the Ledge say the Chasm is cursed.

Dawsyn says the people are cursed.

The villagers stay as far back from the Chasm as they can, which says little. Surrounding them is nothing but vertical mountain face. The obsidian rock is its own wall – unclimbable. The space remaining is a matter of a couple of hectares, enough for small groves of pine and fir trees. Enough for small game to survive. Enough for the villagers to build shelters out of the pine they harvest. A species once widespread, now confined to a pinprick on a map and stranded. And still, it is better than the alternative. Better trapped like rats here, on this icy shelf, than swallowed by the Chasm – or worse still… taken to the other side.

Dawsyn laces her boots again now and slides her still-damp gloves over her raw hands. She pulls a coat around her and carries the sled to the door and out. She retrieves her newly crafted table and drags it over the threshold. She’ll take it to a cabin a short way along the curve of the rock face, where it will be gratefully received.

Her feet are not swallowed by the snow here, so close to the Face – that unending wall of black rock that climbs into the clouds and beyond. The Ledge falls gradually away from it, slowly slanting down and then all at once, straight into that crack through the world, like a monster tilting a plate to its mouth.

In the warmer months, when the snow troubles itself to melt a little, the Face turns reflective. A frozen, glistening waterfall. A mirror of the Chasm’s depths. If this godforsaken mountain has a peak, Dawsyn has never seen it. Sometimes, she wonders how high they perch here on the Ledge. Halfway up? A third? Less? No one seems to know, and nothing ever falls from above but the snow and sleet. No tumbling rocks, no avalanches, no clues.

The season is still hostile, so the Face does not shine. The path she takes is empty – a rare luxury. It is the safest route between cabins, the farthest point from the Chasm and therefore the path most travelled. But the howling of the wind has warned the villagers away. Today is a day to be spent close to the burning log fires until the blizzard has come and gone. She was distracted. She didn’t listen for the wind before stepping outside.

Dawsyn swears through her knocking teeth. She drags the sled to the door of the next cabin and slams her fist against it once. The exertion of the short trip has torn at her lungs. Dawsyn sees eyes peep through slats of wood. The door is thrown open.

“What the fuck are you doing out here, Sabar?”

She scowls, though the shivering diminishes it. “I’m going on a picnic. Join me?”

“Get inside,” Hector groans. It is only then that he notices the table she’s hauling. “You made this?”

Dawsyn pushes past him in answer, practically clawing for his hearth. “You can fetch it yourself.”

He does, rolling the table on its side through his door and into the cabin, where he rights it again.

Dawsyn studies him as she pulls off her gloves. Hector looks a little thin – or thinner than normal, she supposes. There is not a soul on the Ledge who looks well-fed. His dirty-blond hair, crudely cut, hangs limp. Hector is Dawsyn’s age, give or take a year. This cabin is his as well as his mother’s, who is nowhere to be seen.

“Did your mother take ill?” she asks carefully.

It isn’t uncommon to find a family member here one day, gone the next.