Beneath Ceaseless Skies #172 Read Free Page B

broke violently free. Jackson asked nothing of us; he knew as I did that all had been agreed to in the tavern. He would take us into the hills; we would call our mothers down. What the thunderbirds did then was out of our hands. He knew this but dared it anyhow and some part of me loved him for it.
            Morning saw the train in motion again, deeper into the hills that rose on either side of us. The snow-draped heights reminded me how far we were from the water, from our home. I watched them with unease, but it was Gugán’s hand upon the back of my neck that grounded and calmed me. This was what we had come for, he reminded me. This is what we longed to do. Free our mothers and then— We could see nothing beyond that moment, could not even see that moment, truth be told. It was cloaked in the clouds Raven had used that day to steal our mothers away.
            Being
of
Raven was not controlling Raven, I told Gugán. It was folly to think any could control such a creature. I could see that this weighed on him even now. That moment of loss, always floating in the depths of his eyes. This was the path that tethered him, and even had I known (I knew—do not listen to this untruth), I would not have stopped what came.
    * * *
            I came to see many forms within the cloaked mountains as we passed northward; the tail of our kin the whale, the rough-cut edge of a wing lifted in flight, the pointed nose of a leaping salmon. It was the wing that drew my eyes time and again until we were far out of its arching height. The train wove her way through tunnels of rock, breaking once more into sunlight falling through bruised clouds. It was those clouds that gave us concern, that made us feel Raven closing in to protect what he believed was his. They were not snow clouds but the clouds of storm and rage. In this way, they were also of the thunderbird.
            Snow and ice on the tracks stopped the train again midday. Before Gemma and Sombra could begin their work, the gold-rush men expressed their frustration by daring to exit the train—they swarmed out of the cars, walked the length of the train, and leaped down to the ice-coated metal. They began to chip at it with picks and boots. The sisters stared at them but made no move forward. They only looked at Jackson, who stood silent upon the engine roof.
            But he also made no move toward the men, and I watched him turn a slow circle, studying the mountains. The peaks traced a jagged line against the clouded sky, a line like none I had seen before. Only the clouds were familiar, possessing the rounded bounty they’d had that day in my youth, when they had dipped to the river and carried our mothers away. In my heart, a notion was given breath, was given space to stretch and explore, and I reached for the hand that should have been at my side, only to find that it was not.
            Gugán had gone already, feeling that breath a moment before I had. My hand curled into the fist of a man who wants to strike a thing. I didn’t look to the sisters or Jackson. I fled the engine, threading my way through the train to the strange cars that changed their shape based on need. Here, I found my other half, kneeling before the great pale bear. I felt certain the beast would lift a paw and spill Gugán’s spirit to floor, but instead it leaned its massive head against his own in acquiescence.
            Another breath filled me. Gemma and Sombra had said this bear would soon be in its proper place. Not necessarily its home, but proper. I watched Gugán settle onto the bear’s broad back and offer me a hand to do the same. The bear heaved beneath us, the train car split wide, and we were gone, running along tracks that should have been iced but were not.
            As the metal rails cleaved the mountain in a sure and sweeping curve, the bear leaped with similar certainty. He knew where he was going, muscle and bone bunching beneath our