Sierra Ashwood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Sierra knelt on the valley floor and spread her map across a flat stone. The cave route ran through the mountain behind her, but her pencil hovered. She had no fixed point to measure it against. She could sketch the passage as a rough line, but a rough line meant nothing. Anyone who followed it would guess and get lost. She knew that fear too well. A map without a landmark was no map at all. Marcus crouched beside her. His dog sat near his boot, ears up, watching the smoke on the ridge. "Your line's wrong," he said. He tapped the paper. "You've got the mouth here. It's not there." "I can't fix it," Sierra said. "I have nothing to anchor it to. No peak, no marker. Just green ground and rock." Marcus stood and looked past her. "You've got that," he said. He pointed downstream. Sierra turned. A river cut the valley, dropping over ledges in white sheets. A waterfall fed one pool, then another below it. The rocks around it stood dark and sharp, the same in any season. It would not move. It would not burn to nothing like grass. "Measure from the falls," Marcus said. "It's fixed. The cave mouth sits above it. Pace it out and you'll have a true distance." Sierra rolled up the map and walked to the water. The dog trotted ahead, then stopped at the pool's edge and drank. She counted her steps from the falls back to the dark cave mouth in the rock. Two hundred and forty paces. She marked the falls on her map first, then drew the cave mouth from it, exact. She checked her compass and set the bearing. West by the falls, the passage climbed into the mountain. Now the line held. Now it pointed somewhere real. But the ground was uneven. A hatchet blade of rock jutted between her and a clean sightline. She pulled the hatchet from her belt sheath and cut back a stand of brush blocking her view. The falls stood clear. She sighted the cave mouth over the water and fixed the last angle. Sierra sat back on her heels. The route was drawn. Not a guess now, but a chart anyone could walk. The first true record of the passage through the mountain. She had it. Marcus was already looking at the smoke. It had crept down the far slope. It reached the head of the river now, where the water started its fall. "You measured off the falls," he said. "The fire's at the falls." Sierra stood. Her landmark was the one thing burning. If the flames reached the dry brush along the banks, the falls would choke with smoke and ash. Her fixed point would vanish behind it. And the valley below the water was still blank on her map. She folded the chart and looked downstream. She had to reach the lower valley before the fire cut her off from her own landmark.