This is nothing!”
Later, Sylas would struggle to understand why he gave in. Perhaps it was because he was still feeling a little guilty about her father, or because he didn’t want her to think him a coward, or because he was genuinely worried that she would attempt the rapids alone. Whatever the case, it went against all his better judgement.
He shrugged and said: “OK.”
Triste whirled about in disbelief. He grabbed Sylas’s boat. “Don’t, Sylas! It’s insane!”
“It’ll be OK,” said Sylas with more confidence than he felt. “We’ll take it one stage at a time. Anyway, you heard her, if we don’t go she’ll try it alone.”
“Let her!” shouted the Scryer. “You’re too important to risk this kind of nonsense!”
“Yeah, because I don’t matter! I’m just here for the ride!” said Simia, with fire in her eyes. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
Triste let out a long, exasperated sigh.
“Come on, Sylas, let’s get going,” said Simia, heading off in the direction of the rapids.
Sylas looked from Simia to the Scryer, then dipped his paddle.
Then he said: “Let’s just get this over with,” he said.
It was a tumult of rocks and stones and trees. Naeo was thrown this way and that, hurled from bank to boulder, slammed against tree and trench, as she snaked across the forest floor.
The pain in her back was almost unbearable as the scars were snagged and pummelled, but she closed her eyes and pushed it from her mind. There was no time for pain – no time to think – this was all instinct: instinct for earth and forest.
She felt the ground beneath her and the trees above, the folds of soil and root, the barest beginnings of bank and slope and drop. They were part of her now.
Her father’s words echoed in her mind: “I see the hearts of men, but you see so much more! You see Nature herself!”
And so she did. It had always been this way, since she could remember. When her thoughts and feelings reached into the world around her, they found their true home. They became lost in the currents of streams, the pulse of animals and the fibre of living things. And yet she did not feel lost. In fact, it was like opening her eyes wide – like seeing the world true and clear, with its thriving mesh of connections: mighty trunk to tiny leaf; raindrop to raging sea.
And she did not just see these connections, she felt them.
The forest wrapped itself around her thoughts and bowed before her feelings. She flew across moss and leaves as though they lay down before her, shaping themselves to her will. The stream carried her at impossible speeds, banking left, then right, then heaving her into the air before catching her on a mossy bank and sending her on, down the hill. Ahead, a constant flux of trees, bracken and bush warped as though seen through a lens: shifting and arching, turning and stretching, drawing her on and on and on.
It was like no Groundrush that Ash had ever seen. Not that he saw much of it, because he spent most of his time on his face, or peering between his knees, or with his eyes pressed closed, pleading for it to end. It was slicker, faster, more savage than anything he and his friends had conjured in their youth. This was no childish toy. This was the unbridled force of nature.
And that was not all. Somehow, by some new trick, Naeo was forging the Groundrush even as they careered down the hillside, feeling out the route in an instant and clearing the path ahead in what seemed the blink of an eye. But there was something else that Ash had never seen before: the Groundrush did not take the quickest path down the slope but traversed it, following not the simplest route but the one that travelled the greatest distance, threading between obstacles, keeping them high, allowing them to whisk along the shoulder of one hill until they joined up with another, avoiding the valleys, hollows and dells.
He was lost in an endless tumult of water, leaves and undergrowth, his limbs flapped about him and his mass of curls were plastered across his face, but Ash knew that everything was as Naeo wished it to be. Somehow, by some miracle of Essenfayle, she was taking them all the way to the Barrens.
Icy waves scythed like teeth, thrashing the side of Sylas’s canoe, sending the bow leaping into the air. Then it turned and twisted, plummeting downwards into a deep grey hole, almost pitching him overboard. As the hull ploughed into the depths, he dropped the paddle and clung to the sides. The river spat him back out, but only sent him lurching backwards into a whirlpool, spinning him round once, twice, and then slamming the boat against a wall of water. He heard Triste somewhere behind him.
“The paddle!” he screamed. “Use the paddle!”
Sylas reached down and grabbed it from the bottom of the boat, but when he jabbed it over the side, it flailed in nothingness – he had been launched high into the air and the paddle simply wafted through the spray. When he looked down the length of the hull, he saw to his horror a gigantic wall of foam. It was the surface of the river, far below him. He felt a sickening sensation of weightlessness, his stomach rising into his chest.
Then a crack on the side of the head.
The last thing he saw was his rucksack flying over his shoulder.
She could see them now – just there, ahead – unfolding in endless waves of grey. The Barrens beckoned like an open grave, calling them on past the last few skeletons of trees. And yet to Naeo, they seemed far away, as though they were behind a sheet of glass, because something was happening to her – something deep inside her. It sucked the air from her lungs and whipped her thoughts into a frenzy. It was a gathering, terrifying, all-consuming panic.
The moment it gripped her, she lost control. The path ahead fogged as quickly as her thoughts, the little stream spilled haphazardly down the hillside, the curtain of shrubs twisted back into shape, the ground once again became rutted and treacherous. And although she saw this, she could do nothing. She was still behind the sheet of glass, her mind and body fighting some unseen horror. She opened her mouth to scream but in that instant her feet caught a rock and she was thrown high into the air, somersaulting over a line of blackened bushes and sent sprawling into the grey mud beyond.
All was silence, blackness and cold. Bone-shattering, skin-pinching cold.
Sylas tumbled in the dark, a massive force pushing him ever downwards. Currents clawed at his clothes and forced water into his mouth and nose. He felt his body flip over and over until something hard and solid smashed against his shoulder. He cried out in a gush of bubbles and then, to his horror, he realised that he had no air in his lungs. He thrashed the water, but it was futile – he had no idea which way was up.
Then, suddenly, a shimmering glow. Not so much light as the promise of it – a lessening of the blackness. And in the midst of the shade and shadow, something sharp and distinct: a hard, black edge.
A shape. A hand.
It grabbed him by the chest – or was it his throat? – he could not tell. All that mattered was that in the midst of the tumult and the horror, something – somebody – had hold of him. He could feel their strength heaving him up, fighting all that would drag him down.
As his lungs were about to burst and his eyes bulged, his world erupted with a blinding light, a rage of noise. But these things he hardly noticed, because at the same moment he heaved air into his lungs – wonderful, beautiful, life-giving air that flooded his floundering body with energy and purpose. He threw his hands up, dug his fingers into something soft, and clung on. As the intensity of the light faded he saw a new shape, a face, peering down at him, shouting something.
“I’ve got you!” said the voice. “I’ve got you!”
Naeo hit the ground hard, slamming her shoulder into the hard-packed earth. She tumbled over and over in mud and twigs and dirt, twisting awkwardly and catching her knee on a stone as she went. She yelped with pain and threw out her hands, clawing at all that flew past, trying desperately to stop.
Finally