Лиза Смит - The Return - Midnight

Elena didn’t lose another second. She dumped her backpack on the ice and skated straight back to the thurg.

There it was, so huge, so pathetic, so helpless. The very thing that had kept it safe from other Godawful Hellacious monsters in the Dark Dimension — its great bulk — was now turned against it. Elena felt her chest tighten as if she were wearing a corset.

Even as she watched, though, the animal became calmer. She stopped trying to get her left hind leg out of the ice, which meant that she stopped churning up the ice around it.

Now Biratz was in a sort of crouching position, trying to keep her three dry legs from going under. The problem was that she was trying too hard, and that there was nothing to push against except breakable ice.

“Elena!” Stefan was within earshot now. “Don’t get any closer!”

But even as he said it, Elena saw a Sign. Just a few feet away, lying on the ice was the tickle-prod that Pelat had used to get the thurgs going.

She picked it up as she skated by and then she saw another Sign. Reddish hay and the original covering for the hay — a giant tarpaulin — were lying behind the thurg. Together they formed a broad wide path that was neither wet nor slick.

“Elena!”

“This is going to be easy, Stefan!”

Elena pulled a pair of dry socks out of her pocket and drew them up over her boots. She fastened the tickle stick to her belt. And then she started the run of her life.

Her boots were fur with something like felt underneath and with the socks to aid them, they caught on the tarpaulin and propelled her forward. She leaned into it, vaguely wishing Meredith were here, so she could do this instead, but all the time getting closer. And then she saw her mark: the end of the tarp and beyond it floating chunks of ice.

But the thurg looked climbable. Very low in back, like a dinosaur halfway into a tar pit, but then rising up along the curved backbone. If she could just somehow land there…

Two steps till jump-off. One step till jump-off.

JUMP!

Elena pushed off with her right foot, flew through the air for an endless time, and — hit the water.

Instantly, she was soaked from head to foot and the shock of the icy water was unbelievable. It caught hold of her like some monster with a handful of jagged ice shards. It blinded her with her own hair, it squeezed all the sound out of the universe.

Somehow, clawing at her face, she freed her mouth and eyes from hair. She realized that she was only slightly below the surface of the water, and that was all she needed to push upward until her mouth broke the surface and she could suck in a lungful of delicious air, after which she had a coughing fit.

First time up, she thought, remembering the old superstition that a drowning person will rise three times and then sink forever.

But the strange thing was that she wasn’t sinking. There was a dull pain in her thigh but she wasn’t going under.

Slowly, slowly, she realized what had happened. She had missed the back of the thurg, but landed on its thick reptilian tail. One of the serrated fins had gashed her, but she was stable.

So…now…all I have to do is climb the thurg, she puzzled out slowly. Everything seemed slow because there were icebergs bobbing around her shoulders.

She put up a fur-lined gloved hand and reached for the next fin up. The water, while making her soaking clothes heavier, supported some of her weight. She managed to pull herself up to the next fin. And the next. And then here was the rump, and she had to be careful — no more footholds. Instead she grabbed for handholds and found something with her left hand. A broken strap from the hay carrier.

Not a good idea — in retrospect.

For a few minutes that qualified as among the worst in her life she was showered with hay, pounded with rocks, and smothered in the dust of old dung.

When it was finally over she looked around, sneezing and coughing, to find that she was still on the thurg. The tickle stick had been broken but enough remained for her to use. Stefan was frantically asking, both aloud and by telepathy, if she was all right. Bonnie was skating back and forth like a Tinker Bell guide, and Damon was cursing at Bonnie to get back to land and stay there.

Meanwhile Elena was inching up the rump of the thurg. She made it through the crushed supply basket. She finally reached the thurg’s summit, and she settled just behind the domed head, in the seat where a driver would sit.

And then she tickled the thurg behind the ears.

“Elena!” Stefan shouted, and then Elena, what are you trying to do?

“I don’t know!” she shouted back. “Trying to save the thurg!”

“You can’t,” Damon interrupted Stefan’s answer in a voice as cold and still as the place they were in.

“She can make it!” Elena said fiercely — precisely because she herself was having doubts about whether the animal could. “You could help by pulling on her bridle.”

“There’s no point,” Damon shouted, and turned about-face, walking quickly into the mist.

“I’ll give it a try. Throw it out in front of her,” Stefan said.

Elena threw the knotted bridle as hard as she could. Stefan had to run almost to the edge of the ice to grab it before it fell in. Then he held it aloft triumphantly. “Got it!”

“Okay, pull! Give her a direction to start in.”

“Will do!”

Elena tapped Biratz again behind her right ear. There was a faint rumble from the animal and then nothing. Elena could see Stefan straining at the bridle.

“Come on,” Elena said, and slapped sharply with the stick.

The thurg lifted up a giant foot, placed it farther on the ice, and struggled. As soon as she did, Elena smacked hard behind the left ear.

This was the crucial moment. If Elena could keep Biratz from crushing all the ice between her back legs, they might have a chance.

The thurg tentatively lifted her left hind leg and stretched it until it made contact with the ice.

“Good, Biratz! Now!” Elena shouted. Now if Biratz would only surge forward…

There was a great upheaval underneath her. For several minutes Elena thought that perhaps Biratz had broken through the ice with all four legs. Then the thrashing changed to a rocking motion and suddenly, dizzyingly Elena knew that they had won.

“Easy, now, easy,” she called to the animal, giving her a gentle tickle with the stick. And slowly, ponderously, Biratz moved forward. Her domed head drooped farther and farther as she went, and she foundered at the edge of a bank of mist, breaking the ice again. But there she only sank a few inches before meeting mud.

A few more steps and they were on solid ground. Elena had to suck in her breath to stifle a scream as the thurg’s domelike head slumped, giving her a short and scary ride to where the tusks re-curved on themselves. Somehow she slid right between them and had to hastily scramble off Biratz’s trunks.

“It was pointless, you know, doing that,” Damon said from somewhere in the mist beside her. “Risking your own life.”

“What d-do you mean p-pointless?” Elena demanded. She wasn’t frightened; she was freezing.

“The animals are going to die anyway. The next trial is one they can’t manage and even if they could, this isn’t a place where anything grows. Instead of a quick clean death in the water, they’re going to starve, slowly.”

Elena didn’t answer; the only answer she could think of was, “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” She had stopped shivering, which was a good thing, because a moment ago her body had felt as if she might shake herself apart.

Clothes, she thought vaguely. That was the problem. It certainly couldn’t be as cold here in the air as it had been in that water. It was her clothes that were making her so cold.