Darkwood by M. E. Breen Page B

mind fresh, but daylight’s wasting. Let’s get you over that cliff and start cutting.”
    â€œI will not—,” Annie began, but Smirch, red-faced, cut her off.
    â€œThis is a kindness, believe me, letting you learn in the day. Chopper must like you.”
    â€œFresh,” Hauler said again, as though that explained something. “And tall. Maybe head of the line?”
    â€œMaybe.” Smirch had picked up Number Four’s rope and begun to tie a series of complicated knots at one end, fashioning it into a seat.
    â€œOkay, step your feet in, like this.” Hauler looked at her expectantly. Annie shook her head. He frowned, puzzled. “You want to go over without a harness?”
    Annie gave in. Hauler showed her how to attach the leather belt to the rope seat, and then how to attach the basket to the belt.
    â€œBoots off.”
    Annie kicked at his hand. He scowled. “Too fresh.”
    â€œWhy are you taking my boots?”
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    Then he picked her up by the harness and carried her, one-handed, over to the cliff edge.
    â€œNow sit down with your legs straight out in front of you, and walk yourself backward down the rock.”
    Sit down into what
? Annie thought. She looked over the edge into space. Far below she could see the blue river winding its way through the bottom of the gorge.
    â€œIf you don’t climb down, I’ll have to push you,” Hauler said, making a sad face. Annie looked down again. The rope would run out of slack eventually, but how far would she fall before it did? Twenty feet? Fifty? She took a few small steps backward, until her heels stuck out over the edge of the cliff. Then slowly, slowly, clutching the rope with both hands, she began to sit back. She closed her eyes and imagined her uncle’s chair with its enormous cowhide cushion waiting to catch her. When she was sitting flat, the bare air as a seat, she began to inch her feet over the edge and down the rock face. The slack in the rope ran through her hands as the rope grew longer and the faces peering at her over the cliff grew smaller.
    â€œâ€™Atta girl!” Hauler yelled.
    Finally, the rope ran out of slack. Annie hung there, fifty feet from the top, hundreds of feet from the bottom, literally in the middle of nowhere.
    The air felt much colder here than at the top. Wind blew up from the bottom of the gorge, buffeting the men on the ends of their ropes. The pale sun of autumn, while scarcely bright enough to warm her, dazzled the rock face so that Annie had to squint to look at it. Most of the men wore hats pieced together from scraps of cloth and birch bark.
    Men hung to the left and right of her, some closer to the top of the cliff, some more than a hundred feet down. The men did not talk or even look at one another. Annie felt in her basket for the chisel. It was sharply pointed at one end and blunt at the other, like a hammer. The routine seemed to be to whack the rock with the hammer end, then turn the tool around andchisel out the ringstone with the pointed end. Strike, spin, chisel. But where to strike first? She watched as one of the men closest to her began to push himself from side to side, gaining speed. He ran horizontally, backward and forward along the rock, until he gained enough momentum to leap over a bulge in the cliff face. He clung with expert fingers and toes to the rock on the other side of the bulge. By working his feet into cracks in the rocks he left his hands free to chisel at the vein he had spotted. So this was why they didn’t wear boots.
    Annie shivered. The wind never abated, cutting through her skirt, her petticoat, her woolen underwear, her socks. A pink gleam caught her eye. She clutched at the rock, finding fissures in which to anchor her feet. Sure enough, inches from her face was a fat vein of ringstone. Annie tapped at it gingerly with her pick. Nothing happened, so she whacked it. A chip of stone flew off.