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Chapter 27

We hike for the remainder of the night, many hours. Stone and me don't speak the entire way, and he always seems distracted, gazing into pools of freezing water, watching the heavens. I dismiss it as lack of sleep, and carry on.
When the first light of dawn strikes, tendrils of pastel and coral stringing their way through the night, we decide to bed down, since I'm staggering with exhaustion, and Stone isn't in much better shape. I find it a little humorous that we sleep with the light of dawn, but are awake and conscious in the dark hours of the night.
It's slightly chilly now, an we've rounded the edge of the mountain where we are most exposed to the wind, which still picks up every now and then. But it's nowhere as near as cold as it had been.
I settle into my bag, and try to fall asleep, but every time a rock starts a miniature avalanche of pebbles below us, or the wind begins to whip, with every crack of a twig, I sit straight up, eyes wide open. I glance at Stone, but he's either asleep, or faking it very well.
The other families that had chosen to follow us had also followed our example and had bedded down as well, while the sun is coming out, and it's as warm as it's going to get. I shiver impulsively, when I realize it's only going to get colder as we go higher. The peak must be freezing. Just another reason to believe that the rebels may only be a figment of the free people's imaginations.
I'm wondering how the existence of the rebels is even possible. Man and Beast, fighting together, for a single cause? The stuff of myth, legend, children's stories. Impossible. Surviving at an altitude like the top of the mountain? Even more so.
I want to believe the rebels exist. I need to. I need a purpose, something to hold on to, some small ray of hope, however feeble, something that I can fight for. I can't just sit in my cave and watch as the Ruler's and their dang Order take over my Wold, my forest. My home.
Rolled onto my back, I stare up above me, far into the heavens. Now that the snow isn't being blown by harsh winds, I watch it fall, indistinguishable from the thousands of stars above me, all little white painted dots on a vast black, red, and orange canvas.
As I stare up into the swirling eddies of snow, the hypnotizing fall of the whiteness, I begin to fall. Up. I'm falling, tumbling from my sleeping back, hurtling into the white-speckled heavens, and I've left the mountain far, far behind.
Slowly, I realize I'm again on the back of a great flying steed. I feel it's enormous, powerful back beneath my legs, corded with hardened muscle, covered with incredibly soft, thick, silky fur, that my fingers sink deep into, curling around for handholds as the creature spins, and the world becomes right-side up again.
We continue flying in with the world tipped on the right pole, and I control my steed with my body weight, leaning ever so slightly to the edge to make it turn effortlessly in the air. I never want to, nor feel the need to look down, nor do I feel threatened by the raw power emanating from the animal.
Great, powerful wings beat the air on either side of me, but all of my senses are focused on something on the ground far below me... Something lurking in the Wold, someone slithering in behind trees and bushes, cloaked in shadow, someone who leaves no footprints in the fresh-fallen snow.
Suddenly, I'm approaching the City again, with the same army mounted upon flying steeds, and I feel like I'm going to attack something, I have my mind set to kill, like when I hunt squirrel and other small creatures.
Then there's the speck below, the lone archer, but this time, he's picked out in select detail, perfectly sharp and clear, and the features of his face, the double blades strapped to his back, are unforgettably, unmistakably, the same.
I scream, then, in terror and disbelief, and even before the arrow hits my steed, I'm falling, falling, tumbling through the cold, snow-filled air, but the ground isn't even visible, and I'm just going to fall, fall forever...