It was the time!
THAT time!
The good time! The best time! Or at least the most exciting time!
The cold rain was coming in!
So many things to be done before that. So many chores turned into games of do-it-the-fastest. So many pets to be bid fare-thee-well-forever to. So many vistas to be gazed at, filled with the subtle understanding that they would never more be seen. So many names to be screamed with such force and urgency.
What a hoot!
And my hoot was loudest of all, because it was getting pretty late on and everyone else had crammed themselves into the tiny squished place.
“GAAAAALEEEEEEE. HEEEEEEEEY GAAAAALLLLEEEEE. GEDDOVERHEEEEEEREEEEE GAAAAAAALEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
And on and on and on like that, until I tripped over something, which was Gale.
“Ooops.”
“Ow.”
“Sorry bout that.”
“You hit my leg.”
“Real sorry.”
“It’s gonna bruise.”
“Aw, I’m super sorry.”
“What do you care so loud about today anyhow?”
I stared at Gale, checking just to be sure she hadn’t been replaced by someone dumber in the night. “Because the cold rain’s coming in,” I told her very carefully, “and it’s time to go into the tiny squished place.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “No.”
“Right,” I said. “C’mon along and we can maybe find a nice spot to what the hell in a hot sauce are you talking about.”
“I’m not going,” said Gale. “I’m going to escape.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is! Where’re you gonna go, huh? North? It’s flat and dead. South? It’s rocky and dead. West? Nothing but the big empty sea. And east, of course, is filled with giant angry monsters. You’re going to get smooshed into ooze. Come on back and I bet I can elbow us a nice spot at the entrance, where we can watch the cold rain fall and very nearly not die. Will that make you happy?”
“No,” said Gale. “I’m going to leave. You can stay here and dodge the cold rain forever and ever if you’d like to, but I’m going to go east, over the hills, and find a place where the cold rain never falls. It sure beats this. See you late, or never, or whenever.”
And she was gone. Well, functionally. It’d take her another good while to run up over those first hills and out of sight, but as far as all of us were concerned she was gone.
I watched Gale be gone for another precious little minute or so, just out of surprise. Then I turned tail and ass, hauled both down to the tiny squished place like they were on fire, and just barely fit my entire self into the opening before the first angry drops came hammering down.
That was one of the worst nights I’d had, and I’d made a few of them for myself. Hours and hours of my backside being six blips from eradication, and chilly to boot. It didn’t endear me a lot to Gale’s memory.
Memory, not Gale herself. Gale herself had undoubtedly been beaten to bony bits by now on some ugly and empty slope. I thought so, and so did the other six or seven people who were crammed up against my face that I asked about this sort of thing, who all seemed very confident of it.
“Seen it happen a dozen times before,” said Eddy, the widest man. “Someone turns quiet-crazy and says ‘I can change everything!’ and then hey, they get themselves whacked. Best to know when you’re trying to do something impossible.”
“What happened to the other dozen people?” I asked Eddy.
“Dunno,” he said. “Never found ‘em again.”
“Do you think any of them made it?”
“Aw, not you too.”
And that was that.
When the cold rain ended, I wandered pretty high and pretty low, looking for Gale. But not super hard, because I didn’t really want to see any bony bits. Guess I got my wish because I sure didn’t find anything.
That was the disappointment, for sure. I didn’t find anything. And that made me worry.
It made me worry all day long digging up the good roots.
It made me worry all evening long brewing down the jellies.
It made me worry through a week solid as we went rockhunting through the Old Crumbles, and found some pretty good rocks to whack things with.
It even made me worry all through the Big Catch Day, which was dangerous because that was when the fresh jellies came in from the Net Guys On The Sea and if you don’t pay attention when you’re untangling those they sting the bejeezus out of you. As it was I lost my bejeezus three times to inattention.
But I couldn’t stop worrying, because I was worried that Gale was right. She’d had a habit of that, sometimes, when she could be bothered, and if it cropped up again boy would I be pissed off. It’d be just like her, to be right like that and then rub it in my face by never mentioning it. Just infuriating. Enraging. Damnit I hated when she did that, and now every day was filled with it.
So the next time the weathervane screeched I hollered my dues, waved bye to everything, and ran for the hills.
It was a spur of the moment thing. The problem with that kind of thing is that once you’re off the moment it just seems stupid.
I ignored that and concentrated on running. There was plenty to be done there.
The rocks weren’t my friends. The rocks were nobody’s friends, ever. But they seemed cooperative enough for the moment for me to live in, running full-tilt uphill and trying to guess what shade of green the clouds were and where exactly I’d seen her run, where she’d run to, and how fast.
Maybe it was here, just above here, that was where Gale had sheltered overnight. Maybe it was there, right there, in that hollow. Maybe it was “Aww, mince,” I said.
The skeleton was in pretty rough shape. The cold rain had beaten its limbs to bits and cracked even the big solid skull and pelvis. But yeah, that looked Gale-shaped to me.
“I DID warn you,” I told her.
She didn’t listen. Well, sometimes things don’t change.
The sky was starting to hiss. Somewhere behind me, the cold rain was starting. The sea was getting smashed to sloppy chunks.
I ran again. Hell, why not?
I didn’t have a plan as to WHERE, mind you. And never you mind why, or what.
But boy did I run.
Behind me, the cold rain came down. Spiked, thorned, thicker than a fist, faster than mother’s forearm. Cracking into stone and sending up little geysers of dirt.
I won’t lie to you. I felt pretty dumb right about then.
I wished I’d never listened to Gale, or at least put more than a half-second’s worth of thought into any of her arguments.
I wished I’d paid more attention to anyone else, who knew anything.
I wished I’d spent more time running so I could run faster right this minute.
It’s just that in the meantime, I couldn’t do any of those things.
So I ran.
Boy, did I run!