I paused to catch my breath.
“It’s such an arcane matter that I don’t even feel qualified to speculate on it. I thought maybe you’d come equipped with ready-made answers for things like that-some sort of preternatural awareness of your limits and abilities.”
“Afraid not. Unless you’d call a hunch preternatural.”
“I suppose I would if you were right often enough.”
“Shit. It’s too soon to tell.”
“Shit. You’re right.”
Soon we’d climbed above the line of haze from which the flakes seemed to fall. A little farther, and the winds died to breezes. Farther still, and these subsided to nothing. The rim was in sight by then, and shortly thereafter we achieved it.
I turned and looked back down. All I could see was a bit of glitter through the mist. In the other direction our trail ran on in a zigzag fashion, here and there looking like a series of Morse dashes-regular interruptions, possibly rock formations. We followed it to the right until it turned left.
I reserved some attention for Jurt, looking for signs of recognition at any feature of the terrain. A talk is only words, and he was still some version of the Jurt I’d grown up with. And if he became responsible for my falling into any sort of trap, I was going to pass Grayswandir through his personal space as soon as I became aware of it.
Flicker…
Formation to the left, cavelike, as if the hole in the rock opened into another reality. An oddly shaped car driving up a steep city street…
“What…?” Jurt began.
“I still don’t know their significance. A whole mess of sequences like this were with me earlier, though. In fact, at first I thought you were one of them.”
“Looks real enough to walk into.”
“Maybe it is.”
“It might be our way out of here.”
“Somehow that just seems a little too easy.”
“Well, let’s give it a try,”
“Go ahead,” I told him.
We departed the trail, advanced upon the reality window, and kept going. In a moment he was on the side walk next to the street up which the car was passing. He turned and waved. I saw his mouth working, but no words came to me.
If I could brush snow off the red Chevy, why couldn’t I enter entirely into one of these sequences? And if I could; do that, mightn’t it be possible that I could shadow-walk from there, wending my way to some more congenial spot, leaving this dark world behind? I moved forward.
Suddenly I was there, and the sound had been turned on for me. I looked about at the buildings, at the sharply inclined street. I listened to the traffic sounds, and I sniffed the air. This place could almost be one of San Francisco’s shadows. I hurried to catch up with Jurt, who was moving toward the corner.
I reached him quickly, fell into step beside him. We came to the corner. We turned. We froze.
There was nothing there. We faced a wall of blackness. That is, not just darkness but an absolute emptiness, from which we immediately drew back.
I put my hand forth slowly. A tingling began as it neared the blackness, then a chill, followed by a fear. I drew back. Jurt reached for it, did the same. Abruptly he stopped, picked up the bottom of a broken bottle from the gutter, turned, and hurled it through a nearby window. Immediately he began running in that direction.
I followed. I joined him before the broken pane, stared within.
Again the blackness. There was nothing at all on the other side of the window.
“Kind of spooky,” I remarked.
“Uh-huh,” Jurt said. “It’s as if we’re being granted extremely limited access to various shadows. What do you make of it?”
“I’m beginning to wonder whether there isn’t something we’re supposed to be looking for in one of these places,” I said.
Suddenly the blackness beyond the window was gone, and a candle flickered on a small table beyond it. I began to reach through the broken glass toward it. Immediately it vanished. Again there was only blackness.
“I’d take that as an affirmative response to your question,” Jurt said.