“Well, I don’t understand it,” the goodly wife said, dabbing at her lips with a napkin that wouldn’t last her two weeks of the trip to the High Ground. “Unless it’s an excuse for guides to make an outsized wage without ever having to travel too far from Low.”
Someone else may have hesitated to say as much in the presence of their guide, or may at least have thrown in a token ‘present company excluded, I’m sure’. It was left to the stalwart husband, however, to look apologetic on his wife’s behalf, turning a hangdog you know how it is glance at the guide when he was sure she wasn’t looking.
The guide sat as unmoving as they always were once the fire was lit, as unbothered as they had been by every slight and sight and toil in the four days since leaving Low. Their cloak bulged as always over the unwieldy weight of their backpack, which neither wife nor husband had ever seen them remove.
“It’s the way of the path,” they said, as if it were that simple. “I would suggest again that you consider dividing your supplies and travelling separately, at least at intervals. If you spend at least one day apart for every six together, it ought to be safe.”
“Safe,” the wife scoffed, offering up her clean hands to the fire’s comfortable warmth. “Safer to travel separately in this wild country? Wolves and highwaymen are realer than any superstition you’ll come across in Low.”
“No highwaymen out here,” the guide informed her. “It doesn’t abide groups. As for wolves…” They hesitated; silence weighed under their hood as heavily as the sliver-moon dark on the fire’s brave light. “No. Wolves aren’t what you need concern yourself with.”
“No one around Low seemed willing to say what they were actually afraid of out here,” the husband said, still like an apology. “As long as that’s the case, well…better plan for the dangers we can understand, you know?”
The guide stared blandly out from under their hood. It was not a look the husband cared for, any more than their silence. The wife seemed not to notice it at all, or anything about them, or most people, except whether they were currently doing as she wanted or not.
“Exactly,” she said, with a spendthrift smile to reward her husband for taking her side. “Now, my offer stands – we will continue to pay you your daily rate for guidance and protection all the way to High Ground, with an additional twenty five percent paid at the end to see you comfortably back to Low. Surely that’s more than reasonable, if, as you say, there aren’t even any wolves or highwaymen to worry about.”
But the guide didn’t even do her the common courtesy of pretending to consider it – their head was already turning side to side, slow as grinding stone, in their hood.
“Six days,” they said, as they had back in Low. “The path won’t abide groups any longer than that. The cliffs-”
“So you all say,” she snapped, “But none of you will say why. Frankly, I’m tired of being told this muddy rut decides somehow how we ought to travel.”
The guide waited for her to say her piece. It hadn’t taken them long to learn it was easiest to do so.
“It isn’t the path itself,” they said once she had settled huffily back onto the stone polished by the derrieres of so many previous pilgrims. “It’s the cliffs. The wounded earth. It was struck apart unjustly, long ago. It strives to heal. Its will, in the ravine, is strong – not enough to knit stone, but anything more malleable is at risk.”
The goodly wife, who’d had a great deal of trouble living up to that title since leaving her home and its comforts, scoffed again.
“You mean to say it…fuses things, somehow?” she didn’t seem at all, really, to ask. At least, not in any way that truly invited an answer. “That has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. No one hears about any monstrosities stumbling into the High Ground, now, do they?”
The guide stared at her. Whether it was out of their usual stillness or something more, the fire’s flickering light wasn’t enough to show.
“No,” they said flatly, “They don’t.”
After that, they said nothing more, except to repeat that they would guide the pair for the agreed-upon six days, for the agreed-upon sum. After that, whether they respected the path or not would be up to them.
The stalwart husband, who had never particularly felt as if he fit his title, couldn’t imagine leaving his wife alone under those conditions. If the wilds didn’t do for her, well, she just might do for the wilds. And besides, she would weep and rail and never forgive him for walking off and leaving her with half the luggage.
Still, those cliffs looming the moonlight down to a sliver did seem to weigh on him that night as he stretched out on his bedroll. They tilted almost together at the top, not as if to fall, but as if to seal.
He rolled onto his side, so he could sleep looking at the fire instead of them. The guide looked to already be asleep, or at least lying down and still again, the ugly, cloaked hump of their backpack pointed towards him. Or so he had always guessed it to be – he had never seen them take anything out of it, or adjust its weight on the long trail. And it seemed…
It was silly. As much so as his wife had said, most likely. But it seemed to him, lying there, in the ember-light, that he could just about see the shape of fingers and a bent extra elbow through the bulk and shadow of their cloak.
