Free Across Carina by Kelsey Hall

than I had thought.
    My fingers began to grow weary and white. I thrust my body against the rocks to keep from slipping, but they were too smooth. All the natural handholds had disappeared. My left hand lost its grip and swung to my side . . . but somehow I didn’t fall. Then my right hand started to slip, and I prepared for the worst . . . but still I didn’t fall. I was suspended in the air, with my feet wedged in the tiniest cracks and my arms hanging like an ape’s. And I was bewildered. I had no idea what was going on, but I was too afraid to move and find out. Something was supporting me, and if I left it by risking a climb to the top, I would risk falling to the bottom.
    As I considered my position, I lost all sound. I could no longer hear the ocean waves or the wind. My own breath became inaudible.
    Panicked, I looked to the sky and screamed.
    “Help! Somebody help!”
    I couldn’t hear myself. Even my thoughts were beginning to fade, like someone was turning down the volume on my mind.
    I stared and stared at the rocks in front of me. Time passed, but I don’t know how much. Without my thoughts, I had no concept of minutes or hours. I was a vegetable on the verge of dissolving into the soil.
    I fell onto something. At first that was all I could say about it. With my back on the thing and my face toward the sky, I couldn’t see what was transporting me. I was immobilized, left only to watch the sky and its shifting clouds.
    I was laid at the mouth of a cave, high on a mountaintop, with no way down. When I sat up, I saw a giant bird flying back toward the ocean. It had an orange body with a sharp blue beak and blue wings that extended several meters. It looked prehistoric.
    I scooted back, frightened that that was what had carried me across the ocean. I didn’t know if it had rescued me or snatched me for its own use.
    It cawed loudly as it flew into the clouds and disappeared.
    My thoughts scrambled. I could hear again. I was trapped. There were animals on The Mango Sun.
    What if it comes back for me?
    I cowered, backing further into the cave. But now the ocean was scarcely visible, and that made me just as nervous.
    It wasn’t long before night drenched the world in black. I wondered where I should sleep, or if I should sleep at all. I was exhausted, having barely slept at all since leaving my house. The shifting terrain had not been conducive to it.
    If I poised myself at the cave’s entrance, I would apparently be exposed to fantastical birds. If I huddled deep within the cave, I might encounter whatever lurked inside. I threw my options back and forth until my body had had enough. I collapsed on the ground, and my eyes shut themselves.
    In the middle of the night, I awoke. I was curled on my side with my head at the entrance of the cave. I sighed out of relief that I hadn’t rolled off the mountain.
    Above me the stars shone like diamonds sewn into a black velvet cloth that draped all the way to the ground. It was lovely, but ever lonely. I had never been by myself for longer than a day. There had always been someone around, even if only in the next room.
    Since Garrett’s death, I had been telling everyone that I wanted to be left alone. Now I was alone, and I didn’t like it one bit. But I bet my family liked it, being without me. I’d caused them nothing but grief for months. So it was fair this way, really. We had all gotten what we deserved.
    I fell back asleep with faded images of my parents, Tyson, and Garrett drifting across the blackness of my mind like a slideshow that would soon be erased.
    A blue man shook me awake. I gasped so hard I knocked the wind out of myself. I scrambled to my hands and knees, hyperventilating.
    The man stepped back. He was bald, with pale blue skin. There wasn’t a hair on his body. He was all but naked in a pair of shorts made of coarse grass. He was studying me with his head cocked to the side like he hadn’t seen a human before, though he looked fairly