Free The Beyond by Jeffrey Ford Page B

boiling water of the copper pot.
    The respite from the storm was so welcome that Cley did not want to leave the shelter. He sat, listening to the rain battering the skin, its rhythm now almost comforting. Wood rested his head on his paws, his exhalations forming puffs of steam in the cold air. Eventually the water infiltrated their haven, lifted the scattered eggshells, and washed them away.
    A fierce gale whipped around outside, tugging at the vines, and one by one the demon-horn pegs shot up out of the ground with the sound of buttons popping. The willow-sapling frame snapped and buckled in a dozen places. The deerskin cover flapped against the travelers like a giant wing closing over them, and then it was gone. Cley looked up and, in the sudden brightness of a flash of lightning, saw the tent being carried away like a sheet of brown paper on the wind. He acted quickly to save his hat from the same fate.
    He stood, dripping wet, and surveyed the situation. The plain was clearly sinking beneath a lake of rainwater. On closer inspection, he saw it was not a lake but an immense shallow river. Now that the water was ankle-deep everywhere, he noticed that there was a slight current to it. He watched as the bush whose branches he hacked off to make the fire gained buoyancy and began moving, along with sticks and loose blades of grass, off toward the north.
    It was with great distress that he left the sled behind. He knew it would put a strain on Wood, constantly bogging down and getting stuck in the deepening water. There was also the absurd consideration that eventually they might have to swim, and then it would put the dog in serious jeopardy. All he salvaged from it was the rifle. With the pack and bow slung on his back, he carried the gun, and they started slogging through the sinking landscape.
    The drag of the water made every step like the weighted plodding of a nightmare. Cley thought the idea of drowning out on the flat-land totally insane, but as the hours and the miles passed by it seemed to become more and more a real possibility. In those instances when the lightning flashed, he searched desperately ahead of them for some kind of shelter, some sign that the plain had a boundary. They continued, mindlessly, the persistence of the rain drilling their reason until they proceeded in a state bordering on the unconscious.
    Cley looked up and realized that they had walked all night and into the next day. He was shivering so badly, he had to stop for a moment, maneuver the gun into the crook of his arm, and put his hands under his armpits for warmth. The hat brim had wilted and hung low, almost covering his eyes. He turned and looked for Wood, but the rain was falling so heavily he couldn’t see two arm lengths in front of him. Then he heard the dog bark and staggered forward a few feet to find him sunk three-quarters of the way to his neck.
    Somewhere in the day, they stopped to rest. There was nothing else to do but sit down in the flow. Cley found a small rock under the water and perched on it, with the ever-growing, lethargic river reaching to just beneath his chest. He positioned the gun across the back of his neck and slung his arms up over each end. Wood sat next to him, the water passing around his shoulders. Cley tried to think of a good excuse to continue, and did not move for a very long time.
    The second night came on early since the day had been little more than a bright smudge on the horizon. The rain had slightly abated to what might be considered, in the realm south of the Beyond, merely an incredible downpour. It seemed as if they had been traveling through the sunken world for years. Cley wondered if he and the dog had wandered blindly into some quadrant of Purgatory. The only things that convinced him otherwise were the hunger and the fierce burning of every muscle in his body.
    It didn’t seem possible that the sky could hold so much water and not, itself, fall from the sheer weight. Wood was