The pillars of creation

Still catching her breath, Jennsen turned back to the dark way ahead. She had yet to get to the sorceress's place, and she was wasting time standing around feeling sorry for herself. Sebastian needed her help, not for her to feel sorry for herself.

She struck out once more, soaked to the skin. Fortunately, though it was winter, it was warm in the swamp. At least she wouldn't freeze. She remembered being wet when she and Sebastian fled her house after the quad murdered her mother.

The ground was mere inches above the expanses of stagnant water, but, with the profusion of roots woven through it, firm enough to hold her weight. Where the water came over the ground, it was only for short expanses and shallow. Even though the water was only inches deep, Jennsen stepped carefully, watching that the roots just below the surface were not lurking snakes. She knew that water snakes were some of the most dangerous. A poison snake, even if it was only a foot long, could kill a person. Like a spider, the size was immaterial if its venom was deadly.

She came to another area where steam rose from fissures in the ground. Colored deposits, mostly yellow, crusted around the openings where the vapor rose. The smell gagged her, and she had to seek a way around that would allow her to breathe. The brush was thorny and thick.

With her knife, she was able to cut several of the heavier branches and make it through to a shelf of rock against a rock wall. Following the narrow ledge, she skirted a dark pool of water. The surface moved with slow ripples as something beneath followed her movement. She kept her knife to hand, trying to watch her footing and keep an eye out for anything that might lunge at her out of the water. When she grabbed for a handhold and loose rock came away, almost making her lose her footing, she threw the rock in the water at the thing she couldn't see. It continued to follow her until she reached the far end, where she was able to climb up onto higher ground that took her into dense growth of tall shoots with broad leaves.

It reminded her of moving through a field of cornstalks. Off through the stalks, she could see slow movement. She didn't know what it could be, but by the size of it, she didn't want to find out, and picked up the pace. Before long, she was running through the thick growth, dodging stems and ducking under branches.

The trees grew in close again, and she was soon back to treading among the tangle of roots. They seemed endless, and progress was agonizingly slow. The day was wearing on. When she came to open areas, or at least open enough, she trotted to save time. She had been in the swamp for hours. It had to be close to the middle of the day.

Tom had told her that he thought it might be a day of travel in and back out of the swamp. But she had been at it so long that she began to worry that she might have missed the sorceress's house. After all, there was no telling how wide the swamp was. She could easily have passed it by and never have seen it. She began to worry that that was exactly what had happened.

What if she couldn't find the house? What would she do, then? She didn't relish the idea of spending the night in the swamp. There was no telling what manner of creature would come out at night. She didn't think there was any chance of making a fire. The thought of being in this place in the dark, with no hope of even the light of the moon or stars, gripped her with fear.

When she emerged at last on the shore of a broad lake, Jennsen paused to catch her breath. Trees, fat at the bottom where they emerged from the water, stood like a series of poles supporting a low roof of green. The light was slightly brighter over the lake. To the right side was a wall of rock that provided not so much as a handhold, much less a way to traverse it. It dropped straight down into the water, suggesting how deep that end might be.

Scanning the shore to the left, she was startled to see footprints. Jennsen ran over and went to one knee to inspect the depressions in the soft ground. By the size of them, they looked to be made by a man, but were not fresh. She followed the prints along the shore and in a few places found fish scales from a catch that had been cleaned on the spot. The growth beyond was thick and tangled, but the grass and dry ground at the edge of the lake provided a good path, and the footprints, hope.

At the far side of the still lake, she followed the footprints along a wellworn path through a dense stand of willow and up onto higher ground. When she peered through an open place in the vegetation, she spotted, off through the trees, beyond the tangled growth of brush and the veil of vines, up on a rise ahead, a distant house. Wood smoke curled from a chimney to blend into the gray fog overhead, almost as if the smoke itself were creating the ashen overcast.