Reading · Write More with Simon K Jones

You’re reading my weekly serial The Mechanical Crown. Find out more here.

A lost explorer. A child slave. A princess.
An ancient shame to be kept secret.
A society on the edge of collapse.

A blackened finger lay in the snow, necrotic, oozing and sickly. Red on white, a puddle of blood melting into a hole, a spattered pattern as if from a flicked paintbrush, fresh from the incision. The skin was tight and swollen after days of abuse, the nail long gone.

Glad that the cold was numbing the pain, he tightened the bandage around the stump, wrapping it under and around his wrist and remaining fingers. The throbbing lanced up his arm and he attempted to ignore it. The bandage itself was hardly sanitised and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it led to infection, but it was better than leaving a bloodied knuckle open to the elements.

Fresh snowfall had already covered the finger, a strange burial ceremony for a part of his body he’d never use again. He knelt within the violent cocoon of ice and wind, unable to see further than he could reach. He patted the snow. “Never did much like that finger,” he said, his voice weak and hoarse, his throat dry and cracked from years of imposed silence. Conversation with humans was a memory from his previous life, and one of the many pleasures the mountains had taken from him. And so he talked to himself, and to the wind, to the hares and shadows of bears in the distance. He shouted at the veiled sun, on the rare occasions that the skies somewhat cleared, and swore at the clouds when they didn’t.

Pulling his layers tighter against the gale, flexing his remaining fingers, he forced himself to his feet. Cauterising the wound would have been best, but there was no lighting of fires atop the Barrier Mountains. He’d likely left it too late, with signs of frostbite already progressed into the rest of his hand. Losing a finger wasn’t a problem; an entire hand would be more complicated. In time he would lose all his limbs to the slow decay, and be left a head and torso, rolling sideways down the mountain, still not surrendering.

He slid the hunting knife back into its sheath and concealed it within the folds of his animal skins. His body was ice, shards of it growing from every surface, a covering of fresh powder turning him to a white crystal stumbling across the frozen fields. Cold was his only companion, welcome in so much as it was at least a recognisable sensation. When he woke, he was cold. When he slept, he was cold. In-between, he was cold. There was no escaping it, no respite, no warm hearth along his way. Nobody ventured into the Barrier Mountains, for good reason.

Attempting to be the first to successfully navigate their peaks may have been a mistake.

On he went through the white, shapeless, only his feet crunching on the ground anchoring him to the world. No part of him was exposed, save for the narrowest of slits through which he could see, his view of the world bordered on all sides. The stinging of his eyes had been unbearable when he’d started out; now, he no longer noticed. He had voluntarily entered a prison, years ago, convinced of his own ability to escape, and now knew he would never leave. There was no regret, for there was nothing to return to, nowhere to think of as home. If he should die in the mountains, then so be it, let there at least be an ending. If he were a man of faith he might even hurry it along, for the promise of seeing them again.

The notion of an alternative — that he could succeed — was absurdist fantasy. Inside the husks of dead animals, he had been walking for months, on the literal top of the world, determined to be the first, the one to make the journey from the coast to the interior. It would be he who proved it possible, who revealed the path to the hidden valley. A riposte to the world’s cruelties, a refusal to accept his defeat, and a declaration that persevering was possible after having lost everything.

Many stories had been told over the years about the Barrier Mountains, some of them turning out to be true. There were unnatural creatures that dwelled there, and the blizzards formed and shifted and dispersed like no weather system he’d ever witnessed. In all his years on the ocean, travelling up and down Safast, none of it had prepared him. His father had read him stories of the long suicide, of disheartened people at the end of their lives choosing to disappear into the mountains. Sitting on the docks, blue seas and birds squawking, fish being unloaded for market, shaded beneath palm trees, the mountains had forever looked over his shoulder: looming to the north, running the length of the Headland. Their lot was to be trapped between the shore and the cliff, but they had made the best of it, looking south across the Winfast Gap. His first life had been found there, on a far continent, where he’d first seen her face.

When he’d announced his intention to go north, into the mountains, his crew had begged him to stay. Argued that he had much to live for. Tranton, they’d said, you can build a new life, start over, we’re here for you. He’d sold the ship, sold the house and everything within. Supplies, equipment, clothing, maps — those had become his concerns. Nobody knew anything, save for scraps of legend and museums that had long forgotten fact from fiction.

Flicking open the compass, he gazed at its wavering hand, still enthusiastically pointing the way. It gave him his orders but made no contribution to the effort of travel.

Sometimes the twisting flow of the blizzard directed him, winds pushing his feet onwards, a diver caught in an ocean current. He was reminded of sailing the Red Sails across the gap, being caught in a storm and being borne to wherever the waves decided. It was also possible that he was instead simply lost. Mostly the snow was noise; a shifting, indistinct pattern of white and off-white, his eyes bleached and sore from the glare. Encountering a boulder, its darker shape emerging from the white, one side shielded from the snow, he would greet it as he would an old friend. Tranton Seldon, the boulder would say, what brought you to this place, you fool? His eyes soaked it in, a visual feast for a starving man. Distance was no longer a concept he could understand, having been unable to see further than his own outstretched hand for days. His compass kept his direction true, but his spirit wavered. Had he been walking for months, or years? For a time, he had counted the days, but the number eluded him. The skies were never clear enough to read the stars.

Returning on the ship to the Headland peninsula, the Barrier Mountains could be seen over the horizon long before the coast. They were the teeth of a shark’s mouth, welcoming crews home. The mountains were always visible but rarely seen, being no more than an irrelevant backdrop to the lives of most. Huge in stature but small in mind. An endless supply of fresh water fell from their slopes, giving the Headland its tropical climate and reputation for agricultural excellence, but otherwise they were as constant as the sky. There were no such views from atop the peaks, no vistas back down to Hollanhead and his old home.

Animals roamed the peaks, fortunately so for Tranton’s own survival. There were predator and prey, and more than once he had needed to defend himself. He’d exhausted his supplies earlier than expected, with the vicious, somewhat deranged wildlife then being all that kept him alive, so long as he was able to kill first and be eaten later. There were rabbits, too, some skittish deer, all of them sickly and wasting away. It was life, but barely.

Tranton winced as he bumped his wounded hand against his leg, a reminder that this diseased place had infected him. The frostbite had spread more rapidly than was natural, and lopping off the finger had been a mercy. It was lose the finger or lose the arm. The blade through bone was an attempt to remain himself for a little longer. Death could wait a few more days.

A shape appeared momentarily in the white-out, a shade darker than its surroundings. It could have been his vision blurring, or something floating inside his eye, but there it was a again: a brief notion of form within the maelstrom. He trudged his adapted snowshoes onward - broad, flat, uncomfortable, rubbing on his flesh, but keeping him on his feet and preventing a slow sinking into the deeper snow. The shape appeared again, the blizzard easing momentarily and offering a glimpse of something in the distance, large and thrust up from the ground. Pushing his weariness away, he crunched each leg forward, increasing his pace. The muddled thing shifted ambiguously before him, slowly resolving as he drew nearer into the mouth of a cave, rising from the snow, angled such that the wind blew past the entrance rather than into it.

No, not a cave. Tranton advanced, step after painful, blistered step, eyes straining through the slit of his wraps. What had looked to be a cave became the rear of a caravan, turned on its side and half buried, broken wheels and a snapped axle in the air, spinning in the wind. Only the frame remained, mostly wooden with some metal panelling, its tarpaulin cover was gone, whipped away by the gale. There was no snow settled on top or inside the exposed interior, as if it had only crashed there moments ago. No sign of a driver or passengers, and no fresh footprints leading away. Tranton touched a gloved finger to the back of the upturned caravan and watched as a rivulet of water ran along his hand. The caravan wasn’t merely free of settled snow but was wet with meltwater, which dripped down its sides before re-freezing as it touched the ground. Where his finger made contact, the layers of ice on the glove glistened, turned liquid and steamed into the frigid air. He peered into the gloomy inside of the caravan, but there was little left other than the remnants of crates, chests and barrels. The caravan’s rear axle was shattered in two, perhaps from hitting a hidden rock.

Climbing inside, he could feel the rise in temperature through his coverings. It was subtle, but contrasted against the blizzard still evident - the caravan was maintaining its own climate, a tight bubble of relative calm within the snowstorm. Moving broken wooden palettes aside, he found a skeleton, curled and crumpled. A flimsy collection of bones, arranged loosely in the right order but with nothing holding them together. The bare bones were enough to confirm that the caravan had come to its ill end years earlier, though had somehow escaped being buried in the relentless snowfall. “What’s your name, friend?” Tranton asked, poking at the skeleton. It was a novelty to have someone to talk to after so many lonely months.

Beyond the uncanny calm of the interior he could see the snow whipping past outside the caravan. He could rest there, beside his skeletal companion, close his eyes for a time and give his legs relief. It was shelter, and human, and reminded him of civilisation even in the caravan’s broken state. A chance to regain his strength before pressing on. Glancing at the shuffle of bones, he sighed. Seemed like it hadn’t worked out too well for its previous occupant. “Stayed here too long?”

Leaning on the frame of the caravan, his coverings and wraps darkening as the ice melted away from the folds and cracks, he stared out into the furious white. His compass confirmed that his heading was true - north-east, towards the other side of the Barrier Mountains and the hidden valley beyond. His bones ached, and it didn’t take a leap of imagination to think of them scattered to the ground. It would be easier to stop and rest. Stopping was always the temptation, always had been his whole life. He might have considered it, but for the fear of sinking to the bottom and drowning.

There was more out there, in the glare. The sun had shifted, its light diffusing obliquely through the clouds and blizzard to reveal shapes not too far off. This caravan had been part of a larger convoy, perhaps. That implied a travelled route, and the prospect of nearby sanctuary. He may have stumbled upon one of the old trade roads, vital arteries before the mountains had risen up.

Tightening his straps and pulling his furs close about him, he flexed his wounded hand, then stood tall, took a deep breath and strode back into the maw of the storm.

Next chapter

1.01 Survival

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