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Back Beyond the Burn Line Save as PDF
Chapters (66)
  1. Copyright
  2. Contents
  3. Epigraph
  4. Part One
  5. 1.
  6. 2.
  7. 3.
  8. 4.
  9. 5.
  10. 6.
  11. 7.
  12. 8.
  13. 9.
  14. 10.
  15. 11.
  16. 12.
  17. 13.
  18. 14.
  19. 15.
  20. 16.
  21. 17.
  22. 18.
  23. 19.
  24. 20.
  25. 21.
  26. 22.
  27. 23.
  28. 24.
  29. 25.
  30. 26.
  31. 27.
  32. 28.
  33. 29.
  34. 30.
  35. 31.
  36. 32.
  37. Part Two
  38. 1.
  39. 2.
  40. 3.
  41. 4.
  42. 5.
  43. 6.
  44. 7.
  45. 8.
  46. 9.
  47. 10.
  48. 11.
  49. 12.
  50. 13.
  51. 14.
  52. 15.
  53. 16.
  54. 17.
  55. 18.
  56. 19.
  57. 20.
  58. 21.
  59. 22.
  60. 23.
  61. 24.
  62. 25.
  63. 26.
  64. 27.
  65. 28.
  66. By Paul McAuley:

‘No footprints or any other tracks?’

‘If there were footprints I would have found them. And there weren’t. No sign of any scratchings like you showed me, either, but you’re welcome to look.’

Pilgrim stuffed his jotter and pen into his wallet, thanked Mercy and Righteous for bringing him here and told them that he had learned some new things today.

‘But not yet what my ghost lights signified, or who disturbed these old stones, and frightened an old man,’ Mercy said.

‘Back home, we have little rockets that youngsters set off during the midsummer festival,’ Righteous said. ‘Maybe your intruders had a bigger one.’

‘I told you it wasn’t like no rocket I ever saw,’ Mercy said. ‘And even if it was, it don’t explain the lights.’

‘Solving a mystery is like building a house. There are many small steps on the path to completion,’ Pilgrim said, quoting a favourite saying of Master Able’s.

‘I know one thing,’ Mercy said. ‘I’ve spent most of my life in the forests and mountains. I thought I knew them as well as anyone can, but now it’s as if I don’t know them at all.’

4.

Pilgrim caught the late-afternoon train to Red Rock Junction, spent the night in the strangers’ lodge and in the morning sent a tapcode message to his tribe’s Hearth before boarding the local service. Hauled by an old wood-fired potbelly locomotive, it took most of the day to wind north and west out of the cloud forest, passing through high meadows and crossing canyons and arriving more than an hour late, in the last light of the day, at the station which served the territory of the Saltmire tribe.

A hand from the lodge captained by one of Pilgrim’s uncles was waiting with a wagon hauled by a matched pair of maras. They rattled up the slant of a narrow valley to the plateau beyond, everything that Pilgrim had forgotten about his home since he had last seen it immediately and thrillingly familiar. The scrub of sawgrass and dwarf bloodbark trees. The lake that stretched down the centre of the valley, Lake Spearpoint, gleaming in the distance. The knife-edged peaks of the Little Hatchet Mountains etched against long bands of orange light stretched either side of the setting sun.