Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 184
184
It was tough, climbing that dusty old ladder with only one good hand. He had to take it slow, despite the voices screaming at him to hurry the hell up, that nobody could keep Banno down for long. And not all those voices were in his head, either.
He could hear them down there, grunting and gasping, urging each other to keep pushing, to keep holding, to keep pulling, to just keep doing what they were doing and not give up. But louder than all their voices was the growls he knew belonged to Banno. Even from all the way up here there was no mistaking that deep, guttural sound.
"Okay, okay, okay..." Luke muttered to himself, sliding his hand up along the ladder and grabbing hold of the next rung. It was the grabbing part that freaked him out, that one panicky moment where he wasn't actually holding onto anything and he was just balancing on the rungs beneath his feet, his tail curled around his leg because sticking it out made him feel like he was about to fall. "Okay, okay, okay..."
Luke repeated the process, pulling himself up, grabbing hold, pulling himself up again, being very careful not to go smacking his broken hand into anything.
His head finally banged against the trapdoor in the ceiling. He craned his neck and was instantly overcome with a dizzying sense of vertigo, being so high up but having his nose less than an inch from a solid slab of wood.
Okay, just push it open. Just push it open nice and easy. Nothing to it...
"Dammit, Ander, don't let go!" the lady Wolf's voice raced up to the ceiling, nearly giving Luke a heart attack. The growling sounds from down below were getting progressively... wetter, and Ander's grunts of effort were quickly turning into barely constrained screams of pain.
He needed to move quickly.
Pressing his body as flat against the ladder as he could, he reached up and pushed against the trapdoor. Immediately he felt his own body begin to tilt backwards and he slammed his face forward, biting on one of the rungs in a panic.
Just go, just go!
He pushed, but it wouldn't budge. The damn thing was stuck!
"No, Mat! Stay away!"
"It's chewing Ander's blasted arm off! I have to do something!"
"Listen to her! Just keep pushing!"
"But -"
"I can take this! I have to take this!"
"You're gonna die, you fool!"
Luke kept pushing against the trapdoor, certain that it couldn't possibly be as heavy as it felt. It must have swollen shut because of the weather or something.
"Dargh!" He hooked his left arm through one of the rungs to steady himself, then began to bang against the trapdoor with his fist. The hard wooden surface coupled with the cold made every impact feel like he was driving a bunch of needles into his knuckles, making him wince. "Come on, damn you! Open up!" he muttered, banging his fist against the trapdoor again and again, going from corner to corner in the hopes that it was only stuck a little, and that it only needed one good shove to come loose.
"Nilia!"
"I know!"
Luke smacked the top left corner and the trapdoor shifted upwards, ever so slightly, with a mouse-like squeak. Thin curtains of dust sifted down from between the cracks.
With a spark of hope flaring up in his heart, he reared back and punched the damn thing wide open, skinning two of his knuckles raw. It flipped up and over and slammed into the other side with a loud bang, but before Luke could even think about celebrating, a cloud of dust cascaded down from above and landed in his face, stinging his eyes and nose. The next moment a sneeze ripped through his body, dislodging his grip on the top rung. He made a grab for it, but missed. His body tilted backwards, pulled by invisible hands. His feet slipped free of the rungs and he would have plummeted, perhaps all the way down onto the grindstones at the bottom of the mill, had his next to useless arm not been wound around one of the rungs. It caught on his elbow and he reflexively tried to grab on with his broken hand. Pain bored through his wrist like a giant, flesh-eating worm as all his weight pulled down on it, so white-hot and intense he couldn't even bring himself to scream any of it out. It just sat there, throbbing inside his body while he struggled for breath, bathed in sweat. Somehow he got his feet back on the rungs, alleviating the pressure, and he just leaned forward as far as he could, shaking uncontrollably, barely hanging on.
You call yourself a Fox? This is nothing, Luke. Just a broken wrist. The guys down there have it way worse than you do and they're still fighting, so you better get moving, you giant sissy!
Luke swallowed back his tears and climbed the last few rungs, fighting wave after wave of dizziness. Finally, he scrambled through the trapdoor and into the tiny little room above, gasping for air and telling himself that he would not black out, would not black out.
He wiped the sweaty hair out of his eyes and looked around. He couldn't remember what this place was called, but he and Tim had been up here a few times before, back when Mom was still alive. They used to think of it as a magical place just for kids, because anytime Uncle Jon or Jonah or Dad was up here they were instantly turned into clumsy giants, always banging their heads against the woodwork and cussing up a storm, no matter how careful they were or how low they ducked.
The brake wheel wasn't quite as big as he remembered, but it was still pretty massive. Far bigger than a wagon wheel, at any rate. It was right up against the wall, a solid ring of wood with tons of stubby teeth nailed into the edge, not unlike the rungs of the ladder he just climbed. The brake itself was a great big half-ring stuck right on top of it like a sideways 'C', with teeth of its own sticking right between the brake wheel's, keeping it in place.
It was also the only thing keeping Banno alive right now.
Spurred on by this realisation, Luke wiped his nose on his sleeve and carefully stepped over the windshaft. The apex of the brake was too high to reach from down here, but at the side it was just manageable.
He put his hand underneath the brake, but just as he was about to shove it upwards, a disturbing thought passed through his mind.
This is easier than it should be.
He was about to do something that would end a life. Indirectly, yes, but was there really such a thing as an 'indirect' murder? Did it really make a difference if he was up here instead of down there? It was like the difference between stabbing someone with a knife and shooting them with an arrow. Dying was dying and killing was killing. It should be a big deal. It should be a cripplingly big deal. If he had any kind of compassion left in him, he should be standing up here full of doubt, shaking in his boots, too scared to lift this brake, too terrified by what it would actually mean.
But he wasn't.
Back before the snow came, back when Valery's neck didn't have any scars, he had stood over Banno's sleeping form with a knife in his hands, ready to do something he knew was right and wrong at the same time, ready to kill to save the lives of his family.
He had hesitated back then. He had been afraid. He had known that the knife in his hands wasn't just a thin piece of metal, it was a line, and stepping over that line was something you could never come back from. But now... now he was different.
If he had killed Banno back then, none of this would have happened. If he had had the guts to go through with it right away instead of cowering for five minutes by Banno's bedside, then Valery wouldn't have had to go through so much suffering. She wouldn't have had to watch her father get stabbed. She wouldn't have had to huddle in fear inside of that stinking, rotting log, crying into her brother's shoulder because her family was being ripped apart again.
If he had killed Banno back then, he never would have gotten the chance to lay his filthy hands on Dad, or Tim, or Valery.
If he had killed Banno back then, he would have kept his family safe.
Luke was different from what he used to be, and Banno was the one who had changed him.
Banno was the one who had changed him into the Fox who could kill him.
"My only regret is that I can't be down there to watch you die, you sick piece of filth!"
Luke raised the brake with one hard shove, the teeth disengaged, and a moment later the windshaft began to turn.
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