Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown Page B

followed a dusty path that was worn through the moss. It disappeared into a stand of twisty birch trees, their branches so gnarled and low they stuck in my hair. Then in a second, we were through the trees and out the other side. In paradise.

    It was a place of unapologetic prettiness. A ravine that opened before us, just under our feet.
    Steep, rough masses of rock plunged down from where we stood, down into a storybook world a long way below. Gerdi and I looked out across a chasm to where twin waterfalls cascaded down a black rock face. They joined and finished falling together into a clear, round pool at least twenty times the size of our bath. It was rimmed with a kind of beach made of blue slate that had been sheared off in a thousand overlapping layers.
    The water left the pool to travel a complex course, feeling its way around plants and boulders and islands no bigger than the heartstone. A striking blue, like sky and navy and silver flashing and flowing together. The waterway turned to skirt the corners of the crags we stood on. The rock walls of the ravine were carved out with child-sized caves, cut by time to inspire bedtime stories and legends.
    The whole scene was surrounded by little birches like the stand we’d just passed through. A giant ring of trees enclosed the entire grotto, and we were inside it. Gerdi had taken me to a secret garden. A place for lovers. For people like Ranka’s parents, who could tumble breathlessly together on the shale beach or hide in a million intimate places where no one—not even their intrepid little daughter—would find them. The sound of rushing water hiding even their sighs.
    I would sit right here every second I could. For the rest of my life.
    “Are you leaving?”
    The chief startled me, his voice harsh, his question so at odds with my peace.

    Behind me on the ridge, he and his dark horse emerged from the little forest, as silent as the mist until he asked his jarring question. With his long straight nose and high cheekbones, he looked stark and angry. Or in pain. He stopped a safe distance from me and regarded me.
    “I saw you going …” He waited a moment, I could see him consider his words and decide to stop there. Then he started again. “You remember how.” He nodded to indicate Gerdi.
    That seemed right, yes. My body seemed to know something that my head had forgotten, about moving in harmony with a horse.
    “I just tried,” I said, “to see if I could do something by myself.”
    Then it occurred to me. Oh.
    “I wasn’t leaving you,” I blurted. “Leaving with your horse.”
    His face closed. I thought maybe he didn’t believe me. But he smiled, then, and was transformed. “You would get far with her,” he said. “But it would take the rest of your life.”
    I smiled, too, and laughed. “This is far enough,” I said. I looked down into the grotto. “I would stay here forever if I could. It’s so beautiful.”
    He drew up beside me.
    “Good,” he said. “Flotta straumi.” He relaxed with the words, his voice deep and respectful. Splendid stream. We watched it go by.
    Then he straightened himself again, like I’d seen him do before—a gesture of deliberately waking from a dream. “In winter, we skate it.”
    “Skate it!” I was thrilled. This wonderland would be made even finer with a dusting of snow. Images of cold laughter came to mind, of frosty breath and fur coats and freedom.
    “Já, have you not skated?”
    “No, never.” I said it for sure, knowing I hadn’t, and he watched me with calm interest.
    “You will, then,” he told me, and he seemed to accept how sure I was. That even with my complete amnesia, I had no doubt I’d never strapped skates onto my shoes. His horse stepped in place, shaking his hooves out, and the chief looked into the grotto. A moment more, standing in a quiet covered over by the sound of endless, speeding water. Oh, I wanted to skate in this enchanted place! This swift rushing could be stilled after