Chapter 11: A Door

Katja ran to the big pine and wrapped the rope twice around it, the way he had shown her on the cliff.

Harvey went over the edge with the line at his waist and was gone.

She braced her boots against the root and took the weight. It pulled at her hands and she let it.

"Slack," called a voice from far below. "Hold. Slack. Hold."

She did what the voice told her. She did not think about the drop or the cloud or her stomach.

A hundred people took the rope behind her without being asked, and Dot's voice rang out over all of them, calling the haul.

One at a time, Harvey sent them up.

First the mother and her two children, then the old man, then the rest, each one lifted over the lip by sixty hands.

Harvey came last. He climbed over the edge on his own, with his palms bleeding, and sat down in the dirt.

The rope was still in Katja's hands.

"I told you," he said, breathing hard. "I told you not to let go."

"You told me you wouldn't let go," she said. "Different rule."

Nine people were alive on the Shelf, and nobody had said a word to her. They only touched her sleeve as they walked past.

That night, Harvey led her into the Cellar and past the sleepers.

At the back of the cave, the stone folded into a small alcove.

There was a door.

It was made of planks from the old bridge, hung on rope hinges, with a latch carved from a pine branch.

"I said I'd find somewhere with a door," Harvey said. "It took me all afternoon. I thought I'd have a few days."

Katja stood looking at the door.

Then she put her hand against his chest, backed him through it, and pulled it shut.

The alcove was warm, and it smelled of pine and rope. A bedroll lay on the floor with a lantern burning low beside it.

She did not wait.

She kissed him against the plank door with both hands in his shirt.

He groaned into her mouth and picked her up off her feet.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he carried her three steps to the bedroll and went down on his knees with her.

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