Page 48 of Emerald

Which means I’m ready to go.

I pull aside the grate. Then I step inside Ivan’s massive fireplace.

Fortunately, he didn’t light it this morning. If he had, I would have had to wait for the stone to cool, which might have taken all day.

I brace my feet against one side of the flue, my palms against the other. I begin to shimmy upward in the plank position.

It’s not too bad at first. The large, rough stones provide plenty of purchase. And it’s airy enough that I’m not choking on soot.

However, the very spaciousness of its dimensions soon begins to cause problems for me. If the chimney were smaller, I could brace my back against the wall and climb with my legs alone. But I’m stretched out to my fullest length, in a position that’s difficult to hold, let alone to climb upward.

Besides that, the bizarre exertions of the last few days have exhausted me. I feel like I’ve been a captive for weeks instead of barely two days. I feel winded and shaky before I’ve barely started.

Also, I wish I weren’t looking down. The farther I climb, the longer the drop below me becomes. If my hands slip, if I lose my strength, I’m going to crash down onto a pile of logs that is anything but forgiving. I should have drug some bedding or a pile of towels into the bottom of the chimney to break my fall.

But that would be planning for failure. I’m counting on success.

I’m not going to give up. Inch by inch I’m going to work my way up, like a reverse Santa Clause.

Thankfully, the chimney is becoming slightly narrower the higher up I climb. I’m also starting to pass the tangled mats of abandoned birds’ nests, and I see more and more daylight shining on my pale, filthy arms.

Finally, I reach the top. By now the flue is narrow enough that I can brace myself, which is lucky because I need all my strength to wrench off the grate over the chimney top.

And then I’ve done it. I’m pulling myself up onto the roof of the monastery.

The roof is steeply pitched, slippery with snow and ice. It’s a long way down to the frozen dirt of the yard.

It’s a bit of an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” situation—if the fire was freezing cold and windy. Inside the chimney I was protected from the wind. Now I feel like it’s trying to push me off the roof.

Well, the longer I stand here, the colder I’m going to get. I start making my way toward the northwest corner of the roof—it’s the point I spotted from the window, where the corner of the roof is closest to the walls encircling the monastery.

I’m hoping to jump from the roof to the wall. It’s a jump I couldn’t have made in the opposite direction. But since the roof is higher than the wall, gravity will be my friend.

I’m so focused on my destination that I don’t even notice when my feet slip out from under me. All I know is that I’m suddenly down on my ass, sliding toward the edge of the roof, gaining speed by the moment. I’m hurtling down like a toboggan, my fingers scrabbling uselessly against the slick metal. I can’t slow down at all, can’t catch hold of anything.

I feel the sickening sense of weightlessness as my body goes hurtling off the edge of the roof. With one last desperate clutch, I manage to grab the very edge of the roof and hang on with my fingertips, my legs dangling down.

Fuck, that was close.

I have now become one of those posters with the kitten dangling from the wire.

Just Hang in There, Baby.

I try to pull myself up again, but I’m so goddamned tired from the climb up the chimney.

My father used to make me do dozens of push-ups and pull-ups. Once I could do ten strict pull-ups in a row, he added a weighted belt around my waist. That’s what it feels like now—like I have a massive weight pulling me down. But it’s just my own exhausted flesh.

My arms are shaking, my fingertips cramping. Slowly I pull myself up so I’m standing on the edge of the roof once more.

And now I’m looking across an eight-foot gap to the top of the old stone wall. The gap looks a lot wider from this perspective, and the wall a lot narrower.

Staring between the two is not boosting my morale.

“You’re committed now, you idiot,” I mutter to myself.

I scrabble back up the roof a little way to give myself a running start. Then I sprint down the slope as fast as I can and launch myself into the air.

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