M.A. Kleen

Twenty-five years ago, I self-published The River of Rain, a philosophical exploration of freedom, human nature, and the modern world. To mark its anniversary, I’m releasing a fully revised edition, one chapter every Wednesday. This is the novel as it was meant to be. Continued from Chapter 12.

---

“Why do you want to leave?” Victor asked later that day as they sat together on the rocky ledge outside the cave. “Why go back to the people who abandoned you?”

“I wasn’t abandoned,” Ariana answered sharply. “My bus crashed. It was an accident that I ended up here. Stop forcing your own experiences onto me.”

She felt unusually bold in the fading afternoon light, though most of it came from desperation. “It’s not my fault everyone made fun of you. Isn’t that why you ran away?”

The look on Victor’s face made her regret the words immediately. For a moment he looked ready to explode, but instead he forced himself still. The restraint frightened her more than anger would have.

“First of all,” he said through clenched teeth, “I did not ‘run away.’ I fled.” He paused, steadying himself. “And secondly, isn’t it your fault? Aren’t you one of the same people who tormented me every single day? Dehumanized me. Treated me like I wasn’t even a person. What did I ever do to any of you?”

His shoulders sagged and some of the fight drained from his voice. “What did I ever do?” he repeated quietly. “All I wanted were friends. Maybe a girl who loved me. Is that really too much to ask? Doesn’t everybody deserve that?”

By the time he finished speaking, he sounded less angry than wounded.

Ariana felt a stab of guilt and moved closer beside him. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “If I’d known then what I know now…” She struggled for the right words. “No, I’ve changed. Back then I probably wouldn’t have liked you, but now I do. That’s all in the past.”

“So is the bus crash,” Victor replied immediately. “I want you to stay here with me. I don’t want you to leave.”

The admission sickened him almost as soon as he said it aloud. He hated how weak it sounded. He did not need her. At least that was what he kept trying to tell himself. Even so, he wrapped an arm tightly around her.

“You have to understand that I have another life,” Ariana pleaded. “Friends. Family. A home.” But she could already tell it was useless.

Victor stared out across the snowy wilderness below the cliff. “Forget it,” he muttered at last. “If we’re moving deeper into the cave, we should bring everything.”

It took them most of the remaining daylight to carry their belongings farther inside. The hardest thing to move was the straw bed. By the end of it they decided they should probably build some kind of frame soon, something that made it feel less like a nest of dried river grass and more like an actual bed.

When everything was finally arranged in the ancient chamber, Ariana had to admit it was better than sleeping closer to the entrance, exposed to the cold and wind. Victor built a small fire that burned hot with surprisingly little smoke. Its pale orange light flickered across the walls, washing the cave in an eerie glow that made the painted handprints seem almost alive.

Ariana glanced toward the underground lake, its dark surface rippling faintly in the firelight. “Finally,” she said quietly, “we can take a bath.”

“Just wait a minute,” Victor said, interrupting her thoughts. “We still have to drink that water.”

Ariana gave him a reluctant look and laid the bearskin down across the straw bedding. Victor added the last of the firewood to the pile beside the hearth. He hoped it would last a while. He had been gathering wood since summer, though they had burned through far more of it than he expected.

“I think we should get some sleep,” he suggested through a yawn.

Ariana nodded. They both removed their hides and slipped beneath the heavy bearskin.

After a long stretch of restless silence, Victor finally spoke. “What did you used to do for fun?”

 “You know, party.” Ariana answered. Her thoughts drifted back to the night before the bus crash, though she tried not to linger in the memory too long.

“Why would you do that to yourself?” Victor asked with genuine concern. “You’re beautiful. Why would you want to make yourself sick?”

She shrugged beneath the blanket. “I don’t know. To be popular, I guess.”

“What about you?” she asked before Victor could reply. “What did you do for fun?”

“Hunt,” he answered. “Walk through the woods. Watch the rain.”

Ariana giggled softly, as though he had made a joke. “No,” she corrected him. “What did you do before? Before you were out here?” Her voice sounded faint now, dulled by exhaustion.

“Oh.” Victor paused in surprise. “I guess the same things everybody else did. Watched TV mostly. I just got sick of all of it after a while.”

He turned to look at her, but Ariana had already fallen asleep. Not long after, he drifted off too, never noticing the faint shuffling sound echoing somewhere deeper in the cave.

The next morning, or what he assumed was morning, Victor woke to near darkness. Only the dull red glow of dying coals remained in the fire pit. His eyes adjusted quickly. He fed more wood into the embers until flames slowly rose again, filling the chamber with flickering light.

Then his stomach tightened.

The pile of dried meat they had been carefully rationing was nearly half gone. Scraps and torn pieces littered the floor. Tracks marked the dust around the hearth. Victor stared at them, his pulse suddenly hammering in his chest.

Bear tracks. Large ones.

For one terrible moment he thought of the bear he had killed a month earlier and wondered if this was its mate. He looked quickly toward Ariana to make sure she was unharmed. She still slept peacefully beneath the bearskin, her face calm enough that he almost smiled in relief. Then the smile faded.

They were not alone.

Continued in Chapter 14…