The face of the canyon wall bore the banded colours of time; shades of yellow, red, and brown pressed on top of each other like the layers of a cake. It was time that stretched back not decades, not centuries, but millions of years, years locked within its craggy, primeval walls. To look down the canyon was to look into the wells of time itself.

The great chasm was called the Panamar Rift, and it was the deepest canyon in the known world. It ran through the earth like a serrated blade, surrounded by nothing but harsh desert. Few souls lived in the desert, in its scorched and unending dunes. Even fewer had set foot in the rift itself. But none had dared venture beyond. That was uncharted territory.

The boy’s name was Diego. He had started the climb up the canyon walls at the break of dawn, but without rope, the deep chasm had proven to be difficult to scale. The sharp rock cut at his fingers, and the hard stone cramped his legs as he struggled to traverse the precarious slopes. It was a slow and arduous and repetitive process. He would climb a few steps, and then, seeing no handhold, would be forced to stop and clamber down. To the sharp-eyed hawk that soared through the canyon, he resembled a sprawled crab, desperately clinging to the rock face, buffeted by stinging desert winds.

The day had passed inconsequentially, and it was near dusk when, with an exhausted grunt, he pulled himself over the lip of the yawning canyon.

The boy stopped awhile, sitting heavily on the hard baked earth and unscrewing the lid of his wineskin, only to find, in despair, his supply of water depleted. The trek thus far had been difficult, despite the boy’s rationing and cautious sips. He had had to traverse the blazing desert without assistance. The scorching sands seeped into his boots as he walked, burning and blistering his feet. Surrounded by monotonous, garish yellow, the boy had stumbled along, sustained only by lukewarm water and guided by the assaulting sun. And the desert was deceitful too, its dunes shimmering with false promise, dunes that had called countless mind-addled travellers to their doom. It was only through conviction and an unquenchable determination that he had resisted the compulsion to join them in a similar fate.

But now, with the angry sun beating down on his back, the boy was tired, and thirsty.

As if in jest, the harsh wind blew about him, spitting dust and dirt into his eyes and face, howling in cruel laughter. Up above, the boundless and infinite sky had turned a startling blood-red hue, and the wispy, unpromising clouds scattered carelessly across it, tinted pink in the twilight. Cold and distant, like fluff tossed by some uncaring god.

The boy was wiry and dressed in dusty clothes that bore many ragged, patched holes. He carried nothing but a tattered rucksack over his shoulders. His face was sanguine, hollow and unkempt, stubble patching his jaw unevenly, like the stone walls of the canyon. His lips were dry and cracked and bloody, and his knotted limbs ached powerfully. The boy’s body had once been strong and full, but the desert had stripped him of his flesh and his muscle. The desert had been taxing. Taking, but never giving.

Wearily, the boy stood and found himself standing atop a bare and rocky plateau, one of the many that walled the Panamar Rift, hostile sentinels of rock and bone. The canyon from which he had risen lay gaping at his feet, its jagged surfaces casting great uneven shadows that seemed to swallow the very bottom of the chasm. If one looked down, they would almost certainly be sucked into its fathomless depths.

But the boy was not looking down. Instead, he looked on westwards. Westwards, where, on the horizon, the blazing sun kissed the earth. Westwards, where he could see what lay beyond the canyon, beyond all reliable charts, and beyond civilisation. He surveyed the scene that lay before him, and he smiled.

The plateau overlooked an enormous plain of trees and canopies. Like a sable mat, dark and dense, it stretched as far as the eye could see, all the way to the scorched horizon. There was no break or interruption in the vast expanse of unerring constancy, aside from the crystalline river that snaked through its centre, glimmering and gleaming with the promise of adventure.

Dark and mysterious and beckoning under the dying sun, the forest laid itself out before the boy’s feet, full of mystery and a kind of invitation. The air was rich with sweet and foreign scents, carried by a persistent eastern wind, almost seductive. The boy knew not where they came from, but his heart sang with an eagerness to find out, to discover.

Bathed in the dying light of the golden sun, casting great long shadows that stretched for miles and miles, the boy felt infinite. The smile on his cracked lips grew wider.

“I’m coming” Diego said.

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