Pip dragged itself over the northern lip of the canyon on five trembling legs, its left front foot curling inward against its chest as the last yard of the damaged bridge sagged behind it.
The creature did not try to stand once its hindquarters cleared the stone. It sank flat onto the cold gravel beside Ysabet’s knees, its sideways jaw parting in shallow, rasping breaths. Under its green-and-white patchwork shell, the faint interior lights guttered down to a dim, watery thread. Along the soft hide of its neck, shoulders, and flanks, hundreds of tiny dark beads of mineral-salt blood welled up where the beetles’ jaws and barbed feet had punctured the skin to hold the arch together.
Above its brow, the new lattice of pale, branching antler-bone quivered faintly in the wind, each delicate cross-strut still humming with the fading echo of a hundred thousand small legs down in the chasm.
“Easy,” Ysabet whispered. She knelt at once, stripping off her wool neck-scarf with her left hand and pressing it gently against the thickest cluster of punctures along Pip’s right shoulder. Inside her pack, the original field mouse gave a muffled squeak from its padded box, rustling the dry moss to check that the jolting had stopped. “You’re across. Don’t try to lift your head.”
