PART II

Chapter13 Mountains dont Bow

The plane lurches down onto the airstrip with a bounce that rattles my teeth, wheels clattering across tarmac patched more with willpower than concrete. When the cabin door opens, the smell of earth and woodsmoke sweeps in.

Outside, Labé greets us in a riot of colour and dust. Motorbikes zip past in clouds of red earth, vendors call out fruit and roasted peanuts, patient faces behind cracked taxi paint. Unlike Conakry’s humid air, here the atmosphere is thinner, sharper against my skin.

“Well, Karim — subtlety is clearly a luxury they don’t sell here.”

“Mountains don’t bow for arrivals, Elena. They rise whether you come or not.”

A driver leans against his battered Peugeot. I study the cracked windshield and arch an eyebrow. “Do you think it’ll make it up the mountains, or shall we push when the engine gets bored of the incline?”

The full chapter — the road out of Labé, red clay and green ridges, and the edge of something vaster — is available unabridged on Ream.

https://reamstories.com/phaedrasfables/public

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