The Land of Miu (3rd edition)

by Karen Lee Field

  Kate tried to run faster. Her breath came in short gasps. Her heartbeat went wild. The foot wraps allowed her feet to grip the surface, but her muscles strained under the effort. She battered her hands against the walls trying to keep her body upright. Yet her legs refused to go any faster.

  The hissing stopped. There was an awful moment of silence, and then a loud scurrying sound filled Kate’s ears. Something scraped against the walls.

  She could hear Siptah’s heavy breathing. She could feel his presence right behind her. It helped to spur her on. They ran along the tunnel.

  The scurrying and scraping grew louder. Louder. It gained on them.

  “Run!”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  Her chest tightened. She needed air in her lungs. She gasped. A pain stabbed at her side. Siptah’s boots pounded on the ground behind her. The torch barely gave off enough light.

  Siptah grunted.

  Kate stopped and looked back, one hand resting on the cold stone beside her to keep herself steady. The huge spider was right behind Siptah. Its fangs dripped with venom. Clawed segments reached out to grab him, but he was too fast. He clambered to his feet, and pushed Kate into motion. They continued to run.

  Suddenly the tunnel opened out into another cavern. She caught sight of the torch as it flew past her and landed amongst a cluster of rocks.

  Kate stopped and spun around, gasping for breath.

  With the light from yet another Fire Well, Siptah no longer needed the torch. But he did need a free hand for a more important object - his axe. He turned to face the spider.

  “No!” Kate doubled over in pain. “No, Siptah. Don’t.”

  The spider reared up, towering over Siptah. He thrust his spear and then raced forward. The spear fell short of its mark.

  A grey mass of what looked like vomit spurted out of the fangs. Venom. Siptah jumped to one side, grabbed the spear from the ground and threw it again. This time, it penetrated a segment of leg. Siptah twisted around and ran at the spider again. He yanked the spear free and retreated.

  The spider’s hiss vibrated around the walls of the cavern. It turned its back on Siptah.

  Hope filled Kate. Maybe it was going to leave ...

  Silver webbing shot out of the tip of the oversized abdomen, landing on top of Siptah. He fell to the ground with a loud groan.

  Kate stood paralysed for only a second before looking over her shoulder. Siptah needed help. What was she supposed to do? Where was Alara?

  Alara ran towards them, her face dark and angry, like thunder. The crease between those mysterious eyes showed determination.

  Kate turned back to look at Siptah.

  The spider’s abdomen flicked the silver substance to one side. It clung to the wall of the cave. Within seconds a small web began to form. As the web tightened, Siptah was drawn towards it and wrapped in a mesh of silver threads.

  “Siptah!” both Kate and Alara shouted at the same time.

  Alara raced passed Kate and pushed her dagger into the spider’s abdomen sack. The spider hissed, flicked its rear end again and knocked Alara off her feet.

  Kate watched, then turned and ran to the discarded torch. Stabbing a giant creature like that wasn’t proving to be effective, they needed something more. They needed flames and smoke.

  She grabbed the torch, swung around and ran towards the Fire Well. Once there, she bent over and ripped the end of her dressing gown away. She remembered Joe burning an old dressing gown once. The fumes stunk and that’s what she hoped for now.

  Shielding her face, she held the torch into the Fire Well. The intense heat worried her, so she quickly pulled it out again. The flame raged with heat.

  She ran back to the spider. Alara was busy trying to cut Siptah free. The thick, sticky threads would not separate. A silk cocoon almost completely covered Siptah.

  Kate pushed her fear aside and quickly covered the end of the torch with the strip of dressing gown. At first, the flames died down. Kate’s heart sank, but before she could retreat, the material caught alight and the flame flared up again brighter than before and then changed colour. The hiss of the spider was met with another kind of hiss—the material sizzling.

  Kate touched the torch to the silver thread on the cave wall. The web broke. Siptah and Alara tumbled to the ground. Kate ignored them and turned towards the spider instead. The flame, the heat and the smell drove the spider back. Then, when Kate thought her plan wasn’t going to work, the spider jumped into the tunnel and raced away.

  Kate grinned. “It worked.”

  As a deterrent, Kate placed the torch in the entrance of the tunnel before returning to Siptah and Alara. Surprised, Kate found the princess’s arm moulded into the cocoon.

  “Good work, Kate. You will have to cut us both free.”

  “What with?” asked Kate, looking around the ground for something to use.

  “Unfortunately, my dagger is inside the web,” replied Alara. “You will have to use the axe.”

  Kate picked up the axe. It was heavier than she expected. The sharp edge of the axe broke into the slimy, sticky web, but Kate had to pull the stuff off Alara with her hands.

  Soon Alara was free, and she was able to help Kate disentangle Siptah. Once the last of the silver threads were pulled away, he blinked and looked up at them both.

  “You took long enough.”

  Despite everything, Kate laughed.

  They helped Siptah to his feet. He looked a sorry sight with his clothing oozing with slime and a mass of tangled fur clumped together above large eyes.

  “We must rest,” announced Alara.

  “What? Here? Are you nuts? What if the spider comes back?” asked Kate.

  “I doubt that it will. This is not within its territory. We will sleep for a few hours and, just to be sure, we will ensure the torch is alight in the entrance.”

  Sleep here? It seems dangerous to me. Thoughts tumbled around Kate’s head. Is it night? Have we been gone all day? Are Mum and Joe looking for us?

  “Emma?” called Kate, turning to look around the cavern. “Where are you? It’s safe to come out now.”

  Silence.

  “Emma?” Kate looked at Alara. “Where is she?”

  “I told her to stay hidden over there.” Alara pointed towards the next exit, and then walked in that direction.

  Kate followed her. Maybe Emma was too scared to come out. Maybe she’d fallen asleep.

  “I left her here.” Alara stared into the gap between the rocks and the wall.

  Kate stared into the gap also. A sense of dread overwhelmed her.

  Emma was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  “Emma! Emma!”

  They searched the cavern twice, but Emma was nowhere to be found. Defeated, Kate stood beside the boulder where her sister should have been crouching. She stared at the empty gap, mental pictures flashed through her mind.

  Joe taking Kate to the hospital, when she was seven, to see her new baby sister. Emma muttering Kate’s name for the first time. The big, excited eyes and huge smile over last year’s Christmas present, wrapped in paper Emma had made herself - there had been so much glitter stuck to everything that Mum had complained for weeks.

  “Kate! I found something.”

  Snapping back to reality, Kate turned to look at Siptah. He stood in the entrance of the tunnel they would use to leave the cavern. He held a red strip of thin leather.

  “This belongs to Min. He has taken Emma.”

  Alara sank to the ground. “This is my fault.”

  Ignoring her, Kate walked over to Siptah and took the piece of leather from his grasp. “Are you sure this is Min’s?”

  “I am sure.”

  “It is from the front of his tunic,” added Alara. “I should have known he would do this. Why did I not stop and think?”

  “It is not your fault, Purr-princess,” said Siptah. “You warned me from the start that we should not
get close to the humans, that it would be dangerous for us and them. You told me to be more aloof, like ...”

  Siptah stopped talking. Alara turned to look at him. “Say it. Like me.”

  Kate straightened up and pushed her palms over her face. “None of that matters. We have to get Emma back. We have to get her back now. Where would Min have taken her?”

  Alara and Siptah looked at each other, but neither of them replied.

  “Tell me. Where?”

  Alara shrugged. “I do not know where, but it will be in one of the many caverns.”

  Kate groaned. “Tell me why ... why did he take her?”

  “Because he knows it will stop us going straight back to Manu.” Alara removed her pack and placed it in her lap.

  Kate stared at the pack, then at Alara. “What are you doing? You’re not still thinking of stopping here are you?”

  The princess nodded. “We have to sleep.”

  “No,” yelled Kate, her voice sounded strange, even to her own ears. “We can’t stop. They might be close by. We have to go after them now.”

  Siptah stepped forward. “She is right. There is a better chance of catching up with them if we leave immediately.”

  Alara looked sad and uncertain for only a moment. “Very well.”

  They left a torch burning in the tunnel entrance leading back to the spider. Alara and Siptah agreed that it was unlikely that the spider would return, but Kate wasn’t taking any chances.

  Armed with a torch and a pack each, they left the cavern and continued their journey. All thoughts of returning home had left Kate’s mind. Her only priority now was finding Emma.

  Some time later Siptah stopped at a fork in the tunnel.

  “Which way would they have gone?” asked Kate.

  Alara and Siptah pointed at the tunnel to the left. “That way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The other tunnel leads away from the city and Min must return in time to claim the throne,” replied Alara.

  They continued on.

  The farther they walked, the harder it became. Kate was tired and she knew her companions were too. Yet every time she considered stopping, Emma’s face popped up in her mind, and Kate was more determined than ever to continue on.

  “Kate, we have to rest,” said Siptah.

  “We can’t. Emma needs us to help her.”

  “If we continue, someone will get hurt,” replied Siptah.

  Kate shook her head. She needed to sit down as much as they did, but what if those few short minutes meant the difference between finding Emma and not finding her?

  “If we do not rest, we will not be able to think straight,” said Siptah. “We need clear minds so that we can rescue Emma.”

  A sob escaped from Kate. “We can’t stop. All this is my fault. If I hadn’t let her go to let the kittens—”

  She stopped abruptly and looked at Siptah. The torch light brought out the ginger in his grey fur and reflected in his green eyes, which were big and sad. He seemed human, but he wasn’t. She kept forgetting that this boy was the kitten she loved so much. She looked down at the ground between their feet.

  “Kate, I—”

  She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. She pushed passed him and started running along the tunnel.

  “Kate?”

  She ran, down one tunnel then another. She ran blindly because she could see little through the tears that filled her eyes.

  “Kate!”

  Why had the kittens come to their house? It wasn’t fair. Her family had taken them in and loved them. Kate had loved them. She had held Jasper in her arms and cuddled him. If she had known he was really a boy, and that he knew what was being said, things would have been different. She had shared so many secrets with the tiny, tabby kitten. She felt betrayed.

  “Kate, come back.”

  Kate heard the desperation in Siptah’s voice.

  All her disappointments in life rose to the surface. All the hurts. The feelings of being left out of the circle of love in her family. Being on the outside looking in. The resentment that Joe wasn’t really her father. The anger that her own father had died when she was a baby, leaving her with nothing—not even memories. All the things that had festered inside her over the years, making her feel miserable.

  Kate sobbed and continued running.

  “Kate! You are going the wrong way!”

  She faltered. The ground tilted. She fell forward, the torch flying out of her hand and rolling away from her. Away, away and then ...

  The torch disappeared over the edge of the rock path. Kate screamed as she slid along the ground after it. Her hands groped for something, anything, to stop her.

  There was nothing to grab.

  Her heart in her mouth, she tumbled face first over the edge of the chasm. Fear stifled the scream lodged in her throat.

  Chapter Nine

  Kate’s right hand closed around an exposed root. The rest of her body continued to fall, her shoulder jolted painfully as she came to an abrupt stop, right way up. Dangling by one hand, Kate tried to ignore the pain in her shoulder.

  She held on tightly. Heartbeat pounding, her breath came in quick, short gasps. She stared up into the darkness in horror. She didn’t have the strength, and couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath, to call out.

  Through the thin, leather wraps, her toes pawed at the ledge as they desperately tried to find a piece of rock to stand on to take the weight off her straining shoulder.

  Stale air drifted up from the blackness beneath her. She knew that it was a long drop to the bottom. Her fingers tightened their grip as her body started to tremble.

  Siptah.

  Her right foot found support. She tried to steady herself, but as she put more weight on the rock, it gave way. She jerked down. The hollow sound of the rock’s fall, as it bounced off boulders below her, sent chills up her spine. Her fingers threatened to break off as an animal groan worked its way up from her chest.

  “Kate?”

  “Siptah.” Her voice struggled up her wind pipe. The air felt trapped in her lungs. Her fingers ached. “Help me.”

  “Siptah!” called Alara. “Over here.”

  Kate heard scuffling noises and a dim light appeared overhead. The fingers on her left hand found a rock ledge to cling to.

  “Down here!”

  The light grew brighter. Two heads appeared over the edge of the chasm.

  “Kate!” Siptah’s eyes were enormous. He stared down at her for a second, and then withdrew.

  “Kate, remain still,” said Alara, leaning over the edge and reaching down to her. Her hand stopped a foot above Kate’s outstretched right hand. “We will get you up.”

  Kate’s fingers began to straighten. She willed them to hold tight. She stared up at Alara’s face. They held each other’s gaze for the longest moment.

  “Siptah,” Alara said without breaking eye contact with Kate, “she is beyond my reach. We need rope.”

  “I have rope,” Siptah replied. “I have secured it to a boulder. Lower me down so I can grab Kate. Then you have to pull us up. Can you do that?”

  Alara broke eye contact and rose to talk to Siptah.

  “I ... no, I cannot ...” said Alara. “You are stronger, you should lower me.”

  Kate’s heart sank. Hurry.

  “No,” came Siptah’s reply. “You are not strong enough to hold Kate’s weight. You must lower me down there.”

  “But ...”

  “We do not have time to argue. I will wrap the rope around here and you will be able to hold both of us.”

  Please hurry.

  “There,” said Siptah, “that should do it.”

  Rope fell from above into the chasm, its length stopping beside Kate’s chest. The looped end of the rope wiggled for a moment. The light overhead dimmed. Kate looked up to find Siptah easing himself over the edge of the chasm. No one spoke.

  Face first, he came lower and lower. Kate saw Alara above him, her back
pressed against his legs. Siptah’s hands reached for Kate. She stared up at his face.

  “Grab my hand,” he said as he came closer. His legs still weighed down by Alara.

  Kate looked at his hands. They were too far away. Her stomach fluttered. Her hands shook. “I can’t.”

  “You must,” said Siptah. “There is a loop for your foot too.”

  She couldn’t move. She didn’t have the strength to explain to Siptah that the rope wasn’t long enough. “I can’t,” she whispered.

  There was nothing in his face to tell her what he was thinking. He stretched his hands farther. “Alara, a little more.”

  Their faces came closer together. His hands reached out and grabbed her wrists. Kate’s fingers ached as she forced them to close around his wrists.

  Siptah jolted downwards. Alara gasped. Kate stifled a scream.

  “It is all right,” called Alara. “You are secure.”

  “Purr-put your foot into the loop,” said Siptah before he shouted over his shoulder, “Quickly, Alara, pull us up.”

  Kate stared at the loop and remained silent. She would have to trust Siptah’s strength to hold her. Her body dangled for a moment, and her shoulder hit the stone wall of the chasm. They jerked upwards.

  Alara groaned and they jerked upwards again. She groaned again. Siptah was already more than half way over the edge again.

  Kate felt another set of hands on her. She panicked, and then she saw Alara’s face beside Siptah’s. A moment later, she was dragged over the edge of the chasm and placed face down in the dirt. Siptah and Alara panted heavily beside her.

  Kate lifted her head.

  The middle of the rope, connecting Alara and Siptah, twisted around two boulders. Kate could see the indentation of Alara’s heels in the dirt where she had pressed her feet against one of the boulders, using it for leverage just moments beforehand. Alara and Siptah were sprawled out beside Kate, exhausted. Kate lowered her head and closed her eyes, grateful to be alive.

  A few minutes later, Siptah insisted they rest before continuing on. Kate didn’t have the strength to argue. Battered and bruised, they moved away from the chasm, but they didn’t go far. They settled down in the tunnel, amongst fallen rocks and rested.

  Kate found sleep quickly.

  ***

  The murmur of voices woke her. She lifted her head to find Siptah and Alara sitting side by side, deep in conversation.