“How are the others doing?” Kol asks. “Is Seeri to the top?”
Looking up, I am encouraged to see how far the others have gone. “She’s just about to reach Lees now,” I say. As I watch, she steadies her first knee on the shelf of rock beside the place Noni sits. Pek, even with the added challenge of carrying the dog, is not far behind. “I don’t think Pek wanted to let Morsk get too far away from him,” I say, only half-teasing. Pek is strong and clearly an experienced climber, but even the best climber would struggle to carry both a pack and a dog. “The extra motivation apparently helped. He’s made the top. Seeri’s taking the dog from him now.”
I wait, still looking up at them, willing them each to make the summit safely. When Pek pulls in his feet and disappears from view, I turn back to Kol, expecting a smile or maybe a smart comment about Morsk.
But instead, I find him slumped sideways, his head leaning against the rock, his eyelids lolling shut. “Kol!” His name flies from my lips as I reach to grab his shoulder. But before I can touch him, he slides forward. The front of his tunic grazes my outstretched hands as he slips from the ledge.
I throw off all my cautious thoughts of balance and lunge toward him, grabbing his collar, the laces threading through my fingers and winding around my hand. The hairs of the elk hide dig into the skin under my nails. His weight tugs at my clutching hands, but the Divine holds me balanced, and I hold Kol.
His head jerks up and he snaps awake. As he realizes where he is—as he comes to know that he is about to fall—he grabs the rock with both hands and pulls himself back up.
It happens so quickly, yet I feel every moment, see every detail as if time doesn’t pass at all. I notice the chill of his skin when the backs of my fingers graze his neck. I notice the shifting of his weight, leaning away and then toward me, as his foot underneath him finds a hold again.
And I notice the relief—the ripple of release that rolls from Kol to me and back again like a shared sigh. I notice the breeze that shimmers up from the ground, as if the whole island were sighing in relief along with us.
And I notice the quickness with which the relief we share is snatched away.
My fingers, numb from holding so long on to the cold stone, have slowly lost their grip, even as I stared at Kol and hoped for him to hold on. I look down into the oval surface of the lake straight below, and I see the reflection of two figures—a boy and a girl, clinging to a ledge, white wisps of clouds sweeping across the sky above them. For a long moment only the clouds move, but then my hands are sliding along the rock and I am falling.
And then the surface shatters all around us, and I lose him in the lake’s blackness.
The lake is a world of liquid cold that sinks down into my bones. My eyes open and I see shafts of sunlight stabbing through the surface, illuminating curious fish, a swirl of bubbles, and a figure floating through the water, lying on his back, arms spreading wide as he moves away from me.
Kol.
Swim, I tell myself. Swim to his side and pull him out before he drowns. But as I stretch out an arm, pushing through the long fronds of sea grass that grow up from the bottom, threatening to wrap around him like the limbs of some mysterious Spirit that lives in the lake, the water clouds with silt and debris that filters down from the surface—bits of rock and pebbles knocked free by our bodies as we fell.
I kick hard toward the place I just saw him—through the dark smear that has gobbled up the light—and one of my searching hands finds something soft, warm, and alive. My fingers trace over his face. I kick once more and I am beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him up.
We break the surface, pushing into the cold bright air. I tread water. My eyes search the bank. I spot Seeri near the base of the cliff, hurrying down to help.
I swim as hard as I can, but I’m not Pek. Carrying extra weight slows me down. By the time I reach the shallow water at the edge of the rocky shore, Seeri is wading in. She grabs Kol by the collar and pulls him away from me. Morsk appears behind her, and before I can tell him I am fine—before I can tell him to attend to Kol—he scoops me up into his arms and carries me onto the bank.
“I’m fine,” I say, but even as I say it, I hear the croak in my own voice. I hear the rattle of cold in my own breath.
“You need to get into the sun,” he says, carrying me to a spot where a wide circle of light falls on a patch of grass beyond the rocks.
I get to my feet, icy water dripping down from my hair, running down my chest beneath my tunic. My feet are unsteady, cold water swishing inside my boots, and I sit down on the trunk of a fallen tree and pull off one boot and then the other, shaking out the water while scanning the bank for Kol and Seeri.
I find them close to the water’s edge, as if she didn’t dare move Kol far. Tugging my wet boots back onto my feet, I hurry to them. I reach Kol just as he sits up and gags, lake water pouring out of his mouth.
I drop down beside him. I want to wrap him in my arms, but before I can reach for him, he pulls away. He stretches out onto his side and his eyes flutter shut. I’m not sure he even knows that I’m here. A low moan rattles from his throat.
“Kol?” I say, pushing back the wet hair that covers his eyes, and I notice the heat in his cheek.
I need to get Kol into the sun. This is what I’m thinking as I turn to look back to the clearing where Morsk carried me. I need to get Kol warm.
Leaning forward, bringing my face against his, I let my lips press against his forehead. His fever fills them with heat. His eyes flutter open, and he says my name.
“Mya.”
“You need to stay still now. You’re sick.”
Kol’s lips twist into a lopsided smile. “I know.”
Morsk comes up behind us and scoops Kol up to carry him to the sun. “You both need to try to get warm,” he says. “I’m going to go search for an easier route up the cliff.”
Seeri follows us to the patch of sun. She looks after Morsk as I kneel down beside Kol.
“I’ll go help him,” she says, “though I’ll keep my distance. I still don’t trust him, but you deserve some privacy.”
When she walks away, I can’t help but wonder if she thinks I need to say good-bye to Kol. Does she think he is dying? He can’t be. He’s sick with an infection, but he can’t be dying.
He can’t be.
“Kol?” I whisper. He turns his face toward my voice, and for a moment I’m hopeful he will open his eyes, but they stay closed.
Hope. I feel it draining from me like mead from a cracked cup.
I find myself whispering a prayer to the Divine, which is not something I have a habit of doing. I pray only when I’m desperate, when I know I need her the most, and I know that in a way, that is worse than never praying at all. It shows I believe, but not enough to do anything about it. I know the Divine can help me, but I also know I can do most things myself. I don’t know. I suppose I don’t want to admit when I need help.
But right now, I admit it. Right now, I need the help of the Divine and anyone else who will give it. “Help me help Kol,” I whisper. “Help me get him to the top of this cliff and out of danger.”
“Was that a prayer? A prayer for me?” It’s Kol. He stirs and opens his eyes.
“It might have been,” I say. “I’m just happy you’re well enough to hear me.”
“I once prayed for help when I was being chased by a saber-tooth. The Divine sent me you.”
His voice is so weak, I lean over him to hear. His face is so close. His eyes cut into me, opening a place I’ve been trying to hold shut.
“I’m hardly the answer to a prayer,” I say.
He coughs, turns to spit out another mouthful of the lake, and then pulls in a long, deep breath. As he lets it out—part breath, part groan—he curls onto his side and his eyes fall shut again.
I slide my fingers across his forehead. Though his hair lies damp and cold against his face, his skin still burns.
I look up to see Morsk and S
eeri hurrying toward us. “We found a route that looks a little easier,” Seeri says. Without speaking a word, Morsk scoops Kol from the ground and drapes him across his shoulders, not unlike the way Pek carried the dog. Kol groans, but that’s all. He must be out. If he were conscious, he would object to being carried, especially by Morsk.
The route Morsk and Seeri found is longer to the top but much less steep a climb. As I follow Morsk up, using my hands only at intervals, I think how much Pek would’ve preferred this way up with the dog. Maybe Kol could have made it up without falling.
I push that thought from my mind. I can’t look back. Only ahead.
At the top Lees runs to us, but Noni shrinks back, standing against a wall of rock that pushes even higher above our heads. She eyes Morsk. “Who are these people?” she asks me.
Certainly Pek has spoken to her since he reached the top with Black Dog. Certainly Lees has told her she can trust each of us.
Or maybe not. Maybe she told her to trust all but one.
“It’s all right,” I say. “They came to help us.” I feel Seeri and Pek beside me—I feel them flinch as I say that Noni can trust even Morsk.
And something about their reactions makes me flinch, too. I don’t want to admit it, but their doubts are making me doubt, too. Could they be right? Could it be that I’ve been foolish to trust Morsk, just because my brother did?
But if Morsk was hoping to help the Bosha find us, why would he have carried Kol to the top of this cliff?
“You can trust all of them to help you,” I say, trying to believe my own words.
“And what about them?” Noni asks. She lifts her hand to point to the other end of the lake.
I don’t need to turn my head to know who’s there. I knew they would come. As soon as Lees let out her cry, I knew.
I turn, and there they are. Dora and Anki. Standing in the very place I stood when Lees called out my name.
EIGHTEEN
I usher everyone back from the ledge, hoping we haven’t been spotted yet.
“Why are they here?” Lees asks, her hand rising to her mouth. The look of fear on her face tells me she already knows.
“We need to stay ahead of them.” I don’t offer any more of an answer, and Lees doesn’t ask. “Where’s the cave you’re so excited about?”
Standing here on this shelf of rock—a flat plateau that stretches only twenty paces before a higher cliff springs up behind it—I see no openings in the walls. Rivulets of water crisscross the stone—offshoots of the stream that feeds the falls—but these all meander through grooves they’ve dug in the rock, dropping over the edge or snaking into crags. But nowhere do I see an opening we could walk through.
Then Lees sits down on the stone we all stand on, and slides her feet into what I thought was a depression in the rock.
And disappears.
Running to the place she just stood, I see what I couldn’t see before. What I’d thought was a depression is actually the entrance to an underground cavern. Looking through the opening, I can see Lees standing on the floor of the cave below.
“How big is it in there?” I ask. “Will we all fit?”
“Twice as many would fit,” Lees calls back. She climbs halfway out again, clinging to a few protruding nobs of stone that serve as toeholds, lifting her head and shoulders out of the hole. Her smile beams.
“Good work,” I say. “We’re coming down.”
The opening is narrow, requiring some twisting and turning, but Seeri and Noni get through with little trouble. Morsk and Pek still stand over Kol, who is stretched out on the stone in the exact place Morsk set him down. I squat beside him. His eyes are closed as if he’s sleeping. He doesn’t stir. My heart sinks in my chest.
“What if I lifted his feet and Morsk lifted his shoulders?” I say. “Pek, you could go down first. Maybe you and Seeri could help take his weight from us—together we should be able to set him on the floor of the cave without letting him fall.”
Pek’s eyes scan Morsk’s face. Distrust hardens his mouth and jaw, but he nods. “Be careful with him, Mya,” he says. At first I think he means Kol—be careful lifting him—but then I realize he means Morsk. As he drops down into the hole in the rock, he throws one more watchful glance back at him.
“Don’t worry,” Morsk says, “I won’t let him fall.”
Kol never opens his eyes as we transfer him through the opening into the cave. I’m the last to go through after Morsk, climbing down out of a windy world bright with sun, into a still, dim space.
I don’t know what I had imagined, but I never imagined this. I stand in a small room with curved walls of rounded rock, as if it had been carved to serve as a drinking cup for the Divine. The ceiling is high enough that we can all stand at our full heights—even Morsk. The floor is pitted and pocked, carved by water that runs down the walls and trickles into several small waterways that flow farther underground, disappearing into the dark. It’s cold down here. On the surface, I’d thought my clothes were nearly dry. The hides had shed most of the water, and they’d warmed so much in the sun. But here, in this damp, dark place, my clothes feel chilled and wet against my skin.
“Well, we’re hidden. That’s certain,” I say. My voice, not even a whisper, but a breath of a whisper, fills the room and reverberates around me. I take a tentative step downhill, following the flow of water deeper into the ground. “How far have you followed it?” I ask Noni and Lees. “Do you know where it goes?”
“Not to the end. It narrows into a passageway you have to crawl through. Lees and I went all the way down to a tight corner, and even followed it around the turn. It leads to another space a lot like this one—one lit by a sinkhole that opens to the surface. As you crawl along you can hear water, like the creek might be running right overhead,” Noni says.
I take this in. I remember hearing the creek right before I first saw the bear this morning. I wasn’t far in from the cliffs that overlook the sea. If we could crawl that far through the dark—all the way back to the cliffs above the sea—we might be able to get back to the beach and to the boats without being seen by Dora and Anki, or Thern and Pada, or whoever else might be out there stalking us.
But before we try crawling that far, we have other things to worry about. I crouch beside Kol where Pek and Seeri placed him on the floor of the cave, and his eyes flip open.
“That was a terrifying trip to the top.” A twitch flickers across his lips—an attempt at a smile? If it is, the attempt fails, as his lips twist into a grimace.
“You were awake?” I glance up at Morsk, who looks away. “I thought you were out. I thought maybe—”
“No, I was all too aware,” he says. “I’m still alert. Just terrible at walking. Even worse at climbing.”
He laughs a bit at his own words, but no one else makes a sound. Noni drops down beside him across from me. “If you could let me go outside, there’s feverweed near the lake. I saw a whole patch of it. If he chewed it—”
“No,” I say. Kol’s eyelids, which had already dropped shut, flip open again. I touch his hand. It’s scalding and dry. His eyes are clouded with fever. “Not yet,” I say, squeezing Kol’s hand. “Once we know we’re safe—that they didn’t follow—then I’ll let you go.”
But even as I say these words, I don’t know that I could really ever take that chance. Could I risk the welfare of the whole group to get a plant I hope will help Kol? Maybe if they all pressed on, if they all got through to the beach, maybe I could get to the lake and gather some feverweed myself? “Noni, is there feverweed near the beach?”
“On the cliffs there’s lots of it . . . more than here.”
“And can we all get through the opening—the space we need to crawl through?” I stare into the dark, imagining the trickle of water I hear running into another tall, well-lit room. Still, I hear nothing but the echo of close rock and I see nothing but blackness.
“It’s tight, but I don’t think it’s any tighter than the hole we just came throu
gh.”
I lean close to Kol. A salty scent rises from his skin. I run my fingertips across his brow, and I notice his temples are damp. Could his fever be breaking?
“We’re going to have to try to crawl through these caves to the beach,” I whisper to him, though I know all the others can hear. Every small noise reverberates. But I don’t care. Let them listen. They all know how I feel about Kol. I suppose this isn’t the best time to concern myself with our privacy. “Do you think you can do it? Can you crawl?”
I think of his leg—his left knee that he’s favored all day.
“Whatever we have to do, I’ll do it. Roon will never forgive me if it’s my fault Lees doesn’t get back to him soon.” From behind me, I hear Lees suck in a quick breath at the mention of Roon’s name. Kol smirks just a bit. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you,” he says.
And I hear it in his voice—the resignation. I can hear him letting go of hope to stay with me. But I won’t have that.
“No. No, you’re going ahead of me. You’re staying where I can see you.” I want to take a few more minutes to let him rest. I want to push up his pant leg and look at his leg to see how bad it really is—but I don’t dare. We need to go. And there’s nothing I can do to help him here, anyway. “Noni, you lead the way. Then Morsk, Lees, Pek, and Seeri. Seeri, I’ll send Kol in behind you, and I’ll come in last. If you get too far ahead of us, call to me. We need to stay together.”
The only answer is the singing of the water as it drips and pools. I watch Noni, so young but so strong, glance one last time at the circle of sunlight above our heads. Maybe she is soaking up the light before she plunges into darkness. Maybe she is wishing she could just make a run for it and leave the rest of us behind. Whatever she thinks, it’s brief, and she turns back toward the black shadows where the rock underfoot drops down.
“You can stand for only about five paces,” she says. “Then you need to duck. In another five paces, you need to crawl.” I watch the back of her head—her black hair damp and matted—as she disappears into the dark. The sound of her sealskin pants dragging across the stone, the splash of running water as she crosses through the stream—these are the only signs that she is on her way through the passageway.
Obsidian and Stars Page 14
