“Hug the wall,” I suggest, hoping I successfully masked the tremor in my voice.
“We’ll be—”
But whatever Helos was starting to say cuts off as a shudder runs through the walls.
The vibration buzzes against my back.
“Hurry up!” I say. “You’re almost here!”
But it’s as if the very walls are echoing my uncertainty. Earthquake or just a trick of the Vale, the stony chamber quivers with affected nerves, loosing a few jagged rocks from the ceiling. They crumble and clatter against the floor, smacking the ground like pellets of hail. The torchlight flinches when one of the pieces strikes Helos’s arm.
“Come on!” Weslyn shouts against the din. Though his expression remains determined, nervous sweat is shining along his brow. “I’ll hold the torch. My shoes have better traction.”
Helos hands it over with a glance up at my face. His is morphing into a landscape of fear.
Feeling utterly helpless, useless, I can only watch as Weslyn shuffles in front of Helos, then sweeps his free hand across the trembling wall. Clearly, he’s searching for a handhold to latch on to, but the rock face is maliciously slick. He abandons the search and just presses his palm against the wall, keeping the torch in the hand closest to Helos. With my teeth rattling between clenched jaws, mouse fur threatens to poke through my skin as Weslyn steps out onto the ledge.
“Almost there,” I call, as the two of them sidestep along the shelf.
As soon as Weslyn reaches the other, wider side, he sheds my pack and tosses it up into the hole with his free hand. Then he finds a notch in the wall, grabs it, and leans back over to light Helos’s path.
My brother takes another step, but his boot doesn’t stick. It slips.
“Helos!” I scream as his body teeters away from the wall. His arms spiral, foot hitting nothing but air, all of it happening too fast, too fast. Weslyn makes a grab for him, and the abandoned torch splinters on the ground below, the impact echoing through the cavern.
The walls stop shaking as the light goes out.
“Helos?” I breathe into the newfound silence, hopeful and terrified all at once. The space is overwhelmingly black, the fire remnants dwindling to the barest glow.
“We’re okay.”
It’s Weslyn voice, sounding tight with exertion.
It’s a miracle, and I bite back a sob, throwing on clothing as quickly as I can. Then I pop my head back out to listen while they feel their way along the wall.
“Grab my hands,” I say, still regaining my panicked breath, ignoring my stomach and extending my arms as far as they’ll go. “I’ll pull you up toward the hole. Can you feel them?”
Labored breathing cuts through the dark. The sound of rubber soles scraping stone. Then—pressure on my palm, the hand wide and calloused, unfamiliar. Sticky with blood where it clutched the wall.
Involuntarily, my muscles lock up.
You don’t touch her again, Helos commanded. Understand? But there’s Weslyn’s palm against mine, trapping my fingers firmly between his own, and Helos is doing nothing.
I find his other hand and haul him up.
Weslyn squeezes in next to me, swearing when his head bumps the wall.
“Careful,” I mutter, releasing my grip. The muscles in my abdomen are screaming. “You can scoot a little way down. It isn’t very steep.”
I reach back out for Helos while Weslyn moves farther into the opening, his shoulder grazing my arm in the narrow space. Familiar hands find mine, and then my brother is there beside me. His palms are shaking.
“Nice try,” I say at last with false cheer. “But no one here is dying today.”
I can hear his ragged smile in the blackness.
“What now?” Weslyn asks, the space around us painfully close. “You said there’s a passageway?”
“It’s narrow, I couldn’t actually see the end. But it must let out somewhere—you can see a faint light.”
Though now that I’m looking with human eyes, there really doesn’t seem to be any light at all.
Weslyn says nothing.
“I’ll go first,” I decide, sliding forward on my rear. My foot connects with some part of him, and I yank my leg back, startled, clenching my teeth at the pain in my stomach.
“Be careful,” Helos warns, his voice rather faint. “Weslyn, you go next. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Curse it. I pull from the air and heal my stomach, stitching it shut with new skin. Just until we’re out, I reason. The aching fades at once.
Slowly, using my hands and feet to craft a picture in my mind, I move my pack to my front side and slide forward once more. The stone scrapes roughly against my arms, the air cool and slightly stale on my tongue. Wordlessly, Weslyn shuffles behind me.
As we progress through the tunnel, the undulating sides narrow and widen at irregular intervals, the resultant gap so small at times that I have to lay back to fit through. In an effort to ease some of the crackling tension, I do my best to narrate the path as I go, warning the boys when the tunnel bends or constricts. The muffled words hang close.
It would be easier to navigate this as a mouse, of course. But I never consider making the shift. Weslyn’s silence is speaking volumes to me.
“You know,” Helos mutters through gritted teeth. “I have a strange feeling Finley would enjoy this.”
I almost smile in spite of the circumstances. He would.
Gradually, the space brightens enough to see the outlines of my hands. When at last, the tunnel lets out onto an open ledge, I slide onto the flat rock face and wait for them to emerge. It’s lighter out here, though still indisputably dim, and I note the vastness of the space and the rush of running water somewhere below. Water—we must be close to an exit. Relief rushes through me.
Weslyn slips out next. He switches his pack onto his back and scoots straight to the opposite end of the ledge, as far from me as possible. I don’t take it personally. His movements seem very tight.
“Is your hand okay?” I ask, realizing I should probably just ask if he’s okay. I promised Finley he would be. I want to thank him for saving Helos, for carrying my pack, but even in the comforting mask of darkness, I still don’t really know how to talk to him.
“It’s fine,” Weslyn replies shortly. He’s looking away.
Helos emerges last, blinking at the newfound glow. Probably because he’s the tallest, his arms look a little more scraped up than ours, but otherwise he seems all right. Better than all right, really. Alive.
“Look at this,” he breathes, moving right to the edge.
The cavern before us is at least three times the size of the one with the obsidian stones. While that had held only bare rock and metallic air, this has the look of an enclosed forest—a tangled heap of trees down below, taller and broader-topped than the Vale’s native conifers, with vegetation crowding the bases and sprawling ivy clinging to the surrounding walls like spiderwebs. A broad stream winds through the forest and out, then disappears into a dark tunnel set into the wall opposite our ledge. Around us, sporadic birdsong spirals through the air, and in a far corner—
Cursed fortune.
“Do you see that dark mass over there?” I lean forward to look at Weslyn. “Up against the ceiling?”
After a moment, Weslyn peers up to where I’m pointing. “Bats?”
“Widow bats,” I correct him. “They have—”
“Toxic saliva.”
I blink in surprise.
“That’s what you said yesterday, right?”
“I—that’s right,” I reply, addled, and he nods. “We’ll have to be careful not to disturb them.”
The three of us pick our way down the rocky slope connecting our ledge with the ground. Once down, we hesitate on the outskirts of the forest, unspoken wariness threading between us.
“I don’t see how this could grow here,” Weslyn says quietly. “There’s no sun.”
“And where is this murky light coming from?” Helos adds.
Sw
eat is already beading along my face in the hot, humid air. I shake my head. “Come on. I think I see a way out.”
Sticking close to the outer wall rather than cutting through the trees, I circle around to the stretch of black water that flows through a ravine and into a tunnel. The stream only spans five or so paces across, and the current doesn’t look strong. “It has to lead somewhere, right? Otherwise it would be stagnant.”
Helos dips a hand in. “Cool, but not too cold.”
“The lake?”
He nods. “I reckon so.”
“Our packs would get wet,” I muse. “We’d have to lay them out to dry.”
“Overnight should do it. We could light a fire to help them along.”
Realizing the third member of our party hasn’t spoken in a while, I twist toward Weslyn to gauge his thoughts.
His face is ashen.
“What do you think?” I ask, feeling an unexpected twinge of pity.
He stares at the water, then the tunnel it flows into—maybe ten paces high—the details inside too dark to make out. After a while, his attention falls to me.
“You want to ride the stream,” he says flatly.
I nod. “We think it lets out at the lake.”
“You think.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not certain.”
Helos scrapes a foot along the ground, watching the bats.
“Can you swim?” I ask.
Weslyn folds his arms, his shoulders taut. “Yes, but I’m not sure if—”
He breaks off when the trees begin to sway.
One heartbeat. Two. Three. Four. That’s how long they bend in one direction before swerving back the other way. The trunks creak and snap under the canopy’s shifting weight, wood groaning in a ghostly drawl, broad leaves hissing as they scrape against one another. With a flurry of high-pitched cheeping, yellow-bellied tanagers erupt from the wood on frantic wings. Back and forth, the forest sways.
Helos throws his arms behind his head and says, “Shit.”
The word has hardly left his mouth when the colony of widow bats shudders awake. Suspended from the ceiling in a far corner, the dark mass ripples like a perverse mirror of the stream. It’s impossible to judge how many there are. Two hundred at least, likely more.
“We have to move!” I say at once, jumping back to the water’s edge. My hair sweeps across my face in the wind churning forth from the shaking wood.
Helos squats beside the stream, ready to lower himself in. But despite the commotion, Weslyn still hesitates.
A few of the bats drop out of the close-knit colony, shrieking at the swaying trees.
“Get in!” Helos shouts.
“What if it dead-ends?” Weslyn counters.
“This entire cavern is about to be covered in giant toxic webs. You want to die here?”
“You have no idea where this leads!”
“I know what will happen here if we stay!”
After the trees’ next rotation, the colony decides it’s had enough. Hundreds of bats peel away from the ceiling in a dark, flapping, shrieking mass.
“Remember what I told you,” I shout at Weslyn. “Staying alive means listening to Helos and me!” Then I shove him into the water.
Strands of white saliva beam across the swaying woods, laying a patchwork of solid lines that weave together like rope. The treetops begin to smolder, but that’s all I see before the stream sweeps us into the tunnel.
In the sudden blackness, keeping my eyes open or closed makes no difference. Only the cool air sweeping my face and the babbling rhythm of the water, magnified in the stone chamber, tells me we’re moving forward. My sodden boots hang heavy and uncomfortable as my legs churn the dark stream to counter the weight of my pack. To my relief, by the time I’ve counted to fifty, the space around us has brightened considerably. Light floods in when the ceiling drops away, and before I have time to assess what’s ahead, we plunge down a tiny waterfall.
Trapped.
For an endless moment, I have been buried alive, dragged under by the force of the drop and the stream cascading overhead. Fighting panic, I struggle to the surface and gulp in air, circling my arms against the downward pull of the pack. Helos and Weslyn emerge heartbeats later, spitting water and scraping wetness from their eyes.
We’re back in the lake.
Though we must have spent hours inside the cave, twilight blue still hangs in the air. Crickets chirp a relentless tune, a welcome to usher us back to the outside world. Clinging to the noise like a lifeline, I swim the short distance to shore, my boots scraping stones from the soft, sandy bottom when it becomes shallow enough to walk. Helos and I pull ourselves onto the bank in synchronized motion, followed, soon after, by Weslyn.
“Not even a hill,” Helos grumbles, shaking his hair dry and nodding over to where the stream spat us out. A few damp strands have stuck to his face.
He’s right; that last cavern was huge, practically the height of Castle Roanin’s central atrium, but the land around the lake barely rises higher than ant hills. I roll my eyes, wringing the water from my shirt.
“Are you okay?” he asks Weslyn, who hasn’t risen from the ground.
Weslyn doesn’t meet his gaze. “Fine,” he mutters.
“I’ll build the fire, then.” Helos makes for the tree line.
I watch my brother go, the spring already returning to his step—remarkable. But I don’t follow. Weslyn’s expression by the water’s edge, before we rode the stream, remains fresh in my mind. Shivering a little in my waterlogged clothes, I pace over to where he’s still sitting back on his heels.
He’s breathing rather heavily, drenched clothes clinging like a second skin. Winding his fingers through the weed stalks, he stares into the forest with unfocused eyes and doesn’t seem to notice me standing there. He’s tossed his pack aside as if it bites.
“Only so much you can learn in a castle, right?” I say at last. And then, remembering the river crossing, I shake aside the strangeness of it and offer a hand to help him up.
Weslyn keeps his eyes on the sodden ground. But he takes it.
THIRTEEN
Things are different the next day. We still exchange few words as we walk, but it’s a slightly easier sort of silence. At least there are no walls to hold us here.
Dawn has scarcely broken when we leave the lapping shore to our right and continue our trek through the patchy forest. Black bugs nip and flit around us, sensing a meal, their wings catching the light of the sun. Helos made me another salve after I released the matter holding my wound together, but this time I’ve applied it sparingly, wishing to remain as alert as possible.
As we walk, I begin pointing things out to Weslyn—an upturned root, the brand of moss that burns rubber soles, sugar-laced pinecones, and a razor-winged, black-tipped caw on a branch. Taking the fire request as a cue, I’m teaching our third to observe his surroundings.
Weslyn rarely comments, just listens quietly. Prior to this journey, I’d only ever seen him in the bustling castle or among a retinue of staffers or guards. Away from all that, though, I’m finding he’s an introspective sort, less vocal when not required to lead. After a while Helos joins in, too, though judging by his indifferent tone, it’s more for the sake of complementing my efforts than any genuine interest in Weslyn’s outdoor education.
“Look here,” I say midafternoon, pacing over to a thick, tall shrub covered in yellow-white blossoms and teardrop leaves.
Weslyn steps to my side and cradles a tubelike flower between two fingers. “Honeysuckle.” He nods with a faint smile. “We have these back home.”
“You have a variation on them,” I clarify. “The nectar in southern honeysuckle is sweet to drink, but not much more. These contain an added benefit.” With a gentle touch, I choose a flower and peel back the petals, revealing the tiny white bead inside. “Honeysuckle pearls. They melt like powder on your tongue and will cure the worst headache.”
“Who taught you that?”
“Helos.”
My brother smiles in a vaguely distracted manner, scratching the back of his head.
“Try one,” I suggest, choosing an untouched flower and sucking the nectar from its depths. The little pearl dissolves with a sweet floral aftertaste.
Weslyn’s eyebrows arch as he runs his tongue along his teeth. “My mouth feels numb.”
“That will only last a moment.”
Nodding again, he studies the shrub, the corners of his mouth sinking lower. “Do they travel well? If I pick a few.”
It takes a little while for me to understand. “For Finley?”
He looks at me, a bit of sadness in his gaze.
“You can store them in this,” Helos says, producing a small vial like the one that holds the cat’s tongue. “I brought a few from the shop. It’s worth a try.”
He shows Weslyn where to break the stems, and we gather a small collection.
By the time evening falls, we’ve long passed the southernmost point of the lake. Once again, few animals and no people have crossed our path, and again, their absence sparks a warning in me. I wrap my cloak around my shoulders in the cool mountain night air and attempt to dismiss it as luck.
Weslyn asks to take first watch, which Helos overrules on the basis of experience. He does build the fire, though, under our supervision, and my brother even offers him a compliment on fast learning. Amazing the difference a couple of weeks living outdoors can make.
Since the stars tonight are impossible to see through the canopy and clouds, I roll onto my side, away from the fire and watchful eyes. Sleep seems a difficult feat out here, but my awareness drifts into nonsense before I can revisit all the usual haunts, and soon enough I’m flying over mountains and far out at sea.
I wake with a start.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep. The firelight glows softer than before, but the flames still snap like thunder cracks, puncturing the screams lingering in my head. My heart is pounding forcefully enough to wake the forest. Dimly, I realize my face is wet.
Prior to this journey, it had been a long time since I’d woken up with tears on my cheeks. This is the fourth time it’s happened in two weeks.
Forestborn Page 17
