A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga)

by Grotepas, Nicole

  Kate reached down and picked up what came out of her pack with the water bottle. It glowed slightly. The iridescent, reflective colors it possessed were otherworldly and familiar.

  It was the dragonfly ring from her dreams.

  24: Trailblazer

  How . . . ? Where . . . ?

  Kate was stunned. Too shocked to think straight. She turned the ring over in her fingers as she lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows. Audra’s snores jerked and tore at the solid quiet of their tent. The campground had become deathly still as well. It was a strange sound, the silence of a place like that—different from a town where people were shielded by solid walls. This was the sound of a hundred people under sleep’s spell. Kate’s senses became heightened and alert, responding to the forbidding aura the ring and the quiet had brought into her tent. The darkness and silence were sepulchral rather than peaceful.

  Kate had a sudden thought and to try to confirm it, she pinched her arm.

  “Ow,” she hissed. So I’m awake. Right? That’s not really a good test, she thought, perplexed. She could wake Audra up, but then, well, she’d be awake. There wasn’t another way to test it, really. For all she knew, she could be sleeping. She felt awake, but then, she always felt like her dreams with Will were real.

  Kate had no way to know, but she continued to puzzle it out until she was interrupted by the dragonfly ring doing something odd.

  It began to quiver in her fingers like the faint heartbeat of a tiny kitten. The dragonfly softened and warmed up as though she’d held it too long and her body heat had transferred into the cool metal. A muted glow formed in the multifaceted eyes and spread through the rest of the insect until the delicate, lace-like wings were beating slowly up and down. Streams of light poured out from it like it was a sparkler, hissing and fizzing over with fire. Kate watched it, stunned, her hand loose around the fragile body. She checked, but Audra was still fast asleep.

  By then, Kate wasn’t too surprised when the dragonfly lifted off from her hand and flew in a jagged pattern over her toward the door of her tent. It landed on the inside of the flap, digging its tiny legs into the netting. It waited there. For what, Kate didn’t know.

  A pang wrenched through her heart. Something of Will appearing in her world . . . was it . . . was it from Will? Or did she always have it? Had she acquired a dragonfly ring somewhere and it appeared in her dreams, only to resurface here, at this very moment? Was it purely coincidence? She thought hard, concentrating, trying to recall a memory of buying a dragonfly ring. A memory that would explain why it was in her backpack.

  The insect lifted off from its perch, flew around in the tent, light spilling from it like sparks, and then it landed again on the door.

  Kate sighed, realizing that her logic wasn’t logic at all. Even if she had bought a dragonfly ring somewhere and forgotten about it, the freaking thing had just come to life and was glowing and flying around her tent, trying to get away.

  Maybe she was dreaming.

  It seemed to want to get out of her tent. It was going to wake Audra up, and then Kate would have to explain why there was a glowing dragonfly in their tent. She had no rational answer. So she shimmied out of her sleeping bag, crawled toward the doorway, and unzipped it. The insect flew out. She watched it zig-zagging over the dark, quiet camp until it disappeared.

  “Whoa,” Kate whispered. And just like that it was gone. She’d let it get away. Nice.

  Kate sat back into a crouch and mulled over her regret. She should have kept it. Who cared if she had to explain it to Audra? She’d had a glowing dragonfly in her possession!

  A bristling noise came from the tent door. Kate looked up. She’d forgotten to zip up the tent flap and a breeze was blowing it to and fro. She crept forward to close it, and that was when the dragonfly zoomed right up into her face, hovering like a copter, eye to eye with her. At least a hundred colors swirled across the top of the huge, angled eyes. It darted away and then zipped back at Kate.

  It was beginning to remind Kate of an old TV show.

  “Oh, you want me to follow you? What is this, Lassie?” Kate whispered to it. The insect moved up and then down, as though it was nodding at her. “OK, OK, OK,” Kate said, thinking quickly. She held up a finger to signal that it wait a moment. It wants me to follow it. It wants me to follow. Wow.

  Kate was in her pajamas, and for once she regretted actually getting into nightclothes while she was camping. Instead of trying to change back into street clothes in the tent with Audra two inches away and in danger of waking up from the noise, Kate stuffed her water bottle into her pack and zipped it up. Everything else was already in it. In the vestibule made by the tent and the rainfly, Kate slipped her sandals on. Her climbing shoes were in her backpack, as well as a small first-aid kit, pocketknife, an old orange lighter, her cell phone which she’d turned off, emergency granola bars, a pair of lightweight hiking boots, a lightweight jacket, and a change of underwear and clothes. I should have been a dang Boy Scout, Kate thought smugly. She glanced at her Timex—1:45 am—then ducked out of the vestibule and the dragonfly followed.

  “Lead on, Lassie,” Kate whispered, laughing quietly at her own joke.

  It flew past the smoldering embers of the campfire to the paved road that led out of camp and paused, glowing like a firefly on steroids, helicoptering in the air, waiting for the slow human. Kate tiptoed past Ty and Malcolm’s tent and the fire and reached the road. The dragonfly zoomed westward and Kate kept her steps light until they’d left the campground behind.

  She had no idea where it was going or why she chose to follow it. She didn’t think. She just walked, enthralled by its glowing body and the possibility that it was actually leading her somewhere she wanted to go. She couldn’t lie to herself. She owned it. She owned that it was quite probably and hopefully leading her to Will.

  She hoped, anyway.

  ***

  The moon rose behind Kate while she followed the dragonfly into the western foothills. They were unfamiliar and following a narrow trail up into a canyon made Kate uneasy—this was not where they’d climbed earlier in the day. They’d been in the eastern rocks—sandstone.

  These were limestone and granite. Moonlight—it rose a half-hour after they’d given up—glittered and fractured off of surface crystals in the rock. Everything else was alight with an ethereal glow that provided a surprising amount of light, enough that Kate didn’t trip or stumble on unseen obstacles, except where a shadow covered the path. Her illuminated guide picked out an easy trail and seemed cognizant of her limitations—not being able to fly and everything that handicap entailed.

  “Who are you?” Kate asked it out of boredom, really. And hope. Hope that it would be able to answer her and that the only reason it had been silent thus far was because she hadn’t tried talking to it.

  But, no. It didn’t answer. It just continued to fly ahead of her, zipping to and fro and diving up and down in short bursts as though entertaining itself while Kate took an impossible amount of time to get where it was taking her.

  In the half-darkness, the mountains loomed over her like sentinels. She kept her mind off what might be hiding in the canyon—wolves, cougars, bears. She didn’t really know. Bighorn sheep for sure because she had seen one while she was climbing earlier. Hopefully they weren’t nocturnal. Hopefully one didn’t charge at her out of nowhere and take her down with its agile, sharp hooves.

  After about an hour, Kate stopped and put on socks and her lightweight hiking shoes, and while she did that, she told the dragonfly that she had to get dressed. Her pajamas—a pair of shorts and a T-shirt—weren’t providing enough coverage. Besides, they made her feel vulnerable. Kate pulled on a pair of canvas cargo pants and a long-sleeve athletic shirt. She found her pocketknife and slipped it into her cargo pocket. The dragonfly perched on a nearby branch and turned toward her. Its eyes shone in Kate’s direction, as though it were watching her change her clothes.

  “I hope you’re staring out of conce
rn for my safety,” Kate told it. “And not, because, you know . . . whatever.” She felt stupid for even considering it—but who knew? Maybe it was a tiny drone of some kind, recording her and sending the info back to a bunch of creepy spies. Then why follow it? Because of Will.

  She finished changing her clothes and they continued on. The trail turned to switchbacks and they ascended higher and higher. In a delirious moment, Kate fantasized that they were heading up into the moon, which hung above them like a soft, golden pool. That impression grew the longer they continued and Kate began to worry that she was hallucinating. The day had been long and her system was overtaxed, but she couldn’t let up. She forced herself to carry on, as long as the dragonfly led, as long as there was a possibility that Will was on the other end of her impossible and strange nighttime journey.

  She focused her mind on Will and the last time she saw him—he’d been so distraught. Each touch had been charged with the fear that it could be the last. And the storm, the unreal, ominous storm that had permeated the dreamworld for so many nights. Kate noticed abstractly that her legs began to throb and tingle in exhaustion. She pushed forward. Her mind called forth Will’s eyes—what it was like to stare into them. She remembered how it felt to hold him. Her fingers ached to touch him, to feel his body, hot, beneath them. His skin was a soft landscape made for her to explore like a mapmaker, a nighttime cartographer. His body always smelled of sun, of wind, of his sweat mixed with light and fire and smoke. Their dreams inhabited so many different places and Kate saw him in a hundred various settings and locales and each was an adventure, a new book to delve into. She focused on being held by Will when her thighs and feet ached from each step. She put herself in the dream with Will when she didn’t want to continue.

  For all she knew, that very place, that journey, was just another dream. Lord, let it be a lifeline to him, she prayed. Kate wished, for once, that she’d been more religious or spiritual just so that she had some kind of credit stored up for praying.

  If it wasn’t a new kind of dream taking her to him, she wondered what would happen to her. She could die. She could fall and tumble down the cliffs. Her friends might wake up and wonder where the hell she’d gone.

  To hell?

  She was thinking that precise thought when her little zipping guide took a sudden turn into the hills, off the trail. It went up a less traversed path, toward what looked like a ridge of granite cliffs. Kate followed, curious and scared. The dragonfly seemed to be heading straight for a shadowy crag. Kate’s heart thundered from the exertion of the hike and from the certain fear that she was going to die and that this had all been a prank played on her by her tired mind.

  As they drew closer to the ridge which was in the dark side of the moonlight and covered in its own shadow, the light and sparks given off by the dragonfly illuminated the dark crags of the rock face. Instead of revealing the face of a cliff, a part of the mountain opened up and the little insect continued further in.

  It was a cave.

  Kate stopped. The dragonfly disappeared around a turn, shadows cropping up as it receded away from her. Kate waited, too scared to keep going. She hated caves. She hated closed in spaces.

  Her throat constricted. There was no way she could go in there. Eventually her guide returned. It hovered erratically in front of her.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Kate said to it. It remained silent. The moon was directly overhead by then, smothering the stars with its brilliance. Around them, Kate heard insects creaking and chirping. Some kind of night bird began a mournful cry and a wave of chills crashed over her. “A cave? There’s no way I’m going in there, Lassie. I have . . . A phobia. I can’t. I just can’t.”

  The dragonfly swooped toward the mouth of the cave and then floated back to Kate.

  “No, I can’t. Tell me where you’re taking me. What’s on the other side? Will? Is it Will? If it’s Will, tell me.”

  The insect stared at her with those glowing eyes. Kate sighed and rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. Her pack began to feel like it weighed a ton. She considered leaving it behind, but immediately scrapped the idea. She might need it. She remembered momentarily the snacks tucked away in some of the small pockets. Fruit leather, granola bars, and such—not exactly enough to last her very long, but it could be the difference between living and dying. She started to wish she’d filled up the rest of her water bottle, but maybe there was a stream somewhere and she’d be able to later. They hadn’t passed anything like that yet, but they still could. The canyon was obviously formed by something—a glacier or a river. She didn’t remember noticing that they were ever near a dry riverbed, but it was dark and she’d been sort of out of it.

  The dragonfly zoomed toward the cave again and then rushed back at Kate. It stopped just an inch from her face. She dodged her head back, but it didn’t hit her. She relaxed a bit and then returned its stare. “What?” she asked, irritated and aggressive. “Look, why am I even following you? You’re probably a demon. Are you guiding me toward a camp full of rapists and plunderers? Geez. What the hell am I doing?” She closed her eyes, shrugged, and rubbed her neck again. She began to wish she was asleep, that she’d never left her tent in the first place. This whole thing was crap. She just couldn’t . . . couldn’t go in the cave. It was like going into a cemetery at night: scary as hell.

  She let out a long sigh.

  “I need to know if what’s in the cave is worth it. Can you please just give me some kind of indication that I won’t massively regret following you into a creepy cave in the middle of the night?”

  When she finished with her plea, the dragonfly started to act weird—at least, weirder than the whole thing had already been—it darted repeatedly toward her face like it was trying to smack into Kate. She brought her hands up to protect her face and the dragonfly landed on her hand. Just like that, it turned cold and metallic, returning to its ring form upon her finger. Its light went out completely. Kate was swathed in darkness. The moon was still bright overhead, but after the amount of illumination the little insect had been giving off, it was quite a change.

  Kate’s gut twisted in fear. She looked around, the night sounds increased—crickets, distant night birds, the whooshing sound of bat-wings overhead.

  “Come back?” Kate whispered. “I’m sorry I doubted you. Please, come back.”

  As though it understood her, the dragonfly lit up and flew off her finger, sparks of fire dripping off it. It hovered before her, the glowing eyes just centimeters from her nose. She saw a reflection of herself in them for a moment. Her hair was wildly messy and her eyes looked tired. There was also a smidgeon of shame in her face—for even doubting that the dragonfly was taking her where she wanted to go: to find Will. She sighed, it was a dragonfly ring. From her dreams. That Will gave her. The reasons to trust it were numerous, and besides, her gut was telling her to go and that’s why she made the decision.

  “I’ll follow you. Lead the way, Lassie,” she told it, screwing up her courage. Kate was about to attempt to overcome a fear that had crippled her since childhood.

  ***

  The cave mouth was a maw, really, opening up into the mountainside at an angle. Kate had to step down into it and sort of squeeze through, which set her heart racing immediately. As she lowered herself into the opening, her pulse thundered in her throat and ears. She swallowed and tried to fend off thoughts of being stuck and dying from starvation.

  She went under a rock that protruded straight down, leaving just a bit of clearance for her to sidle under, then shimmied through the narrow opening and when she came out the other side, she was able to stand up. The dragonfly hovered nearby, spilling light on the rocks around her. The cave was natural, Kate could see that immediately, and it opened into a huge, wide-open chamber, the roof of it curving overhead about thirty feet up. The dragonfly buzzed further into the room, looking like a small, glowing blip in the midst of the cavernous space. Boulders, rock, and debris were scattered across the floor of the c
hamber. The dragonfly was leaving her behind and utter darkness came quick in that space where there wasn’t a speck of light to break up the black monotony. Kate hurried after it, picking her way carefully across the jagged floor. At least the room was open enough that the panic of knowing she was in a cave hovered at the fringes of her mind.

  They reached the other end of the room and the walls narrowed to form a tunnel, which her guide darted into full throttle. Kate kept up, stepping gingerly and carefully. She battled against visions of the walls collapsing onto her. The dragonfly maintained its speed so that Kate had no time to really focus on thoughts of her annihilation.

  Parts of the tunnel narrowed and the only way through was for her to turn sideways, suck her gut in and squeeze between a jutting rock and the wall each time, and always Kate tried to clear her head and keep her thoughts in check so that she didn’t descend into a panic attack.

  Sometimes the dragonfly went too fast and Kate couldn’t keep up. When that happened, the black closed in around her, pressing in on her so that her fears choked her and left her gasping for breath.

  After a while, it began to feel as though they were going up. The slope of the floor changed. Soon her fingers brushed across soft, moss-covered rock wherever she touched the cold walls, and it seemed as though the darkness was lightening. Was she hallucinating?

  The tunnel curved and they entered another chamber. Kate inhaled sharply. There was a small pond in the middle of the cavern, and the roof vaulted and opened to the sky like they’d just come to a natural observatory. The water in the middle of the room was still as a mirror, and reflected in the calm waters was the amulet-like, unnaturally huge moon.

  Kate gasped.

  “Is this what you wanted me to see?” she quietly asked the dragonfly, which hovered at her shoulder as though it too was awe-struck by the beautiful view. “It’s—it’s amazing.”