Last of all, I took a couple of extra shirts that I could potentially rip up for bandages. I wished I could read the signs on the shops. I would’ve looked for an apothecary, to see if I could find anything whose medical purpose I remotely understood. Unfortunately, for time’s sake I had to set the idea aside, and I left the city by the same gate through which I’d entered.
Outside, I tried to get my bearings and decide where to search first, and if the sun was going to descend on me before I could get back to Carter. Weirdly, I couldn’t discern that the position of the sun had changed that much. I didn’t seem to be in grave danger of losing daylight yet.
Shouldering my self-made pack, I started back down the steps, seeking a trail. There were many that met at the stone steps leading up to the city gates. I simply had to take my pick. I chose one that led back over the hillside. Wasn’t sure why, except it seemed to follow the natural curvature of the land and led away from the city, into the surrounding hilltops.
I hiked along for a while, thankful I had actual shoes. The day was warmer now, but far from scorching. I was amazed by how I wasn’t growing hungry or thirsty yet, and how my energy levels weren’t flagging. Was it due to the meal my visitor had left?
The trail wound and curved along, leading me through knee-high grasses and past stacks of boulders, away from the city walls and into the rugged hills. Once I got through this terrain, the landscape became rockier. I had to watch every footstep because of the gravel and loose shale beneath my feet. My breath hitched in my chest as I kept climbing upward, towards bare cliff faces and towering piles of stone. At one point, I stopped to catch my breath, turning to look back the way I’d come.
Below me spread the city. From here, I could see it was ringed in several concentric circles, one inside another. Down the hillside from the city was the strip of woods, and below that was the beach. We were on an island. I could see that now. I sought out the area where I gauged I’d left Carter, but I was too far up to spot even a dot on the beach.
Please let him be okay, I prayed, and swiveled around to continue my climb.
As I went along, I tried to keep my senses alert for possible signs of danger, from wild animals if nothing else. All was quiet and non-threatening. The countryside seemed as lifeless as the city. Until I noticed the owl up ahead, perched on a craggy boulder beside the trail. I was surprised to see the little guy there in broad daylight. I was even more surprised that he didn’t take off as I approached. In fact, he sat there watching me, his round, bright eyes alert and knowing. I stopped beside him. He returned my stare with an expression so sentient it was almost creepy.
“Um, hello,” I said.
I’m talking to an owl. Why am I talking to an owl?
The owl blinked, as if in response. Then abruptly fluttered his wings, lifting himself into the air. He took off, soaring in circles over my head and returning to hover in the air in front of me. He didn’t hoot or make any noise, but I could’ve sworn he was beckoning me to follow him.
After all the weird things today, an owl waiting to guide me didn’t seem any crazier than anything else. What did I have to lose…except possibly my life, if it led me into a trap or a dangerous situation. Which I could be walking into blindly anyway, since I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or what I was doing except seeking blindly for some promised “help.”
I took off after the owl. It flew fast enough that I had to pick up my pace. I wasn’t exactly used to cross-country trekking, and the hike uphill, skirting boulders and picking the best places to set my feet, wasn’t exactly easy. However, a sense of urgency filled me. Daylight couldn’t last forever. Here I was alone, up in the hills, following a strange bird to who-knew-where, and there Carter was, alone, back on the beach.
I’ve got to finish this and get back to him.
I slipped and fell a few times, scraping my palms when I caught myself on the rough, stony ground, as well as bruising and skinning my knees. Just when I was getting tired and cross and pretty stinking worried that I’d gone off the deep end and was making the worst decision of my life, up ahead of me I spied a massive jumble of stones, into which crept a faint footpath. The footpath then led to a dark recess, like a cave. The owl drifted down from overhead, perching on one of the stones. There it sat, staring at me, blinking.
“Is this it?” I asked aloud.
The bird twisted its head around towards the cave then twisted back to me. It blinked. I sighed.
“Either I’m going completely nuts or you just told me this is it. Okay, thank you for your, uh, help. I guess I don’t have any choice except checking it out.”
No response from my guide. As I swept past it I paused to ask, “Will you still be out here when I’m ready to leave?”
It looked at me but didn’t blink or nod. That stare could’ve meant anything. I shrugged and went on.
Oh well. Guess it got me here.
Not that I knew where here was. As I stepped into the shadowy entrance of the cave, bits and pieces of Greek mythology I’d learned in school, coupled with movies I’d seen that were based on it, floated into my head. Dark caves weren’t typically great places to visit, especially alone and without a weapon. What if some sort of monster waited inside? Like the three sisters with the vat of stewed humans and the one eye they shared between them? Or Medusa, the lady with snakes for hair, whose stare turned people to stone? There were already elements of Greek mythology intertwined in the shifters’ background, and seemingly in this new world. How did I know a nine-headed Hydra wasn’t waiting on me?
The truth was, I didn’t. Yet I also refused to believe I’d been brought this far without a reason. The visitor down on the beach, the owl, now the cave…it couldn’t all be coincidence, surely.
Reminding myself of this, I took heart and crept inside, slowly, looking around, watching for danger. The first thing I noticed was how cool it was inside. I’d long ago tied my wrap around my waist, since I was sweating, huffing, and puffing from the climb. Now, the perspiration on my skin left me chilled. I untied the wrap and draped it around my shoulders like a shawl for warmth. Next, I noticed the sound of water, a gushing in the back of the cave. There was little light to guide me, but I followed my instincts and the sound of the water, creeping around rocks strewn across the floor of the cave and rock formations that were a part of the cave, with my hands out in front to help me feel my way along.
As I approached the water, I began to see a soft, gentle glow that intensified as I approached. Like a beacon, it drew me in until I was standing on the edge of a pool into which a waterfall—about ten to fifteen feet high—poured. The waterfall itself didn’t seem to be anything spectacular, except for the soft glow underneath, almost like it was backlit by electric lights. I sure couldn’t see any electric lights, although I admit I glanced around in case somebody was going to flip on the lights, yell, “Surprise!” and reveal this whole thing was a giant hoax.
No such luck.
Instead, I kept going until I was standing on the brink of the pool, watching the water. I clutched the borrowed shawl around my shoulders with one hand, shoving my glasses further up the bridge of my nose with the other.
Okay, I’m here, I thought. What do I do now? How is any of this supposed to help Carter?
The universe or whatever powers that lived in this place must have heard the silent question.
“Somewhere in-between,” a voice said.
“What?” I gasped, jumped, spun. “Who said that?”
“Somewhere in-between,” the voice repeated.
Nervous, I did a double, triple take of my surroundings, but still didn’t see anything.
“Listen, listen,” the voice insisted.
That was when I realized it was coming from below, from underneath. My gaze dropped to my sandaled feet at the water’s edge, then to the water itself. Like a beacon, it honed in on something I hadn’t noticed before, a whirlpool in the center of the pool. Not a big one: it wasn’t more than a couple feet
across. But it spun in circles, rapidly, and the glow there was much brighter than from the rest of the water.
“They are somewhere in-between, all of them,” stated the voice. It was whispering, watery, yet strong and compelling. “The Repairer of the Breach will cross the ways and open the fissures. There is hope for peace, but oftentimes peace is found at great cost.”
The strength of the voice had faded by the end of this sentence. Shivers rolled down my spine.
Peace, but at great cost? What cost? What kind of peace, and for whom? For Carter and me? For the people who’d once lived in this city but were gone? For the shifters back home, Carter’s people?
“Take me,” the voice whispered, so softly that I could barely hear it over the rush of the waterfall. “Take me to the Repairer of the Breach. And take this. He will need them both.”
Take what?
Again, my innermost thoughts seemed to be read. From the midst of the whirlpool an object appeared. Fingers, a hand, a wrist, an arm reaching up from the spinning watery circles. I stiffened, sucking in a gasp. The hand wasn’t alone. It was holding something. A vial, a beaker that glowed brighter than the waterfall.
“Take it,” the voice insisted. “It is me. Take it.”
I can’t lie. The hand rising up out of the water creeped me out. It reminded me of the first night I’d met Carter, when a water shifter had appeared in his bathroom, in his apartment, and tried to kill me. Was this some type of water shifter? Would it try to grab me and suck me down into the whirlpool if I waded into the liquid? I’d have to do exactly that in order to grab the vial.
“Take me,” the voice insisted more forcefully. “You must return to him. Night draws on apace.”
Night draws on apace?
That dialect as much as anything told me I wasn’t back in the good ol’ USA anymore.
Cautiously, saying a prayer that I wasn’t making an idiotic decision, I first kicked off my sandals then picked up the hem of my borrowed dress, hoisting it above my knees, and stepped into the water. The cavern floor under my feet was bumpy and sharp. I stumbled a couple of times as I waded out into the middle of the pool, but managed to make it without falling and getting soaked. I retrieved the vial from the hand and quickly stepped back, intending to get out of there.
“Wait,” the voice demanded.
I didn’t want to wait and give it a better chance to grab me.
“What?” I asked reluctantly, forcing myself to freeze.
“He will need this, as well.”
The hand retreated into the depths of the pool, then came up again, this time holding a sword.
A sword.
I stood there staring. I think I said, “A sword? Carter will need a sword?”
The weirdness was getting to me. Why would he need a sword? I was used to seeing him carry, but I highly doubted he was trained to wield a sword.
Then again…
Maybe it’s better to have a weapon of some kind, any kind, so we’re not totally defenseless. We don’t have anything else.
While I stood there dithering, the hand in the water waited too, holding the sword aloft without trembling. Something about the hand sticking out of the water, the sword, struck me as oddly familiar. Almost like a sense of deja vu, although I knew for a fact that I’d never in my life seen anything remotely similar, except for the water shifter in Carter’s shower. And she sure hadn’t been offering me a weapon. She’d been trying to murder me.
I puzzled on it for a second until it struck me.
The Lady of the Lake.
The old Camelot legend, of King Arthur and Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake. Wasn’t it sort of like this?
That is too weird, I said to myself as I waded forward a few tenuous steps to accept the sword. It wasn’t easy juggling a sword and the vial without dropping my hem and getting it wet, but somehow I managed to hold onto all three. The hand slid back into the water, vanishing as I turned away, and I mulled over the extraordinary scene as I climbed out of the pool.
My confusion didn’t lessen as I left the cave and emerged into daylight. Outside, the owl still perched on a nearby boulder, blinking at me.
Fragments of another story teased my mind as I stared at my guide.
Perseus. Didn’t he have an owl guide or companion?
I blew out a puff of air.
“I guess I got what I was supposed to come for,” I announced to the owl, lifting the vial and the sword to show him. Or was it a her? Hard to tell with an owl.
“Time to go back to Carter. Hopefully he’s okay. I’ve been gone a long time. Are you going to show me the way?”
By this point, I wasn’t even surprised when the owl flapped its wings, lifting itself into the air. He headed down the mountain and so did I, happily. I was ready to quit exploring strange worlds and return to Carter, especially before evening arrived.
Chapter Five
Thanks to the help of my feathered guide, I made it back to the beach just as evening was draping itself like a curtain over the landscape. I probably could have found the beach on my own, knowing it was down the mountain, past the city, down the hills, and through the forest to the beach. Then it would’ve been a matter of searching the beach till I found Carter. However, by following the bird, I was able to more or less head directly to the spot where I’d left an injured, sleeping Carter.
He was still out when I arrived, and still in his Talos form. As I knelt next to him in the sand, a stiff, evening breeze swept over us, making me shiver. I glanced overhead worriedly. Grey clouds were rolling in over the water. The leaves on the trees whispered and trembled, some of the limbs creaking softly in protest. I’d lived in Texas long enough to recognize the signs of a potential storm.
“Great,” I whispered. “Just what we need.”
Fear of being stuck out on the beach with no shelter spurred me on. I glanced over at the owl, who had landed on the grass nearby, lifting the vial that the hand in the pool had given me.
“Don’t suppose you have any idea how I use this, do you?”
The owl blinked.
“Thanks. That’s helpful.”
I blew out a puff of air. “Okay,” I muttered, adjusting my glasses. “It’s water. Maybe the water itself wakes him up and heals his wound. Guess I’ll try. Don’t know what else to do.”
Acting off either instinct or my best guesses—since, let’s face it, all of this was pretty far outside the realm of my knowledge and experience—I first tipped the vial and poured a little of the water onto the slice across Carter’s ankle, figuring that blood was what had opened the portal and gotten us here, so it was probably vital to make sure the bleeding stopped.
The water hit the wound with a hiss and fizzle. Steam rose, a tiny, effervescent cloud. I held my breath, hoping, praying, I was doing the right thing and hadn’t been hoodwinked into pouring acid or poison onto him. There was a split-second where the water mixed with the ichor, bubbling like hydrogen peroxide on a scrape. Then the bubbles faded, the color of the Talos’ blood evaporated, the water seeped into the wound, and the wound closed in on itself, the edges of bronze flesh sealing themselves back together.
“Oh, thank goodness.”
The words escaped in a sigh of relief.
Still on my knees, I rotated to slide a palm under the Talos’ bronze head, lifting it off the sand.
“Carter,” I said, bending over him, “if you can hear me, I’m going to give you this water. I think it’ll help you. Please try to drink it. Please try to wake up.”
Again, I had no idea if he could hear me or not. However, if any part of his mind could be reached, I was praying he would accept the water and not fight it, since it was likely his final chance. I brought the vial to his lips and poured several drops onto his closed bronze mouth. Waited. Nothing at first. I tried a little more. He remained immobile, motionless, unresponsive. My nerves fired, tension curdling in my stomach. What if I was wrong? What if this didn’t do anything? What if it had healed the wound b
ut couldn’t wake him up? What if—
His mouth parted a little. It wasn’t much, but my heart leapt with hope. Carefully, I urged several more drops from the vial into his mouth. His lips closed as he swallowed. Parted. I gave him another sip. He swallowed that too. Behind my glasses, tears flooded my eyes as he took several more sips, each one with more force. His bronze throat moved as he swallowed. His limbs twitched. He shifted restlessly. Then his hand reached up, cold and hard but animate, and clasped my wrist, like he was hanging onto me for comfort or support or dear life.
“Carter, I’m here,” I said, encouraging him. “I’m here. Come back to me. Please.”
The hand clasping my wrist squeezed in response. A half-broken sob escaped. He was okay! He was going to return. And he did. Sip by sip he grew stronger until he was able to move his legs and both of his arms. Finally, he sat up, his grip on me never releasing, like he didn’t want to let go. He turned his head, looking right into my face.
“Carter…” Overcome, I sat the vial down and threw my arms around his neck, leaning into him. “You’re back. You’re alive. I’m so glad you’re alive.”
Alive, but not human yet. That came a moment later. In my excitement I’d acted, embracing the statue, but as I leaned into him I felt cold, hard bronze melt away, replaced with flesh. His human side reemerged, replacing the Talos, and I fell against him, fighting tears of abject relief. He let go of my wrist and circled my back with one arm, clasping my head with his other palm, pressing my face into his shoulder.
“Ellie.”
His voice was rough from disuse, weak, but it was him. It was him. Not the shapeshifter, not the Talos. Him.
“Carter,” I whispered, reaching up to remove my glasses so I could press into him harder, hug him tighter. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Repairer of the Breach (Stones of Fire Book 4) Page 3
