by D K Drake
“Yes, I do.” Taliya glared up at him. “Why else would the eetzy bird be pictured on the map?”
“I’m not sure, but you saw how violent these trees were yesterday. I don’t understand how something as simple as whistling is going to tame them.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Javan asked.
Micah shook his head. “I exhausted all my ideas yesterday.”
“They we try this approach.”
“Not me,” Ravier said. “I’ll take the lead and count the trees while you three whistle along.”
Micah clenched his fists, irritated with himself for not thinking of Ravier’s practical approach first. “I’ll bring up the rear and signal the warning if the trees start to tremble.”
“Let’s do this.” Javan handed Ravier the map. “Taliya, you’re the one who knows what this bird sounds like. Micah and I will copy your tune.”
“Excellent,” she said. “If we keep the tune light and cheery, we should be fine.”
“Light and cheery. Got it.” Micah offered an unenthusiastic thumbs up and took his position in the back of the line. He expected to get about three steps into the acres before a tremor started, which meant no one would have time to notice whether he whistled or not.
As Ravier entered the woods, Taliya pursed her lips and let out a series of quick, high-pitched notes. She drew the notes out when she walked by the spirally tree, then repeated the quick notes. Javan joined her this time through the whistling chorus, and Micah realized his head was bobbing to the tune as his turn came to enter the acres.
He tried creating the tune himself, but all he managed to do was blow air through his lips. How were they making those musical notes? He gave up trying to duplicate the noise as they passed the W tree and followed the tune with a low hum.
That’s when the trees started shaking. No. Not shaking. Swaying. And the roots began thumping to the beat. Encouraged by the response, Micah hummed louder, and the trees danced to the speed of the wordless song.
The musical trio followed Ravier deeper and deeper into the acres. The humming tapped into a part of Micah he didn’t know existed. He felt, well, light and cheery instead of dark and depressed. So when Ravier held up his hand and pointed at a squiggly tree, a strange sort of sadness washed over Micah. He was going to have to stop humming and lose his newfound joy.
“We’re here.” Ravier pointed at the map, showing that the squiggly tree matched the drawing of the fifth tree. “Now what?”
They all looked around. At the trees. And only the trees. Following the twisting trees had gotten them nowhere except in the middle of twisting trees.
Chapter 25
Tunnel of Darkness
Javan wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but he did expect to find something. However, this area of the slanted acres looked like every other area they had passed through while whistling and counting a path that ended up being seventy-seven trees long. “The next phrase on the map tells us to travel down through the ground.” Javan licked his sore, dry lips. “I guess we should look for some sort of tunnel.”
“The ground is covered in leaves and cotton.” Ravier spoke in a soft voice as the four of them huddled around the map in front of the squiggly tree. “No amount of humming or whistling will stop a tremor if we start kicking things around searching for an underground tunnel.”
“If we set off a tremor this deep into the woods,” Micah added, “there’s no way we’re getting out alive.”
“Then we better not cause any tremors.” Taliya nudged Javan. “Check out the map. What is that a picture of beside the fifth tree?”
“It’s a mole. Think it’s another clue?”
“Why else would it be there? The top of a mole hole is signified by a mound. If we find a piece of ground rounded up like a mole hole, we should find our tunnel.”
“The problem with that theory,” Ravier said, “is that every part of the ground is flat.”
Javan studied the ground. Sure enough, it appeared to be flat. “Maybe it’s not flat underneath all these leaves. Everyone, get on your hands and knees, spread out, and search for a slightly rounded section of ground. That must be what we’re looking for. Just be slow and deliberate about your movements.”
Ravier remained standing while Javan, Taliya, and Micah eased to their knees. He crossed his arms and whispered, “I don’t crawl.”
“You do today.” Javan spit out the words through gritted teeth. “Get down here.”
Ravier huffed, lowered himself his knees, and slapped the ground. “Happy?”
The forest reacted. A wave of trembles knocked Javan off balance, and a root under his stomach shot up and tossed him into Taliya. He grunted, but she whistled. A slow, high note. A fast, low note. Slow. Fast.
He joined the rhythm as the tremor jostled their bodies. Micah added his harmonizing hum, and the trees downgraded to dancing once Ravier’s deep hum joined the chorus.
While continuing to whistle and hum, they resumed their search. The cottony ground beneath the leafy surface reached almost to Javan’s shoulders. He crawled through the fluff easily, yet he noticed it only reached his elbows the closer he got to the back side of the tree.
He changed his whistling tune to alert everyone and waved them over. Ravier and Micah continued to hum while Javan and Taliya worked together to clear the area. Underneath the cotton, they discovered a small mound of dirt. Javan furiously dug through the dirt until his fingertips touched a piece of steel. “Found a door.”
“Better open it fast,” Ravier said. “The trees aren’t responding well to the humming without the whistling.”
“Here’s the handle.” Taliya threw a clump of dirt out of the way and lifted the round door. She peered into the hole. “That is one dark tunnel.”
An angry root slapped Javan’s face. “We can deal with the dark tunnel or the trembling trees.”
Taliya pointed down. “The tunnel.” She threw her legs into the hole, found what appeared to be stairs dug into the side, and climbed down.
“Micah, you’re next.”
Micah dodged a tree lunging toward him and followed Taliya down the hole.
“Grandfather.”
“No. I’ll go last.”
Javan couldn’t think of a good reason to argue and launched himself into the darkness. The narrow chamber shook from the tremors around them, but the stairs were well-carved and easy to hold on to. He was a body length into the hole when Ravier entered above him.
“Brace yourselves,” Ravier said. “I’m closing the door.”
A second later, the door clanged shut, plunging them into total darkness.
◊◊◊
“People check.” Taliya inched forward, irritated with her eyes for not adjusting to the oppressive darkness. It forced her to walk with her right arm testing the air in front of her for obstructions and her left hand dragging along the cold dirt wall to keep her on track. “Everyone still with me?”
“Micah.”
“Javan.”
“Ravier.”
“Thanks, guys. I just like to make sure I’m not alone from time to time.”
“Tell us another story, Taliya,” Javan said. “Listening to you talk is the only thing keeping me sane.”
“I’ve been talking for hours. Javan, why don’t you tell me something fun about Earth?”
Micah laughed. “What would he know about Earth?”
“Enough with the story time.” Ravier abruptly changed the subject. Why? Did he not want Javan to answer? Did Micah not know Javan had grown up on Earth? “I need some peace and quiet for a little while.”
Taliya wanted to point out that if no one talked, they wouldn’t know when they reached the spot where they couldn’t hear and thus wouldn’t know when to yell, but she judged by Ravier’s tone that keeping her mouth shut was the wisest course of action. He was in the back of the line and could easily run away if he reached his mental breaking point. Javan was convinced they needed him to get through the p
ortal, so she chose not say or do anything to drive him away.
Not talking did allow her to walk a bit faster. She pushed forward, anxious to get to the end of the miserable tunnel. She worried that she had gone too fast when she could no longer hear footsteps behind her. “People check?”
She knew the words came out of her mouth, but the sound didn’t register in her ears. “Javan? Micah? Ravier? You still with me?”
Nothing. No sound. No response.
She thought she had experienced loneliness when living by herself in the treehouse far from any village, but this was worse. Standing in unbearable darkness alone unable to see or hear sucked the life from her soul.
“Pull yourself together, Taliya. You can still think and speak and feel. Now yell. Yell louder than you have ever yelled before.”
She put her hands on the dirt wall to remind her she wasn’t standing in a void, drew in a deep breath, and screamed. She screamed until her throat felt raw. As she cleared her throat to scream again, a skin-tingling scream answered her.
◊◊◊
Javan covered his ears, but he could still hear the eerie scream that seemed to be coming from the tunnel itself. What if it wasn’t the tunnel? What if it was Taliya? Why was she screaming? He had to get to her.
He ran forward but crashed into Micah. “Let me by,” he said. “I need to get to Taliya.” But his words did no good. The darkness ate them, allowing no sound through except that awful screech.
Yell where you cannot hear. Push when the stone yells back.
The words from the map penetrated his mind. That screech wasn’t Taliya. It was the stone yelling back, presumably at Taliya. She had reached the sound vacuum first and must have figured it out. He didn’t know where or why or how the stone yelled, but he did know he could push. He thus reached for the dirt wall and put all his effort into pushing against it.
“Why is nothing happening?” Perhaps he had to find the stone and push against it. Following the noise, he squeezed past Micah and let his fingers drag along both walls as he moved blindly through the tunnel.
The noise grew painfully louder and the cool darkness pressed against his skin, urging him to turn and run. He needed silence. He needed light. But he needed Taliya more. She was here somewhere, and he wasn’t going anywhere without her.
He turned to his left and began frantically racing his hands along the wall until it curved to the right. That’s when his hand landed on a hot, vibrating stone. He jerked his hand away, and it connected with flesh. “Ooh. Sorry. Taliya? Is that you?”
He felt her hands on his shoulders and her breath on his cheek as she yelled into his ear. “How are we supposed to push the stone without it burning our hands?”
“Like this.” He took his shirt off, bunched it up, and pressed it against the stone. With a deep breath and a prayer for help, he pushed. The deafening noise stopped as the stone wall gave way, and light spilled into the dark tunnel. Javan closed his eyes and covered them with his hand. He began blinking and slowly lowered his hand until his eyes adjusted to the light from the luminous rocks inside the cave. Scattered among the glowing, jagged rocks were hundreds of smooth, colorful dragon eggs as far as his eyes could see. “We found them,” he whispered. “We found the eggs.”
Mesmerized by the discovery, Javan put his foot through the door, but Taliya pulled him down by his belt before he could step all the way through. He landed on his rear end and quickly picked himself up. “What was that for? Did you want to be first or something?”
“Nothing of the sort. I just thought it would be wise to duck to enter the cave like the map said.” She drew his Noon sword and tapped the top half of the doorway with the blade. It pinged against a wire Javan couldn’t see. “This wire is sharp enough to cut through skin and bone. It would have taken your head off.”
“Oh.” Javan rubbed his throat and scratched out the words he had uttered when Taliya kept him from eating the poisonous berry. “Thanks for the assist.”
“This saving-your-life thing is starting to become a habit. So you know what? I think I do want to go first.” She returned his sword and ducked through the doorway as Micah and Ravier approached.
“Every time I need a reason to smile,” Micah said, slapping Javan on his bare back, “I will remember how ungraceful you looked when you got dragged to the ground by a girl.” He laughed and slipped through the door.
“Are you going to tease me, too?” Javan asked Ravier.
“Not right now, but I am going to tell you to put your shirt back on. This is not the time to try to impress the girl with your battle scars.” He nodded toward the long scar on Javan’s chest formed by the tip of Micah’s sword when they were fighting over Mertzer. “Stay focused. Win the throne. Grow up. Then you can woo the girl.”
“That’s not why I took my shirt off.” But Ravier wasn’t interested in Javan’s response. He entered the cave with a chuckle, leaving Javan alone in the tunnel. He put his shirt back on, bent down, and joined everyone else in the warm, humid cave.
“Pick an egg so we can go,” Ravier said.
“I can’t just pick an egg and go.” Javan balked at the idea. “I have to walk through the whole cavern and get a feel for which egg will hatch the dragon that is the right fit for me.”
“Whatever egg you pick will hatch a Dusk Stalker,” Micah said. “Dusk Stalkers are all the same. It doesn’t matter which one you choose.”
“Nonsense!” Taliya moved to stand beside Javan. “That’s like saying all humans are the same. We share similar characteristics, but we’re all unique. So are dragons.”
Javan pointed to Taliya. “What she said.”
“You have ten minutes,” Ravier said. “The day is already half gone, and we’ll never be able to find our way through the slanted acres in the dark.”
“Understood. I’ll be as quick as possible.” He took a deep breath and scanned the rows and rows of dragon eggs. How was he going to pick just one? “Taliya, will you help me--”
A thunderous roar cut off his question.
The door had slammed shut. On its own.
Chapter 26
Choosing a Dragon
“W
hy did that door close?” Micah stepped to the door and slid his hands along the wall that had been open two seconds before. “Better question. Why is there no handle? I can’t open it if it doesn’t have a handle.”
“I’m sure it will open.” Ravier shoved Micah out of the way. “It probably needs a strong push.”
“We pushed it from the outside. Pushing it from the inside will do no good. We need to pull it but can’t because it has nothing to pull.” Micah wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “We can’t be stuck in here. We can’t be stuck in an underground cave with nothing to eat or drink and no way out.”
“Chill, Micah.” Javan tapped his Stalker sword. “All I have to do is teleport to the tunnel, do the screaming thing, and push the door back open. Let me choose an egg, and then I’ll get us out of here.”
“Another idea,” Taliya said. “The final phrase on the map said to leave through the inside door. I bet that means there is a door somewhere in this cave that we can easily open and escape through. It probably also means we don’t have to go back through that awful tunnel.”
Micah snapped. “I like Taliya’s idea. Javan, you find your egg, and I’ll go find whatever door will get us out of here.”
“Take Ravier with you,” Javan said.
“What?” Micah and Ravier asked the same question at the same time.
“It’s a safety thing. We don’t know what else is lurking in this cave, and I don’t need you getting hurt or lost. Plus I don’t want my grandfather judging me while I choose what egg to take.”
“I won’t judge,” Ravier said.
“He won’t judge.” Micah agreed, desperately working to change Javan’s mind. “He’s the one who suggested you grab any egg.”
“True, but watch this.” Javan pointed to a dull blue and pink egg a
t his feet. “What if I want that egg right there?”
“That one?” Ravier shook his head. “That shell doesn’t appear to be brilliant or strong. I doubt it would survive for ten minutes outside of this environment. You should look for a shell that is thick and streaked with strong colors.”
“Micah.” Javan stared at him. “Please take my grandfather with you to find the door.”
“All right.” Micah rolled his eyes, understanding that Ravier would attempt to control Javan’s choice but not wanting to have to deal with Ravier in a one-on-one situation. “Let’s go find this door, Ravier.”
“Fine. I will go, but I am going because I need to be doing something useful, and watching Javan pick an egg is not useful.”
As Ravier stomped away, Micah pointed at Javan. “You owe me for this.”
“I know.”
Micah took his time catching up to Ravier with all his senses on full alert. While his eyes searched for the door, the rest of him had to be ready to fight if Ravier chose to attack him once they were out of earshot of Javan and Taliya.
◊◊◊
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Taliya cocked her head in the direction of the fading footsteps. “As much as those two hate each other, it’s likely only one of them will return.”
“I’m sure they will work out their differences in constructive ways.” Javan focused on the eggs to his right while he spoke. “I just needed my grandfather gone so I can pick the egg I want, not the one he wants.”
“I get that.” To give him the space he desired to make his choice, she wandered a little further into the cave and touched the cool shell of an egg with one streak of pink around the middle. “Who are you?” she whispered. “What kind of dragon will you become if we let you hatch?”
