Cavern of Secrets

by Linda Sue Park

  They were close to the Southern Woodlands now. Garith would take the straightest trail north to get to Gilden. And the easiest way to do that was to follow the river.

  Kuma was still asleep. Roo had spent the night in a hollow at the base of a big neverbare, with Twig curled up next to her.

  “Echo!” Raffa called. “Echo, where are you? I need you!”

  The bark of the tree’s trunk flickered with movement. Echo had been perched several feet above Roo’s head. He flew to the necklace, landing with his customary “Ouch.”

  “Echo, would you please fly north—that way, away from sunpeak—and tell me if you see Garith anywhere?”

  Kuma had woken and was now standing beside him.

  “No,” she said. “You won’t find him. He left hours ago.”

  Raffa stared at her. “You saw him leave? You—you knew, and you let him go?”

  She looked back at him steadily. “Perfect moon was two nights ago, so there was plenty of light. He’ll follow the river, and it will join up with the road. He won’t get lost.”

  “But he can’t hear! What if— Something terrible might happen to him—”

  “Roo and I walked him out of the gorge. He’ll get to the Southern Woodlands soon. Nothing there can hurt him.”

  Kuma reached out her hand, almost but not quite touching him. “Raffa, he couldn’t leave things as they are with his father. He had to go back, no matter . . . no matter what he finds there. And he had to go on his own, without our help. If he doesn’t do it now, he might be afraid forever.” A pause. “No one likes feeling helpless. Or useless.”

  Her words triggered a memory so strong that Raffa almost winced. At home, his father, Mohan, had for years given him only menial apothecary tasks to do. Raffa had hated doing work that he considered of little value.

  Was that how he had made Garith feel? All the long winter, when Raffa had toiled so hard doing Garith’s share of the work, he thought he was taking care of his poor deaf cousin. Well, Garith was deaf sure enough, but maybe Raffa’s pity was the last thing he’d needed.

  Kuma folded her arms and held her elbows, almost as if she were hugging herself. “He made me realize that I have to go home, too.”

  Raffa’s eyes widened in surprise. Kuma had been raised by her aunt and uncle, who had a large family of their own; she had once told Raffa that they never missed her when she stayed for days at a time with Roo in the Forest of Wonders.

  “I don’t suppose they’re worried,” she said slowly, answering his unvoiced question. “But they were kind enough to take me in, and I don’t have any other family, except for Roo, and I owe it to them to let them know that—that I’m still drawing breath.”

  Raffa had never fully realized before how fortunate he was when it came to family. Garith, heading for Gilden, with no idea how his father would react. Kuma, not knowing if her family had even missed her all this time. Whatever doubts and worries Raffa had, they did not include the welcome he would receive from his parents: Their reunion would overflow with relief and joy and love.

  “Echo’s better. He doesn’t need my parents’ help,” Raffa said slowly. “But I’m still going home, because—because home is where you go when you don’t know what else to do.”

  It was as if Echo’s illness had half-blinded Raffa to nearly everything else. Now he could see that the bat’s health had been only one of many reasons for getting home—and probably the least important, if he were being honest.

  Garith’s depression. The Chancellor’s schemes. Uncle Ansel’s role in those schemes, and his use of apothecary. The trapped animals . . . Raffa could only hope that winter had played its usual part in slowing the pace of life, including, especially, the Chancellor’s plot. He had to reach his parents and tell them everything. They would figure out what to do.

  Kuma’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Still friends?” she asked.

  He felt a flicker of shame that she even had to ask.

  “Of course,” he said firmly, and meant it.

  While Raffa cleaned up the campsite, Kuma went to the river and collected several handfuls of large pebbles. She left the pebbles in random piles at the base of the cliff. With their smooth round and oval shapes, they looked quite different from the chips and shards of limestone that had fallen from the cliff face. But anyone who didn’t know that the river rocks were there would be highly unlikely to notice them.

  Then Kuma and Roo climbed to a ledge on the cliff halfway between the floor of the gorge and the chosen cave, where there were several saplings crowded together. At Kuma’s request, Roo used her tremendous strength to pull and push one of the small trees until it was partially uprooted. It was now leaning against the cliff, its root ball half exposed.

  “How does that look?” Kuma called down.

  Raffa tipped his head back. The tree looked like it could have been pushed over in a bad storm.

  Kuma was marking the location of the cave so she could find it again when she returned to the gorge to visit Roo. She was using the tree and the pebbles as signposts; they looked natural enough not to give away the site to anyone else.

  Twig had followed her bear-mother up the cliff and was now pawing at the tree’s root ball. “Bugs!” she said. “Bugs bugs bugs!” She snorted and chuffed joyfully.

  The root ball harbored a whole universe of insects and grubs. Twig’s delight made it clear that they were especially scrumptious. Roo plunked herself down next to Twig and began eating, too.

  With a sigh of resignation, Raffa climbed the cliff to join the group. After watching the bear and raccoon eat for a few minutes, Kuma crouched beside Roo and stroked the bear’s haunch.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back, Roo,” she said. “Like in the Forest, remember? Whenever I come, we’ll find each other.”

  Her voice started to wobble. Raffa bent down and rubbed Twig’s back gently. The little raccoon looked up at the two humans. She chirred and stretched her front paws out toward them; in each, she held a nice fat grub.

  “Grrr-rum!” Twig squeaked. Raffa wouldn’t have thought it possible to squeak a growl, but Twig somehow managed it. “Eat, eat, grrr-rum!”

  “Oh!” Kuma said. “She wants to share with us—how sweet!”

  Raffa looked at the grubs wriggling in Twig’s grasp. “Adorable,” he said, then waved his hand in a gesture of generosity. “You can have mine.”

  So there were tears upon laughter as Raffa and Kuma climbed back down the cliff, leaving Roo and Twig behind.

  With nearly every step he took through the gorge, Raffa thought of Garith, who would have traveled the same route, not diverging until beyond the next stretch of forest, when he would head for the ferry landing. Raffa searched for signs of his cousin’s journeying—a footprint in soft ground, a broken twig on a shrub . . .

  Nothing. Raffa knew it was foolishness, but he couldn’t stop wishing for some way of knowing that Garith was safe.

  Kuma, too, was preoccupied, and finally spoke up. “Do you think Roo is still in danger?” she asked. “It’s been months, you know. Maybe they’ve given up on the idea. . . .”

  Raffa did not reply, because he knew she wouldn’t want to hear what he was thinking. He had only to recall the vicious determination in Chancellor Leeds’s voice during their escape: There was no doubt in his mind that she would be searching for Roo again, now that the ice and snow were nearly gone. Was the cave in the remote gorge a safe enough hiding place?

  He sought to reassure Kuma. “You know, Twig is like a cub to Roo,” he said.

  That brought a smile to her face, but a tentative one.

  “It’s not just, you know, sweet and cute and all that,” he continued. “It means she’ll do anything to keep Twig from harm. They’ll both be that much safer.”

  “That’s solid truth,” she said, her expression brightening. “I wouldn’t want to be Jayney or Trubb trying to get close to Roo while she’s protecting Twig!”

  Then she tapped Raffa’s arm. “Would it
be okay if—” She paused. “I mean, I’ll understand if you say no—”

  “Er, can I find out what I’d be saying no to?” he teased with a smile.

  “Could I wear that for a little while?” She nodded at his neckline.

  Raffa understood at once. Missing Roo, Kuma wanted to wear the perch necklace, where Echo was roosting, fast asleep. He took it off and handed it to her. She looked at him gratefully.

  Echo emitted two clicks, his sleep disturbed by the movement of the perch. He opened his eyes groggily.

  Kuma held the bat close and studied him for a moment.

  “Raffa?” she said. “Look at his eyes.”

  Raffa glanced at the bat’s small face. Echo blinked a few times, then went back to sleep.

  “What about them?” Raffa asked, puzzled.

  “Do they look any different to you?”

  “Different how?”

  “I—I—I’m not sure. Darker, maybe? I just thought—”

  Darker? Raffa felt a twinge of unease.

  When he first met Echo, the bat’s eyes had been black. After being treated with the scarlet vine, his eyes had taken on a striking purple sheen. Twig had it, too—as did all the other animals in Gilden that had been given the vine infusion.

  If Echo’s eyes were turning dark again, could it mean that the effects of the vine infusion were wearing off? And if they did wear off, would Echo stop talking? Would he want to return to the wild, to live with other bats again?

  “I don’t see any difference,” Raffa declared. His voice sounded more belligerent than he had meant it to, so he added, “I’ll check again later, when he’s properly awake.”

  But he had no real intention of doing so. If there was any chance that Echo might leave him, he didn’t want to know.

  Raffa mapped the rest of their journey in his head. Southern Woodlands, Kuma’s settlement, then the Eastern Woodlands. And, finally, home. Three days’ walk if they made good time. The closer he got, the keener his longing to see his parents.

  The woodlands lacked the mysterious and magical plants found in the Forest of Wonders; still, Raffa had always thought of them as untamed wilderness. Now as he and Kuma hiked its trails, he saw traces of human activity everywhere.

  The trails themselves, of course. Clearings where trees had been cut for firewood. A stunning pink expanse of spring beauty blossoms, with swathes missing because their roots had been dug up for food. Raffa realized that the woodlands were hardly wilderness at all compared to the desolate reaches of the Suddens.

  Toward sunpeak they crossed a small stream that branched off from the Everwide.

  “Lunch?” Kuma suggested. “We can wash and drink here.”

  Raffa nodded. “But not for long,” he said. “We should try to get out of these woods before dark.”

  They ate the last of the cattail-pollen bread and drank from the stream. After their meager lunch, they began walking again, and reached the edge of the woodlands by sunfall.

  The leftovers of winter’s chill tinged the air. Raffa wore his hood pulled up. He said little as they walked; Kuma spoke even less. She slowed her pace as the tree growth gave way to brush and meadow, and the trail broadened into a path.

  “The settlement starts after that bend,” she said quietly.

  They exchanged glances, and Raffa could see his own thoughts in Kuma’s expression.

  Would guards be awaiting them?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A SETTLEMENT as small as Kuma’s would not have its own guard station. But the Chancellor could have ordered guards posted there, as well as at the pother settlement where Raffa’s family lived, which was what Raffa suspected she had done. The Chancellor had struck him as someone who did not give up easily, and who was accustomed to getting her way, no matter what it took.

  Raffa pulled out the perch necklace. Echo was just stirring.

  “Skeeto,” Echo said. “Skeeto skeeto skeeto.”

  “Yes, Echo, I know it’s your hunting time, but I need to talk to you. We’re going to be with other people again soon. Remember the way it was in Gilden? You mustn’t talk unless we’re alone.”

  “Don’t talk,” Echo said. “Talk Raffa good.”

  “Echo good,” Raffa said.

  Echo swayed a little on the perch. “Talk Kuma friend?” he said, which made Kuma smile.

  “Yes, you can talk to her, too. But not when other people are around.” Raffa had long harbored the fear that Echo might be kidnapped by someone who thought to profit from the bat’s amazing ability to speak. He had trusted very few people with this secret.

  “And before you go hunting, would you do me a favor? I need you to fly ahead down the path a little and tell me if anyone is there.”

  Echo flew off and returned only moments later.

  “Cow big. Cow little. No human.” He flapped away again almost before he had finished speaking.

  Raffa and Kuma grinned. They rounded the bend, and sure enough, a cow and a calf came into view. They were pastured in a field flanked by a beech copse.

  “We should still be careful,” Kuma said. “There’s a back way to the house. I’ll go, and if it’s all clear, I’ll come fetch you.”

  She turned off the path into the brush. Raffa watched until she disappeared behind a hedgerow. He found a large rock nearby and sat down to wait.

  Kuma was gone long enough for Raffa to grow restless. First he drank from his waterskin. Then he spent some time tightening the knots that joined the sections of his rope.

  As he retied the last knot, a flock of starlings in the beech copse rose into the air as a single skein. Raffa’s head jerked up; he was instantly on the alert. Something had disturbed the birds.

  In the next moment, he heard hoofbeats. An unfamiliar voice shouted his name.

  “Hoy, Santana! Raffa Santana!”

  For an instant, Raffa’s whole body was paralyzed with shock and fear. Then sheer instinct took over, and he quickly turned his head away from the voice, in the other direction. With that small motion, a desperate plan came to him.

  He shaded his eyes with one hand and peered into the distance for a moment, as if searching for someone; at the same time, he pulled his hood farther forward. Only then did he look back to see a guard on a horse, stopped in the middle of the path a dozen paces away.

  Raffa jumped to his feet, his mouth so dry that he had to force out the words. “Were you talking to me, Senior?”

  The guard, with no insignia on his uniform, was not a senior, but using the title of respect couldn’t hurt. Likewise, Raffa kept his head lowered as if in subservience, hoping that the guard wouldn’t be able to see his face clearly.

  “Quake-brain,” the guard said with a scowl. “If your name’s not Raffa Santana, then it ought to be clear upon crystal that I’m not talking to you.”

  “Sorry, Senior, very sorry . . .” Raffa ducked his head even lower.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  Raffa should have been ready for this question, and indeed he had expected it. But it seemed like every name he had ever known flew out of his head at that moment, and he blurted out the only one left.

  “Cinders. Cinders Cat—er—Cattergood.”

  He had to suppress a giggle of pure nervousness. Cinders was the name of a cat that had once lived with his family.

  The guard didn’t even seem to hear him. “Looking for a boy name of Raffa Santana,” he said. “He’s better than twelve years old, so a good bit older than you. You see him, tell one of the settlement seniors, hear?”

  “Yes, Senior.”

  Despite being in a state of near panic, Raffa found that he had to swallow a bubble of indignation. He had long resented the fact that he looked so much younger than his age; it was never easy to hear, even when it was saving his skin.

  The guard pulled at the reins, turned the horse around, and galloped away.

  Raffa’s legs wobbled beneath him, and he sat down on the rock so hard that he bruised his rear end. But there was no
time for satisfaction that his ruse had worked.

  Guards were looking for him. Here, in Kuma’s settlement, and surely at his own home as well. And if they were after him, they would be looking for her, too. Was she already in their grasp? Was that why she hadn’t yet returned?

  Raffa grabbed his rucksack and started running through the brush, in the direction Kuma had taken. At the hedgerow he stopped, panting hard, and peered through the bushes.

  On the other side lay two fallow fields. Beyond them, he could just make out a small farmhouse. Earlier, Kuma had described the communal settlement: a dozen houses in a rough semicircle, facing a large common area that contained the farm buildings. Three barns and a stable; coops, folds, and pens for various animals; and several storage sheds. There was a big vegetable garden as well. The families worked the surrounding fields and pastures together, sharing both the labor and the harvest.

  Raffa crept around the edge of the fields, keeping to the hedgerow. Closer now, he saw the back dooryard of the house. A large water barrel stood near the door. As Raffa studied the house, a slight movement caught his eye.

  Kuma was hiding behind the water barrel. She was leaning toward the door, obviously eavesdropping.

  Raffa looked around quickly, then scurried across the yard. Kuma whirled around at the sound of his footfalls. She glared at him and put a finger to her lips as he joined her behind the barrel.

  Inside the house, a man was speaking, his voice loud with outrage.

  “You’ve been watching our house for weeks, and there’s been less than no sign of her! Why won’t you believe us?”

  My uncle, Kuma mouthed.

  “We want to know where she is as much as you do!” A woman’s voice. “No, no—far more! All these years and she’s never once given us a sliver of trouble. For her to disappear like this, for so long—something must be terribly wrong, and you won’t tell us why you’re looking for her!”

  Her voice caught on a sob. Raffa tilted his head, glancing at Kuma in puzzlement. That was surely her aunt speaking, and she didn’t sound at all like someone who didn’t care. Kuma looked away from him, her lips pressed together.