Raven's Wings

by Colin Lindsay

  They couldn’t leave the tunnel, and they didn’t want to be discovered near its entrance, so their only option was to move deeper into it. It was so dark that they were robbed of their senses. Without a hand anchored to the wall, they felt like they were floating.

  They advanced into the tunnel side by side, holding hands and tracing along the wall with their other hand. The tunnel descended slightly. They heard skittering far ahead and felt watched, but neither sensation felt entirely substantial. Kaia squeezed Dhara’s hand tighter, and she squeezed back.

  The air was as still as in a tomb but without the stale smell of death. The walls, curiously, weren’t covered with dust. Kaia removed her hand from the wall and rubbed her fingers together. She felt no residue, as though the tunnel was well-traveled. Without grounding herself to the wall, however, she began to feel disoriented and reached quickly back to anchor herself to it.

  After walking a long distance, Kaia felt she could risk whispering. She stopped her sister and pulled her into an embrace. “I knew you’d come for me,” she said.

  Kaia’s faith was so absolute that Dhara couldn’t tell her how lucky they were to still be alive, for the moment at least.

  Kaia pulled back. “Nina?”

  “She’s with Zara,” Dhara replied, reassuring Kaia that her daughter was safe.

  “Thank the Goddess,” Kaia declared and pulled her back into a hug.

  “We should probably keep moving,” Dhara reminded her.

  “Have you noticed that the air isn’t getting staler as we descend?” Kaia asked.

  Dhara hadn’t.

  “There has to be some airflow, even if we can’t feel it. The tunnel must connect to the surface at both ends. We should keep descending.”

  Dhara didn’t like it, but Kaia’s inference made sense and gave purpose to their progress, so they continued to descend. Dhara had torches in her pack, but because she feared that the way wouldn’t always remain this easy to follow, she resisted the urge to pull one out and light it. As they advanced farther, the tunnel widened slightly, pulling the girls a little farther apart. Dhara suddenly felt the wall give way to open air at the same moment as her foot failed to find purchase. She and her sister pitched forward.

  They landed on their hands and knees, but aside from some scrapes, they were no worse for wear. Dhara reached around her but didn’t feel the wall. She pulled her pack from her back and rooted through it until she found her flint. She struck the two pieces together, and a spark briefly illumined their surroundings. It was only by gradations in the darkness that they could tell that they’d fallen into a circular depression surrounded by six branching tunnels.

  “Which one did we come through?” Kaia asked.

  “I’m not positive, but I think it’s one of those three.”

  “Which one should we take?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They sat in darkness, contemplating their options when an idea struck Kaia. “I have an idea, but we’ll need light.”

  Dhara pulled out a torch and lit it.

  “On the count of three, point to an entryway that feels right. Don’t think about it. Just use your intuition,” Kaia suggested. “One, two, three…”

  They looked at each other but found that they were pointing to different tunnels.

  “Let’s try again. One, two, three…”

  Again, they pointed to different tunnels. Kaia sighed, but Dhara had a thought. “From the moment I first entered this place, I’ve felt repelled. It’s as if the site is warded by strong magic. On the count of three, point to an entryway that feels wrong. Okay?”

  Kaia nodded her understanding.

  “One, two, three…”

  The girls looked at each other and found that they were pointing at the same tunnel.

  “Does that mean we should take any route except that one?” Kaia asked.

  “No. Just the opposite. That’s the one we take because it’s the one we’re not supposed to take.”

  Kaia was confused, but she’d never doubted her sister before, and this hardly seemed like the time to start, so she shrugged and gestured her to lead on.

  Dhara stepped into the warded tunnel. It appeared identical to the others. It was the same width, and the walls felt as smooth. “I think we can extinguish the torch and save it for when we really need it.”

  Kaia agreed and moved to stand beside her sister as she put out the light. Once the torch had cooled, she wrapped it in leather and placed it back in her pack. Kaia felt in the dark for her sister’s hand. Holding it tightly, she squeezed it to say, “Let’s go,” and they set off down the tunnel. It rose slightly as if it were a mirror image of the tunnel they had descended. It could even be the same tunnel for all they knew. In fact, at the edge of their hearing was the same skittering sound they’d heard before and the same feeling of being watched. It didn’t unsettle Dhara because she knew that if a spirit were going to consume her, there was nothing she could do about it, so what was the point of worrying about it?

  The distance they had walked since leaving the nexus of the six tunnels seemed farther than the distance they’d walked before arriving at it. Given that they hadn’t re-emerged into the arms of murderous villagers, they concluded it must have been a different tunnel.

  Kaia thought she saw flickers of light ahead but assumed that it was probably just her vision playing tricks on her again. Several times earlier during their descent, she’d begun to see vivid images as her brain, denied of senses, concluded that she was fast asleep and filled the dark void with dreams.

  The wall fell away again beneath Dhara’s hand, and she tensed for a fall, but her foot struck the ground as it always had. She and her sister stopped.

  “Do you see a faint glow ahead?” Dhara whispered.

  “I thought I was imagining it, but yes.”

  They edged forward slightly into what appeared to be an enormous cavern. They were standing on a ledge, high above the cavern floor. Below them, at the center of the cavern was a crystal lit from within by flickering sparks. The crimson flashes were intermittent, and it was the faint source of the light that they’d seen. As their eyes adjusted to the dim and inconsistent light, they noticed hundreds of metallic spiders moving in and out of fissures in the ground around the crystal. The girls’ blood froze.

  It’s the home of a demon, thought Dhara. They looked about for any manner of escape other than the tunnel they’d just exited. All that they could see was that the ledge on which they stood ringed the cavern. Deciding that moving on was more promising than retreating into the tunnel from which they’d come, only to lose themselves at the nexus or return to the site near the village where Kaia had been held captive, Dhara motioned to her sister that they should proceed along the ledge. Neither option seemed palatable to Kaia, but she accepted Dhara’s suggestion that they traverse the cavern, hopefully without waking the sleeping demon.

  The ledge was narrow, so Dhara led the way. She and her sister edged along, holding hands with their backs to the wall. They’d made it halfway around when they noticed that the spiders had ceased moving and were watching them with unblinking eyes. Kaia’s skin crawled. She disliked spiders at the best of times, and devil-spiders with razor legs took her fear to a whole new level, but they were halfway around and committed, so they kept moving. They braced themselves for the spiders to surge toward them, but they stayed still and simply watched them with their black eyes.

  Arriving at the far side, they found a tunnel like the one that they had entered from. They ducked into it and fled the cavern. No sound followed them, but they didn’t slow down. Over time, the tunnel wall began to feel faintly damp, then increasingly wet. Perhaps we’re nearing the river, Dhara thought. Accounting for the faster progress they’d have made underground, rather than through dense jungle, it was possible, she concluded. Her innate sense of direction served her well in the labyrinth of the jungle, and despite her sensory deprivation underground, some part of her felt that they’d been travel
ing in the direction of home.

  Kaia was the first to notice that she could faintly see the outline of her sister beside her. Advancing farther, the pitch dark gave way to gloom, which in turn gave way to a faint light ahead. Eventually, they pushed through a vine-covered opening into the jungle. They took deep breaths of the humid jungle air. There were no black pillars here, and Dhara said a silent prayer thanking the Goddess for that. She and Kaia both heard but didn’t yet see, flowing water. They moved toward the sound of water and soon found themselves at the river’s edge.

  “We’ll have to wait for the sun to set and rise again for me to be sure whether we’re upstream or downstream from where I hid the canoe. If we can find it, it’ll make the return trip that much faster,” Dhara said.

  Kaia noticed for the first time just how exhausted her sister was, so she suggested, “Why don’t you light a fire while I look around for something to eat?”

  Dhara agreed and handed her knife to her sister. “No bow or spear, sorry.”

  Kaia shrugged and took the knife. She turned it over in her hand to judge its weight and balance. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said and ventured out, keeping her eyes on the trees. It didn’t take long for her to spot a huge tree rat munching some leaves. She snuck closer and let fly her sister’s knife. The rat fell impaled to the jungle floor. She raced to it to finish it off, but it had already succumbed to its injuries. It was a good omen, she concluded. She returned to her sister, who had a small fire going. They feasted on roast rat. As the sun set, Dhara noted its location to get a sense of their position. The morning would hopefully confirm it. The girls fell into a deep sleep holding each other.

  Dhara woke before dawn and was careful not to disturb her sister. She watched the direction in which the sun rose and concluded that they were upstream from where she’d hidden the canoe. When Kaia eventually stirred, they walked along the water’s edge, thankful for the sparse undergrowth. Several times Dhara spotted an unusual tree that she thought might be the one that she’d used to mark where she’d hidden her canoe, but it was only at the fourth such tree that she finally found it. They pulled the canoe into the water and paddled downriver, staying away from the shore and possible attack. The jungle began to look more familiar.

  At the point where the river came closest to their village, they steered for shore and pulled the canoe out of the water. The village’s store of canoes lay beached there.

  A guard sat on a stump, cleaning her nails with the tip of her knife. It glinted in the sunlight. Observing their approach, she addressed Dhara, “Your mother says that you’re not welcome to return.”

  “It’s my sister who returns. I’m merely escorting her.”

  The guard pondered this. “I guess she never said that Kaia wasn’t welcome. Do as you please. It’s your funeral,” she shrugged and didn’t bar their way.

  The girls walked well-worn paths until they came across the rope ladder that would take them up to their village in the trees. Climbing off the ground, Dhara felt liberated. She despised treading the earth unless she was hunting. Reaching the first of many crisscrossing catwalks, they began the elevated trek back to their family’s dwellings, which were built on platforms high in the trees.

  They passed many surprised villagers, but none addressed them. Their sister Zara was the first to greet them. She ran across a swaying rope bridge and picked Kaia up in an embrace. She pulled Dhara in, and the three of them hugged. Dhara broke away, feeling self-conscious.

  “Mother knows you’re back,” Zara said to her.

  “That figures. She has eyes everywhere.”

  “She wants to see you both at the family tree immediately.”

  “We just saw her deep underground,” Kaia joked, and Dhara laughed.

  Zara looked confused.

  “I’ll explain later,” Kaia told her. “Where’s Nina?”

  “Playing, but the longer we make mother wait, the more hell there’ll be to pay,” Zara replied.

  Kaia hated to delay seeing her daughter, but she knew their mother, so she agreed to meet with her first. As the clan’s matriarch, her chambers ringed a towering Sumaumeira tree, around which her family members lived in adjacent trees. Their servants dwelt on the ground. The sisters traversed paths that took them straight to the room in which their mother held court.

  Walking into its antechamber, several servants looked up as Dhara passed. A young man rose to face her, and she shoved him out of her way roughly. “Remember your place,” she told him, pushing past. It burdened her to know that her father had been a slave, and the entire clan knew it. She felt it lessened her in their eyes.

  Dhara’s mother had married Zara’s father to form an alliance between their families, but she could barely stand the man, and when a servant in his household caught her eye, she took him as a lover. When she found that she was pregnant with Dhara, she had her lover executed to guard her secret. It was the worst kept secret in the clan, but if anyone spoke of it, they risked having their tongue cut out, or worse. Zara’s father was now long dead, the victim of some intrigue or other.

  Kaia’s father was a widower whose clan their mother had absorbed when she married him and gave birth to a daughter. He, too, was now dead, and the clan of his first wife now absorbed into Kaia and Dhara’s mother’s clan. With her father’s clan assimilated, Kaia no longer served any purpose to her mother, and her mother wrote her off. When Kaia was raped at twelve, her mother was ambivalent. It was Zara who hunted down the man. His body was discovered bound to his family tree, minus the majority of his skin. When his clan was predictably outraged, the sisters’ mother was ready and had them slaughtered. Dhara suspected that their mother had engineered Kaia’s mistreatment to consolidate her power further. Dhara believed that Kaia suspected this as well because she refused to give up the resulting baby to spite their mother.

  They entered their mother’s chamber, where she sat on her throne, which was ironically carved from the heartwood of an ancient tree. Her eyes spat fire. “Why did you come back?” she snapped.

  “Happy to see you too, mother,” Dhara quipped.

  “You disobeyed me by leaving.”

  “Kaia needed me.”

  “That useless girl? I sent her away to strengthen our bloodline, and you have the audacity to bring her back to me.”

  “I’m not useless,” Kaia protested.

  Her mother rolled her eyes dismissively and called for her maid. The frightened girl entered the chamber. Kaia’s mother pulled a dagger from her belt and gave it to the maid to bring to Kaia. The maid crossed the room and handed it to Kaia.

  “Kill her,” her mother commanded Kaia, gesturing to the maid. The confused girl’s eyes went wide with fear, but the matriarch’s stare pinned her to where she stood shaking.

  Kaia hesitated, then strode to her mother’s throne and stuck the dagger into the armrest. “Kill her yourself.”

  “Useless,” her mother concluded. Turning to Dhara, she said, “And what’s that outfit? You insult your family by wearing it.”

  “Its owner had no use for it in the afterlife.”

  “You two disappoint me. Leave my chambers. You too, Zara.”

  The girls withdrew and returned to the dwelling that they shared. Kaia held her breath as she pushed the door open. Her daughter looked up from her play.

  “Mommy!” she shrieked and raced into her arms. “Where have you been?” she asked accusatorily.

  “On an adventure, darling. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”

  Nina was none too pleased to have to wait until tomorrow.

  “There were airships, devils, and daggers,” Kaia teased.

  “I want to know now!” her daughter demanded.

  “Mommy’s tired and needs to wash. Tomorrow, I promise.”

  Dhara ordered the servants to prepare a bath. They hesitated until Zara put a hand on the hilt of her dagger, prompting them to scramble for water and wood. Dhara and Kaia bathed and only began to feel like themselves
once they’d washed the dark underground from their bodies. They climbed into their beds, Kaia holding her daughter tightly, and fell into a deep slumber.

  Dhara woke to the feeling of something amiss. She opened an eye to see a blade falling on her. She grabbed the assassin’s wrist and barely kept the point of his knife from piercing her chest. Zara was roused by the struggle and leaped from her bed to grab the man from behind. While he fought to free himself from Zara’s grip, Dhara slowly turned his blade around and drove it into his chest. He stopped struggling, and Zara threw him off her sister.

  “Great,” Dhara said, wiping the man’s blood off of herself, “Now I’ll have to wash again.”

  Kaia put Nina back to bed, who didn’t seem terribly bothered by the assassination attempt. The girls spent the remainder of the night taking turns keeping watch for further attempts on their lives. In the morning, they were again summoned to their mother’s chambers.

  Kaia left her daughter with a servant, reminding her that it would be no fun for her at her grandmother’s.

  “She’s mean,” Nina agreed.

  “She sure is,” Kaia agreed, “but we only say that in our heads, never out loud.”

  When they arrived, they saw that their mother was flanked by the matriarchs of the next two largest clans. This did not bode well.

  Her mother stood and addressed all those present. Pointing an accusatory finger at Dhara, she began, “Last night, my daughter returned, against my wishes. If this weren’t insult enough, she took a slave to her chambers, and when she was finished with him, brutally murdered him.”

  Dhara started to speak the truth of the night’s events, but her mother’s guards raised their crossbows, and she knew it was futile to try and set the record straight.

  Her mother continued, “While I don’t care what my daughter does in her bed, this slave was my property, and I’ll not brook this final insult. Dhara, you are hereby banished from the village. If you’re seen again after the rising of tomorrow’s sun, you will be put to death.” She looked to the crones on either side of her, “Has this decree been duly witnessed?”