and she hadn't believed, how beautiful she was, how wonderful she looked, how it seemed that she'd never grow old. Had he known or suspected? He must have, she thought, but maybe he didn't. Maybe he was forgetful, like her, ignoring the stories they heard of immortals, pretending they didn't exist, because if they did, then terrible crimes had been done, and no one, hardly anyone that is, had come to their aid.
Edeline had other worries to keep her company throughout the cold night. She had assumed that the task given to them by The Hidden One had been meant to end their captivity. It was only when Baudry had hinted otherwise that she even considered that she might have been wrong about that. If she wanted to live, then the quest might not be what she wanted? Wasn't that what he'd said? But if not to live, then, what? To die? Why would anyone want that? The answer came trickling to her like drops of water slowly falling. Some of them were more than a hundred years old. Ember had been trapped as a little girl for what seemed forever to her. The Hidden One might be a hundred twenty eight, unable to move, barely able to speak very long. Even Barque, even Baudry, were much older than they seemed. And if there was no escape? The thought was astounding. Of course they'd been trying for years! They were trapped in some sort of a supernatural maze. Yes, she could see where they might want to end their ordeal.
It hardly seemed, though, like the task they were given could possibly accomplish that goal, or any other end, as far as she could imagine. To find a place where there was a ‘thing’ and take that ‘thing’ to some other place and put it somewhere so a squirrel could eat it? She very nearly burst out laughing with the realization of her situation's total absurdity, which came with the dawn, and the others beginning to awaken as well.
Somehow her insights gave her a lift, and it was cheerfully that she set about gathering berries for breakfast. Up until then she'd been only observing, but now she carefully applied what she'd learned, twisting the berries off in just the right way so they'd grow back immediately, and she smiled, admiring her newfound skills. She worried she might have collected too many as she returned to the camp with a whole raft of fruit, but Ember was happy to greet her and take some of the load off her hands.
"Very nice," Ember said. "You've done well, I can tell."
"Thanks," Edeline answered brightly.
Baudry came climbing down from his roost, and Barque appeared out of nowhere, with Princess in tow. He had brought a handful of some kind of shavings that tasted like licorice, and handed the pieces around.
"Map Makers, eh?" he queried to unanimous consent.
"And I suppose someone knows where to find them," he added, to which everyone shook their heads 'no'.
"Well, at least we know where we want to be going, even if we have no idea where to actually go," he said with a laugh.
"They're not in the game," Ember shrugged. "Otherwise I could see them. I can send out some feelers, however," and with that she closed her eyes and lapsed into deep concentration.
"What's she doing?" Edeline whispered to Baudry, who leaned over and replied very quietly,
"Reaching out with her mind. She can do that, you know."
"No I don't know," Edeline murmured, thinking "of course I don't know. I don't know anything about all you people."
Everyone was quiet for several minutes while Ember worked on her mission.
"They've been seen by the lake," she announced, opening her eyes.
"We could reach it today if we set a good pace," Baudry added.
"Then I say we're off," Barque concluded, and set on ahead while the others hustled to follow. Ember caught up to him rapidly, while Baudry and Edeline struggled to keep them in sight.
Fifteen
Soma and Squee scurried back with the news before the troop had even made it five miles. Somehow the two little ones were able to fly through the roof of the forest as if distance were merely illusion. It was their little known secret. Squee had stumbled across it by accident one morning when swinging on vines playing a game he called 'caveman'. The boy had made a hat out of leaves that resembled a brigadier general's, and carried with him an assortment of hollowed out sticks through which he could blow different notes. He'd swing and he'd whistle, lift his cap up and holler, and doing all this he was able to keep himself entertained. Most of the time he didn't even notice the trees that he swung from, or where he was going, but one day he slipped and fell quite a distance and realized, when he landed, he was not anywhere near where he'd factually fallen from. "Factually" was one of his top secret words.
"Factually," he related to Soma when he made her acquaintance, "there are keyholes sprinkled throughout here." He gestured at the forest around them.
"Keyholes?" Soma asked, understandably confused. She hadn't yet learned about Squee's sense of language, that words could mean whatever he wanted them to, even those words that did not exist.
"Phantalooms," he confided. "Nestled about."
"Okay," Soma told him, "when you want to speak normal I'm listening, okay?"
"Oh, all right," he relented, and explained himself better. "Air pockets," he said, "or something like that. You go through them and come out somewhere else. Sometimes they're sideways, like this," he said, gesturing horizontally. "And sometimes they go up and down," he added with appropriate hand motions.
"You might have to be small to fit through," he suggested, though he wasn't quite certain of this. "It's why you can never get out. They're invisible, you see? No one knows that they're there."
"But you do," Soma was dubious. She hadn't known him long, but what she did know wasn't terribly impressive. Oh, he was certainly fun to play with, but science? That was clearly out of his range.
"I'll prove it to you," he asserted, and challenged her to join him. She did. Nothing was too risky for Soma, not even when they climbed up to the top of one of the highest trees in the forest, and Squee stood up straight, spread his arms out, and dropped. Soma gasped as she watched him go down. She hesitated, frightened, then followed. A bet was a bet after all and he'd dared her. Down, down she went, somehow evading all branches and vines, and then, for a moment, before she passed out, she felt the air change, felt the temperature plummet, saw the color of the breeze shift in front of her eyes, and then she knew where she was and it was far from where she’d been.
"We were days from here!" she shouted as they landed quite softly on thickets of clover.
"Days on foot," he corrected her. "But only moments when you go through the keyhole."
"Can you go anywhere?" she asked him, excited.
"I've found maybe twenty," he counted out, unfurling nine fingers. "And I know where they are."
"Did you tell anybody?"
"Nobody but you," he replied. "And Bumbarta, but I don't think he believes me."
"Why wouldn't he?" Soma wanted to know.
"He thinks I'm an idiot," Squee confessed. "And maybe he's right, but I know what I know."
"He'd have to believe you," she said, "if you showed him."
"He won't leave the lake," Squee informed her. "He never goes anywhere. It's why he has Watchers. We go places for him. Listen and see."
‘Listen and see’ is what they did, and they dropped straight through one of the keyholes that led near the lake. Bumbarta was waiting for news, and the words that they brought were intriguing.
"The sisters?" he mused. "They're not here. Haven't been here for days. Sure, they wanted to go naming my lake but I told them it's already named. Lake Bumbarta!" he laughed a grim laugh, and his whole body shook with a joy.
"Lake Bumbarta!" Soma cried shrilly. "I love it. I love it."
"Me too!" echoed Squee.
"So the group's coming here," Bumbarta repeated, rubbing his cold hands together. "Then I'll ask them myself what they're after and why, and who sent them. So far I don't know enough."
"We've told you all we know," Squee reported dejectedly.
"Yes, yes," Bumbarta looked down at him coolly. "You've done very well, my good Watchers. Very well. I am pleased.
No, sometimes you have to do more than just watch. Sometimes you have to ask questions, and that's what I'll do when they get here. Now go, and post yourselves in a good place so I can know when they arrive. Send for others as well. We might as well gather our forces."
Bumbarta watched the two running off and took himself outside of the hut to stand by his lake. He gazed over the water as if admiring its allegiance to him. He certainly did feel he owned it. After all, it was named after him.
Sixteen
Barque stepped up his pace as Ember reached his side.
"I know what you're thinking," he called back to her, as Princess coiled herself behind his back to add on an extra glare.
"But it's not going to work," he continued.
"You're wrong," Ember grunted, struggling to keep up.
"Then why are you trying to stick so close?" he countered.
Ember nearly stopped to let him continue by himself. She did slow a bit, asking herself why indeed was she hurrying to stay with him, rather than linger behind with the more compatible Edeline and Baudry. Maybe he was right, that she was more interested in following his movements up close, to get a feel for the way he moved and acted and reacted as he made his way through the trees. Her interactions with him in the past had been limited to last minute lunges, when she'd jumped on her intuitions and rushed to prevent him from scoring. She had to admit, to herself if not to anyone else, that there had been many more times when she'd done the same
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