by Jackie Dana
“No, you don’t understand.” In between gasping breaths she said, “I can’t breathe. All I can think about is the rock coming down on us. Oh, god, Arric, get me out of here. There’s got to be a way out. I’ll do anything, just don’t let me die here.”
“Nay, you’re not going to die. You’re safe with me. I will not allow anything to happen to you.” He stroked her hair, and then rubbed her arms, as if willing life back into her. “Now, listen to me. You need to take a slow, deep breath.”
“I can’t do this, Arric, I just can’t.”
“Breathe.”
“But—”
“Breathe!” He was insistent, and waited until she complied. “Good. And another.” She followed his commands, inhaling as deeply as she could. “You can do this. I know you can. You’re a brave woman, and this is just a cave. It has been here as long as the ancients walked this land, and will be here long after we’re gone.” He buried his face in her hair, close to her ear, and whispered light endearments, gently willing her to relax. Then he began to hum to her, a gentle melody that sounded like the music he had played on the flute. It took some time, but eventually he helped her bring her haphazard breathing under control.
Then he asked her, “what’s behind your fears? Is it the darkness?”
She opened her eyes, but everything was still black. The warmth of his palm on her cheek served as an anchor. Closing her eyes again, she inhaled sharply and focused on his touch. “Your brother. I feel like he’s here with us. He’s still hunting us.”
“Bedoric?” he said, surprised by her comment. “You think so?”
“Arric, you know he’s looking for me—for both of us. I know he’s going to find us both, and I don’t know what he’ll do when he does. He was so angry at me the day I went to him, offering to trade Rynar for Nyvas, and even after Rynar returned, he was ready to execute us both.” She allowed herself to cry, now, the fear being named at last. “I don’t want him to catch us now. Not after everything we’ve gone through to get this far. I don’t want to die.”
“Shh, Minara, he cannot find us. You are safe with me,” he affirmed, in a voice that carried confidence. “Even if he came with a thousand troops, you would still be safe. He cannot fight us in the cave. You know that.” He nudged her shoulder and tried to get her to sit up. “To prove it, I will get you out of here. You have my solemn promise—I will not allow you to die in this place.”
***
Eventually she overcame her panic, and they continued as before, crawling or, when they were lucky, walking through the cave. When exhaustion called a halt to their progress a few hours later, they curled up together and slept fitfully against the damp rock walls, huddled together both for warmth and security. Their slumber was short-lived, however, as much due to discomfort as to their shared desperation to escape the underground passage. Once awake, they resumed their trek immediately, having no reason to delay.
When they took their next break, they dug into their diminishing provisions, and then took turns massaging each other’s muscle cramps and soreness. Arric insisted she be first. He kneaded her shoulders, and then her lower back just above her hips. His hands were strong, and he knew how to find the soreness and work it out. “That feels really good,” she said, her words slurred a little as she sat there enjoying the way he worked out the knots. When he was done, he encouraged her to rest, and she dozed off for a little while. When she awoke, she insisted on returning the favor, though she didn’t think her skill matched his. He seemed to appreciate it, though, moaning lightly as she dug fingertips, and then knuckles, into his sore muscles.
“I should have had the Sarnoc do this for me. It really helps loosen everything up,” he muttered.
“Somehow, I can’t really see that happening,” she said with a smirk. “They seem too dignified to give massages, somehow.”
“Aye, they leave it up to healers, who know exactly where to work out the pain.” As she moved back to his neck, he caught her hands in his. “That’s enough. I don’t want you to wear yourself out on my account.”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see the gesture, and silently wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulders.
“Take heart, Kate. I think we are nearly halfway now. It should be no more than a couple more days if my reckoning is correct.”
“Really? I hope you’re right. I’ve never hated the dark as much as I do now.” At her comment she heard him laugh, and she wished she could see his face at least for a moment. She was tired of talking into the darkness, and his smile would have cheered her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Aye.”
“What was it you called me yesterday when I was so upset?”
“Hmm. What was it?” he thought for a moment. “You know, I don’t recall.” Then he added, suddenly, “oh of course. I do remember. I called you ‘Minara’.”
“Minara?” She liked the sound on her tongue. “What’s that?”
“The minara are small blue flowers that grow at the base of Monmora, the hill across the river from Loraden. From a distance you might not even see them, but when you approach and look closely, you discover how complex the flowers’ petals are.” She imagined his smile. “It is a rare flower, but an exquisite one. They say the Mosumi planted it to mark special places.”
She smiled in return. “I like that.”
He reached behind him and caught her hair in his fingers. “I do not know why I thought of it, but for some reason it just seems like you. To me, you are like minara blossoms: uncommon and complicated, but quite beautiful.”
She scooted around, finding his face with her fingers. Quickly, before she lost track of him, she leaned close and kissed him.
“Mmm.” He reached out and wrapped his hand around her head, pulling her close so he could return the kiss. Then his fingers traveled to her neck, and he fingered the chain that hung there. “I’ve been meaning to mention this. I’m very relieved to know that you still have my ring.”
Kate felt at her collarbone and found the thin chain under her shift. “You know, I probably should give it back to you now.”
She felt his hand on hers. “Nay, you must keep it. It is much safer with you than with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, aye. You know, I first noticed it on you the other night, and though I was pleased you still had it, I was in no position to tell you so at the time.” He laughed lightly with those words. “I would be honored if you will bring it to Altopon for me.”
“What’s special about it? You still haven’t told me.”
“I dare not.” Hearing her grunt, he added, “it’s not that I cannot trust you—it’s just that you are better off not knowing.”
“Okay.”
He laughed again. “That was too easy. Are you agreeing to drop it because you trust my judgment, or because you know you can’t talk me into telling you?”
She liked hearing his laughter. He had a nice voice, and his laughs were solid, and came from his chest rather than his nose. “I don’t know, maybe both?”
“That sounds about right, then.”
“Do you really think the Sarnoc can help you?”
“Oh, aye.” He offered no explanation as to the kind of assistance he hoped for, and instead kicked out his legs in front of him and shook them out. “Speaking of secrets—you’ve never told me how you came to be in Sarducia.”
She started to gnaw at a jagged fingernail. “No, it’s too complicated.” She felt as little inclined to tell this story as he was to explain the significance of the ring.
“We have plenty of time, do we not?” He reached out and grasped her hand, instinctively preventing her from the nervous habit.
For the first time in three days she began to sweat, and she pulled her hand back. “If I told you what I know about it, you might have a different opinion of me afterwards, and I don’t want that to happen.”
“Really? Have you not been honest about something, then?” he asked,
sounding dubious.
“Well, it’s just...” she bit her lip. On one hand she desperately wanted to tell him everything, but here, in the darkness, she feared he would abandon her if he knew the truth. How could she explain her heritage, and that she traveled using magic?
“Surely it can’t be that controversial. What is it, Kate?”
She swallowed, and her eyes sought any vision, anything to focus on other than perpetual unyielding blackness, but there was nothing. “It all started when I inherited this ring—” she guided his hand to touch the ring on her hand, “after my mother died. Something about it allowed me to travel here. That’s how I ended up in the torrapon where you found me.” More softly, a little less confidently, she added, “she was Mosumi. I don’t know how that’s possible, though, since she never told me about it.”
This time he laughed, but she was certain there was a note of derision in the response. “Mosumi, eh?”
“Arric, it doesn’t mean anything. I never—” She stopped, trying to catch her breath, and find the right words. “Whatever’s happening here, whatever game people are playing, please understand—I’m not part of it. I’m not your enemy. I’m really just like you—I’m just trying to survive, to figure out what the hell is going on, and as I go along I’m trying to do what I think is right. This is all new to me. But at the same time, I promise you, I have never betrayed you, and I never will.”
She heard him suck in a breath, as if at the brink of releasing a tempest in the small space, but then he expelled the breath in a deep exhale. When he was done the cave returned to its usual deathly silence. All she could hear was his labored breathing, and her own racing heartbeat.
“Something else you should know. The land I’m from is an entirely different world. No one has heard of Sarducia—as far as anyone there knows, it doesn’t even exist. Where I live, people can’t heal someone else just by touching them. We don’t have quinsa and we don’t have glysar. My world is nothing like this one, and people don’t know how to travel from one world to the other. But we have technology you could never imagine, ways of traveling in machines, and ways to communicate with anyone in an instant.” With that she stopped, because even keeping it vague made it sound fantastic, almost unbelievable, given all she had experienced. Would it be as strange to him as this land had been to her? “Anyway, I don’t know how I came here, or why. This is all at least as bizarre to me as it is to you.”
There. She finally told him the truth, and no matter what happened, she was glad the truth was finally out. Surely he would understand. And if not, maybe it was best that they were headed to Altopon. Maybe the Sarnoc could find a way to send her back home.
“Hmm. I need a moment.”
While she sat against the cave wall swimming in fear and regret, she heard the shuffle of his boot soles on the stone. His breathing seemed to get quieter, until she could no longer hear it.
Was he trying to slip away, and leave her behind? The paranoia of the darkness again crept into her, and with it came another wave of crushing panic. Without him, she would certainly die in here. “Arric?” she called out as she stood up, grateful that she didn’t collide against the ceiling. “Where are you?” She jumped when a hand patted her right arm, and then followed it down to her own hand.
“I’m right here,” he announced, his tone quite genial. “I simply needed to relieve myself. You were so quiet that it was hard to find you.”
“Oh, god, Arric, I thought you were gone—”
He lifted his right hand, the one hand not already linked with hers, until he found her face. Then a finger brushed the fleshy apple of her cheek. “Did you think telling me you were Mosumi would change anything? I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a shock, and complicates matters somewhat. But it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
She practically collapsed into his arms, and he wrapped them snugly around her. “I didn’t know what to think. Oh, Arric, I’m so sorry for everything. I know how it must all sound.”
“Minara, I’m the one who needs to apologize.” He chuckled lightly, in a self-deprecating way. “Being in this cave, half-starved, is bringing out the worst in me.” Even as he said it, his stomach growled in agreement, and they both laughed.
They stood where they were for a while, holding each other in defiance of the dark. Finally, he loosened his grip, and tipped his head down, catching her unaware as he kissed her.
“I am glad you’re here, no matter how it happened, or why.” His hands found her wrists, and with a light tug he encouraged her to sit down. “The other night was Jiona, and what happened was the work of the gods.” Hearing her begin to protest, he put his fingers over her lips. “Nay, I know you do not believe such things, but I do. Ever since that time I’ve been wondering... no, that is not what I mean to say. I was hoping that maybe you would be willing to try it again, to see if it might work out between us, when it’s just us, without the gods interfering.”
Astonished that he would make such an offer—but enormously happy that he had—she laughed, and pulled him closer.
Chapter 52
When they woke up, whether it was the next morning or late afternoon, it was all the same to them. She raised a hand to his head, and used her fingers to comb through his wavy hair. He lay quite still, and groaned slightly.
“I cannot wait until we get out of here, and I can lay my eyes on you again, you Mosumi witch,” he said.
Kate countered, “you’d just better hope I don’t take one look at you, all filthy and bruised up, and run back to Loraden!”
“You wouldn’t dare,” he taunted.
“Well, if you want me to stay, you’d better make it worth my while.”
“Oh really?” he twisted around, and grasped one of her wrists, not hard, but enough that she gasped. “Maybe I just need to make you my prisoner, then.”
She pushed him with her shoulder so that he released her and fell back onto the floor, and then she pounced and slid her cold hand into his yet-unlaced trousers. “Maybe we should reconsider who is the prisoner here?”
He laughed. “I surrender!” he croaked. Then he sat up in a hurry. “Kate—over there. What is that?”
“Do you think I’m going to fall for that trick?” she giggled in return. “You know I can’t see anything!”
“Nay, I’m serious. Look!”
She turned her head, not sure which way he meant. Not that it would matter, because she knew she wouldn’t actually see anything. The odd thing was, she did.
“Is that sunlight?” she asked, spellbound. In the distance was the tiniest stream of light, sneaking in overhead through a fissure in the ceiling.
“I think it is!” he replied, thoroughly excited. “Come, we must be close!”
They jumped up, both with visions of a sun-bleached hillside and mounds of food ahead.
At first they jogged along the cave passages, moving as rapidly as Arric could navigate. Eventually, as no opening presented itself, and they had traveled for at least a half-hour by Kate’s reckoning, they slowed to a more normal pace.
“I really thought we were going to get out of here.” Her voice was heavy with defeat, and she could scarcely find the energy to keep walking. “I was so sure.”
He squeezed her hand. “Come on, we can do this. It cannot be long. I do not know where the exit is, precisely, but I can sense it.”
“It’s okay,” she said, defeat apparent in her voice. “I bet you don’t really know how far it is.”
He was adamant. “I do. The end of the tunnel is not far ahead.”
When a short time later she again spied a sliver of daylight, she thought she was hallucinating.
As they turned the final corner, they stumbled into a full blaze of light, as if every combustible item in the whole world had been set on fire in front of them. Both gasped, and fell to their knees, clutching their arms over their eyes. The shock of the sudden light was exquisite, a wonderful, miraculous thing. Squinting, she dropped her arm eventually, so she c
ould seek out the source of the light: a small opening just an arm’s length over her head. It looked like it opened into a small rock outcropping, and the hole itself was the size of a manhole in her world, small, but just wide enough that they should be able to climb through.
“Arric, this is it!” She tugged at his arm, and he dropped it from his face, where he had raised it to shade his eyes from the light.
He considered the distance, and looked appraisingly at her. “One of us needs to give the other a boost and climb out first, and then help pull out the other. What do you think?”
She measured the distance. “I think you should go first. If there’s any danger, you’d know it before I would. Anyway, I don’t think I could pull you out.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.” He put one of his booted feet on the improvised step provided by her interlinked fingers, and she heaved him up about a foot, just enough for him to grasp the sides of the hole. With little effort he pulled himself out, and crouched at its edge.
“See anything?”
“Aye!” he said joyously. “I see lots of rocks, and trees, and grass, and the Amberia River, and sheep, and...” he looked back down the hole. “And best of all, I see you.” He smiled. “Come here, Minara.” He knelt down, and leaned into the hole, reaching for her.
She had never had someone lift her by the arms eight feet off the ground, and never before had she felt so much like a sack of grain—an oversized, lumpy sack at that. As he pulled, her feet dangled uselessly beneath her, and she scrambled to hook her toes on the edge of the hole so she could push herself out the rest of the way. Despite her own self-consciousness, he seemed not to mind at all, and once they were both out of the cave, he rolled beside her and kissed her.
“So, Minara, we did it!” He fell back onto his shoulders, and she lay beside him, soaking in the warmth and light overhead.
“Did I ever tell you how much I like your new look?” she asked.