by Elin Wyn
“Why would no one touch you?” A terrible thought came to mind. “Don't tell me you've got some sort of contagious disease that I'm going to need shots for. I'm really not a good patient.”
As I'd hoped, a tiny smile caught the corner of her lips.
“I've noticed. No, I'm not sick. At least I don't think I am. I'm just different,” she finished softly.
I stood over her, hand stretched down for her to take if she wanted the support.
After a long moment, she reached up, wrapped her fingers around mine and let me pull her up.
“Believe it or not Val, different is good.”
Rubble completely filled the tunnel. It would take days to clear it out and I wasn't even sure how far the collapsed section went.
"We'll have to go forward," I said. Val's face looked pale and strained. "Everything all right?" I might have wanted to wrap an arm around her shoulders, but I didn't.
She bit her lip, nodded her head. "This is something new. Something I haven't tried before. That should be good, right?"
"Sure." For something she thought was good, she seemed pretty worried about it. "Let's see if finding the water shows us the way out." I tasted the air again. "We're close now."
Within minutes I could hear it. But when we reached the water it only solved a few of our problems.
A good-sized trickle of water flowed from the crack between two rocks and then down the cave wall and into a shallow depression formed by years of constant erosion before flowing away through another small crack.
We wouldn't be getting out that way.
"Here, let's get you cleaned up." Using the smallest rocks around, I partially blocked the crack that the water had drained out from. Slowly the shallow basin started to fill.
Valrea stood back, eyes wide. "I thought you wanted a wash."
"I can wait." The sight of her bloodstained face set my teeth on edge. I needed to do something about it, now, and punching the cave wouldn't be on my list of brilliant plans. I knelt by the makeshift basin and wet my hands, waiting for her to come near me like a wild feral creature.
She slid off the enveloping long coat she wore, revealing a long lush body before she sat beside me.
"Lean back a little, okay?" I scooped up her hair and laid it carefully on her chest, so it wouldn't trail into the water, then with my damp fingers gently wiped the blood away. Her wide eyes never wavered from mine.
"Will anyone be looking for you?"
"They won't need to."
I froze. "You have a tracker in you." There was no reason to feel betrayed, but I struggled to keep my voice flat.
Her brow wrinkled. "Not that I know of. I'd be surprised if they bothered."
Interesting, but didn't get me any closer to the information I could use. I tapped the knife hilt, thinking.
"Do quakes like that happened here often?
"Recently, seems like all the time."
I dried my hands on the remnants of my pants and brushed the last of the water from her face.
"Then we'll keep angling up, keep exploring. There's fresh air, it has to be coming from somewhere.”
I leaned away from her and she scooted away, turned her back and began to braid her hair.
"All right," was her only answer.
Annoyed with myself for missing the feel of her skin I sloshed water over my chest in handfuls and scrubbed.
She was scared. She was quite possibly the enemy.
Freezing water was my new best friend.
This time Valrea followed closely as we twisted through the labyrinth. In the back of my mind, I built a map of the places we've been. At some point, it would be useful. Everything was. I took a deep breath, caught the scent of the sea. "There we are."
I grabbed her hand and this time she didn't pull away, just ran forward with me towards the growing light.
And then suddenly we ran out of tunnel.
Valrea pressed her face to the small opening in the cliff wall and we stared out at the sea, waves crashing into the dome, where it curved towards land, just out of sight to the left.
"I still don't feel like going for another swim," I joked, but she watched the waves below and for the first time since I'd woken, looked at peace.
It was hard to tell from under the dome, but the faint light above must've been a moon, maybe two. It spilled through the hole, lighting the last few meters of the tunnel.
"Hey. You look like you're homesick for it. Trust me, it's not any place you want to be."
Her eyes glistened, and she dashed it away. "I like the ocean. Out there, it's an escape. No games, no punishments, just nothing."
I could feel the needles of the creature wrap around my chest again at her words. "Is that what you're trying to do? Escape? There are easier ways, you know."
She turned back from the sea, her face composed once more. “I can't, not yet. But I know where we are on the island, so that's a start.” She took a deep breath. “We found water and now we found fresh air - don't you think it's time you tell me why you're here?”
I stepped back, her shift in mood hard to follow. But she was right. I'd stalled long enough.
"My job is to collect information. There's something going on here, on this island, under this dome. And it's hurt a lot of people.”
She didn't look surprised by my words, so I barreled on.
“When I'm done, there’s going to be retribution for the things that have happened here.”
Her face remained closed, a mystery.
I'd never been a betting man, but I had to take the chance.
“You said you wanted to escape. Come with me. Be safe.”
With a quick motion, her hand cut the air in front of her, dismissing my hasty words.
“Can you stop it? Stop him?”
Damn the mission. Without even being sure what, who she was asking about, there was only one possible answer.
“Do you want me to?”
Valrea
I spun from the hole in the cliff, from the ocean and freedom, back into the tunnels. I knew where we were, the curve of the dome as it came in to meet the land had revealed that.
“Come on, if I'm right as to where we are, then we need to go back.”
With quick long strides, he was beside me. “Glad one of us has a plan. Mind sharing?”
“The tunnels the maintenance crew use are the lowest points of the Compound. We should check and see if that last tremor made enough of a crack for us to get inside, but we need to get back, get beneath the main campus.”
“Not bad,” he remarked. “Then what?”
A pounding headache made my mind slow, struggle for ideas. I didn't know. Hadn’t gotten that far. “Then we figure out the next step once we’re inside. One step at a time.”
“Well, it’s more of a plan than we had. We can run with it and see where it takes us.”
Every time we reached a turning point, a juncture, I imagined where we must be, the direction of the corridors that ran beneath it all. Slowly we climbed until we reached another cavern.
Not as large as the one by the beach, but as we stepped in and I ran the light over the walls I swore. It was ringed by openings. No telling which would lead closer to the heart of the compound. Maybe none of them did.
The wave of confidence I'd been riding since Geir had told me he'd come to stop father crashed, leaving me reeling in its wake, the throbbing in my temples pushing me towards the edge of panic. “I just don't know which to pick.”
Slowly, as if he were sure I would break at any moment, he folded his arms around me, stroked back the tendrils of hair that had escaped from my braid.
“Hey, relax. You got conked on the head pretty hard not long ago, remember? Let’s not make it worse.”
My stomach rumbled, and my cheeks heated.
“I'm hungry too,” he laughed. “Got anything else hidden in those pockets?”
I shook my head but didn't move away. Being held by him felt surprisingly protected, secure. Like no
thing could get through to hurt me.
Even if I knew it was a lie, it was a nice one.
“I don't eat much,” I said. “Last time they randomly drugged the meals. I didn't know what was safe, stopped eating. I guess the habit stuck.”
He leaned back, eyebrows raised, and I hurried to clarify.
“No, that was last time. I only know about it from the notes from my sister. All the food I brought you was safe, I'm sure.”
“So many, many things to ask you about,” he sighed. “But for right now, let’s make a new plan.”
My breathing evened. I could do that. Eight openings ringed the cavern. I marked the one we’d come in through with a pile of loose stones. “No point going back that way.”
“Unless we need the water.”
I shivered. As comfortable as I’d been visiting my sea cave, being trapped underground in the dark without any supplies was something else entirely.
“Let’s try not to be here that long.”
Slowly I paced around the edge of the room, peering down the new passageways as far as the pale beam of light would allow. The light blinked out, and I slapped it against my palm. Solar powered, I’d never used it so long before. It flickered again, the beam weak and watery now.
“That’s it. Time for some modifications to the plan,” Geir snapped. “Turn the light off, save it for an emergency.”
He picked a tunnel, seemingly at random, and reached for my hand.
“Wait!” I cried. “I thought we were trying to get into the lab!”
“We are, but first we have to secure supplies. We can come back and explore each tunnel until we find the way. But I’m not risking you being trapped in the dark.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to scream. But I knew he was right. I clicked off the light, slid it into a pocket next to the book, and forced my voice to be steady. “So, what do we do now?
“We find a way out. I smell something interesting down that way.”
“Last time you tried that, we hit a dead end.”
“Think of it as a window, rather than a door.”
“What?”
He laughed in the dark and enclosed my hand with his. " I can make it large enough to get through, carry you on my back and climb up the cliff. If we don't find anything else, we'll go back."
I shook my head. “That’s not a place we want to be.” That wasn’t a place anyone wanted to be.
“We’ll keep it as a last resort, then.”
While we’d talked, my eyes slowly adjusted to the near dark.
Wait. That couldn’t be right. It should be pitch-black. In the blackness, a vein of rock glowed faintly in the far wall of the cavern. Time had scattered luminescent pebbles to the floor.
I pulled away. “Let me grab these first.”
Muttering, Geir helped me stuff the pockets of my coat with the stones.
“Let me wear that,” he added as I pulled myself upright. “It’s too heavy for you now.”
"I'm fine," I declared and staggered back towards the tunnel he'd started down.
His large hands fell on my shoulders and gently turned me. "This way."
Every ten steps I dropped another pebble. Looking back, they formed a waving line, marking our way as we twisted further into the dark.
"Wherever we're going, it's away from the lab, I'm sure of it." Tens of steps had become hundreds until I'd lost any count other than up to ten and over again. One pocket had emptied of pebbles, and my fingers had just brushed the bottom of the second.
“Do you think we’re still under the dome?” Geir wondered aloud. “I don’t think so.”
I stopped, thinking. The stabbing in my head had subsided to a dull ache, making it easier to visualize. Our path had twisted, curved and doubled back on itself more than once. But the ache in my thighs insisted we’d been heading up. If we were still under the dome of the Compound, surely we would have broken through by now, wouldn’t we?
“I don’t think so either,” I whispered, suddenly afraid.
“What’s wrong?”
“No one goes outside of the dome.” I had hoped we’d emerge behind one of the far storage buildings, someplace out of the way, unobserved. But not this far. “The island is filled with creatures, dangerous creatures. It’s not safe.”
“Have you seen them?”
“No, I’ve never been beyond the enclosure.”
“Have you talked to anyone who’s seen them?”
“No.” A strand of hair drifted across my face, and I puffed it out of the way, annoyed. “But I’ve seen the Devourers, see what they do. If that’s in the water, what do you think is on the land?”
“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here in the dark. Come on, let’s at least see what’s out there.”
Another loose bit of hair tickled my face. I slapped it away, then froze. “Is that the outside?”
“I’ll keep an eye out for any ‘land devourers,’ promise.”
I pushed past him and his sarcasm to stumble out into the fresh air, mind whirling. We’d emerged from a crack in a low rocky ridge. Behind us, half-blocked by the hill, the golden radiance of the dome beat back the last hours of the night. Though the moons had long since set, bright starlight revealed a broad valley, with thick trees lining a river below.
No giant insects scuttled across the grasslands, their blade-like pincers rattling. Nothing dove and attacked from the sky, ready to tear us apart.
“Lies, all lies.” Fury bloomed hot in my chest as I carefully stacked the last of the glowing stones on either side of the crevice. “And soon, I’ll be back to make you choke on them.”
The youngest Princess waited alone in the tower. One by one her sisters had left, the last she lowered down with trembling arms, uncertain if she could bear the weight, surprised by her own strength.
Seven times the sun had risen since the last of her sisters had left. Seven times the magic cabinet that supplied food and water refreshed itself with the same amount every night.
There was no way down, no sister left to help hold the rope. She threw the extra bread down, piece by piece, her eyes searching the far forest, wondering how long she could wait.
Two days ago, she’d begun throwing the extra bread out the window. There was no reason to keep it, no one to eat it before it became hard and stale.
Suddenly the flock of gray birds that settled at the base of the tower to squawk and scrabble for the crumbs flew away, shrieking.
A giant bird, feathers darker than night, perched on the windowsill, cocking its head back and forth, piercing her with its twinkling eyes.
“Are you lost?”
“Where did you even get this stuff?” Geir interrupted. “Giant birds? Princesses and towers? Can't be good for you.”
We were halfway down the hill to the river valley. I’d started reciting the story under my breath as a familiar comfort, a reassuring ritual against the vast open sky.
Apparently, not quietly enough to keep from his ears.
“It's from a file of old books the Companion gave me when I was learning to read.” My breath caught, just for a minute. The Companion, and her access to the pills. How long would it be before the symptoms reappeared?
“Companion?” Geir asked, his eyes fixed on a cluster of trees ahead. Even if the threatened terrors of the island hadn’t immediately attacked, every shadow seemed to hold danger.
I shrugged, ignoring that he couldn't see me. "Sort of a teaching robot." The Companion was more than that, but like everything else in the Compound, it was complicated. "It had me read the stories in this book over and over. I guess they're old stories that are supposed to teach some sort of morals." But all I'd learned from it was that even princesses were lonely.
“Our instruction was a little more practical,” he commented. “Right now, the moral I’m remembering is to get under cover before light. We’re too in the open here, too exposed.”
He looked at the distance remaining, then back to me, lips pressed flat, and f
ace grim. “We’d get there sooner if I carried you.”
“I can walk faster,” I protested.
“Not as fast as we need.” He pointed behind us to the predawn light that blended into the glow of the security dome. I’d missed the gradual lifting of the blackness all around, and blinked, suddenly exhausted.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, and then without warning scooped me into his arms and began sprinting down the hill. I struggled to regain my feet, but he was having none of it. “You tell me the rest of that crazy story, and I’ll get us down.”
Geir
Valrea fell asleep long before we reached the stand of trees, arms tucked away in the depths of her coat, so still that only the warmth of her breath on my chest told me she was alive. The purple shadows of bruises on her face highlighted by the morning light kicked me in the gut.
My fault for not getting her out of the rockfall, for letting her exhaust herself in the caverns.
Whatever her secrets were, first I’d take care of her, or she wouldn’t be able to tell me anything.
Sure, I mocked myself. Because you’re so good at that sort of thing. A flash of memory, the woman who’d been held hostage by the pusher back on Orem. Her terror.
I hadn’t exactly stuck around to check on her after getting rid of the guy.
But this was different. This was Val.
Cautiously I circled the trees, listening, tasting the breeze.
Small chirps and calls filled the air around us, but nothing sounded large enough to be a danger.
“Hey, honey, wake up. I need you to keep an eye out while I finish scouting.”
A tiny whimper of protest was the only response at first. Then her hand reached up, smoothed over my chest as she pushed awake.
“Okay, I’m awake.” She shook her head, blinking at the shadows, while I thought about knives, fights I’d been in, Hunters, the Devourers… anything to distract from that casual, intimate touch. Her voice was deep with sleep. “What do you need me to do?”
The mission. Focus on the mission.
“Just stand here, and let me know if you see anything moving.” I set her down in the clearing between the trees as gently, and as quickly as I could, and finished recon.