by Joni Sensel
Ariel crawled more and more slowly as her staff failed to find the drop or the knotted rope she expected. She was certain Dain had led her up the rope to the crawl space and then on their knees for not too long before they'd emerged. This tight space stretched on and on.
Finally Ariel stopped. Her panting bounced off the rock, loud. Without the scrape of her staff and body on stone, the pressing dark felt like a grave. She tried not to think of how far she'd wormed in here or how much crushing rock loomed above. The crawl space must have branched somewhere she hadn't noticed. She wasn't retracing the way Dain had led her.
Yet her feet, trailing behind her bruised knees, urged her on. Nervously she obeyed, moving fast to snip a thread of panic unspooling inside her. Her feet had helped her avoid danger before; she hoped they understood about cave-ins. She should've brought Zeke.
The rock beneath her grew wet, with puddles in low spots. Then a wavelet swamped Ariel's hands to the wrist.
"Oh!" She pulled back too quickly, banging her head. The sighing water receded, and a deeper surge answered it through the rock. The tide had been ebbing when she left the cove, but it may since have turned, and the sea could flood this passage before she got out.
Her feet still wanted her to go forward, and now.
Another wave reached her. While she pondered retreat, a new sound rose above the distant crashing of breakers, as close as the lapping at her sodden knees. She'd almost mistaken it for own breath in the dark until the soft brushing deepened to a buzz.
Her staff, on the ground before her, vibrated between the stone and her hand.
Saltwater surged, splashing. The buzzing grew angry. Ariel didn't dare let go or leave it; she needed the staff to plumb her way out. She lifted it from the water. The noise stopped, leaving only a gentle dripping.
Ariel slid her hand up the wood toward the knife. Her fingers crossed the leather wraps and swept toward the hilt, but then they plunged into a large, mushy lump that felt, for an instant, like bubbling sea foam. Bzzzzzt! She'd grabbed a thick knot of small, beating wings.
She shrieked.
Flies burst from under her fingers like bees from a hive. In the tight space they swarmed her. She dropped the staff and flailed to keep off the flies. Her elbows and shoulders cracked hard on the stone as she batted at blackness and tried not to inhale. Flies struck her skin, bouncing between her and the walls, until Ariel curled tight and covered her head with her arms.
More waves came, sloshing instead of receding. The droning buzz faded. Over the rush of water, which kept growing louder, Ariel became aware of someone calling her name.
She sat up, the air still black but mercifully free of insects. Wet lumps littered her clothes and her hair.
"Ariel!" The voice echoed far down the tunnel.
"Zeke?" Ariel's heart, eager to find help in the dark, took control, and she started toward the caller--she thought. Immediately she banged her cheek into a wall. In her panic, she'd spun, and now the sea swirled around her, elbow deep on all sides. Fear and cold water numbed her farwalking sense. She was no longer certain which direction she'd come.
A voice shouted again. Ariel splashed toward it, banging off the stone walls through a flood that deepened by the moment.
She spotted a glow, then Dain scampering toward her like a three-legged dog, one hand keeping an oil lamp dry near the ceiling. Zeke crawled behind.
Ariel barely heard his scolding. She rushed to meet them.
"No, turn!" Dain panted. "Turn! We're near to this end. We won't beat the tide going back!"
Ariel stopped, uncertain. Dain banged into her. "That way!" She shoved Ariel back.
Ariel spun. Seawater blasted her in the face. Spluttering, she wiped her eyes.
Dain pushed from behind. "I can't get past you! You gotta lead. Keep your face high and breathe when it ebbs. Then hold your breath and crawl against it--fast as you can!"
Another surge hit them. The oil lamp went out.
Chapter 16
The return to darkness drove Ariel into motion. She plowed into the merciless tide, catching breaths as each surge eased, which wasn't often enough. Her knees and head cracked more than once against stone, but she barely felt any pain. Fear drove her too hard. All she could do was breathe ragged gulps and shove herself forward. If she put a palm or her shins on the staff where she'd left it, she didn't notice as she passed. It may have floated off.
More water smashed in and stayed, getting deeper. Her thoughts flew to Zeke. She was the better swimmer, with more practice holding her breath--and she hadn't gotten mud in her lungs yesterday. Was he still behind Dain and still breathing? Without room in the dark, cramped tunnel to trade places, she had no way to know, and no way to help him except to go faster.
As she flung herself forward on her hands and knees, her arms struck a low barrier--a bit of driftwood, a rock? Her momentum spilled her face-first overtop of it. Water rushed over her head. Choking, she jerked her face out just as Dain ran into her from behind. The collision knocked Ariel under again. A hard edge pressed into her belly.
Dain flailed and rolled off. They untangled themselves, and Dain's hands yanked Ariel up from behind. But water now slapped at the top of the tunnel, forcing Ariel to hold her breath anyway. She struggled with the thing in her path. It wasn't a rock. It was sturdy stick at an angle--not driftwood, but the staff. Her hands recognized its grip through the swirling water. It had drifted ahead of her to lodge in the tunnel, blocking the way as if intentionally. She bashed it loose with both fists and raced past, not sure how much longer she could go without a breath.
Glimpsing whitewater now, she wondered, crazily, how Dain had relit the lamp. Ariel slammed into the end of the tunnel before her brain told her the light was coming from her left. An arch opened there, filled with more sea than sky. They'd made it! Ariel pushed off the wall and burst out through a breaker flooding into the hole.
Spinning to help her friends, she found the rocks too steep and the surf too strong. She bounced against the cliff and thrust her arms back in through the arch, but Dain and then Zeke emerged on their own. She grabbed them. Dashed by waves, they all dragged themselves along many boulders until at last they reached secure footing and could climb out.
Ariel looked back. The sea had submerged their escape hole completely.
"Good thing... we chased you," Zeke said between gulps of air. "We saw you... take off and head... into the tunnel, and.... if we'd gone back then for Scarl's help like I wanted, some of us--maybe all of us--might've been drowned."
"I'm so sorry!" Ariel said. If she'd gone as fast as her feet had implored her and not stopped to wonder or battle with flies, she would've have been fine, but her friends might not have been. "But how did you find me? I didn't go the way I expected to go."
"Followed the tracks of your knees in the dust." Dain shook oily seawater out of her lamp, which she'd managed to keep. "The light helped us catch up. But why'd you come in by yourself, anyhow? You could've died lots of places if you'd gotten lost."
"I'm a Farwalker," Ariel said. "I don't get lost."
"That didn't answer the question." Zeke glared.
Ariel gazed up the hillside. They were far out on the point. The stone ruin where she'd met Dain squatted a short ways inland. Between, rows of squared stones and a crumbling wall suggested homes that were gone now. Landslides had left several scars on the hill.
"I wanted to return Elbert's knife where it came from," she admitted. "Where he'd slept."
Zeke clapped a hand to his head in dismay.
Dain rose. "Come, then. This way."
"No," said Zeke. "Let's just get back to the cove."
"The knife's gone anyway. In there." Ariel pointed. She felt as though Elbert's knife had escaped... but not before doing its best to drown her.
Dain shrugged. "Got to go past, anyhow. 'Cause we sure can't head back the same way we got here. Not for a few hours, at least."
They picked their way uphill and inland toward th
e stone rubble. The homes on this side had been dug into the hill like animal dens, with only small sections of stone protruding. Those were now remnants. Such homes may have been cozy and safer from winds, but they were also more easily buried.
Dain gestured to one hollow, mostly caved in. "Uncle Elbert's."
Ariel stopped to stare. What was left seemed crumbling and cramped for a man as big and loud as Elbert Finder had been.
Zeke tugged her along. Ariel let him, having no desire to step into the ruin. She might not even have done it to plunge the knife into the earthen floor. It would have felt too much like stepping into Elbert's grave.
Dain angled toward the ruin that hid the other entrance to the tunnels. Taking a slightly different path, Ariel wandered among several cut stones that probably had once belonged to a building but now were arranged, one by one, in a pattern. A few had been carved on. The first bore a design, but the next held a mossy likeness of a man.
Ariel's feet stopped. The stones were markers. She stood in a graveyard.
Dain was hurrying ahead without looking back. Ariel winced. Dain had lost her family on this side of the ridge, and being here obviously didn't soothe her. Ariel welcomed the breeze slicing through her soaked clothes, since she probably deserved the chill it gave her.
"Why are you stopping?" asked Zeke.
"Shh." Ariel showed him. "Graves. Memory markers, at least. Dain's family might have stones here somewh--"
Her feet tingled, and she turned to her right in response. Three stones in descending sizes, a little rock family, stood in for the human one that'd been lost. The largest bore the shape of a fish and the middle, a flower. They were more recently carved than most on the slope. But the freshest work showed on the smallest. No weeds grew around it, and the bright lines of a border had been scratched within days.
"Dain's family?" Zeke repeated.
"Cassalie told me," Ariel whispered. "They--"
"What'd you stop for? Come on!" Dain's voice sounded cross.
Zeke and Ariel moved forward. Glaring at the sea, Dain awaited them in the stone hut's doorway.
As they arrived, she grumbled, "I know you seen 'em. I like to keep the weeds off Dain's stone, that's all."
"That's--" Sweet, Ariel had started to say. Then the name she'd heard sunk in.
"Whose stone?" Zeke asked.
Dain flinched. "My brother's, I mean. His name-- never mind! It's no business of yours! Are you coming or not?" She darted into the shadows.
At Zeke's bewildered expression, Ariel lifted her palms helplessly and followed Dain in.
Dain thrust her empty lamp into Ariel's hands. "Hold this." She rummaged in a corner and removed a lump of tallow, a fresh wick, and a firestick from a half-buried clay pot. Softening the tallow in her hands, she refilled the lamp and lit the wick without making eye contact.
Ariel couldn't forget the girl's flustered words. "I'm truly sorry you had to come over here after me," she said. "My mother left the world two years ago now--" Her throat closed, but she forced herself on. "It'd be hard for me to go back to our cottage. Without crying, at least. I tried once and couldn't do it. You're brave."
Dain didn't answer, except to lead the way into the tunnels. Zeke took some coaxing. Dain promised that nowhere on this route would be wet.
Once they'd left daylight, however, she said, "I already spilled it, so you might as well know. Dain was my brother. My name's really Neela."
The shadows thrown by the lamp flame wavered and lunged as Ariel tried to make sense of what she'd just heard.
"But don't call me that. I won't answer." The girl with the lamp hurried faster as if to get away from her name.
Ariel debated staying silent before asking, "Why not?"
Dain--Neela--pressed on her eyelids. "'Cause I killed Dain, that's why. Neela killed him. I can't give him my life. It's too late for that. But we can share it."
Ariel worked hard not to frown. Zeke just looked confused. To help him, Ariel said, "Cassalie told me about the mudslide that buried your house. But--"
"Cass wasn't there that night. What did she tell you?"
Ariel recounted the disastrous storm.
"You got some, but not all," said the girl posing as Dain. "Our papa wanted Dain to be Windmaster. Wanted it something fierce. But he wasn't good at it, and I was. Pa said it wasn't a fit trade for a girl. He'd cough fishhooks if he saw a Farwalker girl. But I couldn't help it! The wind likes me, is all, and it did tricks for me whether I asked it or not."
"He should've been proud," Zeke said softly.
Pain filled Dain's laugh. "Sometimes we made what the wind did for me seem like breezes and airs that my brother had called. But I took more'n one thrashing for mocking Pa's orders. Or for weather I had nothing to do with."
Zeke growled.
With the stink of burning tallow wafting around them, Ariel asked, "Did he beat you that night?"
Dain nodded. "And that was the last time."
"But none of that was your fault."
"Oh, aye, it was. Cass didn't tell you I brought the storm, did she? She thinks it was luck, but I asked for that rain. I just didn't mean for it to take everything. Not like that."
Ariel didn't know what to say.
But Zeke did. "You might not believe this, but I've killed people, too."
Dain stopped in her tracks. "You couldn't," she whispered.
"I didn't mean it, either, exactly," he said. "I was trying to stop some bad men. I stopped them, all right. More than I expected." He told her how pleading with stones overhead had caused a cave-in, crushing two killers who'd taken him and Ariel captive--and sending two friends from the world along with them. "It was awful," he finished. "So I know how you feel."
"I doubt it." Dain's voice was no longer harsh, though. "If they weren't your family." They reached the ledge with the knotted rope, where the lamplight gleamed wetly in her eyes.
"I guess you're right," Zeke admitted. "But I still have nightmares about it. So whatever makes you feel better is all right with me--Dain."
She looked at him hard, but Zeke only grabbed the rope and said, "Up?"
As they climbed to the ledge and then crawled toward freedom, Ariel admired Zeke's wise compassion. If he hadn't been there, she might've argued with Dain, or at least said the wrong thing to make matters worse. She wanted to reach through the dark and hug him. She resisted, afraid of repeating the awkward moment when she'd clung to him as they'd swum in the cove. She loved Zeke best when her feelings for him snuck up on her. It ruined everything when either of them got too self-conscious.
So Ariel forced herself to stop thinking about it. Her thoughts bounced back to Dain. Perhaps now she'd be able to finish their trade. It probably had something to do with her brother, and she hadn't known how to say it without revealing the truth.
Ariel didn't ask while they crept through the tunnel. It'd be wiser to have Scarl near when the request finally came, so she could call on his help if the trade were unfair. Besides, Ariel wasn't eager to dwell on the fate of anyone who'd been buried alive. Not while she was still in an underground passage that had too nearly become her own makeshift tomb. It would've pleased him no end if she'd found Elbert's home, only to die there as he'd died near hers.
He wasn't there to feel pleasure, of course. Ariel scolded herself for even thinking that way. She'd done more or less what she'd come here to do: return the knife to its home and the shark's tooth to the sea. It was over. She'd won. She could forget about it.
The prickling in the back of her neck wouldn't listen. It was probably just the cove's name, the ruins, and her memories, but in the clammy air of the tunnels, Elbert felt all too close.
Chapter 17
When Ariel, Zeke, and Dain emerged from the tunnel, the sun was sinking toward the sea. They hurried to reach Cassalie's house before dusk. On the way, Ariel convinced Zeke not to mention their misadventure to Scarl. They could let him think her staff had just washed from the creek into the sea. Since they'd
escaped with no more than bruises, Zeke agreed--if she promised never to mention Elbert Finder again.
Dain sealed Ariel's vow with these words: "Though I'm nothing made of iron, no sword or stone can shake me. But speak the wrong words only once, and just like that, you break me."
Zeke crowed. "You like riddles, too?"
As he challenged Dain with several, Ariel sighed and studied the sun-gilded clouds. She wished she'd made a promise before leaving home by forging a sky pledge with Nace. A kiss blown to the moon every night could have bounced off and fallen to him, binding them over long days apart. She wondered if he might be watching this sunset. Then she hoped he wasn't, that he was safe in the abbey and not outdoors where predators prowled.
Once back at Cassalie's, the three friends clustered gratefully around the hearth. To Ariel's dismay, Dain and Zeke riddled on, silenced only when Scarl posed a hard one.
As night fell, Dain said, "I'd like to sleep in the boathouse with you. You're more fun than Cassalie."
"You don't have to," replied Ariel. "We're sleeping in your house tonight."
"We are?" Zeke said.
Dain turned startled eyes toward Cassalie and Scarl. The two were preparing their supper, and when Scarl bent to retrieve a mussel he'd dropped, Cass tweaked his curls and then smoothed them again. Although Ariel had seen them embrace earlier, even she was amazed by the Finder's good humor about the teasing.
Dain flashed a grin. "Heartthrobs, Cass and Scarl? That's a rich 'un!" Her smile faded. She picked at the dust wedged between flagstones. "I wish I had a heartthrob. There's nobody here who could be it."
Ariel's sympathy rose. "We could use that for our trade! Scarl could find you a heartthrob, I bet--somewhere. And I'll take you there!"
Dain stiffened. "You aren't leaving yet? You said a week."
"No, I mean later. Whenever you want."
Dain shook her head and stared into the fire. "I don't need a heartthrob, anyhow."
Ariel's heart sank. What trade could be better than love?