apologetically, “Thanks. Yes, I should have thought it would take longer to get.”
“Not a thing, not a thing—as Sticks would say.” Starnee eased some water into Thorn’s mouth and then let Childheart drink from his bill. “No sight of Alex or Jamie—though likely they’re in that castle,” the condor said, pointing his beak toward Santanya’s compound.
“We should get him out of here as soon as possible,” said Childheart, “and I suggest we go back.”
“Go back?” Starnee blurted out. “Back to where—and how?”
“Back to Taralina’s castle. There are going to be few, if any, enemy left, and what’s there we should be able to handle. We’re too exposed here, and it’s not clear what our next move should be anyway. Besides, perhaps we’ll find some food there—and maybe, just maybe, another ‘word’ or sign of some sort from someone or something about what to do next.”
“Let’s wait just a little longer, okay? Let the water work? Maybe he’ll be a bit stronger and better able to manage the flight. And we both could use some rest and sleep. I’ll watch—with one eye anyway, and sleep with the other.”
And so one and a half of them turned in, as if “for the night,” the sky remaining unchanged in its invariable duskiness.
Childheart lay next to Thorn’s head and fell quickly into a deep slumber. Starnee sat halfway up one of the leafless trees and half-slept. While Starnee watched in the never-ending twilight, it occurred to him that ordinarily he would have found leafless trees—in their season—rather beautiful. But not these.
~two~
The tomb door slammed shut with a piercing bang as Beatríz fell hard against the stone floor; and then all was instantly quiet. Beatríz was stunned, but acutely aware of her aching head and the painful weight of Elli on top of her, making breathing difficult. It was completely dark inside the tomb, and Beatríz could feel it. She also felt Elli’s head dangling next to her ear and reached up tentatively to touch it.
Beatríz gasped in short little breaths, struggling to get out from underneath Elli; but she couldn’t move, either Elli or herself. “Elli!” Beatríz whispered sharply. When Elli did not respond, she remembered the spear striking her friend’s back, thrusting the two of them fiercely against the door and into the tomb, certainly killing Elli she now thought with rising horror. What was she to do next, she asked herself. But it was getting harder to breathe, and she knew there would be nothing else next to do unless she escaped quickly from under Elli’s body. Beatríz squirmed frantically. She was making no progress and beginning to panic when she heard a deafening roar surrounding her, as if she was inside an angered lion, and then felt the pavement starting to shake—so violently that it cast Elli off of her.
Beatríz turned over and buried her face in Elli’s chest, sobbing uncontrollably while awaiting the imminent collapse of the ceiling.
Then, just as suddenly, the shaking stopped and all was once again silent, save only the noise of a dissipating rumble and the sound of Beatríz’s own diminishing sobs. When her crying had finally subsided to a whimper, and she was about to move, Beatríz realized that nothing had fallen, that the floor itself seemed intact, and that, to her nearly euphoric delight, Elli’s chest against her cheek was rising and falling!
Beatríz sat up with a start, comprehending that Elli was now lying flat on her back. She began frantically searching the floor with her hands. Not far from Elli’s body Beatríz discovered her friend’s knife, still in its sheath, but bent. A few moments later she also found the spear; its point was flattened and still warm. She strained to reach beneath Elli to see if she could find a wound—or at least some blood.
Elli groaned when Beatríz touched a spot on her lower back, so she began to call again for Elli while she rubbed her arms and caressed her face. “Elli! Elli!” Beatríz repeated several times. Elli’s arms soon moved and she sat up abruptly, coughing harshly.
“Beatríz?” yelled a terrified Elli while grabbing her friend’s hands.
“Elli! Elli! You’re okay! The spear didn’t hit you!”
“But I felt it, Beatríz! I felt it!” Elli searched rapidly around her back, finding neither the spear nor a wound, and then grimaced when she touched a slight depression in her lower back.
“Elli! Your knife saved you! And,” Beatríz said, pausing, and then continuing as if whispering a prayer of gratitude, “you saved me, Elli!” Beatríz released her friend’s hands and picked up the weapons. “Here!”
Elli received the spear and knife and felt each of their tips. “Oh my,” she said softly. “Oh my!” She added quickly, “Are you hurt, Beatríz?”
“No—just a headache; and my body hurts, and I’m tired—and scared—and sad,” she replied.
“Stay right here, Beatríz! I’m going to scout around—I won’t go far, I promise.”
“No, Elli! I’m going with you!”
Hand in hand, darkness blinding both of them, the girls walked stealthily around the chamber, stumbling into the locked door and three walls. They prepared themselves for stumbling into Taralina’s bier. They finally found it. It was made of smooth stone, and the top was too high off the ground to reach, so Elli made a stirrup with her hands and gently hoisted Beatríz several feet into the air. Beatríz reached out slowly to touch the corpse, or skeleton, or whatever she would find.
“Oh!” Beatríz screamed, pulling back her hand.
“What, Beatríz?” Elli asked, not certain she wanted to know the answer. “Beatríz?” she asked again, becoming frightened by Beatríz’s silence and lack of movement. “Beatríz?”
“Elli,” Beatríz said quietly, “her clothes are here, as if she had just been laid out, but, . . . but there’s no body, not even a skeleton.”
“Are you sure? Have you felt all around?”
“No, Elli. No. She’s not here; let me down.”
The two girls sat, their backs to the bier, in silence, thinking and wondering, and finally resting. Elli had forgotten all about her amulet until now—Santanya said she had found only her knife.
At length, Beatríz spoke first. “What now, Elli?” She then added in a quivering voice, “We’re going to die in here, aren’t we?”
“I don’t know, Beatríz; I really don’t know. And I’m hungry and thirsty; and I’ll bet you are, too,” said Elli.
Beatríz gathered herself. “Well, as much as I don’t want to move from this spot, maybe for a very long time, we’re not going to have any food or water just come to us.”
“Okay. Let’s go. There’s only one direction, but I don’t know what direction it is, or where it leads, or where it will end.” The girls walked protectively along the wall stretching away perpendicular from the wall revealing the tomb door, Elli’s bent knife in front and Beatríz behind. Beatríz held tightly to Elli’s hand, resisting the urge to grip her own knife, fearful to lose it.
After perhaps two hours of uneventful treading on a slow trek downward, hunger and thirst began to vie for control of their minds, leaking a rising
