scar above his eye! “You work in Growing Room One. But I couldn’t find you today.”
“I’m Kaydin, pleased to meet you.”
The worker winced as he touched his face again. Then he saw the two lizards, each lying on their sides. “How’d you kill the shadows?”
“They are sentinels, not shadows. And I didn’t kill them. We don’t know how to.” He held up his hand. A series of stone rings with sharp points. “I stunned them with my gauntlet and a flurry of earthlight shards. Now, come on.”
The worker took Kaydin’s hand, letting him pull him up as he found his feet. At the end of the bridge the worker bumped into Kaydin.
“We’re not going back to the workers quarters,” said Kaydin. “I hope you don’t regret it, but you left that road behind you when you stayed out past the second toll.”
The next few moments went fast for the worker. Kaydin urged him along the chasm walkway and into a crevice he was forced to climb part way into the chasm to reach. A stone door was slid open for them by a tall man this Kaydin called Gara, with whom Kaydin spoke in whispers as they made their way through the ensuing tunnels. Into another unseen crack and through a crawl space. A cramped stone stairwell. Then light so strong the worker had to shield his eyes. And voices, but they stopped when they saw him.
“So you’ve made it, then,” said an old man, struggling to push himself out of his stool. His hands were on a black-stone table. The small cave around them was mostly bare besides the shards of earthlight, blues and greens. A colony of glowworms lit the far corner where a cluster of turma vines climbed and crosshatched the jagged stone.
“Stunned two of them to get him out,” said Kaydin.
The man limped over to the worker. He rested strong hands on the worker’s shoulders. “We’re glad you’re here,” said the man, his eyes taking on an alluring green below those deep crevice-like wrinkles. “My name is Ry.”
“Me too,” said the worker, “I owe my life to Kaydin—I would have descended.”
There was noise in the stairwell behind. The worker turned, expecting the worst. Instead, two women and a man entered wearing expressions not unlike the worker's peer had the previous shift when he'd miraculously come through the stone door.
“We were watching from the lookouts,” said a man with hair around his lips and chin but nowhere else. “We are glad to see you. Kaydin took a big risk to save you, you know.” The words sprang from him like irritated turma vines.
“There were actually two more sentinels joining from the east bank if you guys weren’t quick enough,” said one of the women. Dark brown hair brushed lightly against her slate-colored shirt, which fastened in two knots across her chest.
“That’s Mav, Maryn, and Bel,” said Ry. “They are all part of Haven. They were watching over you tonight, just as Kaydin and Gara were.”
Watching over me? And the Rahz? Why weren’t they doing likewise?
“Sharp claws on those feet,” said Kaydin, tapping his scar. “And sharper teeth.” He held up his four-fingered hand. “Doesn’t look like you faired too much better, though.”
The worker felt the dried blood on his cheek, then moved his hand to the still oozing wound, feeling pain as he did.
“We do try to avoid them,” said Ry, glaring at Kaydin.
“If I’d been quicker,” said Kaydin, “I could have distracted the sentinels from even attacking you. But I haven’t fought them in awhile.”
“None of us have lately,” said Ry. “but it isn’t easy to get out of the system without a scratch.”
“And yet you avoided fatal injury,” said Kaydin, “as if you knew where the sentinel would attack.” The worker realized he had dodged the lizard much like he had evaded the brunt of Director Dimah’s blow. He had seen the claw coming before it actually did.
Feeling a hand lightly squeeze his shoulder, the worker noticed Ry had held it even as the worker had turned to meet the newcomers. “We’ll have to get you bandaged,” said Ry, eyeing the worker’s bloodied face. Maryn took this as a cue, passing through the room to a hallway beyond.
“Why don’t we sit a moment,” said Ry. He pulled the worker kindly toward the obsidian table, offered him stool. He started to notice the gray lines etched into the smooth surface, but the others joining him drew his attention, and he took a moment to study them: Kaydin, the lost worker; Gara, the taller partner-in-rescuing; Maryn, light hair like the turma vine, small nose, a hopeful smile; and Bel, brown hair on her bare shoulders. She had said little, but now hugged Kaydin from behind before sitting. Ry, their apparent leader, now spoke.
“This is Haven,” said Ry, gesturing around the table and the small cavern. “We help people like you, the curious and the rebellious, survive in this underground city outside the established system of the Rahz.”
“How’d you make this place?”
“With tools.” He nodded to Gara, who produced a stone hammer. Then he drew the worker’s eyes. “And anger.”
Maryn returned. “You and your anger,” said Maryn, laughing lightly. She brought out a cloth which stung to the touch. Her lips formed a frown. “Stitches, Ry.”
“Just wrap him up for now. You and Mav can fix him up in the morning.”
Mav, the man with the goatee, smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve stitched people up before.”
“What do you mean fix me up?” asked the worker to Ry, trying to touch his cuts but finding them wrapped by a cloth. Maryn continued circling his head and face with the bandage, eventually covering his right eye.
“It’s time to rest, son,” said Ry. “Answers are coming.”
Maryn led the worker by the arm out the main room along a roughly carved corridor. Vines ran along the walls here, too. A red pitcher plant the size of his fist waited, idly, until a glowfly deigned to snatch its nectar. It pounced and the glowfly was reduced to a droning like a muffled snore. Maryn saw him eyeing them.
“Each of us has added our own touches over the years.”
“What is a year?”
“A long time.” She paused. “Well, not that long. About three hundred of your shifts, the time between tolls. But it goes fast. Ry used to say time flies."
"And what does he say now?"
"I think he wishes it would go a little faster."
After a short walk, Maryn pulled him into a small, dark room, only lit by the corridor. She led him gently to an alcove. “This is your place to sleep,” her smile just visible in the dim, orange light. A small lizard scampered into a crevice.
“Thank you,” said the worker, frowning and hoping there were no more of the critters. “What’s this?”
“A mat for your head. I weaved it myself.”
“From?”
“From
