“Please don’t go so fast!” Sheiral cried as Jace pulled away from her, as he had many times during their nocturnal flight through the trees. She seemed to be moving slower and slower, the longer they ran… and they hadn’t put nearly enough distance between themselves and Keeper’s Cove, in Jace’s mind.
“If you can talk the governor’s soldiers into slowing down, so will I,” Jace said, stopping and turning to look over his shoulder at her. Something caught his eye as his head was turning, and he turned back to see a dark shape through the trees… was that a long, waving arm a bit up the slope? “Hold on,” he said to Sheiral. “Wait here.”
“That’s fine with me,” she said. “I thought we had run far enough a long time ago.”
Jace crept up between the trees. There was no sign of whatever he’d seen… whether it was a beckoning arm or something else entirely… but there was a spot of darker darkness at the base of a particularly steep rise, not quite screened from sight by some weeds.
“Come here,” he called to Sheiral.
“Make up your mind, groundling,” the proud girl said, though she did follow him.
Jace ducked down and parted the weeds. There was a hole there… maybe not much more than a depression in the cliff face, but definitely an opening.
“There might be a cave here,” he said.
“Might be?”
“There is,” he said.
Though the moon was bright outside, not much light reached inside. He crawled in a bit. His shoulders just barely fit in the opening. He stopped to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. This didn’t take very long at all, as it was total… he couldn’t see a thing. He hadn’t encountered a back yet, though, so he felt his way forward… the narrow passage seemed to be moving almost straight back, with a very slight downward grade. He crawled a body’s length in, and then wriggled his way back out.
“It seems to go back a ways,” he said.
“That’s a fascinating bit of island trivia,” Sheiral said.
“We can hide in there,” Jace said.
“You mean crawl into a hole and wait for them to find us?”
“Why not? You seemed satisfy to skip the crawling into a hole part,” Jace said. “Maybe it could be a proper hiding space if we cover the entrance behind us.”
“So we have to crawl into the hole backwards,” Sheiral said.
“You can go in forwards… I’ll crawl backwards behind you and cover the entrance.”
“So I get to be the one who falls into a bottomless pit or gets crushed in a cave-in,” Sheiral said.
“You can pick: go first and go forward, or go second and backwards,” Jace said. “It might get wider after a bit, anyway. There are caves all over the mountain, and some of them are pretty big… I used to live with my master in a good-sized one. It was practically a house.”
“Let’s find one of those, then,” Sheiral said.
“People already know about all the ones that are big on the outside,” Jace said. “This one’s small enough that it might be overlooked. Even if they track us to it… maybe we can block it off somehow?”
“So then instead of being trapped on a ship and fed once a day, I can be trapped underground,” Sheiral said. “I don’t suppose you’d taste very good.”
“Fine, we’ll keep running then,” Jace said.
Sheiral sighed, then went over and knelt in front of the cramped cave.
“We can try it this way,” she said.
Ongoing support is especially appreciated.
Note: I'm trying out a new comment system. It's new and subject to jiggerypokery. It's moderated. Detailed guidelines to come but follow the general rule: be excellent to each other.
If you enjoy reading, please consider a financial contribution.
« « 24: The Hidden Harbor 26: Lost In Translation » »