Ancient Companion
DAPHNE
“We must break quickly,” Klyesque says in a rushed whisper before leaping off of Delago’s back and guiding him to the edge of the creek bed. “I detest this darkness, but it should be morning soon. When it is, we will take a rest. Hopefully we can lose this… watcher of yours by daylight.”
Trielle kneels for me, and I slide off of her back carefully, wandering forward cautiously as she scampers toward the stream and rubbing my bottom to soothe the ache I’ve been dutifully ignoring for the past few hours. My eyes are on the woods in a tedious search of the shadow that moved within the black, just beneath the forest’s sparkling canopy. Unfortunately, I cannot see what sits directly above us. The walls of The Alley are too high. That alone has my ears tilting toward the breeze, scavenging for any hint of sound that I might find sneaking about the terrain above.
Klyesque strolls forward, “Tell me, Daphne… what exactly did your ancient… companion tell you?”
“It told me that they followed within the trees and…”
She presses, “And?”
“That they were afraid.”
Klyesque flinches. “Afraid? Afraid of what? You?”
“I-I don’t…” I grimace, wondering for the first time what exactly was meant by that particular whisper. Who was afraid? And of what? “I’m not sure.”
“Hmm,” Klyesque murmurs, her gaze flitting toward the far wall and the cracklike shatter of earth that fairly explodes with a thickening spray of water. “How odd,” she says, strolling toward the advancing waterfall with a critical eye as more and more rubble begins to tumble from the rift in the earth. Like a fracture in the gutter, it spews debris in the form of sparkling emerald stones to pile them at the base of the cascade, then tumbling them almost in what appears to be a U formation.
The harder the ground becomes above, the more vigorously the rapids surge forth. “If I didn’t know better, I would say that not only is this creek bed but a few days old, but it is still forming. Even as we speak the ground above shortens and the brook widens. Like something is being revealed”
I follow her gaze, settling my eyes upon the rapidly growing gemstone staircase that rises up and up toward the woods that remain too high for me to look upon, but that I know stand sentient and strong on the precipice. In fact, the split in the crumbling charcoal soil has not only begun to broaden but quiver like a dam about to burst.
The soil is shaking loose over thick, live roots and dropping larger and larger stones that are miraculously beginning to shift in vibrancy and shape.
“What in the Goddess?” Klyesque murmurs as the tiny etching of what appears to be a spiral of shadow - and entryway behind this shallow waterway toward what may be a secluded hollow spawned from rock.
“Is it a tunnel?” I chirp, my eyes fixing on the thick white curtain that splashes and toils, going from bubbling to roaring in the space of only minutes. “Some manner of passageway?”
“I don’t know,” Klyesque hisses, suddenly drawing her blade from its dormant leather sheath and circling in an acute arc as she scans the northern and southern stretch in equal measure. “Perhaps. Or maybe… the False King’s spies have warmed his ears with news of our presence, and he seeks an audience with the girl he believes is mortal. Maybe he has magicked this tiny river knowing it would eventually bite through and he waits just there. On the other end of that swirling darkness behind that veil of water.”
My head jerks toward the left, absently taking note of Klyesque as she steps boldly under the rapids in favor of following the berth of the stream.
On the other side of The Alley, the creek seems to feed into a nearly invisible tear in the earth, just where the opposite wall begins to climb from level ground. The water appears to almost… vanish, leaving not but a flat pillage of a pond in its wake.
The sudden warble of a male’s voice has the pair of us standing back to back and the horses taking a defensive stance. “Pretty maiden fair… what be yer name?”
Another voice, “Do you see her?”
And yet another, “I see her, I see her! Lovely, she is! Like the sun! No, no! Like the moons!”
“What in the Lunar Leviathan?” Klyesque grumbles and more and more squiggly black shapes appear beyond the waterfall.
Both Klyesque and I turn toward the waterfall and Klyesque’s arm shoots out, urging me back a step as she cleverly hides her sword behind the expanse of one leg.
“I’m assuming that was not the book,” she stage whispers, her calculating teal eyes locking on the still pouring rapids and fixing on the excitable shapes that appear to be bouncing ahead of the shadow’s swirl.
Shaking my head, I say, “No. Definitely not.”