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77.
Next day, as they headed back toward the river, they were going up a hill when Maryan cried out: “Over here!”
He hurried to catch up with her.
She stood on the crest of the hill among big tree trunks, pointing to a dark shadowy blur. “A cave!”
He came close. “Sure enough. Did you look inside?”
“I just peeked. Nothing came out to bite me. But I think I’ll let you lead.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly as he bent low to enter the cave.
The opening was hidden behind long sheets of moss in the shade of wide pine trees. If it was gloomy around the outside, it was almost pitch dark inside. Alex sniffed for any sign of recent animal habitation but caught only a tiny stale odor like burned wax, very faint. He backed out of the cave, eyeballing it and its surroundings while holding his spear up ready to defend himself and her.
“Hang on a moment,” Maryan said. She pulled up some dry moss and wrapped it around a stick. From one of their pouches, she produced a foul-smelling gob of animal fat, which she smeared around the moss in a circle, patting it down around the stick. Carefully, from their fire bowl, she sit the moss on fire. The fat caught on fire, then smoldered with a greasy smell. “Here you go.”
They traded, he taking the torch and she his spear. “Cover my back,” he whispered.
He took the torch and carefully stepped into the cave. The light was faint, and it took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust. The cave had a narrow mouth that opened into a round room about ten feet in diameter. He had a stoop slightly to enter. The round room seemed to have been formed from the earth between several huge boulders whose rough surfaces protruded from sandstone walls. Between the boulders, huge trees had grown outside, and their roots hung down into the cave. Torchlight made shadows dance hideously among the hanging roots. Maryan crowded in behind him as Alex examined the cave. He smelled the smoky, waxy smell again, and waved the torch over a dark mound in the middle of the cave.
“A table,” she said.
“An altar,” he guessed. Holding the torch closer, he saw the clear outline of bleached ribs from some small animal, perhaps a cat. He reached out to touch it, and its grayish flesh and fur disintegrated in the wind as his hand moved. He never felt a thing. “This place has been abandoned for a long time,” he said.
“Shine the light around the edges of the altar,” she said quietly, full of tension.
The torch was fading, and he made it flare up in rings of orange embers in the still air as he moved it. They made out the outline of what looked like a man-made table, with edges and corners. That confirmed what they had thought—this had been a homestead or a place of worship long ago. So why had it been abandoned?
A noise outside made them shrink back in the cave. Alex slapped the torch against the wall, and it sputtered out while sparks fell. The air was full of roiling smoke and a fatty burnt stink. Hearts beating rapidly, they listened to what sounded like birdcalls—or were they creatures calling to one another in some owl code barely audible to the human ear?
Maryan gripped his arm.
He felt his heart beating in his neck.
“There it is again,” she said.
He heard that owl sound again.
“People,” she said. “I don’t think that’s natural.”
His skin prickled with fear. “We figured someone might be tracking us,” he said. “Now we really have to watch every step.”
“We can stay here until we die of hunger and thirst.”
He bit his lip and thought. “No. Let’s make a go for it before they find us. This cave doesn’t look like anyone has been here in a long time, but we could rot here.”
“Let’s go,” she said, pinching his arm and pulling him along out of the cave. He heard no sounds of pursuit as they jogged as softly as possible, trying to put distance between themselves and the hidden place.
They headed back toward the city wall at the other end of the cylinder. After a half hour, they paused on a high hill to take stock. They spent several minutes standing about, bent over, gasping for breath. Alex felt almost nauseous from the fear, the adrenalin, the sudden and continuous exertion. They stood on a high ledge, overlooking a lake below. The lake water glowed dark greenish-blue and was still except here and there where a gust of wind stirred up a tiny whitecap. At either end, a river attached itself, coming out of the forest and disappearing back into it.
“Nobody after us,” she said, standing at the edge of the hill. Overhead, in the gravity-free core of the cylinder, white and gray clouds hung frozen in a gigantic swirl like galaxies of mist. She was gasping for breath, and sweat ran down her face. She looked out over the wide swath of forest and plains behind her. The landscape was wreathed in silent fog that seemed almost motionless except for faint stirrings of mist.
He stepped toward her, to embrace her.
“Honey, I—“ she started to say, raising her arms to embrace him.
Just past his head, he heard a sharp whipping sound, a whistle, and a ripping sound. At the same time, he watched her face freeze in surprise. Her eyes grew wide, and her hands slowly moved downward as she lowered her arms.
In the next second, he began to understand what the noises were: a large arrow flying past his ear, and the sound of flesh tearing as it cut through her torso, high up and to the left, penetrating the delicate furrows of her rib cage.
His breath escaped in a gasp as he prepared to shout, and he stepped forward like in a dream, a horrible dream, a nightmare. He was moving as if underwater.
She stood stiffly, staring straight past him with huge eyes. Her jaw muscles moved as if she were trying to say something. In seconds, her eyes grew glazed. Stiffly at first, then limply, she toppled over. As she did so, she spun lightly halfway around. The huge arrow protruded from her back, and blood pumped in spurts from the arrow’s entry and exit points.
Alex moved forward, raising his hands as if to catch her, while he knew it was all over and he never would. A shout caught in the pit of his throat, unable to get out.
She fell off the cliff, head down, feet up, with her arms still at her sides. He got to the edge just in time to catch one last glimpse of her as she fell into the water some 40 or 60 feet below. The water parted around her head, and he caught one last view of her face, which looked almost restful now, though her eyes were wide open, but unseeing. She landed on her back. Her head, then her torso, and finally her long legs disappeared, and the water closed like the neck of a foamy sack over her feet. She was gone.
Alex thought of diving after her, but thought it wouldn’t help if he broke his neck on a submerged rock. There was a roundabout way down, and he started that way. He ran toward one side of the cliff edge, where a narrow trail seemed to lead down.
As he ran, he heard a sound to his right.
A mean, ominous, triumphant laugh.
He glanced to his right and saw the glittering eyes and teeth of Nizin from behind a screen of leaves and twigs, which Nizin was spreading apart with both hands. The bow with which he’d shot Maryan was clearly visible, down to the shaving marks in its sapling skin and the knots in its hide string.
“You!” Alex screeched. “You! I’ll deal with you!” He did not stop moving, thinking only of whatever vague hope there might yet be of finding and rescuing Maryan.
Nizin laughed, some 50 feet away.
Alex suppressed his rage and the urge to run toward Nizin. Instead, he plunged over the edge of the embankment and started down a natural flight of rocks and boulders interspersed with mossy, soft damp soil.
Seconds counted. If he could get to her now—
His last view was of the still-rippling muddy blue-green water. A sharp stone hit him on the left side of the head and he winked out with a sickening, grinding flash of light on damaged skull-bone. His last fading thought was not about himself, but that he had now surely forever lost the woman he loved.
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