The Hidden Crystal

Chapter 6

After the longest, most miserable night of Iris' life, morning dawned.

She opened her eyes and rested her chin on her knees, listening to the chatter of birds awakening and the rumbling of her stomach. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying until she ran out of tears, and her dress was still muddy and damp. She'd been too cold and frightened to sleep.

But with the sunrise came warmth, and as her shivering subsided and the graying sky turned to blue, a calm resignation settled over her.

The forest was actually very pretty in the daylight. Thick, gnarled, twisted tree trunks crowded each other for room on the forest floor at her level, far below the trees reaching their limbs over the edge of the cliff above. Bright green leaves knocked loose by the storm carpeted the mossy ground. Vines wound around a tree here or there, climbing trunks to wrap around branches and hang back down to the earth. Flowers bloomed in the patches of sunlight filtering through gaps in the canopy. Mushrooms crowded around the roots weaving in and out of the mud.

If those were edible mushrooms, she could satisfy her hunger somewhat while she gathered her bearings.

She stood stiffly, bracing herself for the pain in her side, but it was only a twinge now. Her rigid muscles loosened after hours of remaining stationary as she hobbled toward the mushrooms, and her mind awoke gradually from the numbness that had settled in over the night.

Her priorities were food, water, and shelter.

Rounded, tan mushroom caps intermingled with flatter, slightly redder caps under the shade of an old oak tree. She almost smiled. It was just like the lesson Jonah taught her years ago, when she was the youngest orphan following the oldest everywhere.

But that reminded her of Kayla, and any hope of a smile vanished.

She picked the rounded caps and left the flatter ones alone.

The rising sun allowed her to locate the cardinal directions as she ate her meager breakfast. To the east was the cliff face. She'd kept the cliff on her right and the treeline on her left yesterday, so she'd traveled north. Since she hadn't crossed the river, that gave her a rough idea of her position when she pictured the old maps in the dog-eared textbooks she'd studied. The river's widest point was west of town, and then it curved north, cutting across the main road to the capital. A bridge crossed it at some point.

Home was southeast.

But she couldn't climb the cliff, and the battleground and the mage were in that direction, anyway, so east was out.

The castle and the mage's school were in the capital to the northeast, which meant the army and the mage would return there eventually.

North was out, too.

To the west, beyond the forest, were snow-capped mountain peaks. Dragons lived somewhere in those mountains.

She turned south and began to walk.

She watched the cliff as she traveled, but she couldn't find the spot where she had tumbled into this valley. The rain had washed away all traces. She couldn't find her shoes, either. They were up above or buried in mud.

That meant nobody could track her here. Some small relief, but she still hugged the treeline as she walked. Dragons wouldn't be looking for footprints in the mud.

The scenery was ever changing and ever the same. She occupied her mind by trying to recall the names of the trees, plants, and mushrooms she passed. It had been a long time since her last camping trip with Jonah, but she remembered more than she expected.

She hadn't thought about him in a while. She missed him.

She missed Kayla. And Father John, and Fred, and Ginger, and...