The Exiles (Book 1 of the Exiles Series)

Eight

We reached a small clearing in a matter of minutes. Several doors were imbedded inside a hill, the only evidence that people actually inhabited the area. Nobody lingered outside; nobody was awaiting our arrival.

"Where are the people?" I asked Nicole. She didn't seem nearly as surprised as I did. "Probably hunting," she reasoned, which did make sense.

We made our way across the clearing until we reached the rocky cliff where the doors were.

"All right, we're here," Nicole announced. "Where would you like to live? We need to build you a house."

My jaw dropped. "Build me a house?!" I asked Nic, not believing what I'd heard. "How are we gonna build a house in a few hours? That's impossible."

Nicole just grinned like a child who was keeping a secret. "We start from the inside," Nicole answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"And just how do you do that?" I inquired testily. Nic just laughed.

"Here, I brought some supplies to build a door, and then we can dig out the inside," Nicole explained, seeming unfazed, if just a bit amused, by my behavior. "Let's get started. We don't have time for this."

I took my pack and pointed to a clump of gray stone on the cliff. "Okay," I told her. "Is this a good place to start?"

Nicole gave me a small smile. "Of course," she told me, sweetly. She dug in my pack and pulled out the hatchet. "Here, you can start by cutting out a doorway," she told me, handing me the tool. "Make sure it's rectangular, and even. Oh, and it might be useful for the doorway to be tall enough to fit through," she added sarcastically, though her voice held no menace.

I gripped the wooden hilt of the hatchet with sweaty palms and took my first swing at the rock. A wave of pain shot up my arm.

"Nic, it's not giving," I whined. Nicole was already kneeling on the ground, shaping a few wooden boards into the beginning of a door, taking measurements of herself with the wood.

"You have to hit more than once, goofball," Nicole teased. That made sense. With my first swing I had made little damage, so perhaps the stone would start to give if I swung more and harder. It sounded as though I would have to keep trying.

So I swung again. A dull crunching resounded from the stone. Thin cracks began to appear beneath the blade of the hatchet, the stone just beginning to crumble.

"It's starting to work," I told Nicole, continuing with the hatchet. I swung again, and again. More and more cracks began to appear across the stone, like framework falling to pieces. Pebbles flew from the area as I hit.

I swung in waves of two, and then three. Sweat began to run down my neck and back and wetted my armpits. The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, and it got warmer. The first patch of stone fell and littered the nearby ground with dust. Chunks of stone flew past my face and gathered in my hair, causing the dark brown waves to abruptly change to chalky gray.

Nicole seemed to be making as much progress as I was. The boards were beginning to look like a door. She was carving out a doorknob with my knife, a small hole within the wood.

The sun was directly overhead when Nic decided that we should take a break. She set the knife down beside her work and burrowed in the bag for some lunch.

"Talia, it's lunch time. Come and sit down," she told me. I was so exhausted I felt like I was going to collapse. Without objection I sat down beside Nicole on the dusty ground. She unearthed two apples from the sack and handed me one. Even after the first bite I was feeling better.