The Fairy Whisperers

A rock and a hard place

Things were going well. I was carrying Alice on my back and we were making good progress. Part of me wished we had taken the whole journey this way. I knew she would be well-rested by now, but she didn't seem eager to do her walking for herself.

We got to the really steep part of the mountain,  and we were about halfway up. Alice assured me that the cave would not be all the way at the peak so we weren't far now. I told her to hold on as tight as she could and began scaling the side of the rocks. Climbing mountains was not my area of expertise, of course, I knew how because it was part of my training. But I was more than a little anxious, especially with Alice on my back. I tried not to think too much about losing my grip and falling backward and crushing her under my weight. But I still ended up checking twice to make sure that I had a strong hold on solid rock with every move.

Despite my cautiousness, I accidentally sliced my hand open trying to grip a sharp rock. I cried out from the searing pain and let go. Alice let out a terrified squeal as her legs and arms clamped tighter around me. We swayed backward and I grabbed onto the rock again biting back the pain as it dug into my wound. I dug my claws in on the other side to relieve the pressure on my injured hand.

"It's fine, it's fine," I said. "I just got a little cut."

I had only said that to keep her calm. The injury was not debilitating but blood was flowing rapidly from the gash across my palm and running into my fur. But she looked over my shoulder to see for herself.

"That is not a little cut, Jane!" she screamed.

"I'm ok, really. The worst thing either of us can do right now is panic," I told her. We just had to keep moving.
"I won't be able to carry us both. You're going to have to maneuver your way onto the cliff and we can climb the rest of the way side by side."

I felt her breath quicken and her swallow anxiously. But then her right leg loosed from around my hips, and she tested a few rocks nearby for a steady hold.

"Try to be careful but confident, don't be scared."

"I'm not," she said proudly, even though I could feel the tensions in her muscles and her heart racing through her fur. But sometimes faking it worked just as well. So I didn't say anything else as she worked herself free from me and onto the rock one limb at a time.

If I remember correctly, we had had a few rock climbing lessons in the interemediate training before careers were chosen. In theory, she should know the basics. I would not give her any more instruction unless she was doing something really crazy, or that would just make her more anxious.

But she did very well. We climbed in sync, matching each other's pace and movements until we got to a flat part of the cliff. We climbed onto it to rest. I took a look at my hand. Dirt and grit had built up in the wound and had helped stop the bleeding but it was still stinging and throbbing very badly. There were clumps of dry, dirty blood in my fur too. This would have been a good time for a little dribble of water. There was really no point cleaning the wound if I would be using it to climb again in a few minutes anyway. I dusted off some of the grime as best I could.

"How much further?" I said to Alice. She looked at me sympathetically, and I tried to smile to make her feel better.

"Just to there. We're almost there." She was pointing at another flat part not much further up the cliff, similar to the one we were on but wider.

As I was racking my brain thinking if there was any easier way to get down, I once again questioned our reasons for being up here in the first place.  I think somewhere along the way I had decided to assume that she had been here before. But she looked terrified on the rock, there was no way she had made this climb before.

"Alice, how do you know where this place is? I'm not very good at maps, but it doesn't look to me like there's a cave on there."

"When my grandmother searched on these hills too she found the cave. Obviously she was a hunter so it wasn't too hard for her, just like it wouldn't have been for you if you didn't have me slowing you down. But she couldn't find the horn. The legend says that only the chosen one will be able to find and remove it from the rock where it lies. Every generation, a few, like my grandmother try but no one ever finds it, so everyone thinks it's just a myth. But I know in my heart that it's real. I begged her to give me exact directions so that one day I could make the journey myself."

I nodded. Her grandmother must have warned about the journey and that was why she had thought to find someone big and strong to help. Her certainty was unwavering but I became certain as well that we would have no more luck than her grandmother had. I only hoped she wouldn't be too disheartened when we found nothing but hollow rock up there.