Chasing Sparks

Chapter 9.2

It was fully dark by the time she took her first steps into the cave, an arrow nocked and ready in her bow. She looked carefully for any movement on either side. Nothing, so she began descending deeper into the tunnel, treading carefully to avoid the broken bones on the floor.

She paused after every few steps, listening intently for any noise or sound from within. A bat suddenly screeched overhead and flew past. Celie ducked and drew her bow, ready to fire at anything that moved towards her. But nothing came. The only sound was the pounding of her heart inside her chest.

Slowly she released the tension in the bow and returned to creeping slowly down the tunnel. As she descended deeper, she could see that the tunnel opened up at the end into a larger space but she couldn’t yet see if anything was inside.

As she reached the end, she got down on her belly and peered into the cavern, her eyes barely above the level of the ground. If the Skree saw her head it might mistake her heat signature for a rat or some other kind of vermin.

The cavern appeared empty, however. She couldn’t quite be sure, as she was unable to see into every nook and cranny from her current position, but nothing moved in plain sight.

Getting slowly back to her feet, she made her way forward and noticed eight large stones arranged in a kind of circle around another larger stone. The fact that there were eight stones made her uncomfortable as she had only seen six Skree tracks over the last day. But it didn’t change anything, she still needed to find the final one of her sister’s killers.

As she moved into the centre of the cavern, she began to realise that wherever the missing Skree was, it wasn’t here. Celie stepped carefully amongst the rubbish strewn about the floor but saw no other caves joining the main cavern. Nor did she see any tunnels leading deeper into the cliff face. Four Skree had definitely come in here, but only three had left. The smallest one was missing and it had to have gone somewhere.

Taking her time, she slowly picked through the debris lying on the floor, careful not to make a sound as she did so. As she silently moved a dirty blanket to one side she noticed some scratch marks on the ground beneath it. The marks stopped adjacent to a big slab of rock, around six feet in length and at least a foot thick resting up against the cavern wall. Cearly, the slab had been moved recently.

Celie reasoned it must be covering a hole or tunnel of some kind. It was the only explanation of where the remaining Skree could be. She then braced herself as best she could against the cave wall and pushed the slab with her feet. She strained as hard as she could but the rock didn’t so much as budge. After another failed attempt, Celie gave up and slumped on the floor.

Being unable to move the slab left only one other option, sit and wait for the Skree that went in there to come back out. Of course, she didn’t know that the Skree would ever come back out. For all she knew, the rock uncovered a tunnel that led further into the rock face and came out at some other point in the woods. But what other option did she have? If she ever wanted to find this Skree, her best chance was to sit and wait. So she settled herself as comfortably as she could into one of the corners and resolved to stay until the Skree showed up.

As she crouched in the darkness, time began to drag. The pain of the last day bubbling up repeatedly only for Celie to push it back down and bring her attention back to looking purely at the slab of rock.

And there she stayed, waiting patiently, finding it harder and harder to suppress the grief inside. At intermittent intervals she walked quietly around the cavern to stretch her muscles and distract her mind from the pain but other than that she just sat and stared.

But as she sat in the dark, no matter how hard she tried, thoughts of her sister kept returning, along with an intense feeling of rage. The urge to scream was palpable and Celie knew she needed to find this final Skree soon or she would go crazy.