36. The Thing About Auras
The Thing About Auras
It’s like this mountain wants to eat me. Keep me. Devour me bones and all. Never let me go.
Watery gray light trickles down into the hole, the only light.
Moonlight. The day comes and goes. The ground no longer feels quite so bitterly cold.
A comforting bed of snow surrounds me, and even though logic tells me this is probably a bad thing, the sign of something very grave indeed, I cannot summon the strength to get up, to move from where I sprawl, flat on my back, the wind permanently knocked from me, my body one giant pulsing bruise as I try to breathe.
I blink slowly, groggy, in and out of consciousness as I stare up at that gray eye looking down at me.
My lips are the first thing to move, the only thing I can move, and then only one hoarse word escapes me, small as an ant: “Help.”
It’s a croak, not even fully formed or audible. Just a breathy sigh. Help.
Eventually, I lift my arm and stretch out a hand. My fingers flutter on the air, extending, straining toward that muted light even as I know it’s impossible to reach.
Dimly, I become aware of a burning pain in my arm.
I wince and touch my bicep, fingering the torn fabric, encountering something wet where it pulses and stings.
Pulling back my hand, a bright crimson smear on my fingers stares back at me.
Blood. It must have happened when I fell through the ground into this cold, lightless hole, a shard of ice gouging me on the way down.
I drop my arm, a dead weight at my side.
After some time, I find the strength to move again. Grunting, I push to my feet, my hand going to my arm, clutching it where it hurts, the pump of blood squishing slickly between my fingers and dribbling down to stain the snow below.
Finding my balance, I stumble along. I don’t know how far the space in this pit stretches.
It could go for miles and miles beneath the snow-laden ground above.
My vision cannot extend to the eternal night beyond.
I’m not brave—or stupid—enough to investigate the outlying areas.
Shivering, and not entirely from the cold, I face that throbbing darkness with bone-deep trepidation.
Shadows gather there, seeming to shift and whisper.
I squint, peering into the gloom . . . and it almost feels as though it peers back at me. I swallow thickly.
There’s probably a bear sleeping somewhere within those shadows, or a den of wolves . . . or worse. Diving headlong into that? The unknown. No. Not happening.
Still holding my arm, I drag myself back to where I fell, into the semicircle of moonlight directly beneath the opening above, my window to the world. If someone tossed a rope down or if I had a ladder or wings, I could get out.
If only.
Sinking to the ground, I curl into a ball, trying to control my sudden panicked breathing as I face reality. I can’t get out of this hole myself.
I don’t have wings. I don’t have a hope.
I’m dead.
My definition of alone once again shifts and alters in my mind.
Day after day after day of floating unseen among the living had once been the ultimate aloneness. I didn’t think anything could be worse. Anything more miserable or lonelier than that.
Except this.
This solitude—finding myself at the bottom of a hole, under the snowy rind of a mountain, the silence so loud, a screaming storm in my ears—is beyond imagining.
The feeble light beckons, out of grasp above me. As distant and unreachable as a cloud in the sky. At least for me. Not for a dragon. Not for Tage.
A pained laugh bubbles up in my throat. I left him. Ran away. For a dragon, a fall into a giant sinkhole would be nothing. For me, it is the end.
I think back to that thread of something in Danhy’s voice, the almost guilty look flashing across her face. Had she known this fate waited for me? If not this exactly, not a sinkhole, at least my inevitable death?
Did she know a weak human such as myself did not stand a chance alone in the Crags?
Well. Now I know, too.
Time ticks by in slow drips.
I’m motionless in the pulsing silence, in the vast underground cavern, a hand curled near my face as I study the grayness of that hole, my lips moving with soundless words.
The shadows that edge and swell toward me, keeping me from seeing just how far this hole extends, fuel my overactive imagination. I conjure up all manner of frightening things in the murkiness.
I lose time.
I could have been at the bottom of this hole for hours or days. Unlikely days, logic whispers across my mind. I would be dead by now—starved or frozen.
Actually, I still have supplies . . . food and a flask of water, so starvation is not imminent. I force myself to reach for a strap of my bag and pull it around to the front of my body.
Unfastening the top flap, I withdraw the flask of water, downing a few sips, sighing in relief.
I reach for some of the verdaberries and nuts Danhy packed, chewing on them even though my stomach rebels at the first hit of food in its hollow center.
I chase down the bites with another small sip of water, taking several shallow breaths, commanding my stomach to cease its rioting.
Plugging the stopper back into the flask, I drop my face into the crook of my elbow and let the tears flow, warm and wet, the salty trails leading to my lips.
I know I shouldn’t be expelling the water from my body—not when I only possess a limited amount—but there is no stopping me from this bout of self-pity.
How did I think I could do this and survive? I didn’t make it far before I fell into this pit.
I could still be in Tage’s warm fur bed right now. Tage. What is he doing now?
I don’t know how long I bury my face into my arm, hiding away from the ache of my body, the pain of my heart, from hopelessness. Eventually I doze off.
When I wake again, I’m not alone.
I come to this conclusion with a start at the first sound of a stranger’s voice, so bewildering over the silence.
“Is she alive?”
“Her shoulders are moving.”
Packed snow crunches beneath feet. That detail feels real somehow.
I keep my face buried in my arm as though that might prevent whomever—whatever—from seeing me even though it’s too late. They clearly see me.
“How did she get all the way down here?”
“Fell. Obviously.”
The voices aren’t like any I’ve ever heard.
They’re garbled, like someone speaking with a mouthful of marbles.
I feel their presence, their whispered movements.
They orbit me as though in a dream with a hazy, not-quite-real quality, and I wonder if I’m hearing anything at all, or have I conjured them in my head in order to not feel so alone, not so lost .
. . not so completely fucked at the bottom of this hole?
They continue, overlapping, talking almost conversationally.
I open one eye without lifting my head, peering out at the ground before me . . . at the feet that fill my line of vision and surround me. Shoeless feet. Not human. Not dragon. Long narrow feet with curling claws for toes.
I lurch into a sitting position, gloved hands pressing into the cold ground as my gaze swings around, braced for whatever these creatures have in store for me.
“Ohh, she lives!” one hisses through overlapping rows of fangs.
They circle me, six or seven of them, their sinewed forms moving like fluid, wings held close to their bodies. They didn’t come close to the size of a dragon, but their teeth were bigger, more . . . and their talons long razors, promising brutality and a painful end.
They can be only one thing.
Harpies.
I must have stumbled into their territory. I wince at the memory of Merik’s words. He, a big, strong dragon, never dared to encroach into their territory. But here I am. Human. Weak and stupid, I landed right in their midst.
I thought I would die at the bottom of this hole from the harsh elements, forgotten, my bones lost to the ravage of time beneath layers and layers of snow, beneath a mountain, lost to the Crags. Generations would pass and I would forever be a part of these mountains even when no one remembers me.
Tage would still be alive because . . . dragon. Unless killed, they lived a long, long time.
I would be but a dim moment in the long stretch of days, years, behind him. Perhaps he will find his mate. If not Danhy, then someone else. Another dragon. Or a lover in Penterra. Someone who deserves him as much as he deserves love and partnership. I want that for him. I do.
“Go on then,” I encourage. “Do your worst.” Only I hope it doesn’t hurt. I eye the rows of razor-sharp teeth they boast and wonder if humans are part of their diet.
“What are you doing on your own out here?” one of them asks curiously with a tip to her head that sends long tangles of hair shaking to her waist.
I go for honesty. “I was trying to get home.”
“Home where?”
They continue circling me, moving like serpents with me, a mouse, in their orbit.
“The Borderlands,” I answer.
“The Borderlands,” they chitter.
“What do you want to go there for?” Their features are human in appearance, only more angular, with sunken cheekbones and slashing lines that scream predator. Their lips protrude and peel back from their excessive teeth as they speak. “Didn’t think they like your kind very much down there.”
“My kind? Where else would I belong? I have family in the Borg.”
“Really?” They all exchange looks as though this is the most interesting tidbit to drop in their ears in a long while. “You have family there? You blend in among the population? Well, then. You must be very, very skilled. Good for you. Except, how is it you found your way into our nest?”
Their nest? So they live beneath ground and not in caves as dragons do. Clever. I doubt anyone would ever find them. Unless they were unlucky enough to fall through a sinkhole like me.
“Totally accidental,” I assure them.