Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Colton heard two things as he winged his way back to Jo in the growing dark: first her laughter, and then, almost immediately afterward, her scream.
His chimera gave a wordless yell of panic and put on a burst of speed that brought them down low over the snowy earth.
On his first pass, he couldn't find her at all: on his second, he saw the path they'd been stomping down, and followed it to…
…nothingness. It simply stopped in darkness.
Colton landed hard, shifted to human, and also let out a yell as the ground beneath him collapsed. Snow and earth and ice rained down with him as he fell—slid—for what felt like an incredibly long distance, then hit open air for a heartbeat before crashing to a surface again.
It was absolutely and phenomenally dark, but Jo's voice came out of that darkness: "Colton?"
"Jo! Are you all right?" He jolted to his feet like he could see, but of course, he couldn't. "Jo?"
"I'm here. Don't move." She sounded close by and supernaturally calm. "Colton, do you see better in the dark than regular humans do?"
"A little bit, but—I mean, yes. As a chimera, yes. Quite a lot better."
"I need you to stay still, and shift," she said, still very, very calmly.
"I don't know if we're in a permafrost hole, or a cave system, or…
what…but if it's a cave system there could be pits anywhere and I would prefer not to fall into one.
This," she added still in that surreally calm voice, "has been a lot of adventure.
I'm ready to go home and have zero adventure for, like… ever."
"Me too," Colton said with feeling. "I'll shift, but…are you okay?"
"I think every single part of me is bruised," she said steadily.
"But nothing's broken. I slid a long way and ran into a rock, which is currently my best friend.
By which I mean, I'm not letting go of it until either you can tell me if there are any pits, or until the sun rises and sheds just the smallest bit of light on the subject down here. Are you okay?"
"I think so. Bruised," he agreed. "I free-fell for a second there. You might have taken the sliding material with you. Okay, I'm going to shift. Give me a minute or two and then wave? My eyes will pick up the motion better than stillness."
"You betcha," Jo said with that same eerie calm.
Colton's chimera whispered, Our mate is so brave, in genuine awe, and Colton nodded, although he hoped Jo was being brave and calm and not in shock. "I'm shifting. Let me have a look around."
Even in chimera form, it took long seconds for his eyes to adjust enough to pick up any light at all.
What there was came from behind them, down the hole they'd both fallen through, but it was the space between himself and Jo that Colton was most worried about right now.
Finally, slowly, he began to pick out details: a sloped rocky floor, and the hint of a shadowed ceiling above him.
Then something moved, drawing all his attention, and he realized it was Jo, lying ten or twelve feet away across the sloped floor.
To the best of his ability to tell, there were no holes between him and her.
The fact that she was there, and not at the bottom of a different hole, suggested he was right.
Relief made him nearly dizzy and he shifted back to human.
"I can see you. Ten, maybe fifteen feet away.
No pits that I can see. I'm going to shift back to my chimera form and lie on my belly and creep toward you, all right?
And then if I can see enough beyond you to turn around, I'll do that right next to you and have a look around from that direction. "
"Okay. I can almost see you, I think. Like a shadow against the shadows."
"Yeah." Warmth filled his voice, because that sounded so accurate.
"That's how I see you, too. Okay, here goes.
" He did as he'd said, inching forward on his belly, testing the floor with big paws until he'd crept all the way past Jo into absolute blackness.
The floor extended at least that far, though, so he scooted backward, testing to both sides with his lashing tail, and finally turned to lie right next to her and shift back to human.
"No pits," he whispered, and Jo let go of her rock to grab onto him and hold on, shaking.
Colton wrapped his arms around her and held on just as hard, finally mumbling, "You're absolutely right. Zero adventure going forward. Most boring lives ever, here we come."
"Sounds amazing."
For a minute neither of them said anything else.
Then Colton reached out to see if he could scrabble for stones in the dark, and found a handful of tiny ones.
He started rolling them across the floor, listening for any sudden changes in pitch that suggested they'd found a hole.
There weren't any, and he sighed in relief, buried his nose in Jo's shoulder, and after a minute, said, "I'm gonna change into a chimera again and see if I can make sure there aren't any pits, now that I'm facing what light there is. "
"Okay." Jo shivered when he shifted, but said, "I guess this is one way to get out of the weather for the night."
Colton roar-laughed right next to her, and she whistled. "Wow that's a big sound from right up close. Anything?"
He shook his head, knowing she couldn't see it but hoping she might feel it, and stayed a chimera for several minutes, intently studying the space they were in with what little light there was fading away.
When he shifted back it was to say, "It looks like a cave of some kind.
I can't see behind us at all, but right here it looks like the ground is solid and we've got enough head room to stand up, if we need to.
There's a slope where we fell in, although I think it's less slope-y than it was, after me hitting it. How did…what happened?"
"The ground just gave way," Jo said with a shrug. "You'd think with the winter it would have been frozen solid enough, but I must have hit a patch of permafrost that thawed enough to thin the ground, and my weight was enough to take it out."
"I didn't know there was permafrost this far south."
"It's intermittent. We've had a couple bison get stuck in it, every once in a while." She sounded less calm now, and more normal. "Did I mention this was enough adventure?"
Colton chuckled. "Yeah. So that tent. Are you familiar enough with it to pitch it in total dark?"
"Probably, but we've got the tea lights, too.
" Now Jo sounded chagrined, and Colton, in sympathetic chagrin himself, put his face in his hand as Jo muttered, "Which would have taken a lot of the drama out of you creeping around, if I'd thought of it.
I swear I didn't until you mentioned the tent, though. "
"Neither did I," Colton said into his hand. "I was very focused on it being dark and being careful. I've got my phone, too. It's probably warm enough that I could use the flashlight on it."
Jo snickered. "Well, aren't we Mr and Mrs Dramatic. We had all these modern tools and immediately reverted to cavemen."
"Literally," Colton said, more cheerful now. "Okay, let's find the bag with the lights and set up the tent. I'm sure I can get us out of here in the morning, but there doesn't seem to be much point right now, does there? Like you said, this keeps us out of the weather."
Together they sat up, Jo groaning with stiffness from her fall and Colton trying not to make a big deal of the fact that his shifting back and forth had pretty well taken care of any bruises he'd obtained.
It took a few tries to find the right bag, but it was astonishing how much less stressful the cave was once the tiny lights pushed back the dark a little.
Jo raised one, looking around, but it didn't give off enough light to even reach the walls, so she put it back on the floor and they pitched the tent with practiced efficiency by now.
Within a few minutes, they were able to crawl inside, bringing the lights with them.
They seemed brighter with the orange walls to reflect off, and Colton winced he finally noticed a bruise along Jo's cheek. "You sure you're okay?"
She made a face. "I'm sure I'd be a lot less okay if I hadn't had a hat and a scarf and a hood wrapped around my face when I fell. Yeah, honestly, I'm mostly fine. I could sleep for a week, but yeah."
"Food first," Colton said, scrounging through the bags to find the last of the energy bars. "You have them."
"We'll share," Jo said firmly. "I'm sure it takes a lot of energy to shift back and forth, and even if it doesn't, a chimera that size must need a hell of a lot of calories."
We can hunt a buffalo tomorrow, his chimera suggested with enough glee to make Colton chuckle. "No buffalo hunting," he said aloud. "It would be hard to explain, or get blamed on wolves. We'll be back to regular meals tomorrow."
The chimera settled down with a grumpy harumph and Colton found Jo looking at him with a soft, delighted smile. "Were you talking to your chimera right then? Thank you for letting me hear. I'd love to know what he says."
"Mostly how brave and beautiful and clever you are, with a side of complaining about how I won't let him hunt buffalo. Seriously!" Colton said at Jo's dubious expression. "He thinks you're utterly wonderful. He is, of course, right."
She smiled and shook her head, obviously pleased if somewhat skeptical. "I'm not sure about that. I'm tired, banged up, scared, and—"
"Amazingly calm under pressure, prepared, smart, determined, and incredibly impressive," Colton finished. "I've never heard anybody as calm as you were when I fell down in here, except maybe you when the plane was going down."
"I would be a huge fan of nobody going down anymore," Jo said, and then even in the limited light of the tea candles, blushed such a furious hot red that it contrasted with her hair.
Colton tried, for a second, not to laugh.
Then it burst out of him, a high-pitched snort that escaped mostly through his nose and rendered him absolutely helpless with tears of laughter.
He could feel his own face turning nearly as red as Jo's as she buried it in her hands and also began to giggle, if more quietly and with more embarrassment.
Eventually she wheezed, "That came out wrong," which for some reason set Colton off all over again.
He finally reached over to pull her into his arms, warm and strong and solid, and, still snickering, kissed her hair. "I know what you meant, although I'd like to voice a strong objection to what you actually said."
"Yes, no, me too, I mean—oh, God." Jo started laughing again and hid her face in his chest. "Oh my God. I think I might be over-tired and over-stressed, Colton. It wasn't that funny."
"It was pretty funny," he said with a grin, but sighed and snuggled her closer as he spoke more quietly.
"That said, yeah. It's been a hell of a three days.
But it'll all be over tomorrow, and yet also, somehow, amazingly, it'll all start for real tomorrow.
I'm coming home to meet the parents," he murmured, now smiling. "If you're okay with that."
"Well, I'm sure not leaving you on the doorstep after all this!
And I think it's already started," Jo added thoughtfully.
"Us, I mean. I think this is as real as it gets.
All of this is…yeah. Very real. It'll be complicated for a while, but we're really already on the path that's going to take us… everywhere, together. Aren't we?"
"We are," Colton whispered. "God, how lucky am I to have found you?"
"Is it luck, or is it fate? I mean, didn't we kind of have to find each other?"
"You know, when you put it like that…yeah, we obviously did. I'm lucky anyway," Colton said, and Jo gave a happy sigh against his chest.
"Me too. I'm lucky too." She fell silent, and after a few minutes Colton realized she'd also fallen asleep.
He couldn't blame her, and with a bit of wrangling got a couple of blankets over them, at least, and fell asleep himself.
Sometime in the night they managed to crawl into the much-warmer sleeping bag, but he was barely conscious for that, and when morning rolled around, he was fairly sure it was his bladder more than any change in the light that told him he needed to wake up.
He crawled out, and, shivering, did his business on the downhill slope—which, he realized, he could almost see, even as a human.
A shaft of dull light fell through the hole they'd made, so he guessed it was daytime as he crawled back to the tent, where Jo was just then sitting up with a bleary expression.
"Morning already?"
"I think so. It's darkest grey out there instead of pitchest black."
"Mmkay. We should pack up and get out of here before…" She shrugged sleepily. "Before later comes."
"Good plan." After she went out to do her own business, they folded everything up, moved the lights out of the tent, and packed it, too. Colton took a light and walked himself to the entrance hole they'd made, peering up through it.
It was snowing out there, light but steady; flakes drifted down the hole onto his face, and he wiped them away with a smile as he turned back toward Jo. "I'm not sure what the best way to get out is. I'd been thinking I could jump out, but the hole's not big enough."
"How high up is it? It felt like I fell about a thousand feet, but it was dark and I was scared."
"Twelve or fifteen, I'd say. I can almost reach it, honestly. Maybe I can knock the hole bigger." He put the light down and shifted, then stood up on his back feet to bat at the hole above.
Jo, behind him, said, "Jesus Christ, Colton," with a laugh, and he dropped to turn and look at her in confusion.
"You're twelve feet tall! At least ten! And those wings! You! Just! Big! So big!"
Well, yes, his chimera said, confused. That's why I thought I should try…?
Humans don't usually see things that are twice their height, Colton said in amusement. It's a little overwhelming if you're not expecting it.
Oh. The chimera shrugged it away as human peculiarity. What're those?
What're what?
Even as Colton asked, the chimera padded over to the wall and stood up again, nearly putting its nose against the wall. Colton's eyes crossed, or felt like they did, from within the chimera's mind, but after a moment he saw what the chimera was seeing. Wait, back up!
It dropped to all fours and moved back, although Colton shifted to human as he did, and picked up one of the tea lights to shine it on the wall. "Oh my God. Jo. Jolene."
"What?" She rose, shouldering the tent bag, and came to his side to look up at the wall. "Oh my God. Is that what I think it is?"
"Pictographs," Colton whispered. "This cave has paintings."