After the longest, most miserable night of Iris’ life, morning dawned.
She opened her eyes and rested her chin on her knees, listening to the chatter of birds awakening and the rumbling of her stomach. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying until she ran out of tears, and her dress was still muddy and damp. She’d been too cold and frightened to sleep.
But with the sunrise came warmth, and as her shivering subsided and the graying sky turned to blue, a calm resignation settled over her.
The forest was actually very pretty in the daylight. Thick, gnarled, twisted tree trunks crowded each other for room on the forest floor at her level, far below the trees reaching their limbs over the edge of the cliff above. Bright green leaves knocked loose by the storm carpeted the mossy ground. Vines wound around a tree here or there, climbing trunks to wrap around branches and hang back down to the earth. Flowers bloomed in the patches of sunlight filtering through gaps in the canopy. Mushrooms crowded around the roots weaving in and out of the mud.
If those were edible mushrooms, she could satisfy her hunger somewhat while she gathered her bearings.
She stood stiffly, bracing herself for the pain in her side, but it was only a twinge now. Her rigid muscles loosened after hours of remaining stationary as she hobbled toward the mushrooms, and her mind awoke gradually from the numbness that had settled in over the night.
Her priorities were food, water, and shelter.
Rounded, tan mushroom caps intermingled with flatter, slightly redder caps under the shade of an old oak tree. She almost smiled. It was just like the lesson Jonah taught her years ago, when she was the youngest orphan following the oldest everywhere.
But that reminded her of Kayla, and any hope of a smile vanished.
She picked the rounded caps and left the flatter ones alone.
The rising sun allowed her to locate the cardinal directions as she ate her meager breakfast. To the east was the cliff face. She’d kept the cliff on her right and the treeline on her left yesterday, so she’d traveled north. Since she hadn’t crossed the river, that gave her a rough idea of her position when she pictured the old maps in the dog-eared textbooks she’d studied. The river’s widest point was west of town, and then it curved north, cutting across the main road to the capital. A bridge crossed it at some point.
Home was southeast.
But she couldn’t climb the cliff, and the battleground and the mage were in that direction, anyway, so east was out.
The castle and the mage’s school were in the capital to the northeast, which meant the army and the mage would return there eventually.
North was out, too.
To the west, beyond the forest, were snow-capped mountain peaks. Dragons lived somewhere in those mountains.
She turned south and began to walk.
She watched the cliff as she traveled, but she couldn’t find the spot where she had tumbled into this valley. The rain had washed away all traces. She couldn’t find her shoes, either. They were up above or buried in mud.
That meant nobody could track her here. Some small relief, but she still hugged the treeline as she walked. Dragons wouldn’t be looking for footprints in the mud.
The scenery was ever changing and ever the same. She occupied her mind by trying to recall the names of the trees, plants, and mushrooms she passed. It had been a long time since her last camping trip with Jonah, but she remembered more than she expected.
She hadn’t thought about him in a while. She missed him.
She missed Kayla. And Father John, and Fred, and Ginger, and…
Iris had never been alone before.
Midday came, and she stopped for a break and more mushrooms. She looked up at the sky to check her position, and her heart sank. The cliff had a gradual curve she didn’t notice. Now, she was facing directly west.
The mountains were a long distance away. It was highly unlikely she would reach the home of the dragons anytime soon. And there was always the possibility this valley was a bowl completely surrounded by the cliff.
Neither thought brought her much comfort.
She had no choice. Her mouth was parched, and the moisture from the mushrooms wasn’t enough. She had to find water.
She began to walk again.
When night fell, she was still facing west, but at least she was dry when she curled up under the trees. The sun had dried her muddy dress to her back. Jonah had taught her out to light a fire, but she didn’t dare try for fear of the smoke giving her away. The warmth of a summer evening had returned, though, so she wasn’t too uncomfortable. And the mossy forest floor was only slightly harder than her thin mattress at the church.
Although she was so tired, she would have fallen asleep on bare rock.
The next morning brought more of the same. She walked because she had to, because she didn’t know what else to do. She had nothing to run to, only to run from, and the thought of being found terrified her and kept her moving. Even though that meant leaving everyone and everything she knew and loved behind.
But that was always the plan, wasn’t it?
They all moved away. One day, Jonah gave her a hug, told her to listen to Father John, and left. Exploring the forest near home and collecting plants and mushrooms for the town grocer didn’t satisfy him anymore. Their camping trips came to an end, and eventually, his letters stopped coming, too.
One by one, they always left.
Many of them moved away. A few stayed. She would wave to them in the marketplace, the orphaned children who grew up to be adults with families of their own.
That was supposed to be what happened to her.
She wasn’t supposed to be lost in a forest far from home, wearing a magical amulet she didn’t know how to use, running from a mage who struck terror into her heart with a single frigid glance.
She hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye.
All she could do was continue walking, staring miserably down at the ground, wondering if she would ever make it out of this mess or if she would die here in the wilderness.
But midday, she finally heard running water.
Her steps quickened, and her gaze lifted from her dirty bare feet toward the sound. It got louder and louder until she finally saw it: a waterfall, spilling over the cliff into a vast lake, the far bank barely visible from where she stood. There wasn’t a river exiting the lake, not one that she could see, anyway. It was either north, just out of sight, or underground.
To the west, far beyond the waterfall, she could just make out the shadow of the mountains.
That made her stop at the treeline—that and the wide clearing surrounding the lake on all sides. There would be no hiding once she left the trees. If dragons flew overhead, they would see her. Maybe they even landed here and used this lake. There was enough room on the bank for a dragon to land.
But she was so thirsty.
She crept toward the cliff, hoping the shadows from the shifting sun hid her a little as she inched toward the water. Dirt gave way to rock. The crashing water hid all other sounds, making her even more nervous, but that water meant life, too.
She kept scanning the skies. Nothing. Not even a cloud.
But when she felt the droplets on her shoulder, the spray from the waterfall tempting her in, she threw caution to the wind. She ran the last few feet, falling on her knees to catch the water in her cupped hands and bring it eagerly to her chapped lips.
The fear didn’t leave her, though. It couldn’t. She paused every few gulps to glance around and up, and on one of those surveillances, she glimpsed an opening in the rocks behind the waterfall.
A thin line of slippery stones led from the bank to the opening.
She drank her fill and washed her face, then she glanced up at the sky and back at the shadows behind the waterfall. The stones were almost like a path…
What did she have to lose?
She picked her way carefully across the wet rocks, smooth under her feet, sharp under her fingers where she clutched at the cliff side. Water misted her hair and beaded on her skin as she neared the opening, and she realized it was much larger than she thought.
Large enough for a dragon.
She froze. Her fingers turned white as her grip tightened on the rocks.
Dragons lived in caves.
This wasn’t a mountain, but it was close to the mountains. And the waterfall formed a perfect curtain to hide a cave. To hide a dragon.
Or to hide her, if nobody else was there.
Water trickled in rivulets down her face and arms, dripping from her chin and elbows as she wavered. She had to decide. She couldn’t stand here forever, exposed to the sky and in danger of slipping and falling into the lake. If that was a dragon cave, who knew what lurked within the dark waters behind her?
Maybe it had been a dragon’s lair in years gone by, but it had been abandoned. There was no way of knowing without going inside.
She took a deep breath and another step, then another, continuing along the slick path until she stepped onto the solid rock of the cave floor. The crashing of the waterfall behind her made it hard to hear anything else as she squinted into the darkness. She swallowed nervously and took a few cautious steps inside.
Empty. Silence. The soft padding of her footsteps and an occasional drip of water deeper within.
“Hello?”
Her voice echoed away, around, and back. Nobody answered.
One night. She would stay one night, and then she would leave, she decided. One night with a solid roof over her head, and she could even light a campfire, too. Nobody would see the smoke inside the cave.
She made her way back to the entrance, back across the slippery stones, back to the forest, and collected an armful of dead branches. Then she returned to the cave, shielding the branches between her body and the cliff, keeping them as dry as possible. She struggled to light the fire, but eventually, the wood sparked, and she blew gently, encouraging the spark to grow without snuffing it out.
The little fire brought a smile to her face.
She remembered the first time she lit a fire, how she had jumped back when she saw the spark, how Jonah had laughed and ruffled her hair. He’d crouched down behind her and taken her hands in his, helping her to make another spark, blowing past her ear to make it catch.
She wondered where he was now. If he was happy. If he found what he was looking for.
Then she swallowed the lump in her throat and returned to the waterfall. She couldn't pass up this opportunity to shower and wash her dress.
Although she still had to take a deep breath to steel her nerves and scan the sky, the grass, the forest, and the cave before she felt comfortable stripping.
When she was clean and she’d scrubbed her dress out the best she could, she spread it out as close as she dared to the fire and then huddled on the cold stone near the flames, uneasy in nothing but her skin. With any luck, her dress would be dry before too long, and she could figure out how to roast some mushrooms over the fire tonight.
She sat there, waiting, staring into the flames, remembering cuddling up on Jonah’s lap in front of a campfire as he told her stories about his little sister. Stories from the good times before she and his parents died.
She hadn’t understood the sadness she saw in his eyes sometimes. Now she did.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9WqbVk6J7Y
