It’s a warm morning without a slight breeze. We sneaked out of our houses and met in front of the giant rock on the edge of the forest that we called our ‘secret place’. I changed my everyday clothes to a hunter’s robe made of leather, but Senka lingered. His arms were trembling, and he couldn’t tie his vest properly, so I helped him out, but right after that Senka suddenly grabbed me and said,

‘Do you really think it is time for us to move?’ his voice was barely audible.

‘Yes, we can’t wait any longer. I’m sure that Hina is already somewhere far away from here and we must catch up with her. It’s already been a month since we last saw her,’ Was my answer and then I added, ‘Do you remember our plan?’

‘Ye… Yeah… We go up to the root of the mountain where Hina was always pointing with her finger and try to find where her parent’s camps is and then we will try to track where they went after…’ Senkas’s voice was trembling, ‘Are you sure that Mountain Witches won’t be mad if we pass the Cold Peak when it’s so dark?’

‘Even if they are real, we have bows and knives to protect ourselves. We still don’t know if they are real or not,’ Last sentence calmed Senka down and he finished preparing. It felt like I was his Mother, preparing him for a festival, where he has to sing in front of a huge crowd. Seeing him kneeling in front of me I recalled that time when I first saw him playing in a mud puddle. He looked like a little puppy, that I wanted to take care off.

During the winter, we were training every single day and now it was time to test our new skills. We explored every single corner of the Cold Valley and once huge fields now felt so trivial. Now I understand why Hina lost her interest in us after such a little time. I suppose it was because she already had seen places much more stunning than the Wind Valley and this raging Ocean. This is if Hina actually existed. However, Hina had interest in rocky cliffs near the village, she always charged there if we had no clue where to go. I assume you can’t find something like this very often and even she was amazed with never-ending battle of bubbly waves and sharp cliffs. Or was is just me so fascinated about the cliffs and I gave Hina these traits?

These thoughts swept through my mind as we were running through the field where she used to pick berries. The Cold Peak in front of us seemed unfriendly, yet, we were full of will to conquer the giant. Senka left his doubts behind and I saw how his eyes filled with courage.

‘Tarynn!’ he yelled at me as we approached the root of the mountain, ‘I feel myself more alive than I ever was! I couldn’t imagine that our meeting back then on in a mud puddle would change my life so much!’

I only smiled at him, as I was only pretending to be confident and focused, on the inside my heart was beating like crazy. Pretending to be cool, I have weakened Senka’s doubts, but my own fears never left. Giving the fact how excited he is, my plan to raise Senka’s morale worked, but who will raise my morale? Hina would definitely raise my morale. She is much stronger than me. She has much more courage than me.

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‘Tarynn, do you have any idea where we need to start our search?’, Senka separately looked around.

‘Yeah, kind of. Look at the path that is going around the edge of the mountain. Have you forgotten everything that Nimrod thought us? We were hunting deer by their traces and what we are doing right now is similar but only with people.’

‘Yeah… but how can that help us? I can see some footprints and trails, but they are pointing both ways…’

‘Damn it! This make everything much harder…’ I felt a slight hint of fear in Senka’s eyes and understood that we had same thoughts in our minds – we had to split up to make the search faster.

Our parents woke up very early every day to milk cows and feed cattle, so we had to find Hina’s hideout before the sun is up, so we could run away from the pursuit that the villagers would set up after they find out that we went missing.

I was first to propose it,

‘Senka, we have to split up. Whenever someone finds Hina’s hideout, he starts to whistle as loud as he possibly can, just like Nimrod taught us.’

‘But what if no one finds it?’

‘We. Will. Find It!’ My angry voice suddenly changed Senka’s attitude. Hina would definitely say it like that. When you don’t give any option for interpretation your words differently, they come across much faster. He did not answer me, just nodded, turned around and started running down the left side of the Cold Peak. There were still no signs of dawn, so we had some time to search for the cave, where Hina and her parents lived.

Searching the root of the mountain on my own turned out to be a lot more frightening than I thought it would be. I was left alone with the voice in my head that kept saying things like,

‘You will never find this cave… and even if you find it what do you expect to find there? You know that they left this place months ago… and how could you tell which cave was their hide out? What if they were hiding not in a cave but somewhere else? What if Senka won’t hear your whistle? What if Mountain Witches get you even before finding that damn cave? What if witches get Senka instead? What if your parents find out what you were doing here and find both of you in fields near the Cold Peak? What will everyone say in the village when they find out that children of cattle farmers tried to escape the Wind Valley pretending to be adventurers?’

The last thought stroke me so hard, that I had to stop and get my breath back from running. When I raised my head again, a murky cave emerged in front of my eyes. On the outside, there were no signs that someone lived in that cave before. Going in was the only way to find out if this had been somebody’s hideout.

I figured that leaving twigs in front of the cave in the shape of arrow will help Senka find me if he comes this way. I pulled out my pocket knife and had it ready if someone jumps right in front of me.

CREACK!

The sound came from the back!

I turned around swiftly swinging my knife in front of me at the same time!