26 | Tree Climb
Grinning for what feels like the first time in weeks, Eli pokes further at the sand. Brushing a good bit of it away, handfuls more cave into an open section beneath one of the largest roots. Eli can’t be certain if it’s just a gap under this root created by the shifting nature of sand, or if it leads to something more, but it is something.
“Klia!” he calls, unable to see the girl from this angle. “Come here a moment.”
If he goes poking around in this hole, he wants her to be with sight. Her fair head of hair appears around the edge of the tree, more berries on her face. Her eyes get big when she realizes what he’s found, and she scrambles over the roots to hide behind his leg and peek around at the dim hole.
“See anything down there?” Eli asks.
She nods.
“Does it go down farther?”
Another nod.
“Anything alive you can see?”
She pokes one of the roots.
“But not monsters?”
She shakes her head and creeps a little closer.
“Hold on now, I’m going to go a few steps in, don’t get too close to the edge.”
This isn’t the first time in the past few days they’ve found a hole to crawl into some unknown depths, and Eli has more trepidation about this one after all the trouble these caverns have caused.
Keeping a handful of the dimly glowing bees in his sore hand, he uses his strong arm to hold tight to the root and lean down in. Sand shifts beneath his boots, but there are uncountable numbers of twisted roots of all shapes and sizes for him to find footholds in. Their bark is rougher than the trunk itself, and he wonders if the harsh sand is to blame. Briefly, he considers dropping one of the petrified bees into the hole below, to see how far its dim light will travel. But he already lost several in the skirmish with the floating creature, he is loath to get rid of any more. Not when light is so scarce down here and not enough firewood is available to light a torch for any permanent length of time.
Feeling around through the underside of the tree’s root structure, he finds a gap up through. By all means, it may lead up through the top of it. If Eli can leave this place by traveling up rather than further into the depths of these mountains, he would much prefer it.
Glancing at Klia, he considers leaving her here while he better looks into this new pathway up the tree. She is looking at him with wide, trusting eyes, and he quickly puts aside the thought. Even if he could trust her to stay right where she is with no wandering about, he doesn’t trust this tree still won’t decide to come alive.
There are so many strange monsters after these children, after all.
He wishes Thistle would appear once more with hopefully more helpful answers, but he cannot rely on such a thing occurring again. He has not put aside the suspicion that the first time was not some sort of figment of his imagination manipulated by the Order.
Still, he asks, “Has Thistle said anything to you in your dreams about where he is?”
Wrinkling her nose, she shakes her head. Eli should encourage her to write out the things she dreams, but that will be of little use if they cannot find their way out of this strange place.
“Let us get our things together, we’ll try to go up first. If we cannot get out through the roof of this cavern, we will go down. Hopefully, something will link back to the dwarven tunnels.”
Klia takes off like a bolt back to their little camp on the beach. Struggling after her, Eli packs away their clothing, stuffing as many berries into pouches as he can, finishing off what’s left of the soup after Klia wrinkles her nose at it. He fills the water skin from the clear lake and drinks his fill while Klia does the same.
Fire does not seem like quite the brightest idea to bring into the center of a tree, but it was quite damp inside, and the wood is green anyhow, often coated with sand. It would be better to have a bit more light, if only for a little while. He picks one of the lesser burned logs from the fire, kicking sand over the rest. His injured hand is strong enough to hold the thin log while he uses the other to climb.
Glancing at Klia, he remembers Abner often climbing every tree in sight—much to both his parents’ anxiety—and hopes his daughter has caught that particular propensity.
“Do you like to climb?” he asks.
Something akin to a grin touches her face.
“We’re going to climb rather high. There are plenty of roots and cracks inside, but you must be very careful. If you cannot go any farther, you must tell me, understand?”
She nods, tucking her mostly dry book back in its pouch and sprinting to the tree.
Well, at least she’s ready to leave this place. Eli is as well, but worries they’re about to head into something worse. He is barely in any condition to be climbing a tree, let alone dealing with anything worse than what is going on currently.
Find the kid first, then rest and heal after. You cannot lie around, old man.
When he catches up to Klia at the hole in the roots, he finds her gazing off at the underground sea once again, the same faraway expression on her face. When she turns to him, she looks as if she wishes she could ask him for answers, likely to everything, and Eli feels unequal to the job.
“Have you learned anything else from the water?” he asks, ignoring the oddity of the sentence. “Seen anything else?”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
She shakes her head.
“Do you still see the waterfall?”
A nod.
“Then it would not be a very fair direction to follow for us, hmm?”
Again, she wrinkles her nose, this time shaking her head more certainly. Eli is relieved. He didn’t want to tell her it is impossible for them to swim out, and there is nothing on which they could float.
Besides, Eli does not believe either of them would survive a massive waterfall.
With his sickle fastened tight to the side of his pack where he cannot drop it, Eli eases back down in the cool dark of the roots, ignoring his irritated arm. In the dark, the warm crackle of the torch is a comfort, casting welcoming orange fingers of light into the center of all the roots. Even up into the truck, whatever crack has split it open is jagged and ancient enough that there are plenty of places to hold onto. Eli tests his weight and steps up with much more ease than he was anticipating with his injured arm holding the torch.
Klia, happy as a clam, clambers up nearby him at a much quicker speed. It’s good she’s going above him, where embers won’t fall from the torch, but it concerns him nonetheless. He cannot help but think if these children do have a mother out there somewhere, she would be quite cross with him for all this danger.
Lyra would scold me. She would have no better alternative in his position, but she would scold him nonetheless. Eli smiles a little into his beard, making his way up after the child.
“Stay within the light,” he tells her, and she gives him a wave as if this is all good fun.
Up and up they climb. Often, Eli calls to the child who has far too much energy to pause and wait for him to catch up, while he finds a place to sit within the cracked inner trunk of the massive tree. He runs his finds along the dark wood and wonders what type of tree it is, and if there is anything living inside it. So far, they have found nothing of note on this strange little island, but he is not comforted by moments of calm.
No such thing as night and day exists in this place, so he has no concept of how long they climb. It seems longer than it likely is, given the painful exhaustion of his old joints and the stinging ache of his arm. Still, he manages to keep a good hold of the torch, and it doesn’t burn down too much.
Eventually, even Klia looks exhausted when Eli catches up to her sitting in one of the cracks. When he dares to glance down, he is grateful it is too dark to see the fall.
“Almost to the top, I should think,” he tells her.
As he hoped and prayed, when they reach the top, it is not sealed by impenetrable wood. The gap out is small enough he must shove his pack out first, but manages to fit his shoulders out, and something akin to a breeze touches his cheeks.
Eli breathes in a deep breath, but it is not precisely the rush of fresh air he was hoping for. Such things cannot exist so far down. But the air is moving, and this must mean there are tunnels for it to circulate through. It would be nearly impossible otherwise.
Elijah Jyce
the Reaper, the Unknown, the Elder
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25/97 Buds | 2/10 Roots | 2/5 Filaments
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Stems
Bladewielder (15), Minddreamer (2)
Eli starts. The magic so rarely volunteers any change in his numbers. Buds have gone up a little with his climb, at least. It was certainly strenuous enough.
“Klia?” he asks, glancing down at the girl poking impatiently at his leg to be let up out of the tree. “Do your numbers grow when you do things such as climb this tree?”
She nods and puts her fingers together as if to say a little. So, they are at least a little similar in nature. Perhaps hers went up as well with the danger of the floating monster, but Eli doubts she’ll tell him.
“Alright, he very careful,” he says, carefully setting the flicking torch in a crook of the wood where it won’t burn anything, boosting this way up and taking Klia by the wrist to help her out of the tree’s trunk.
It is a broad top to this tree, with a dozen paces worth of uneven surface where they can sit, dipped enough in the center Eli would be fully comfortable sleeping up here. Not that they have time for such things. Massive branches lead away and into the dark of the cavern top where he cannot discern. Eli does not even wish to think about the fall below them and doesn’t look over the edge yet, not wanting to lose his nerve.
Still, the trunk is large and thick enough he is not nervous to have Klia sitting in the center of it.
“Stay right there,” he tells her. “And don’t crawl near the edge.”
She doesn’t quite listen, laying on her stomach so she can peek just off the nearest edge, slinking back a moment later with a vastly concerned expression. Eli would laugh if everything didn’t hurt.
Carefully, leaving his pack near Klia so it doesn’t hurt his balance, he gets to his feet and steps closer to the nearest thick branch. It is massive enough to be walked on easily, even with his old legs, so long as he doesn’t consider the fall too much. Mumbling to himself, he glances around at the tree, considering how the Order still has not given him any identifying information about it. He would think there would be something by now. Perhaps this monster of a tree avoided it all—all the strangeness and mutation, so far below the ground. But this does not quite add up either, for he cannot imagine something so large could exist down here without the help of magic.
“Where are you coming from?” he asks the breeze, then louder, says to Klia. “Do you see anything in the branches?”
Her face is turned toward the wide expanse of the cavern, where the massive underground body of water should be, barely visible to Eli’s eyes from this height. He wonders where the monster is, drowned in all the oppressive darkness, and puts the thought from his mind.
“Do you see anything?” he asks again.
She shrugs and glances up. He wonders very much what goes on in her mind, but nearly doesn’t wish to know. There is enough weighing upon him already, and if she does wish to speak to him—or write to him, rather—these types of things can wait.
Even after a glance up into the branches, she only looks at him sadly.
“No Thistle?” he asks. He’s been holding onto hope that the higher they return to the tunnels from which they fell, perhaps she would pick back up on their shared bond. There’s nothing in her eyes that would suggest such. Her momentarily excitement is gone, replaced by tired misery Eli cannot blame her, not at all, but knows no way to help. He sits beside her a moment, taking a drink and attempting not to dwell on the ache within his arm. When they find their way back into the tunnels, he is going to sleep. Judging by Klia’s slumped posture, she won’t be giving any arguments.
Squinting up at the trees, Eli counts a few of the spare leaves that manage to grow along its branches. Perhaps he should try to use Minddreamer, it could not make his thoughts less clear, but he is not discounting needing it in a fight. With a huff, he seals the water back up, twisting his sickle between his fingers. For the first time in a while, he uncovers the new marking on his hand. It is not much changed—if he stares long enough, he thinks that perhaps the petals look larger than he believed, and that the little leaves curling away from the heart of the flower are more spread out, but it must be a trick of his mind. He has not looked at it closely in a long while. Even if it has shifted, he wouldn’t know much use it would be to him.
Above, he watches the few leaves flicker. They are not all dragging in one direction by the strange breeze. Eli frowns at them. More than one tunnel? Rising carefully, he instructs Klia to stay and carefully steps up the nearest branch as wide as him and reaching up into the dark, the one with the most ruffling of its leaves far above. Using his sickle for extra balance when he needs it, he eases up onto the next branch, squinting into the dark. There is a possibility Klia does see something up here but isn’t recognizing it as a way out.
With his good arm, he holds his torch as high as it’ll go, telling himself the drop below his feet is nothing, that he has stood on mountain cliffs quite taller than this and not been too terribly dizzy, he does not need to feel panic. The scant light is worth very little. Carefully, he takes the strange little orb from his pocket, washed up in the soft lapping of the cold water. Holding it tight between his fingers lest it falls, he squints at its strange pale light, the markings on it like the tentacles which nearly dragged them to their deaths.
I wonder…