I sigh. It’s too far out for a flight. Even if the sky were clear, we’re too far from anything that would let us land and disappear if we needed to. Shifting out here, this far from cover, would paint a target on us that every Red within ten miles could see.
Maybe when we’re closer.
I scan our immediate area and find what I hope will be a good place to shelter for the night. It’s easily an hour’s hike from here.
I climb back down faster than I went up, the bark biting into my palms, and drop the last six feet silently to the ground.
Carla is exactly where I left her, picking at a loose thread on her ruined skirt.
“Well?” She looks up. “Please tell me it’s good news.”
“We’re going the right way.” I keep my voice even. “There are too many airborne dragons for me to attempt a shift and a flight. I’m sorry, but we have to keep going on foot.”
Her face drops.
“We need to keep moving while there is light, but we need to make better time if we want shelter. The sun is going to start going down soon.”
“Okay.” She gets up onto her feet, wincing before she’s even fully upright.
“I’m carrying you.”
“Magma, I can?—”
“It’s not negotiable, Carla. You’re going too slow,” I snap, feeling bad, but I’m not taking it back. “We need to be under cover before dark.”
Something crosses her face. It’s a look of hurt. It’s there and gone, quick enough that if I weren’t watching for it, I might have missed it.
“Alright…um…sorry,” she says again, quieter this time.
I don’t apologize. I can’t afford to soften it, not today, not with this much ground between us and shelter. Not after what happened. Distance is important.
She doesn’t fight me when I pick her up. She leans against my chest, and I do everything in my power not to react to the way she fits there, the smell of river water and mud, and underneath it is all her. I keep my jaw locked and my eyes on the trail ahead, and I walk.
We make good time after that. Better than we have all day.
The ground starts to change underfoot, the soil giving way to broken stone, and the trees thin enough that I can see the shape of what’s coming. A rocky outcrop rises out of the jungle floor ahead of us, gray stone streaked with moss, taller than the canopy around it.
I put Carla down at the base of it.
“It isn’t safe for me to shift here.” I look up at the rock face. “But I might be able to find us somewhere to sleep tonight. I’m hoping there’s shelter up on that rocky outcrop.”
I don’t tell her how much farther there is ahead of us. She’s had enough today. Once we’ve eaten and slept, the distance will feel like something we can manage, instead of something that might bury us.
“Stay here,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
She nods, looking exhausted.
I find a route up the rock face that isn’t difficult for me, and a few minutes of climbing brings me to a shallow overhang on the far side, a slab of stone jutting out far enough to create a pocket of shadow beneath it. I duck inside.
It’s bigger than the space under the fig tree two nights ago. There’s a smell coming from somewhere deeper in, the dry, musty scent of bats, and when I look, I can make out the dark smear of guano in a crevice toward the back. Nothing else lives here. There are no fresh tracks, no scat, nothing that says we’d be sharing the space with anything that bites.
It’ll do.
I climb back down for Carla.
The light is going gold and low through the trees by the time I reach her, the kind of light that means we don’t have long before full dark hits.
“It’s a bit of a climb,” I tell her. “Get on my back.”
