I’m plummeting through air and there’s no one to catch me. No wings like sails to lift me up. No one to stop me from landing hard. No one to save me.
36
The Thing About Auras
It’s like this mountain wants to eat me. Keep me. Devourme bones and all. Never let me go.
Watery gray light trickles down into the hole, the only light. Moonlight. The day comes and goes. The ground no longer feels quite so bitterly cold. A comforting bed of snow surrounds me, and even though logic tells me this is probably a bad thing, the sign of something very grave indeed, I cannot summon the strength to get up, to move from where I sprawl, flat on my back, the wind permanently knocked from me, my body one giant pulsing bruise as I try to breathe.
I blink slowly, groggy, in and out of consciousness as I stare up at that gray eye looking down at me.
My lips are the first thing to move, the only thingI canmove, and then only one hoarse word escapes me, small as an ant: “Help.”
It’s a croak, not even fully formed or audible. Just a breathy sigh.Help.
Eventually, I lift my arm and stretch out a hand. My fingers flutter on the air, extending, straining toward that muted light even as I know it’s impossible to reach.
Dimly, I become aware of a burning pain in my arm. I wince and touch my bicep, fingering the torn fabric, encountering something wet where it pulses and stings. Pulling back my hand, abright crimson smear on my fingers stares back at me. Blood. It must have happened when I fell through the ground into this cold, lightless hole, a shard of ice gouging me on the way down.
I drop my arm, a dead weight at my side.
After some time, I find the strength to move again. Grunting, I push to my feet, my hand going to my arm, clutching it where it hurts, the pump of blood squishing slickly between my fingers and dribbling down to stain the snow below.
Finding my balance, I stumble along. I don’t know how far the space in this pit stretches. It could go for miles and miles beneath the snow-laden ground above. My vision cannot extend to the eternal night beyond. I’m not brave—or stupid—enough to investigate the outlying areas. Shivering, and not entirely from the cold, I face that throbbing darkness with bone-deep trepidation. Shadows gather there, seeming to shift and whisper. I squint, peering into the gloom...and it almost feels as though it peers back at me. I swallow thickly.
There’s probably a bear sleeping somewhere within those shadows, or a den of wolves...or worse. Diving headlong intothat? The unknown. No. Not happening.
Still holding my arm, I drag myself back to where I fell, into the semicircle of moonlight directly beneath the opening above, my window to the world. If someone tossed a rope down or if I had a ladder or wings, I could get out.
Ifonly.
Sinking to the ground, I curl into a ball, trying to control my sudden panicked breathing as I face reality. I can’t get out of this hole myself.
I don’t have wings. I don’t have a hope.
I’m dead.
My definition ofalone once again shifts and alters in my mind.
Day after day after day of floating unseen among the living had once been the ultimate aloneness. I didn’t think anything could be worse. Anything more miserable or lonelier than that.
Except this.
This solitude—finding myself at the bottom of a hole, under the snowy rind of a mountain, the silence so loud, a screaming storm in my ears—is beyond imagining.
The feeble light beckons, out of grasp above me. As distant and unreachable as a cloud in the sky. At least for me. Not for a dragon. Not for Tage.
A pained laugh bubbles up in my throat. I left him. Ran away. For a dragon, a fall into a giant sinkhole would be nothing. For me, it is the end.
I think back to that thread ofsomethingin Danhy’s voice, the almost guilty look flashing across her face. Had she known this fate waited for me? If notthisexactly, not a sinkhole, at least my inevitable death?
Did she know a weak human such as myself did not stand a chance alone in the Crags?
Well. Now I know, too.
Time ticks by in slow drips.
I’m motionless in the pulsing silence, in the vast underground cavern, a hand curled near my face as I study the grayness of that hole, my lips moving with soundless words.
