Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 28 of 150

The fog thinned as they dropped toward the gully. Water ran cold over Ben's boots. Anita's map was useless now. The courier animal was gone. The east trail was gone. Three relics still sat somewhere in the kingdom, and every hour they wandered blind, the blue-scaled creature closed the gap along the ridge above. Ben stopped in the creek bed and made himself think. Guessing would kill them. He needed a direction, and he needed it before dark. Justin sat on a wet stone. Amber checked the felt in the chest. Sandy still held the tin canister against her chest. Anita spread the map on a flat rock and weighed the corners with pebbles. Three pictures. Comb crossed out. Cup crossed out. Tooth crossed out. Nothing left on the paper to point them anywhere. "We had the herbalist," Amber said. "The runner's list named three. Mask, comb, cup. Things she already knew we had. She knows where the rest are, or she knows who does." "East," Ben said. "But east is a week of open ground and no trail." A branch cracked upslope. Ben went low. A small figure stepped out from behind a trunk on the far bank, barefoot, skin the color of bark, leaves tangled in dark hair. He crossed the creek slow, testing each stone, like the ground might bite. Yellow eyes flicked to the chest, then to Ben. "You left tracks," the figure said. "Bad ones. I covered them a mile back." "Why," Ben said. "The thing on the ridge follows sound. I don't like sound." He stopped an arm's length from the chest. "My name is Joe. I know where three trees grow that shouldn't. One holds a box. I've watched it a long time." Ben did not move. "Where." Joe pointed south and west, back away from the herbalist, back toward country they had already left. "Two days. A tall one with layered leaves. Another with a thinner crown. Third I won't name yet. I need to see if you're worth it first." "How do you know it's a box," Anita said. "It hums when the wind stops." Joe's jaw tightened. "I was rooted near it once. Before something pulled me up. I don't think about that." He looked at his own feet, splayed on wet stone. "Legs are worse than roots. But legs go where roots can't." Ben weighed it. East was a guess. South and west was a witness. He chose the witness. "Lead," Ben said. "We keep the chest sealed. You keep our tracks gone." Joe nodded once and started back across the creek. Ben shouldered the rope. The direction problem was closed. A stranger with yellow eyes now held their route in his head, and Ben did not know yet what Joe would want in return, or what he was afraid to name in that third tree.