Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 61 of 150

Ben crouched by the crate with Joe and Amber. The scout's boots had faded up the ridge, but the voices there hadn't. Three men, maybe four now. They would sweep back once the false trail dried. He could not stay. He could not carry the crate alone through open ground, and the shrine was already burned as a hiding place. Lolly wrung her sleeve over the tarp. Water pattered on the wet mound. "An hour," she said. "Then the leaves dry and the shape shows again." "I know." Ben looked south through the pines. The ground fell into a shallow draw choked with brush. Beyond it a stone fold in the hillside, low and dark. He had passed it on the way in. He had not looked twice at it then. "That cut in the rock," he said to Joe. "How deep?" Joe held up two fingers, then spread his hands wide. Deep enough for the crate. Narrow enough that no one would look. "We move it now," Ben said. "While they think the shrine's empty." Amber shook her head. "Four scouts on the ridge. One glance down and they see us hauling it." Lolly was already walking. She stopped where the brush thinned toward the ridge line and knelt. She put her hand flat in the frost, and the gray-blue creature came to her heel, shaking water from its coat in a fine spray. She pulled a red pot from under her wet coat. It was slick with condensation, beaded like a cold cup in summer. She tipped it. Water ran out in a thin steady line along the ground, then a wider one, cutting across the open slope between the crate and the ridge. "Fog," she said. "Give it a minute." The water hit the frost and lifted. A pale mist crawled up between the trunks, thickening as the creature paced through it and shook again. From the ridge, the slope would show white and moving. From below, Ben could still see his own feet. "Go," Lolly said. Joe took one end. Ben took the other. Amber walked ahead, breaking the brush aside. The crate was heavier than Ben remembered. His arms burned before they cleared the draw. He did not stop. He heard a shout from the ridge, high and uncertain, the sound of a man calling to another man about weather. They wedged the crate into the stone fold. Joe packed brush against the opening. Amber cut pine boughs and laid them over. When Ben stepped back, the hillside showed nothing but rock and scrub. Lolly came down through the thinning mist with the pot empty at her side. "They'll sweep the shrine again by dark," she said. "They won't sweep this." "How do you know?" "No door." She looked at him. "People only search what has a door." Ben sat down on the frost. His hands were shaking. The crate was hidden. He was still north, and the scouts were still coming, but the crate was hidden.