Britta Stonefoot's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Britta sat on the cold stone with empty hands. Her pack was gone. Trikar was gone, sealed behind the crack with his food and his rope and his stolen light. She could call him. But her voice would carry down the black passage ahead, and she did not know what waited there. She rubbed her palms together and made herself think. A faint glow leaked from deeper in the tunnel. She crept toward it. The light came from a plant. Thick vines climbed the wall, and tiny gnome heads grew along them like fruit. Each head wore a pointed cap that shone a soft blue, red, or yellow. The heads turned to watch her. They grinned. A cluster of them giggled, high and sharp, and the sound skipped down the passage. Britta froze. Something ahead answered. A wet, heavy shifting, like a body dragging over stone. She pressed flat against the wall. A huge flower swung into the glow. Its head split open into a wide mouth ringed with teeth. Purple petals framed the jaws. It had no eyes. It swayed toward the giggling gnome heads, hunting the sound, exactly the way the sound-beast had hunted her before. Britta understood. The gnome heads made noise. The flower chased noise. If it followed the noise, it would not follow her. But it swayed closer to her too, drawn by her breathing. She had to make the plant louder than herself. She reached for the vine and gripped it. Thorns bit her palm. She hissed and squeezed anyway, then shook the whole vine hard. The gnome heads shrieked with laughter, all of them at once. The flower snapped toward them. Its jaws crashed down on the vine and tore a mouthful of shouting heads free. It chewed. The other heads screamed louder. The flower lunged again, deeper into the tangle, dragging its stalk away from Britta and into the wall of vines. She ran. She scrambled past the feeding flower while it thrashed in the leaves. Her bleeding hand slapped the stone as she went. The passage bent, then opened into a wider space, and the giggling faded behind her. She stopped, gasping. Ahead, water dripped somewhere in the dark. New tunnels branched off in three directions. She had crossed to the far side alone, and she had lived. But she had no map now. No charcoal. No paper. She looked at her cut palm, wet and dark. She pressed one finger into the blood and drew a short line on the wall. Then a fork, three branches, the way she had come. It was ugly. It would stay. Britta stood in the unmapped dark, marking the stone with her own blood, and started forward into the branching tunnels.