Sable's Arc

Chapter 17 of 18

The roast was gone and the caramel tin sat empty on the table. Her father wiped his hands and looked at her. "Today," he said. "You show me where they went. The far peaks. The ledge." Sable's stomach dropped. She had led the dragons there with the lyre and the winged buffalo. She had never climbed those peaks on foot. She did not know the way. "The near cliffs I can show you," she said. "The far peaks are different. Hard rock. No trails." Her father crossed his arms. "You promised me everything. Every cave. Every ledge." He meant it. She had made that promise to earn his trust back. She would not break it on the first morning. They packed bread, a candied pear, and water. A neighbor with a polka-dot apron met them at the gate, arms full of carrots and squash from her garden. She pressed food on them for the road. "You two be careful up there," she said. "That rock bites." They climbed past noon. The slope turned to loose scree, then to bare stone with no handholds Sable knew. She had bragged about the cliffs her whole life. Now she stood at a sheer wall and could not find a way up. Her father waited below, watching her fail. A small shape moved on a high ledge. A cub, cream-gray with pale spots, watched them with round eyes. It stepped down a hidden crack in the rock, sure-footed, and vanished. "There," Sable said. "That's the path. Where the cat went." She followed the crack the cub had used. It was narrow but real. She wedged a boot in and pulled herself up. She climbed from crack to crack, tracing the cub's route. Her father came behind her, slower but steady. A round hedgehog sat tucked in a crevice near the top. It did not run. Sable eased past it and reached a flat shelf of stone. The far peaks opened before them. Across a wide gap, on a high ledge no rope could reach, she saw them. The mother dragon lay coiled in the sun. The hatchling, bigger now, climbed over her tail. Safe. Hidden. Exactly where she had left them. Her father stood beside her, breathing hard. He did not speak for a long moment. Then he put his hand on her shoulder. "You did that," he said. "All of it. Alone." Sable nodded. The climb she thought she could not make was behind her. She had shown him everything. Then her father pointed down at the valley trail they had climbed. Three figures were coming up the same slope. They carried long poles and coils of rope. Hunters. They were following the only path to the peaks — the one Sable had just found and left plain in the dust behind her.