Sloan Sinclair's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Sloan pressed her hand to the cave wall and listened. Boots scraped on the ice above, still far, but closer than before. The cub huffed in the tunnel. Lyric knelt beside it, the glowing flower cupped in her palms. Sloan did the math fast. She could carry her sister up the slope. She could carry the cub. She could not carry both and hold a light and move fast enough. The hunters were coming, and lingering would end this in the worst way. "We split it," Sloan said. "You take the cub. I take the flower and go first, draw them off." Lyric shook her head. "It dies without the flower." She held it out. The light shivered at the petal's edge. "An hour, maybe. Then it dies. I've watched it." Sloan's plan cracked in her hands. One flower. One dying creature. No way to divide either. She stared at the low tunnel, then the bright mouth above, and her jaw set. "Then we're stuck. I can't carry you both, and it can't leave that thing." Lyric didn't argue. She looked at the flower a long moment. Then she said it plainly. "There are more." Sloan turned. "What?" "More of these." Lyric's voice stayed level, the way it did when she'd decided something. "When I first came in, I saw a whole patch of them. Near the mouth of the cave. A little field, right where the light gets in. I didn't know what they were then." She swallowed. "I forgot. I'm sorry. I forgot until now." Sloan's mind moved. If the flowers grew at the mouth, she didn't need to carry both down. She needed to move the cub up, to the light, to the source. "You're sure." "I'm sure." Sloan scooped the cub into her coat. It weighed more than it looked, warm and shaking against her chest. "Then we go up. Now. Stay behind me." Lyric grabbed the light and followed. They climbed the tunnel fast. The boots above grew louder. Sloan's arms burned. The cub's breathing turned thin and ragged against her ribs, and for ten steps she thought Lyric was wrong, thought the whole climb was a mistake that would cost the little life she carried. Then the tunnel opened, and she saw them. A field of pale flowers spilled across the packed dirt near the cave mouth, each one shining like a drop of light. Dozens. More than dozens. Sloan dropped to her knees and set the cub down in the middle of them. The cub pressed its nose to a petal and breathed. Its shaking slowed. Its eyes brightened. "It's working," Lyric whispered. Sloan looked up at the bright gap in the rock. Voices carried through it now, close, just outside. The cub was alive and steady. But the field lay in plain view of the mouth, and the hunters stood one turn from finding all three of them.