Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 20 of 31

Sterling walked the cavern wall while Linny stood in the light. He looked for a seam, a draft, another passage. The stone was smooth under his hand. No door. No crack. He counted their supplies in his head: half a loaf, a strip of jerky, one flask. Two days, if they ate light. Less if they moved. He circled back to the tree. Its streams of color poured up and vanished into the ceiling glow. He could not tell if the ceiling was rock or sky. "There's no way out," he said. "Not that I can see." Linny had taken a scrap of board from her coat and a small tin of paint. She sat on the grass near the roots. She looked up at him. "Sit down." "Linny. We need to find a door." "Sit down, Forge." She reached up and took his wrist. She pulled him down beside her. The grass gave under him like new wool. He had never felt anything so soft. It pressed up around his palm and stayed warm. "We're safe here," she said. "Feel it." He wanted to argue. He thought of the bread and the flask and the sealed doors behind them. But her hand stayed on his wrist, and the air smelled sweet, and the chipmunk had curled into a ball in the grass and gone to sleep with its pink tail over its nose. "Watch," she said. She opened the tin. She dipped her brush and set it against the board. He watched her work. She mixed a blue he had not seen before. She laid it down in a curve. Then a pink over it, thin, so the blue showed through. She painted the streams above them without looking up at the tree once. She already knew them. Sterling leaned closer. He kissed her shoulder through the painted coat. "I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. I should have believed you." She did not stop painting. "Anyone with your hands was going to paint something bigger than the square," he said. "I knew that. I said the other thing anyway." She dipped the brush again. Her mouth moved a little at the corner. "I told you," she said. "You told me." "It really is beautiful." "It is." He watched her lay down a stroke of gold. The color on the board caught the light from the tree and held it, the way silver holds a flame. He had been in this cavern an hour and had already stopped hearing the wind he had walked in through. He stopped looking for the door. When he checked the flask later, it was still half full. When he checked again, it was still half full. He set it down in the grass and did not check a third time.