The Fae light slows down, as if evaluating the riders moving around the base of the mountain range, before flashing twice.
“Good to know,” Rachel says. “It would’ve sucked if we came all this way just to get stopped by a few male Fae and their pretty ponies.”
Ziggy flashes once. His usual mirth is missing, though. There’s no zigzagging across her path anymore, no playfulness whatsoever. It’s all business.
“I’ll shut up now.”
She’s answered by another single flash.
Rachel watches as the riders disappear in the distance before she relaxes again.
In the silence, her body makes its aches known again. The backpack’s straps cut into her shoulders, the weight she carries settling in her lower back. She reaches up to rub the tension out of her neck and shoulders, groans as she touches the knots in her muscles.
An hour before nightfall, Rachel and Ziggy reach the footfalls of the mountain.
“I think we should get to higher ground, in case those Fae return,” Rachel says, pulling her bottle of water from her backpack. There’s a mouthful left, nothing more. “And we should search for water.”
One flash.
Rachel pulls the compact mirror out of her pocket and studies the image reflecting on the surface. Another rock with an insignia carved into its face. She looks around, but finds nothing that resembles the image.
“Ziggy, come look here,” she says. The Fae light bobs closer. “Can you go ahead and see if this marker is up there somewhere?”
A single flash.
“Don’t go too far, okay? Just do a quick scan and come back.”
Without answering, Ziggy flies off, bypassing the mountain’s treacherous slopes.
Rachel conserves her energy by half-sitting, half-leaning against the rock formation, afraid that if she relaxes too much, she won’t be able to move for the next week. Without water, this is not an option.
Approximately ten minutes pass before Ziggy returns, flashing gold repeatedly.
“Calm down. Did you find the rock?”
One flash.
“Water?”
Another single flash.
“Is it far?” Rachel studies the steep slope she’ll have to take up the mountain.
Ziggy hesitates and grows dimmer. One flash answers her question.
Rachel inhales deeply through her nose, her body begging her to stop for the day. She can’t, though. Her thirst is already becoming unbearable, and she only has a few drops of water left. She needs to move, whether she wants to or not.
“Lead the way.”
She pushes away from the rock formation, and heads to the winding path up the mountains. Her progress is slow, especially with the precarious shifting of loose rocks underneath her feet. Finding any type of traction is nearly impossible in the daylight—risking the ascension at night would be foolish.
They’re able to clear the first flattop mountain, which leads directly into a higher, steeper mountain. She’s ready to stop for the night, but Ziggy is adamant in continuing.
“Really?” Rachel drags her feet as she follows the Fae light. “I’m not going to climb that thing now. We can wait until morning.”
Ziggy flashes brightly, and swerves dangerously close to her head, before shooting ahead. Just as the golden sphere reaches the mountain’s side, Ziggy vanishes into thin air.
“Ziggy?” Rachel walks closer, forgetting her qualms. Losing Ziggy now ... She doesn’t even want to think about it. “This isn’t funny.”
Ziggy half-reappears from the mountain’s side, flashes brightly several times, before slipping into obscurity again.
Rachel exhales in relief and follows Ziggy through the glamor—a carefully constructed image of a roughhewn wall—and into a narrow serpentine passage behind it.
The Fae light bounces in midair a few steps ahead.
“You could’ve been less dramatic about it.”
Ziggy keeps heading down the path, shining brighter as the world grows darker. The passage still has abrupt inclines and treacherous slopes, but at least she doesn’t have to navigate her way across loose rocks. This helps. Not a lot, considering every part of her is in revolt, but the packed ground does make things easier. The darkness is an overpowering force of nature, though, and it threatens to suffocate her in the confined space. The wind moves through the passage, screaming as it erodes the rocks on either side. A gust thrusts her forward, the force of it pushing her onward.
“This wasn’t the best idea,” Rachel says. She squints to see past Ziggy’s glow. The passage is too narrow and twists too often to set up a camp. It would be murder on her already aching body to sleep here. Also, she doubts she’ll get any sleep with the furious wind coming through this place. “You better get me somewhere relatively safe soon, because I’m about to drop dead from exhaustion.”
Ziggy flashes once.
Not long thereafter, her eyelids become lead. She actively works on blinking less frequently, afraid if she shuts her eyes too long she’ll fall asleep while walking. The passage grows narrower, as if the mountains themselves have decided to move closer together to make the journey more difficult. Around one bend, her backpack gets stuck, forcing her to take it off and carry it sideways in her already-weary arms. The farther they walk, the more impatient she becomes. Then, to make matters worse, the passage becomes an even tighter squeeze. The backpack doesn’t fit through anymore. She takes her bag off and leaves it dangling between the rocks, hoping to return to it as soon as she gets to wherever Ziggy needs her to be.
Rachel turns sideways to inch through the opening, praying all the while that she won’t get stuck. Just as she’s ready to throw the fit of a lifetime, the passage suddenly opens up into a large cavern, brightened by moonlight reflecting off the surface of a moderately sized pond. There is vegetation here, too. Green grass surrounds the pond, along with some flowers she’s seen in Orion’s greenhouse. And there, just to the side of the cavern, the rock with the insignia stands.
“Thank goodness.”
She’s about to step forward, towards the semi-subterranean oasis, a slice of heaven after trudging two days through a wasteland, when Ziggy blocks her way. Rachel motions around the ball of light, but Ziggy doesn’t let her
