“I never thought about what would happen if the hole on the other end was filled in,” Alex said.
“Are you saying you cannot think of everything?”
Alex did not answer her, but picked up his pace. He remembered the last time he had crawled up and out of this hole, he had been worried that Douglas Winterborne would be waiting there with a gun aimed at his head.
This time, he popped up out of the hole and reached back for Senta-eh. Once on the surface, they scanned the area for any possible predators. They had not brought their primary weapons with them. Alex’s spear and Senta-eh’s bow were not a good fit with crawling and so they were left with the horses. They did not want to run into any other alpha predators like the dire wolves who had torn Winterborne apart.
Alex remembered the game path that wound through the forest. They soon found it and worked their way through the trees and brush. When they came to the edge of the forest, the vista was familiar. Another open plain, like a smaller version of what was on the other side of Winten-ah, then a sloping hill where the door had been.
“Let’s not risk exposing ourselves,” Alex said, pointing to the plain. “This is where I watched them tear Doug-ak apart.” He walked to a tall tree on the edge of the grassy area, looked up, and began to climb. Senta-eh followed easily behind him.
When he was forty feet up, everything opened up in front of him. His eye traced the path he remembered Winterborne taking, then past that, to where he had seen the door.
Again, the door was gone.
Where it had once stood, shimmering darkness against the natural world, there was only grass and a few scattered boulders.
“Is it there?” Senta-eh asked from just below him. Her voice was tight.
“No. It’s gone.”
“I am sorry, Manta-ak.”
He looked down at her, standing on the branch below. A slanting ray of the afternoon sun lay on her dirty and sweat-smudged lovely face. “We’ve done everything we can now. I have my answer. The doors are gone. There is no way back.”
Alex scanned the area, looking for the telltale sign of curved gray backs that would indicate the dire wolves had found them. There was no sign of them. They climbed down and dropped lightly to the needle-covered ground.
“We shouldn’t leave Monda-ak alone with the horses any longer than we have to,” Senta-eh said.
“I can find my way back there from here. I remember it now. We don’t have to go back through the tunnel.”
Alex was not certain whether it was faster to go through the tunnel or not, but he knew he did not want to pass right by the nuclear weapon buried there.
They took off at a fast jog. They followed the ridgeline until they got to the spot where the fence had once marked Denta-ah off from the rest of Kragdon-ah. They hurried around it and heard low growls coming from the area where they had left Monda-ak and the horses.
They sprinted toward the sound, with Senta-eh outdistancing Alex a fair bit. They each only had a single weapon—their stabbing knives. They had left everything else with the horses.
When they turned, their hearts leapt. Monda-ak stood, legs spread wide, head lowered, facing a pack of the coyotes that roamed the region. He stood directly in front of the horses, moving his head warily from side to side.
No coyote was a match for Monda-ak. No two were. As they ran, Alex counted five, though, and knew that many could tire the dog out and attack him from behind and the side.
As that thought crossed Alex’s mind, it played out in front of him. The biggest of the coyotes attacked from the front, but it was only a feint. Monda-ak sensed an opportunity and lunged forward, snapping, but the coyote was gone. Two others attacked from his flanks.
Alex whistled sharply and the dog leaped forward. The two attackers snapped at nothing but empty air. Monda-ak ran straight toward Senta-eh. When he reached her, he turned and snarled at the coyotes.
Coyotes only attack when they have everything in their favor, and with the arrival of Alex and Senta-eh, those scales had tipped away from them. They snarled and whined and circled, but with each step, they moved a little further away.
The horses’ eyes rolled back in their heads and they pulled and tugged on the reins that had been tied to a low-hanging branch.
Alex and Senta-eh went to them and gentled them, speaking quietly, stroking them, and waiting until they settled down.
Alex smiled at Monda-ak. “You are a brave boy. I know you would have killed all of them, but I am glad we arrived so you didn’t have to.”
Unlike the horses, Monda-ak returned to calm almost immediately. He laid in the grass, grinned, and let his tongue loll. For all Alex knew, he had already forgotten the coyotes had ever attacked.
Alex spent the trip back to Winten-ah making plans. He had slept in the communal sleeping rooms since he had stepped through the door, but that didn’t feel right now. After the binding ceremony with Senta-eh, he wanted them to have something of their own. He decided he would ask Sekun-ak if he could build a small house at the base of the cliff for the two of them.
When they arrived back at the cliffs, the first thing Alex did was seek out Ganku-eh. She had been the chief of Winten-ah for many years. It had been her decision to form Alex’s army and send it into battle against Douglas Winterborne and Denta-ah. That decision had impacted both Winten-ah and herself greatly. While the army was gone, invaders had struck, killing many Winten-ah, including her husband, Banta-ak.
She had stepped down as chief and had been in decline ever since, not at all sure she had made the right decision.
Alex found her in the room at the top of the caves, staring
