“I don’t know, I can’t understand them,” Sath replied. “What else are they saying?”
“From what I can understand, they think that the portal to—something, something, there it is again, Mother Dragon, Kaerinth—will be at the tunnel leading to—I don’t know that word—but the tunnel is right. Is that where we were heading, Sath?” Sath’s eyes were blank and glassy. “What’s wrong with you?” She grabbed the sides of his face and shook him as hard as she could.
“It was a myth,” Sath said, his words distant and quiet. “The whole thing was just a story, wasn’t it? But that would mean we are—Gin, something is wrong. We need to keep moving.”
“But where?” she asked. Her wide eyes scanned his. “Sath, what do you mean, the whole thing was a myth? What thing? Talk to me.”
Sath pulled her down from the window and held her at his eye level. “When I was a cub, my nanny told me about a place that bad little cubs went—the Dark Side of the World. It’s where the Mother Dragon went after her defeat in the Forest War when everyone thought she was dead. She was so powerful that she created portals between our world and hers through the Void so that she could easily travel back to take naughty cubs back with her for her dinner. It was a place where time stood still, so even if a cub could find a route back to Qatu’anari, everyone that cub loved would be long dead.” He shuddered, and then his eyes widened as something occurred to him. “But didn’t you tell me that’s how you can transport us? Your spells open portals into the Void, and we pass through them to get to where we want to go? So if that part of the story is grounded in fact, then -” He took a careful step back from the window and set her on the ground, his eyes wild and his fur standing on end. “Hang on, Gin, we’ve got to get to somewhere safe so we can figure this out. If this is really the Dark Side of the World, I don’t know if we can find our way back home, never mind the danger if the dragons are actually here.”
They ran back to the trail but took the other fork this time. The sun was setting, and Gin had given up holding Sath’s tail in favor of running along beside him. They slowed to a walking pace. “I’m not surprised you couldn’t understand them, Sath, the last time I heard that dialect was when my great-grandmother was still alive. I was a tiny thing then.”
“You’re still a tiny thing,” Sath chuckled, hoping to lighten the mood. Gin scowled at him. “More proof that we have somehow traveled back in time.” He looked around and scratched his head for a moment as he thought, and then frowned. “I’m just not sure where to go, Gin. If that is a tunnel in the tree line, it could take us home, or it could spit us out right in front of the Mother Dragon and her brood.”
Gin skidded to a stop. “We can’t really afford to be picky, can we? Maybe I can contact the other guardians and ask them.” She closed her eyes to concentrate, opening up her barriers to Sath to help him connect with the spirits of the guardians gone before them. They were the only two living guardians, but she hoped that at least her parents or Sath’s father would hear them and answer. Sath was silent for a moment, but he didn’t sense anything.
“Have you found them? I don’t hear anything.” He opened one eye to look at Gin, whose eyebrows were knotted in frustration.
Gin opened her eyes and frowned. “I don’t either. But it isn’t an exact science, you know. I can’t just call them up any time I want.” They struck out again, but every so often, Gin would pull Sath to a stop to try again to contact the spirits of the guardians. He wanted her to try while they kept moving, but she insisted that they had to stop so that she could properly concentrate. Finally, she looked around, admiring the beauty of the landscape. They were almost to the treeline, and the similarity to her homeland was startling. “This is a beautiful forest, Sath, are you sure we can’t stay for a while?” She looked back the way they had come and noted the placement of the sun on the horizon. “It will be dark soon, look how low the sun is! Can we make the tunnel before nightfall?”
Sath sighed. “If you had listened to me about ten minutes ago and we were on our way now, we could, but the longer we linger…”
“Oh, no you don’t, this isn’t my fault,” Gin said, her annoyance clear in her tone. “Come on, there has to be a place we can stay for the night. I can speak to the people in the house if we can find it again.” She shook off the invisibility magic and headed the opposite way from the tunnel, and Sath stood still a moment, watching her walk away. “Come on, Sath, I can feel you staring at the back of me. Keep up, or I’ll tell them you’re my pet and need to be kept in a barn.”
“Not funny,” Sath mumbled as he hurried after her. When Gin lost her invisibility, Sath’s cover fell away too, but he was too focused on her to notice. She ran up to the first house she saw, delighted that no candles were burning inside, and the door seemed slightly ajar.
“Here, this one is empty,” she said as she pushed the door further open to peer inside. “Oh, dear spirits, I see why…” Sath ran up behind her and leaned into the doorway. He muttered a banishing curse for an evil spirit
