••••
Molly knelt down in front of one of the holes and peered inside. She leaned close, but the light on the shaded side of the canyon only filtered in a few decimeters. Beyond that, it was just mysterious blackness emanating a weak moan. She considered reaching in to her shoulder and groping past the darkness for an egg-filled nest, but the thought of sticking her hand that deep sent a shiver up her spine.
The wind abated for a moment, pitching the moaning even lower. The sound made the deeper parts of the canyon creepier, the small caves more ominous. Molly felt a twinge of fear before kicking herself for being such a wimp. She felt positive Cole and Walter weren’t having any problems with their hunt, so she needed to soldier up. If Drenard youth could do this, so could she. In fact, she didn’t want to come out of this with any old Wadi—she needed to make sure hers was bigger than Cole’s. She’d never hear the end of it otherwise.
She moved on, keeping an eye out for any movement up and down the canyon. At the next bridge, she sat down in the shade to adjust her boots, a loose lace nearly tripping her up during her last crossing.
She pulled her hood back a little and secured a double knot in the laces, then noticed her reflection in the side of her boot, her face smudged with sweat and dust, the skin beneath pink and sunburned, even though she hadn’t left the shade. She checked her reflection, turning her head side to side—then got an idea.
Pulling off her boot, she rested her lance in her lap and began weaving the laces around the hooked end. She tied them off around the shaft and cinched them tight, adjusting the angle a little.
Molly stood and walked back the way she’d come, to a hole about the height of her eyes and a little larger than the others. She peered into the darkness, her nose almost inside the lip.
“Hello?” she called into it, her voice ringing metallic as it reverberated in the cylinder of stone.
She heard no response over the wind and the groaning canyon.
Stepping back, she wiggled the boot on the lance one more time to make sure it was secure, then extended it into the sunlight.
The flash nearly blinded her. She’d naturally been looking right at the boot as she reached it beyond the shade, and the thing just happened to be angled right at her face. She turned her head away from the blinding light and nearly dropped the lance, cursing herself for not moving it out at a safer angle. Gradually reopening her eyes, Molly saw an image of the boot everywhere she looked—a white shape dancing in the center of her vision.
She tried to blink it away as she dragged the lance back into the shade. Leaning against the rock wall, she rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, the sound of her lids against her dry eyes like the click of claw on stone. She squinted across the canyon and waited for her vision to return to normal.
Pulling the cloth map from her sleeve, Molly traced her finger across the branching lines. She had no idea where she was now—the canyon had split and joined too many times to keep up. Getting out of here, however, should be as simple as leaning into the wind.
Worthless as a guide, then, she wiped the map across her face, soaking up the sweat. She peeled her hood off the rest of the way and swiped the cloth down her throat, absorbing the moisture that had gathered in the depression at the top of her sternum. After wicking up as much as she could, she folded the damp cloth several times and placed it on the nape of her neck, the evaporating sweat cooling the blood that flowed up to her head, the pointed ends of the makeshift handkerchief hanging around in front, dripping precious wetness down her suit. Molly tucked the tips inside her collar, letting the water run down her belly and chest, pulling away even more heat.
With her vision returning and the wind cooling her exposed head, Molly rose to give her improvised flashlight another try. She moved the boot out into the sunlight again, this time looking toward the rock wall while she adjusted the angle. A bright spot of white sunlight splayed out near her knee. She experimented with different ways of maneuvering the lance until she felt some degree of control over the beam.
Moving the light up the wall, she brought her head level with the large hole and directed the reflection until it shone straight down it, illuminating an interior acclimated to eternal shade.
She looked in.
Something else was looking out.
13
After another kilometer of arduous hiking, Cole finally found a hole big enough to crawl inside. He felt utterly convinced a family of these lizards would make their home in a nice, cool cave like this. If not, he wasn’t sure he could wander much further into the daylight. He’d been marching for dozens of kilometers, certainly further than Drenard children could be expected to go.
He had explored a few holes with his lance along the way, scraping nothing but rock. If he couldn’t find anything in the cave, he’d start heading back, searching the ground he’d already covered.
Crawling inside, he felt immediately refreshed in the cooler air. The sweat chilled his skin, giving him a renewed vitality; he berated himself for having just considered giving up. He paused in the entrance and enjoyed the echo of the canyon’s moans as they filtered through the rock around him.
The air felt less dry in there as well, like moisture was somehow stored up in the stone.
Looking deeper into the hole, Cole wished he had some way of making a fire or shining a light; he didn’t want to step on these little critters if he could avoid it. At this point, he would take the easy way out happily, bringing back a Wadi Thooo egg rather than a juvenile or an adult.
Once he felt somewhat rested, Cole pushed his lance ahead of him and began crawling into the darkness. After a few meters, he looked back, comforted by the circle of light behind him. He was accustomed to the blackness of space, but the absence of illumination ahead was different. It pressed in on him from all sides, and with the weight of solid stone behind it, rather than the vacuum of the cosmos.
Cole froze, imagining the rock giving way and collapsing on his back. He would be trapped there, unable to breathe. He could feel his stomach crawl up his neck in panic; he took a deep breath and hurried the wild thought out of his mind.
He concentrated instead on his environment. The details. Under his hand, he could feel the walls weren’t perfectly smooth—they had even indentions running along their length. It didn’t feel like erosion or anything geological. A deep part of his brain worked on this problem as he scrambled deeper inside.
A noise.
Cole whipped the hood off to free his ears. What was that sound?
Something poked him right between the shoulder blades, making him spin to his back in fear. He tried to get his lance out from underneath him, and he could feel a draft of air descending from the ceiling.
Another tap on the chest. The sound of his metallic suit crinkling as something struck. Cole reached down with one hand and felt something wet.
He brought his hand up to his face. It didn’t smell. He touched his finger to his tongue, but couldn’t taste anything. Another drop hit him.
Cole reached up into the darkness, searching the ceiling for the source, but his hand kept going up, further than the tunnel was wide. He tried to sit up—and banged his head on the rock, falling back down.
“Damn!”
He rubbed his forehead and another drop impacted his suit.
Reaching up again, Cole found the large hole his hand had entered. He could feel a ledge encircling the lip and a thin stream of fluid gathered on it. He probed just over his head and noted the hole didn’t extend quite that far, could feel where he had bumped it.
He tested the fluid again and felt certain it must be water. Fresh water. Just a trickle, as if condensation collecting from somewhere. Perhaps the difference in temperature between the cave and the canyon? Could moisture gather on the cool rock and run together through these strange holes?
Cole reached for his map and soaked up as much of the fluid as he could. He squeezed the cloth over his tongue, letting some of the juice run into his mouth.
It felt great.
Refreshing.
He wiped the cloth over the rim, looking for some more moisture; he gathered it up, unappreciative of how natural and universal that tendency would be in other living things . . .
••••
When Molly saw the two eyes, further apart and larger than she thought they’d be, she jerked her head back in fear.
The eyes launched out after her.
She tried to bring her lance around, but the boot tied to one end made the weapon unwieldy. The creature was on her head before she could even react.
She dropped the lance and brought both hands up, clawing back at the thing clawing her. It was in her hair, then back around her head and inside her hood, and everywhere at once. She could feel slices of agony across her face as claws opened her flesh to the dry, dusty air. As soon as she got one hand on it, she felt a sharp pain as teeth sank down to bone, gnawing on her wrist. She screamed and pushed away from the wall, falling to the ground in a heap. The vicious thing thrust off her, scampered up the wall, and wiggled into its hole.
Molly looked at her hand—it was dripping blood and burning as if on fire. She touched her face and felt the scratches, the pads of her fingers coming away slick with more blood. The sight of so much of it made her feel faint. Reaching behind her neck, she groped for her map, a perfect bandage—but it wasn’t there. She rolled over on all fours, looking around on the shady path.
The handkerchief was gone.
That damn thing had stolen her map.
No, she realized, it stole my sweat!
These things go after wetness. And they’re much bigger than she thought they’d be. Meaner, too.
Molly peered up the wall at the dozens of holes gaping back at her. She glanced left and right and saw hundreds, thousands more of them ranging up and down the canyon. Looking over her shoulder, across the river of sunlight and at the other wall, she realized she was surrounded.
The holes weren’t a geological feature—they’d been chewed out of solid rock!
And they got bigger the further in the canyons they went.
The rite of passage, the way Drenards might use this as the basis of a hierarchical society, it all made perfect sense. For all Molly knew, she’d stumbled into the realm of upper-middle management, or higher. And they’d sent her there with no instructions, completely ignorant. They probably didn’t expect any of them to return. She thought of Edison again and wondered what had happened to her big Glemot friend.
Meanwhile, the eyes came back to the edge of the hole, looking for more water.
Molly picked up her lance and ran, one foot bare, past hundreds of holes—and into the wind.
••••
Cole held the moisture in his mouth and just let his body absorb it. He lay on his back, his head pointing into the unknown. Beyond his feet, he could see the small disk of sunlight that marked his way in.
He reached up to gather some more water when a shape moved across the circle of light.
Or was that his foot? No. There it was again.
It was either really big or really close. Or both.
But that didn’t make any sense. He had come in that way without passing anything.
Cole held his breath, one hand still up in the lip of the hole above him, when he realized what had happened: there was no telling how many shafts he’d passed before he stumbled on that one.
He shoved his map into the neck of his suit and reached for the lance. He held it out in front of him, pulling his feet in to scoot backwards, deeper into the hole.
The thing moved across the entrance of the tunnel once more; he could see its outline. These were not the little lizards that Dani had described. Cole wasn’t sure if he should crawl toward it with his lance and attack—or retreat into the darkness. He decided to move back and see if it would scamper up the dripping shaft; maybe it’d stop for a drink and become an easy kill.
Shuffling backward, Cole felt empty space below his hand and nearly fell down the hole cut out of the floor behind him.
“Damnit!” he uttered. One hand went into the shaft, his other arm collapsed with the unexpected shift in weight. Cole fell back on his shoulder blade, his arm wrenched at an odd angle.
He lost his grip on the lance, and it became pinned beneath him.
The silhouette froze.
That noise just came from its favorite drinking spot.
The large Wadi Thooo rushed forward to defend its territory—its precious resources.
••••
Molly ran, leaning into the wind, until she came to the first bridge of shade. She had a full-blown fear reaction raging through her body—every hole seemed poised to spit out a legion of attackers. She could feel hundreds of invisible beasts stalking her heels, ready to run up her back and claw her to death at any time.
The sight of the bridge crushed this imaginary fright with an immediate one. She came to a panting halt, fell to her knees, fought to regain her breath. Facing the wind, she allowed it to push air deep into her lungs, but it was dry and chalky, offering little relief. She glanced over at the holes in the wall beside her, then back to the narrow path of cool rock.
She needed to get a hold of herself.
She needed to get her boot back on.
Fumbling with the knots, she tried to work the thing free from the lance. She constantly shifted her eyes up to the holes, not comforted in the least by the many kilometers of them she’d walked by without incident. They were all a threat after that last encounter.
By the time she worked the laces free and forced her foot back into the boot, her heart had calmed down somewhat, her adrenaline subsiding. She inspected her wounded hand, touched the gashes in her face—she needed to concentrate.
It’s just an alien landscape and some pesky critters, she told herself. I came out here to get one of them, and that’s what I plan on doing.
She nodded, sealing the resolution as she peeled the protective suit down to her waist, working her arms free. The outfit was designed to retain moisture, to protect her from direct sunlight, but she didn’t plan on falling out of the shade. She worked the suit all the way down over her boots, leaving her in just the white jumpsuit liner underneath.