Higher Ground

 

Facing east, Bebe was the first to wake when the sun rose above the slope and she felt the light beneath her eyelids. She lifted her arm and tapped Alpen on the shoulder. “You and Drindl are used to this outdoor living. It’s not for me.” Drindl snorted a laugh.

Alpen rolled over on his side, laid an arm on Bebe’s back. “We’re alive, thanks to you.” He came up on his knees and looked over the edge of ground into the ravine. “Water’s high in the channel. I thought there might be some meat strips left hanging.” When Bebe showed him the hide strips, he shook his head. “Strips of meat. Something for our journey.” He sat and surveyed the Ibik herd on the other side of the ravine, then felt around in the grass. “My cutting rock. I think I left it down there.” He felt in the pocket of his tunic, pulled out a dirty white thin cake that crumbled between his fingers. “Not much good, now.”

Drindl sat up. “What is that?”

“Energy, I think,” Alpen said. “Noticed it sticking out of the dirt next to the stake as I came down the wall of the ravine.

Drindl leaned over the edge of the ravine. “Just out here in the open? The miners are digging through tons of rock and dirt in that open mine.”

“The queen and her men must not know it is here. Come on.” Bebe stood up. She led them down the hill nearer to the beach. She scanned north and south looking for the Fae warrior. Where the ravine met sand, she began to dig with a nearby branch, and the others followed suit. After an hour, they had made a tunnel from the ravine to the ocean.

Drindl hopped down into the open tunnel, offering to make the final cut that would release the dammed water. He motioned to Alpen to hand him the stake. “Drindl, out!” Bebe yelled. The dam was giving way on its own, bowing out from the pressure of water. Alpen extended the stake and pulled Drindl up to beach level as the dirt dam gave way and the water rushed from the ravine.

As the river rushed to the ocean an Ibik carcass got caught in the wedge of dirt between ravine and tunnel. Several branches caught against the animal and mud collected in the branches until the water slowed considerably.

“All that work,” Alpen lamented.

“Come on,” Bebe called as she headed back up the slope. Drindl remembered the bladder he had rinsed out in the ocean. When they returned to the place where they woke up, she looked down into the ravine. The meat strips had been carried downstream and the water at the bottom of the ravine was knee high. Drindl’s tunic was caught in the branches of the fallen tree they had climbed earlier.

Alpen came alongside her and picked up the spear points and hide strips. “We’ll have some weapons at least.”

As Drindl joined them, she pointed out the tunic, turned her attention to a spot on the wall of the ravine. “Is that where the energy was?”

Alpen looked over the edge at the yellow-whitish honeycomb protruding from the muddy wall of the ravine. “That’s the spot. Too muddy to go after it.”

Bebe took measure of several landmarks. “The rains may reveal more and more of the energy. Would the faeries find it? They are always on the hunt.” She looked south toward the herds and peered into the sky. “Why have there been no faeries?”

“Maybe something hunted them,” Drindl offered. “We saw few faeries on our way south from the highlands. There was the one we captured, of course.”

“But he came from further north,” Alpen said, looking at the bladder Drindl held. “We need to find water. And food. I’m starving.”

As they worked their way up the slope, the contour of land took them further from the edge of the ravine. They encountered many berry bushes, most of which were stripped bare. Bebe held one branch in her hand, carefully examining the stems that had held the berries. “Something with teeth, not a beak,” she concluded as she pointed out the edge marks. On the stem buds.

“Not Dibby birds?” Drindl asked. He pointed to the birds perched on the backs of the Ibik across the ravine. They fed on insects on the Ibik fur.

“I’ve never known them to feed on berries,” Bebe said. “Small animals or faeries.” Looking to the north, she pointed to a faint cloud of fine dust rising above a green ridge. She turned to Alpen. “The mine?”

He looked toward the ocean, measuring the shoreline. “Hard to know how far south we came. I think the mine is further north.” He looked to Drindl. “You’ve been here a bit longer. It’s not natural, I don’t think. What could make dust like that?”

“Something to do with the mine?” Drindl guessed. He pointed to a high point to their right. “We could see better from there.”

“That’s pretty steep.” Alpen turned to face the Ibik herds on the far side of the divide below them. He pointed to the herds as they walked around the bluffs in the distance. “Maybe they can’t cross the gap.”

They found no hint of small rodents or faeries but did find some branches that they used as makeshift spears. A few Anschloss leaves helped ease their hunger as they climbed the steep terrain toward the ridge. A few steps ahead of Bebe and Drindl, Alpen raised his hand and stopped. “Small animals,” he whispered.

They circled left, using the cover of some bushes, then crouched down behind a boulder. The thought of a meal caused renewed hunger pangs in each of them. As a cloud obscured the sun’s brightness, Alpen peered around the rock. Bebe tugged at this tunic, anxious for the good news. Alpen stood up, his shoulders slumped as he motioned to Bebe and Drindl to get up.

“What?” Bebe asked as she stepped to Alpen’s side. Her mouth dropped. Several dozen faeries lay still on the ground.