Chapter 106: Home Behind the Falls

Lyra’s attention shifted from the foaming water to the tangled roots spilling over the gorge wall. "We’re using a creek bed for a road now?"

Kaela’s silver eyes shifted toward her.

Lyra let out a long breath through her nose, rolling her bruised wrist before adjusting her leather satchel higher on her hip. "Upstream it is. Watch the moss on the grey rocks; it’s slicker than grease."

She turned and led the way up the rocky margin of the brook, holding her wand out over the water. Kōya followed two paces back.

The gorge tightened as the elevation climbed, forcing the brook into a series of narrow chutes between mossy ledges and washed-out cedar roots. Kaela navigated by small, economical shifts of her hand against his coat: an immediate point when the bank forked around a gravel bar, or a long, silent pause while she studied the shape of a split pine before tapping his collarbone twice to send him left.

Kōya matched his breathing to hers. When her hand froze in uncertainty, he stood still on the stones until she found her landmark; when she pointed, he moved.

Half a mile up the ravine, they climbed past a massive hemlock uprooted across the water, its bark furred with thick green moss. Above the fallen trunk, the stream hooked sharply around a jumble of house-sized granite boulders spilled from the cliff face above.

Kaela lifted her hand from his lapel.

Kōya stopped in the shadow of the stone pile.

She pointed straight at a vertical fissure splitting two of the largest granite blocks.

Lyra raised her wand to the crack and leaned in, narrowing her eyes into the cleft. "That isn’t a trail, Kaela. It’s barely wide enough for a fox."

Kaela’s left hand clamped tighter around Stormfront’s hilt. She kept her right index finger leveled at the fissure.

Kōya stepped up beside Lyra and measured the gap with his eye. The split in the granite was less than two feet across, dog-legging sharply to the left before dropping down an unseen slope on the far side. Carrying Kaela horizontally would wedge her shoulders and the four-foot length of the Lightning Sword straight across the stone jaws.

"Can you make out what’s past the bend?" Lyra asked.

"No."

"If Zarth’s trackers boxed us into a blind cul-de-sac—"

Kaela tugged twice on Kōya’s torn coat, her silver eyes wide and fixed on the cleft.

Raw desperation filled her stare. Kōya turned his left shoulder toward the rock split, angling Kaela upright against his chest so Stormfront’s scabbard pointed straight down along his thigh. "We’ll find out."

He edged sideways into the fissure. Cold, damp granite scraped across the back of his coat and the scabbard of the Hero Sword strapped across his spine, while he shielded Kaela’s head and flattened ears in the hollow of his neck. Lyra sidled through behind him, bracing one palm against the rock wall to keep her boots off the slick moss at the bottom.

After four cramped steps, the granite jaws opened onto a sunken, bowl-shaped shelf of rock.

The narrow brook they had climbed served as the runoff channel from a sheer basalt cliff rising eighty feet above the trees at the back of the gorge. Down the center of the black stone face plunged a wide, roaring curtain of white water, smashing into a deep plunge pool that sent cold mist billowing across the fern-choked clearing.

Lyra pushed past the last screen of river alders and stopped dead on the shingle. "Kōya."

He stepped out beside her, the spray immediately dampening his hair and cooling the sweat on his neck.

In his arms, Kaela trembled so hard the iron chape of Stormfront’s scabbard chattered against his belt buckle.

Her face filled his vision. Her silver eyes were fixed halfway up the base of the cliff, past the pool, past the ferns, fixed on the dark rock where the foaming edge of the waterfall met stone.

"Master?"

She raised a trembling hand from his chest and pointed directly at the stone wall behind the left fringe of the cascade.

Kōya followed the line of her finger through the drifting mist. Dark basalt, trailing curtains of wild ivy, and water-smoothed ledges filled the space beside the falls. Then the unnatural, chisel-straight line of a stone retaining wall emerged behind the outer sheet of falling water, where a hand-cut rock stair switchbacked up into a deep recess in the cliff face.

Lyra took two steps toward the edge of the plunge pool, shielding her eyes from the mist. "There’s a ledge cut straight behind the water."

Kōya studied the approach. Between the roaring curtain of spray and the overgrown ivy trailing from the rock shelf, a scout standing ten yards downstream would face only solid mountain.

His attention dropped to the beastwoman in his arms. "Is that what you were looking for?"

Kaela nodded. Her throat worked, the muscles along her jaw bunching above the dark slave crest as her dry lips parted.

Kōya bent his head lower to catch the sound over the thunder of the falls. "What was that?"

Her chest rose in a ragged pull of mist-heavy air, and a single, cracked syllable scraped past her vocal cords.

"Home."

Lyra went rigid beside the pool.

Kōya’s arms tightened around Kaela’s ribs before he forced himself to ease the pressure. "Your home?"

Kaela turned her face up toward his. Tears spilled over her lower lashes, cutting clean tracks through the alley dust on her cheeks as she nodded.

Kōya stepped onto the slick basalt causeway leading behind the falls.

Cold spray pelted his shoulders and soaked the hem of his coat as they passed beneath the outer fringe of the cascade, the roar of falling water vibrating in his teeth before dulling to a deep, steady rumble as they cleared the stone shelf.

The recessed cavern opened into a wide, sky-lit cleft between two wings of the cliff where the high canopy met overhead.

Tucked against the dry back wall of the mountain stood a low, timber-framed cabin built from dark cedar planks. Thick ivy climbed the eastern gable, and autumn leaves from three seasons past lay drifted in deep rust-colored piles along the porch eaves. Out in front of the steps, seven flat river stones had been set flush into the packed earth in a wide circle—a footwork ring worn smooth by thousands of bare heels pivoting in place.

Every split shingle and hand-planed beam had been set by someone who intended to stay. Far from cities. Far from markets. Far from iron cages.

Kōya’s attention stopped on the doorframe. A weathered wooden plaque carved with twin crossed blades swung sideways from a rusted iron nail beside the latch; the bottom right corner had been sheared off long ago, leaving the wood raw and splintered.

In his arms, Kaela’s fingers uncurled half an inch from Stormfront’s hilt. Then her breath caught, and she clamped the scabbard back against her ribs.

Kōya carried her across the stone footwork circle to the bottom of the porch steps. "Master, is this where you lived?"

Kaela nodded, her chin pressed to his soaked shoulder.

He bent his knees and set her boots gently onto the flat cedar planks of the porch, keeping his left arm securely around her waist to take half her weight.

She leaned heavily against his side, staring at the three feet of weathered decking between her toes and the threshold.

Lyra climbed the single step to stand near Kaela’s free shoulder, her voice quiet beneath the rumble of the waterfall. "You made it home, Kaela."

Kaela’s split lip trembled. Leaning on Kōya’s hip for balance, she dragged her right boot forward across the dry leaves on the porch.

Then her left.

Kōya matched her half-steps without pulling or steering her, letting her set the pace until the toes of her boots touched the doorsill.

Holding Stormfront pinned against her stomach with her left forearm, Kaela slowly lifted her scarred right hand toward the iron thumb-latch. Her fingertips hovered half an inch above the cold metal.

She froze.

Behind the thick cedar planks, the cabin sat dead silent.

A violent tremor ran through Kaela’s wrist, shaking her outstretched fingers until her knuckles knocked against the wood.

Kōya stood motionless beside her hip. He kept his mouth shut and his hand steady at her waist, giving her all the time in the night.

After ten long heartbeats, Kaela let her right hand drop from the latch. Stepping forward one last inch, she bowed her head and pressed her forehead flat against the rough cedar planks of the closed door.

A thin, strangled whimper tore out of her throat.

Lyra turned her head toward the waterfall, keeping watch over the approach while leaving the porch to the two of them.

Kōya kept his palm warm and solid against his master’s trembling back.