Torrent

CHAPTER 14

The duct tape rope was gone.

“Not good,” Simon whispered.

Daylight still entered through the hole in the ceiling, but less of it than before. The sun must be dropping behind the trees up there. Even though I had no idea what those two… people had done down here, besides burning a hole into the rock, I was more than ready to get out of the forest. That would, however, prove difficult if we couldn’t escape the passage.

“Any idea how far the river flows before it pops above ground again?” Simon asked.

“Not until Wickenburg. And just in case you’re thinking of taking a swim, the odds of the ceiling remaining high with a breathable supply of air the whole way are not good.”

“No wonder this isn’t on that site for Arizona’s best tubing spots.”

I closed my eyes, trying to listen for voices up above. Several moments had passed since we’d last heard the words of Eleriss and Jakatra. After our brief encounters, it was strange to think of them by first name, but I couldn’t consider them normal human beings now, so calling them “men” seemed even odder.

“Temi?” I risked calling up.

Somewhere high above a peregrine falcon screeched. I tried to decide if that was a bad omen or not. At least it wasn’t a vulture.

“Temi?” I called again, louder this time.

Simon sprang up, trying to touch the walls at the bottom of the hole. He didn’t come close, managing only to get both of us wetter.

“You jump like a geeky white guy,” I said.

“Yeah, there weren’t a lot of NBA teams scouting my high school.”

“Is this the high school you’ve mentioned before that had a hundred and fifty students?”

“That’s the one,” Simon said.

“Did it have a basketball team?”

“Of course. Football too. If we hadn’t had jocks, who do you think would have tormented me between classes?”

“The girls you tried to woo by quoting Star Trek episodes?”

“No, I would have been happy for such attention from them.”

When my calls didn’t produce a rope-dropping savior, I reluctantly uncoiled my whip. It was already wet from my trek through the river, and I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to crack it through a hole, much less get the popper to wrap around something up there, but I might as well try. It’d distract me from how cold my lower body was-not to mention the slimy something that had just brushed past my hip.

I prodded around with a foot, searching for a rock to stand on, something that would get more of my body out of the water. “Can you give me a boost?” I finally asked.

Simon eyed the whip dubiously. “Do you promise not to hit me?”

“I’ll try.”

“That wasn’t a yes, was it?”

“Sorry, this is going to be awkward. I might hit myself.”

“That doesn’t make me feel as good about being whipped as you’d think,” Simon said.

“I’m not even sure the hole is wide enough for what I plan. Boost, please.”

Simon grumbled under his breath but clasped his hands together to make a step for me. He sank down, hissing at the coldness of the water, so I could clamber from there to his shoulders. When he stood, I could reach the bottom of the hole. Too bad the stone was too slick to climb. At least I could brace myself with one hand.

I’d never tried to snap the whip directly over my head, and it took me a minute to find a position where I could send the thong through the hole. It took several more minutes to figure out a technique that would get the popper and the fall out of the hole up above. At last, the whip made a muted crack. Now if I could find something for it to latch onto… Unfortunately, our friends had cleared away all the foliage around the hole. But there’d been a stump a couple of feet up the bank. Maybe…

“Not to complain,” Simon said, “but every time you snap that thing, your clod-stompers grind into my shoulder.”

“While I appreciate your uncomplaining support in holding me up, I feel compelled to-” I snapped the whip again, knowing it’d be luck and repetition rather than skill that wrapped it around the stump, if I managed the feat at all. “Compelled to point out that they’re running shoes. The heel isn’t hard.”

“It is when it’s under a hundred and-”

“Careful,” I said, as the whip, failing to grasp anything, tumbled back down to be coiled again. “I might forget our deal not to hit you.”

“Right.”

I snapped the whip again. This time, to my surprise, it didn’t flop limply back into our hole. It’d caught on something. I was about to give it a tug to see if it would support our weight, when someone up there finally spoke.

“That would be my ankle,” Temi said.

“Oops,” Simon said.

“Temi, is it safe up there?” I asked. “Can you lower our rope?”

“Your rope was… incinerated. I’ll see if I can tie the whip to this stump.”

“Incinerated?” Simon asked.

I thought of the glowing eyes. What else could Eleriss and Jakatra do? I let go of the handle to give Temi some slack.

“Can you reach it?” she asked a moment later.

“I can, though we’re going to have to think of something else to pull up Simon. He won’t be able to reach it. It seems he wasn’t on his high school basketball team.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “I have more tape in my pack. I’ll make another rope.”

“I hope duct tape is tax deductible.”

“Given that it’s being used in our pursuit of pictures of monsters that are going up on our webpage to make us advertising money, I should think so.”

“I’d love to be in the room when you explain that to the IRS auditor.”

“Hm,” Simon said, “maybe we’ll just categorize it under shipping supplies.”

Temi had finished tying the whip, so I grasped the handle. Even with its aid, the climb wasn’t easy. I struggled to pull myself up, hand-over-hand until I was high enough that I could thrust my feet against the walls to reduce the strain on my arms. Given how physical our workdays had been of late, Simon and I might have to add gym memberships to our tax deductions too.

“What happened up here?” I asked while Simon worked on Rope Number Two. “Did you have any warning that those guys were climbing out, or did they see you?”

“Your rope started smoking, then burst into flames,” she said. “I took that as a warning.”

“Er, I would too.”

“I rushed over there and hid.” Temi pointed toward a couple of thick-trunked trees growing from the bank. “I’d barely reached the spot when one climbed out, with the other right after.”

“Wait, they climbed out after they torched the rope?”

She nodded. “They seemed quite agile.”

My mind boggled at the idea. I’d barely made it out with the whip.

“One of them was carrying something too,” Temi said.

“Oh?” I hadn’t seen a thing in the dark down there, aside from those eyes.

“It was bundled up, but a handle or maybe a hilt stuck out of the end. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a sword.”

“A sword? What would that be doing down there? Nobody in North America had swords until the Spaniards showed up.” An image of an Aztec Macuahuitl came to mind, but that was more like a sharpened club than a sword.

“It can’t be a Spanish sword?” Temi asked.

“Well, I guess it could if the cavates aren’t as old as I thought. Or… I don’t know. They dug under the caves, didn’t they? For something buried… when? Before the cavates were dug? It’d make even less sense for a sword to be in there, then, don’t you think?” I was puzzled, but I was fascinated. I really wanted to talk to those riders again. And figure out a way to convince them to provide answers to my oodles of questions.

“I don’t even know what a cavate is,” Temi pointed out.

“My rope’s ready,” Simon called up. “Can someone catch it?”

“Yes,” Temi and I said together.

Something slapped the side of the hole, then splashed into the water below. “Oops, just a second. This is going to take a few tries.”

A distant roar sounded from farther up the valley. Motorcycles starting up.

I grimaced. “Not that there was much room for maneuvering, but I wish we’d hidden Zelda.”

“We’ll have to hope they thought incinerating the rope was enough of a delaying tactic,” Temi said.

A wad of braided duct tape flopped out of the hole. I caught it before it could fall back in, then tied the end around the stump. “If they incinerated the van, Simon will be devastated.”

“I didn’t get the sense that they felt that… angry toward us,” Temi said.

“What gives you that idea?”

“I thought I was pretty quiet in moving toward my hiding spot, but they both looked toward my trees before they jogged off up the riverbed.”

“They saw you?” I asked, then leaned over the hole. “You’re set, Simon.”

“Thanks, coming now,” he called up.

“I can’t be positive, but it seemed so,” Temi said. “After eyeing my hiding spot, they exchanged looks with each other. I thought their expressions were more… exasperated than murderous.”

“It’s true that I didn’t get a murderous vibe when I talked to the chatty one either,” I said. “Though I definitely don’t think we should consider them buddies.”

“Which one is the ‘chatty’ one?”

“Uh, the younger one. I guess I can’t be sure if he’s younger, but he seems more innocent. Less hard and chiseled. That’s Eleriss. Blue Eyes.”

Scuffs and pants drifted up from below. Simon was having as much fun with the climb as I’d had.

“What’s the other one’s name?” Temi asked. “He was more… striking.”

“Jakatra.”

Simon’s head popped up, then he stuck his hands out on either side of the hole. The worried crease on his brow didn’t seem to have anything to do with the climb. He was frowning at Temi, though she was gazing off in the direction the riders had gone.

“Who’s striking?” Simon mouthed to me.

“It’s not important.” I stood and helped him the rest of the way out of the hole. Even if Temi thought Jakatra was a handsome cat, she’d reassess any attraction once she saw those eyes on a dark night. I shuddered. I told myself it was because of my soaking clothing, but I wasn’t certain that was the truth.