Chapter 20 — Stones and Streams

Morning came pale and sharp, the sky a violet slit between the ravine walls. The air bit colder down here, damp with mist. My body ached from carrying Merlin, from running, from stone bruises and rope burns. But we were alive. That counted.

I tested my legs, then moved along the stream. The water was clean, running clear over stones veined with faint silver. I drank again, filling myself slow to keep from cramping. Then I searched the banks.

Roots. Mushrooms. Nothing I knew, nothing I trusted. Some grew in clusters like white stars, others hung in fleshy shelves from the stone. I left them alone. Hunger could wait longer than poison.

I gathered what I could—dry grass, driftwood caught between rocks, flat stones that might serve as blades. No knife, no firesteel, but I could work with what the ravine gave.

Merlin stirred when I came back. He lifted his head, weak but watchful, and sniffed the bundle I set down. I stroked his fur, feeling ribs beneath. He needed food more than I did, but there was nothing yet to give.

I built a little shelter against the wall, weaving grass into a mat, propping driftwood into a lean-to. Crude, but it kept the mist off.

But my hands never stopped shaking. Not from cold—though there was plenty of that—but from memory. The moment in the Caller's hall when the world had opened. When I'd seen the lattice, the hidden pattern in the stone and air. When I had pulled, and the fortress itself had obeyed.

I had to try.

I knelt on the flat ground near the stream, closed my eyes, and dragged the memory up again. Fear. Rage. Desperation. I clenched my fists, pressed until my nails bit flesh, and waited for the threads to spark.

Nothing.

I shifted, breathing hard, tried again. Forced my body to remember how it had felt—the heat in my chest, the blur in my vision, the geometry that had snapped into focus. I pushed until my temples throbbed, until my ribs ached.

Still nothing. Just stone, water, breath.

Frustration flared. I slammed my fist against the ground. Pebbles scattered, mocking in their simplicity.

I sat back, panting. Merlin watched me with tired eyes, head cocked, as though he knew exactly what I was trying and exactly how it was failing.

"I don't know how," I whispered.

The memory of the Caller's smile burned in my skull. He had seen it. He had wanted it. And me, I couldn't even spark a pebble into shifting.

The thought left me colder than the mist.

Later, when I walked upstream, the ravine bent tight, walls closing in until only a sliver of sky remained. The stream narrowed to a trickle, and there I found tracks—claw marks in the mud, three-toed, sharp. Not Merlin's. Something else had come here for water.

I crouched, staring at them, cold sliding into my gut.

This place was no refuge. It was a hunting ground.

I went back, settling beside Merlin, hand resting on his side. He sighed, pressing against me, and I stared at the stream, listening. Every ripple, every drip, every rustle against stone felt like a warning.

— Eighth day, afternoon, discovering we're not alone —

We would have to move. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

And when we did, the world would be waiting.