Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(26)

An arm drapes around my shoulder. Lees tugs me to her side. “She’s dead,” I say. The words come out in a shudder of pain that’s been held like a clenched fist for too long.

“I know.” I’m not sure, but I think Lees knows I’m not talking about the woman on the ground.

I don’t notice at first, but at some point the little girl stops leaning over her mother and turns her attention to me. She begins to say something, but her voice cuts off. A sound comes from the cave—rock falling, and after, a faint sound like an animal in pain.

Lees looks up—she’s heard it too—and she hurries to the mouth of the cave. The girl is right behind her.

“What are you doing?” I call. “You can’t go in there!” I jump to my feet, hurrying to grab them and hold them both back. Lees turns her ear to the cave and closes her eyes, listening.

“Did you hear that? Someone’s alive in there. We need to—”

But before Lees can say what we need to do, the quiet of the clearing is split in two by the long, high howl of a wolf. The howl of a wolf coming from inside the cave.

“It’s Black Dog!”

The girl turns her dirt-smeared face toward me, her tired, red-rimmed eyes wide and bright again. “Black Dog is alive!”

Before I can reach out to stop her, the girl scrambles over the rocks that fill the opening of the cave and disappears from view.





ELEVEN


She’s gone before I can catch her by the arm. Right behind her, Lees runs to the mouth of the cave and climbs up on a boulder that partially blocks the way.

“Lees, stop! You can’t go in there—”

“She could need help—”

“She’s not your responsibility.” My eyes brush over the body of the dead woman. I don’t mean to abandon her daughter, but I can’t let my own sister run headlong into danger to help someone who isn’t even of our clan.

“But the dog—”

“What could you possibly know about dogs?” I ask. Lees has never seen a dog in her life. Neither have I.

“Father used to tell me stories about them,” she says. “Before he died.”

This stops me short. I wouldn’t have guessed Lees remembered any stories from our father at all. She was only six when he died. “He told you about dogs?”

“About how long ago our clan kept dogs. How they were like wolves, but tame, and helped the people with their work.”

I know these stories too. Stories of the days many generations ago, before a storm took the lives of half the clan. All the dogs were lost in that storm, and our clan has never kept dogs since.

Maybe dogs remind Lees of our father. Maybe the thought of seeing one feels like reaching back to him, to the stories he told in the past. Before I can ask, Lees is beyond my grasp, climbing through the mouth of the cave. I call her name but she never turns back.

Lees’s willingness to help a person who is not clan is beyond my understanding. She hasn’t been groomed for clan leadership. She hasn’t been taught to never let anyone or anything come before the clan. She’s fortunate—in so many ways, she’s the most free of the three of us—because the least is expected of her.

At least until now.

I call her name twice after she drops down into the cave, but I get no response. I have no choice but to follow.

Inside the cave I find two boulders as high as my shoulders. Above my head, light pours in—these rocks must have formed part of the ceiling before the quake loosened them and let them fall. A sound—part howl, part cry—comes from beyond the place where Lees and the other girl stand. They have gone far back into the cave. Sweeping my eyes over the space beyond the girls, I see nothing.

The sound comes again and Lees drops to a crouch. “There!”

The other girl straightens and slides farther into the dark, skirting the edge of a huge trench that splits the floor in two. “Be careful!” I imagine this girl falling into the trench, and my stomach drops. As I get closer, I see how deep it is—at least as deep as the height of three men—with sides too steep to climb. She would be lost to us if she fell in.

I think of this as I move closer to Lees, reaching for her hand. I edge forward, peering into the hole. It’s narrower at the bottom than at the top, with straight, smooth walls. And at the very bottom, tucked so far into the rock that his voice is muffled, stands an animal that looks like a wolf with a black coat. If I saw him in the wild, I would think wolf. I would think run.

He sees the girl, and he howls again. His front paws claw at the steep ledge of rock that separates the two of them as if he intends to climb straight up to her, but his feet skid back down. He tries again, manages by force of will to climb a bit, but then tumbles to the bottom once more. He lets out a yelp as he twists from his back onto his feet. The sound bounces from the walls, mingling with the skittering of pebbles.

This dog confounds me. Everything about him tells me he’s a predator—everything except his behavior. He whimpers, and I suspect he’s no danger at all.

I suspect, but I can’t be sure.

“Don’t cry, Black Dog,” the girl says. “We’ll get you out. We’ll find a way.”

“Don’t tell him that,” I say. The dog whimpers again, and the sound claws at my heart the way his feet clawed at the rock. “We can’t help him. We can’t reach him, and there’s no way to lift him out.”