The Deepest Blue(59)

Palia stumbled, and Mayara caught her. Arms around her, she helped Palia walk-run. Her breath hissed through her teeth. Mayara didn’t look back. She couldn’t do anything to stop the spirits if they came. She’d have to hope. . . .

The hole wasn’t far, but getting there felt like an eternity. She’d never felt so exposed. Why hadn’t they been caught yet? She sent her thoughts back toward the spirits—and felt them spinning away. Their thoughts were distant to the touch.

Roe, she thought. What did you do?

“Quickly!” Roe whispered. She popped out of the hole to help Palia into it. “We have to get away from here, before they come back.”

“You shouldn’t have used power!” Mayara said. She thought they’d agreed on that! Run and hide. No power. Nothing to draw the spirits, not until they were ready to face them or until the month was up.

“They’d seen you. What was I supposed to do? Watch you die?” Roe helped Palia down into the hole. “Besides, I wasn’t the only one using power.”

Who else is out there? Mayara wondered. It had to be another of them, but who had survived? And why were they risking themselves by using their power? There wasn’t time to discuss it. “We can’t use this exit again. And we’ll need to hide if they search.”

They hurried as best they could through the tunnel. Holding firemoss, Roe led the way, while Mayara helped Palia stumble over the uneven ground. Safe in their cave, they shifted rocks to block the tunnel from any spirit that followed.

The three of them hid motionless and in silence, trying to keep their thoughts as quiet as possible. They heard clicking and scratching from a distance, echoing through the caves. Eventually the sound and feel of the spirits’ search receded.

Mayara dug into their supplies for angel seaweed, while Roe gave Palia coconut milk. She drank, and it dribbled down her chin.

“Slowly,” Roe said. “You’ll make yourself sick. Little sips.”

Palia obeyed.

Mayara inspected her wounds. Palia was covered in small cuts, one of which was swollen and red. Mayara applied the angel seaweed, squeezing it liberally on the infected cut. “She looks mostly dehydrated. And probably starved as well.” She thought of something. “Roe, what did you mean you weren’t the only one using power?”

“It was weird—there was resistance, as if the spirits were listening to someone else. Remember how it felt when we were training and Sorka would command them? It was like that.”

“Someone was trying to help us? Who?” Mayara knew it wasn’t herself, and Palia hadn’t been in any condition to concentrate on anything. Had she? “Did you do it, Palia?”

No answer. Just a moan.

Maybe it was one of the other trainees. Someone else was alive! And close enough to see they were in danger and to help them. We have to find whoever it is. . . . We can team up. So far, joining together with Roe had only helped her survive. Sorka had been wrong about that. They were stronger together. If they found this other person . . .

“That was the odd thing,” Roe said. “I could hear the command. Well, I couldn’t hear the words directly, but I felt it through the thoughts of the spirits—their reaction to it. The other person wasn’t helping us.

“She was directing the spirits to attack.”

Mayara whipped her head around to stare at Roe. Her expression, as shadowed as it was in the cave, was serious. “Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know. To send them away from herself maybe?”

“But that doesn’t make sense. Using power draws attention. You’d be better off just hiding. Unless she’d already been spotted? But we would have felt that, right? Or heard the spirits hunting her?”

Roe had no answer.

THEY SAT SILENTLY THEN, TOO EXHAUSTED AND FRIGHTENED TO DO much else. Still, Mayara mused on what Roe had said, even as she continued to treat Palia, who had passed out. After a few hours, the older woman regained consciousness, asking for water. Holding a coconut for her, Mayara asked, “How long were you trapped?”

“Two days.”

“Two days and the spirits didn’t kill you?” Roe asked.

That was very unlike them. Spirits weren’t known for understanding delayed gratification, especially the less intelligent ones.

“I told you—it was like they didn’t know I was there,” Palia said. “And I didn’t do anything stupid to draw their attention.” She then winced, breathing heavily, and leaned back against the cave wall with her eyes squeezed shut.

“Rest,” Roe ordered.

Mayara continued to clean Palia’s wounds, bandaging them with kelp to hold on wads of angel seaweed. Every time Palia woke, Roe fed her more coconut milk.

When she was well enough, she ate bits of mango that Mayara cut for her. She looks too thin, Mayara thought. She wondered how Palia had stayed alive, tied to a tree, for so long. The spirits should have at least come by to check their traps.

Unless it wasn’t their trap.

But who, or what, else would set traps on Akena?

“What caught you?” Mayara asked, when Palia seemed lucid enough to talk again. “Did a spirit grow the vines, or was the trap already there, waiting for you?”

“It was a snare,” Palia said. “A simple hunter’s snare. I wasn’t watching for anything left by a human. Just for spirits. I was going to gather fallen coconuts. I’d checked for spirits. All clear. The spirits abandoned the cove after the initial attack.”