Tess’s lungs burned and her vision was spotty by the time she reached the beech grove where Pathka had said to meet. She didn’t dare stop so close to the house. She ran—or, more accurately, staggered stubbornly onward—until she reached a cattle guard, a bridge of narrow slats that a cow, being bulky, would shy away from crossing. She crawled into the ditch under the bridge and lay in the weeds, panting. Sunlight poured through the slats in slanting stripes.
When she had breath enough, she laughed, and when she could laugh no more, she tore into that bread like a vulture into a bloated carcass. The interior steamed, scalding the roof of her mouth, but she didn’t care. She’d never tasted such sweet, rapturous bread in her life.
Her head nested in spindly weeds; beyond them the sky glowed preternaturally blue through the slats. As her chewing slowed, she noticed a bee crawling along a blade of grass above her head. She counted its stripes, amazed to see them juxtaposed with the stripes of sky. The bee’s were a warning, the sky’s a promise she could not yet fathom, and for a moment everything seemed connected, aching beauty and imminent danger, the fragility of the bee and the scalded roof of her mouth, the transcendent savor of bread and the fact that she was literally lying in a ditch.
The moment made such a deep impression that she never forgot it, but she couldn’t explain it except with the single word: there. She was there. Present in herself. She wasn’t always, so it was worth remarking upon.
Pathka caught up soon after, an iron pan in his dorsal hands, and in the pan fresh eggs, smoked meat, a wedge of soft cheese, and a jar of peach jam. There was no bread left for the jam, but Tess happily scooped it out with two fingers and ate it like that. The bee had buzzed off, or she might’ve extended a jammy finger to it, as if it were a friend.
She closed the jar and stowed the rest in her pack for later. “Are they still looking for me?” she whispered to Pathka.
“They’re looking for a quigutl,” he said, his voice like a gravel road. “I showed myself and left musk about to confuse the dogs. Try to be stealthier, if you don’t mind.”
“It was my first time!” Tess protested, crawling out from under the bridge.
“It was almost your last,” said Pathka mildly. “I suppose you’ll improve with practice.”
* * *
Tess slept hard that night, her belly full and her whole being exhausted by running and danger. Pathka let her sleep a whole hour past sunrise before pouncing on her.
“I spotted several cave entrances when I was foraging,” he cried, sitting on her chest. “Today we find the best one and begin our journey toward Anathuthia.”
“Pluhhh,” said Tess blearily. She’d been having a terrible dream—her mother had dismembered her, put her in a basket, and lowered her into a pit where a monster lurked, all the while berating her for choosing to be sacrificed this way. She’d been so deep, in both sleep and pit, that she was having trouble pulling herself out.
“I thought we’d begun,” she muttered. “And that Anathuthia was south. In Ninys. Under a wheat field.”
A terrible idea occurred to her; she tried to sit up but was prevented by Pathka’s weight on her ribs. “You don’t intend us to travel underground to Ninys,” said Tess, flopping back.
“No, no. Do you remember what I was doing in Trowebridge that upset everyone?”
“Bleeding in the well?” Tess eyed him suspiciously.
“That’s what I did, but it wasn’t what I was doing,” said Pathka, climbing off her. “I was calling to Anathuthia. We can’t go to her without calling her first; we’d never get close. I need to get deep underground to do the—the needful things.”
Tess sat up, still suspicious. He was blazing with tics and wriggles, body language she couldn’t quite parse. “Does it involve bleeding?”
“Kikiu made it sound worse than it is,” said Pathka.
“Then make it sound better.”
“It’s called kemthikemthlutl,” he said. Tess untangled the word with some difficulty: a dream within a dream that is also the opposite of a dream within a dream. “I need to go deep and sleep,” Pathka went on, “and also bleed, but only a little. It will let Anathuthia know I’m coming, and she, in turn, will indicate more precisely where we should go. I hope.”
The thought of blood made Tess shudder, but she decided this was some kind of ritual, a symbolic sacrifice not meant to kill him, and that reconciled her a bit.
“Fine,” she said with more bravado than she felt. “You can try it, but if I perceive that you’re in danger of dying—”
There was no way to finish that sentence. She had no idea what she’d do.
She ate hastily, packed up, and followed him toward a stream leading into the trees. They soon reached a humid glen where a cave mouth gaped under a crumbling overhang.
Tess had never been in a cave, though Goredd was riddled with them. Soft limestone underpinned this part of the Southlands, and it was carved by trickling, persistent streams that joined into underground rivers, the unseen arteries of the world. Some were reputedly enormous, bigger than any river on land, rushing through darkness toward who knew where.
Caves made for fascinating lectures at St. Bert’s, but the actual cave mouth exhaled a breath of decay. The prospect of entering that empty darkness made Tess shudder. “What if there’s a cave-in?” she asked Pathka, who was winding dry fern fronds upon the end of a stick. “Limestone caves are prone to those. Water weakens the rock, and—”
“We won’t know what hit us, because we’ll be dead,” said Pathka, his nimble dorsal fingers tying the fronds securely. He set them aflame with his tongue. “Or we will know, and we’ll die in protracted agony. There’s no point worrying about it beforehand.”
He handed Tess the torch and plunged into the darkness without a backward glance.
Tess, intensely discomfited, got up her nerve and followed.
The cramped, muddy cave pierced deep into the hillside and soon left daylight behind. A giggling rivulet traipsed across the floor; Tess avoided it at first, then decided that’s what boots were for. Pathka adhered himself to the ceiling and crawled upside down. Tess worried about singeing his tail with her torch, but if the flames licked him, he seemed not to notice. He wound among jutting thumbs of rock, none dramatic enough to be called a stalactite. Tess hit her head twice, because her attention was occupied downward. Minnows swam in the rivulet, and a fat white salamander. She laid her hand on a rock, and something disturbingly leggy scuttled over it.
Tess recoiled, inhaling sharply; the torch revealed an enormous ghostly cricket, almost transparent. She laughed then at her own apprehensions. The darkness was full, fuller than she would ever have guessed, and she found this curiously comforting.
They reached the egress and burst out into sunshine again. Tess felt strangely exhilarated and sorry to be out so soon. Pathka seemed twitchy and cranky. “You didn’t try your dream-in-a-bloody-not-dream thing,” Tess said.
“It wasn’t right,” Pathka said, rubbing himself in the grass. “I can’t reach her here.”
Tess didn’t mind. She extinguished her torch and said, “Let’s find another.”
There were many such crevasses to choose from. They tried two more that afternoon, to Tess’s immense delight, but Pathka soon became frustrated. “These limestone crannies are too shallow,” he grumbled. “I suspect we need something deeper.”
The word gave Tess a chill, eagerness and dread combined. Deeper would be more dangerous, without question; she both wanted and feared it. Pathka, however, seemed done for the day. For now, Tess had to settle for deeper south. She followed Pathka through tall grass, across a stony field of sprouts, and back to the road, into the heart of the heart of the country.