We keep making our way deeper into the cave, and Golmarr isn’t as impatient when he stops to wait for me.
“If this is a dragon’s cave, then where are all the bones and treasure?” I ask, swinging down from a grime-covered boulder taller than me. I wipe my hands on my shirt, leaving two dark smudges down the front.
“If a dragon truly lives in this mountain, if this is one of its caves, it isn’t going to keep its treasure here. It is going to hide it as deep as possible. Look.” He points up. I crane my neck and squint. The ceiling seems to be moving. Squirming. I hold the dragon scale above my head and shudder. A dense canopy of bats covers the cave’s roof, making it impossible to see the stone they are hanging from.
“I guess that explains the smell and the stuff all over the boulders,” Golmarr adds, his voice amused.
I cringe and look at my filthy palms.
“The legends say the fire dragon is as tall as a two-story house. There is no way it could fit in this cave. The ceiling is too low.”
I shudder, still intent on the brown smears on my hands, and wipe them down the front of my shirt again. Where I’ve wiped, my shirt is brown and red.
Golmarr lifts one of my hands, uncurling my fingers to look at my palm. “You’re bleeding.” Without another word, he reaches behind me, takes the hunting knife from the back of my skirt, and unsheathes it. “I’m going to cut your skirt shorter so you don’t have to crawl over the boulders,” he explains, kneeling in front of me and lifting the fabric.
I gasp and pull away from him and shake my head. “No, please! That wouldn’t be…proper,” I blurt. My cheeks start to burn at the thought of having my legs exposed.
He groans and looks up at me. “We are about to be eaten by a dragon, you’re crawling on bleeding hands through bat droppings, and you’re worried about being proper?” I bite my lower lip and nod. I really don’t want him to see my legs. He stands and presses the knife into my hand a little too roughly. “Suit yourself.”
We keep moving deeper into the cave—Golmarr leaping over boulders and me crawling and stumbling after him. In the darkness there is no way to measure time, except by how thirsty I am. The longer we wander, the thirstier I become. I lick my dry lips and keep going.
The cave curves to the left, and Golmarr stops, pointing to something long and coiled, resting between two rocks. He picks it up. It is a piece of rope leading deeper into the cave. “This looks like the same rope they lowered us down with. The rope taken from the lamb.”
After we have gone twenty steps, he pauses and frowns, rubbing the rope between his fingers. “This feels different,” he says, and holds it close to the dragon scale. The rope is blackened and brittle. “I think…” He holds it up to his nose and sniffs. His eyes grow wide and he drops it. “This is burned!” he whispers. “The fire dragon must cook its food before it eats it.”
My stomach turns. “How? With the low ceiling, you said it wouldn’t fit.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s smaller than the history books say it is. But it has been here.” Beneath our feet, the ground rumbles. Overhead, the thousands of bats coating the ceiling start to screech and drop, catching themselves in midair a mere instant before they hit us. They surge around us and over us, flying in the direction of the cave’s opening. Golmarr and I look at each other with wide eyes. He clutches my hand in his and starts pulling me deeper into the cave.
“Shouldn’t we be following the bats? We need to get away!” I say, grasping layers of skirt and petticoats in my free hand in an attempt to keep up with him.
“We’re not trying to get away. We’re trying to find somewhere to hide!” He leaps over a rock, and my hand is torn from his. I stumble on my skirts and fall to my knees. Without a word, Golmarr leaps to my side and lifts me to my feet. I silently curse myself for not cutting off my ridiculous skirt earlier, because far, far ahead, an orange glow lights the darkness. And I can barely run.
The entire tunnel is illuminated. It looks like a long orange worm, and the light is growing brighter and brighter. The air around us is being drawn toward the light, sucking my shirt against my back and pulling loose wisps of hair that have escaped my braid forward around my face.