The Catswold Portal

She closed the wall behind her and moved to follow Vrech. Soon she was running, keeping in sight his yellow cape. If there was a changeling she wanted to know it. She wanted to prevent the switch. She was determined not to let the tryst happen for nothing. She ran, her emotions and purposes all in a tangle, only knowing that she must follow Vrech.

Chapter 20

Melissa ran, ducking branches. She was just able to glimpse Vrech’s yellow cape disappearing between the trees as his horse trotted away through the forest. Running, she felt twigs catch and pull her hair, and she jerked her skirt higher to avoid the grasping vines. Soon Vrech vanished beyond the palace among the forested hills. Her breath burned in her throat as she turned aside and ducked under the pasture fence.

With a quick spell she brought a pony to her. She grabbed his mane and slid on, opened the gate with a spell, and pushed the willing beast to a gallop. As, behind her, the gate slammed closed, she bent low over the pony, willing him to a run. Soon again she saw the yellow flash of Vrech’s cape. He had slowed his horse. She slowed the pony and followed quietly in shadow. He was moving up along the river that wound through the forest. Her pony wanted to nicker but she quieted him with a spell.

Vrech followed the river for several miles. Among the trees flocks of birds fled away from him. Where a stream branched away from the river, he turned to follow it, but soon it flowed into a low cave and disappeared. As Vrech dismounted she turned the pony aside behind a tangle of mulberry bushes.

She watched him unsaddle his horse and tether it with a spell where it could graze and drink. He took from the saddle a lantern with a bundle. Carrying these, he disappeared into the cave, ducking low. She was cold with fear, wanted to go back. She spellbound the pony where it, too, could graze and drink, and followed Vrech. Ducking into the cave, she was terrified he had seen her, that he would be waiting for her on the other side.

But he had gone on. Beyond the opening the roof rose higher, and far ahead the earthen walls were lit by Vrech’s receding light. Vrech’s shadow humped and twisted as the lantern swung. Beyond him, the tunnel snaked away into blackness. She followed slowly, trying to made no sound. At her feet beside the narrow trail the stream ran deep and fast. But its faint churl did not hide the sound of Vrech’s boots on the rough stone.

The echo of his steps grew fainter and his retreating light dimmer. She stayed close to the wall so the green daylight behind her would not silhouette her, but soon that light was lost as the tunnel curved. She could see nothing now in the blackness but the glow of Vrech’s distant lantern. The air grew colder, soon the path became slippery. She knelt, feeling out across solid ice. Vrech had surely known it was here, and he had hardly paused. Carefully she crawled over the ice floe, then rose. This was the tunnel to the upperworld; she had no question but that that was where Vrech was headed. The thought of climbing out of her own world into the vast, unending emptiness of the world above filled her with hollow terror.

At last the air grew warm again, then the stream dropped away from her feet into a chasm, and here the trail narrowed, too. The spaces below her echoed back to her with the scuff of Vrech’s boots. When his passage dislodged stones, each fell down and down clattering until its sound was lost. She did not hear the stones strike bottom. She clung close to the one solid wall, and soon she had lagged so far behind that Vrech’s light had vanished. She wondered if he had heard or seen her and had doused his light and waited around the next bend. She dared not bring a spell-light.

Maybe the tunnel had split, maybe she was lost. She moved on faster, feeling ahead with each step to be sure there was solid earth under her reaching foot.

But then soon, frightened and wary in the darkness, she began to sense the path ahead of her, began to know which way the path was turning, and to sense the spaces and densities around her. She was aware of the solid wall almost as if she could see it, aware of the thrusting slabs above her, acutely aware now of the hollow chasm beside the path, as if some other sense than sight picked out the contours.

She had never had this sense before; surely this was Catswold sense, and it excited her. Accurately perceiving the inky spaces around her, she hurried on until she could see Vrech’s light again. Moving ever upward, curiosity filled her, about the world above.