Thorn Fall (7 page)

Since a couple of minutes had passed without any more ammunition being flung through the entrance, I stood up and moved around Temi so I could see the pictographs on the back half of the wall.

“Whoa.”

She tensed, shifting toward the exit again. “What?”

“Not that,
that
.” I pointed to the wall; unlike the monochromatic pictographs near the entrance, these retained yellow and ochre colors as well as a hint of blue, though most of it had faded. The colors were a rarity, but the subject matter was even more so. An image of a Sedona-esque rock formation with humps and flat areas had been carved into the stone, and a smaller version of the shaman stood on the top of the mesa, his arms stretched toward the sky. A black circle had been painted above him, with swirling colors inside of it. A weird shiver ran through me. “Is that supposed to be a portal?” No, that was crazy. That only came to mind because we had been talking about vortexes that morning. As far as I knew, portals were unprecedented in Sinagua art. Maybe it was something else. A really big clan shield. Still, it made me wonder if one of the people who had started the stories of otherworldly aspects around Sedona had seen these pictographs or others like them. If so, they hadn’t reported the finds, because there was nothing like this in the archeological record, not that I’d ever heard of.

“What’s coming out of the circle?” Temi asked.

I shrugged. She was right; there were black wavy lines coming out of the circle and heading to the ground beside the rock formation. Snakes? Streams of water? I couldn’t tell. A number of dwellings had been carved on the ground beside the rock formation. A Kokopelli fertility deity the same size as the shaman hunkered at the bottom of the mesa. He was much bigger than the dwellings, but that wasn’t surprising. Cave paintings tended toward symbolism rather than perceptual accuracy. Now what was that Kokopelli doing there, bent over his long flute? Helping the shaman? Or calling forth the lines from the portal? Usually, the Kokopelli’s flute was held up to his lips, but this one was holding it out, more like a staff. Wait,
was
that a Kokopelli?

The aerial attacker forgotten, I crept closer, squinting at the faded artwork. “That almost looks like a sword, or maybe a musket. But if this is Sinagua, they shouldn’t have
seen
a musket yet. I’ll have to double-check, but I’d thought they were gone before the Spaniards showed up. Of course, there weren’t many swords around back then, either.” My gaze drifted to Temi’s blade, and the shiver ran through me again, raising gooseflesh on my arms. “Too much of a coincidence,” I told my goosebumps. I was seeing things that weren’t there, letting my own recent experiences color my analysis of the artwork.

Still… I had never figured out how the glowing sword had gotten in those rocks under the cavates, or when it had been placed there. Jakatra and Eleriss hadn’t thought to tell us—maybe they didn’t know, either—but I supposed it was possible it had made an appearance in the area before it had been buried. But even if there was some pictorial history of that sword, what were the odds that
we
would find the markings on our first day walking around out here? Too incredible to believe, at least if random chance was the only factor.

“Though you did pick the route, didn’t you?” I mused.

“What?” Temi’s brow furrowed. She must be wondering what the heck I was muttering about.

“When we got out of the van, Simon’s app gave us three possible directions. I waved toward them and said which canyon shall we check out while the boys work. You remember that?”

“Of course. It was less than two hours ago.”

“You pointed this way.”

“Just randomly,” Temi said.

“Are you sure?” I nodded toward the sword. So far, all I knew was that it cut things and made a handy nightlight, but if I could accept that it was a magical or technologically advanced sword, then I could accept that it might have others powers as well.

Temi frowned at me. “If you’re suggesting the sword
talks
to me or something crazy like that, it doesn’t.”

“No, I wasn’t suggesting that. I doubt it knows English.” I grinned.

Temi’s frown didn’t fade.

“I just thought it might have… I don’t know. Not sentience. Presumably. But maybe it would be drawn to certain things. I don’t know. Maybe this is all nothing. Besides interesting.” I dug out my phone. “I’m going to take some pictures.”

“I don’t hear the buzzing anymore.” Temi waved toward the canyon.

“Are you suggesting it’s time for lunch?” I snapped a few pictures. I could put these on the business website; they weren’t crazy or gory like Simon’s pictures. Of course, someone might ask what type of lighting had accounted for the unusual silver glow in the background…

“I don’t know,” Temi said. “It could be lying in wait for us too. Hoping that if it can’t get to us in here, we’ll come out. We’d be easy targets walking across the top of the cliffs.”

“Yeah.” There were spots where we would have to walk across a lot of bare rock before being able to climb back down into the canyon where we had left Simon and Alek. “Let’s wait a few more minutes. We can go back down and look around that campsite more.” Admittedly, hunting for coffee tins seemed less exciting now that I had found something of more historical significance. I would probably be accused of faking the pictures if I sent them off to someone in the field though. I sighed. I would have to report the GPS coordinates again, to someone other than Professor Tillium, that was for sure.

“Or we can figure out what that thing was shooting at us.” Temi lowered her sword, her gaze searching the floor. “I know some came in here, but I don’t see anything, do you?”

“Oh, duh, right.” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that myself. Granted, Sinagua artwork excited me more than monster ammunition, but we had to know. “They must blend in.” I dropped to my hands and knees, lowering my face to the uneven rock for a better look.

“Unless they’re invisible.” Temi shone the sword around, the light pushing back shadows, probing the nooks of the rock.

I had been sweeping my hands across the rock, but her words made me pause. I didn’t want to accidentally stab myself, especially if this ammunition was poisonous somehow. Surely that kid hadn’t died simply from a tiny puncture wound. I shifted to searching with my eyes only. Invisibility was a stretch, but they might be camouflaged, designed to blend in like the lizards in the area.

“Here,” Temi said, crouching over an area I had already checked.

A slender reddish brown thorn the length of my pinkie finger lay on the ground, its tip turned after striking the rock wall. Now that she had pointed it out, I had no trouble seeing it. “Weird. I swear I looked there.”

“I thought I had too. In fact, I was looking right in this area, and it just seemed to appear out of nowhere.” She reached down.

“Don’t touch it.”

Her hand froze.

“This might be what killed that kid.”

“Ah.” She withdrew her hand. “In other words, we found exactly what we came out here looking for?”

“
I
came out here looking for coffee tins; Simon and Alek are looking for the creature.” I winced, hoping that the fact that it was no longer here didn’t mean that it had gone over to attack them.

“Well, you found that too.”

“I guess that’s true. Why can’t I feel like this has been a good day?” Because we were hiding in a cave and afraid to leave.

“You’re a pessimistic person by nature?”

“Must be.” I delved into one of my vest pockets and withdrew a pair of tweezers and a sandwich baggie.

“You carry tweezers in your pockets?” Temi asked as I plucked up the thorn and deposited it in the bag.

“That’s not weird. Lots of women carry tweezers.” I decided not to show her the toothbrush I carried around for cleaning off artifacts and dusting dirt out of crevices.

“For grooming their eyebrows, not collecting specimens off cave floors.”

“What are you saying? That my eyebrows don’t look properly manicured?” I double-bagged the thorn and wished I had a glass vial, something it wouldn’t accidentally poke through. Maybe thorn was the wrong word. It reminded me more of a bee stinger. A very large bee stinger. But there wasn’t anything in the natural world that could launch a stinger fifty feet, not that I had ever heard of. Not that we were dealing with the natural world here.

“They’re fine.” Temi crouched at the lip of the cave. “I wish I could sense the
jibtab
. It doesn’t seem fair that they can sense me, and I can’t sense them.”

“Monsters rarely play fair, I hear. We could go back out on the ledge and look around a little more. If we hear the buzz again, we ought to have time to climb back up here.”

“As long as the rest of the ladder doesn’t break.”

“There is that.”

Despite her concern, Temi faced inward and climbed down the ladder. She had never been one for inaction. By the time I also climbed down, she had walked around the bend out of sight. I grabbed my backpack, which clanked with its new contents, and tucked the thorn into an outer pocket. I wanted more than a layer of clothing and a thin plastic baggie between that projectile and me.

When I rounded the bend, Temi was standing at the other end of the ledge, frowning back at me.

“What?” I asked, not seeing anything.

But then it dawned on me. I
should
have seen something. The ropes we had rappelled down. They were gone.

I leaned back, testing the whip with my weight. The tree branch I had wrapped creaked ominously.

“Better try another one,” Temi said. “I’m heavier than you.”

As if it was so easy to unfasten a whip that was wound three times around a limb. We were standing at the end of the ledge, trying to find a way over to a tall straight pine tree that grew up higher than us. Its tip reached higher than the top of the cliff. Temi had volunteered the notion that it might be easier to climb up the branch-laden trunk than trying to scale the vertical rocks. I wasn’t that certain.

I shook my wrist, trying to work the whip loose. It took several tries before it unraveled, falling slack.

“Or we could try climbing down.” Temi pointed at the ridges in the vertical wall. “There might be enough handholds.”

“You’ve been hanging out with those elves too long. Besides I’d rather go up than down. Climbing up is easier, and I’m not sure there’s a way out of that canyon, regardless.” I tapped the GPS unit fastened to my vest. I had already checked for potential alternate routes, and at the least, we would have a long way to walk to get back to the others.

“There would be more cover down there if our attacker comes back. And there might be somewhere else where we can climb up.”

A couple of weeks ago, Temi would have gone along with what I suggested, since this was more my milieu than hers. It was hard to believe her training could have changed her that much in a week, but she was definitely thinking more of tactical issues now.

“There might be, there might not.” I cracked the whip again, aiming for a lower and thicker branch, one just above us. “Let’s see if we can get to the tree, and we can decide from there. I would like to take a peek up there to see if I could spot the thorn thrower. Not to mention whoever took our stuff. If the ropes were still up there, and had simply been wound up and put out of sight, I wanted to get them back too. We weren’t rich enough that I could afford to go shopping for climbing gear every week.

“All right.”

The whip had caught, and this time the branch remained strong and solid when I tugged against it. “You want to go first?” I asked. “Now that you’re all trained and fixed up?” I waved to her knee.

“I will if you want.”

I hadn’t expected her to volunteer, but she tucked her sword into the scabbard on her back and held out her hand. Shrugging, I dropped the whip handle into it.

She tested the anchor herself before creeping to the edge. “I’ve been told momentum is best in these situations,” she said, giving me a weird look.

“What kind of momentum?”

I thought she would sit on the edge and wiggle over, getting as close as possible before swinging toward the tree, but she surprised me by jumping off. She swung down and out, the whip pulling her toward the trunk. Pine needles swatted her, but she avoided the branches and landed with both feet on the tree, her knees bending to absorb the impact.

“Never mind,” I said. “I see.”

Temi climbed to the top, not gracefully exactly—I had been the more likely one to scramble around in trees and caves when we had been kids—but efficiently. It probably wouldn’t take much practice before she was making me look like a klutz out there. I wasn’t envious. Really.

When she reached the branch, she loosened the whip, rolled it up, and tossed it in my direction. I had visions of it hitting the ledge below me or getting caught on something, but she had an accurate throw. It almost landed in my hands.

As soon as she climbed up out of the way, I repeated the whip snap. This time it missed the branch, only knocking a few needles free. It took a couple more tries to hook my target again. I tested it and was tempted to act out my earlier notion of sitting on the ledge, sliding off, and letting gravity take me to the tree, but some bravado or unwillingness to be shown up gripped me. I jumped off the ledge as Temi had done, swinging toward the trunk.

Rock and clumps of green needles blurred past. A branch scraped through my hair, and I ducked. Thanks to the distraction, I wasn’t ready when the trunk came up. I got one foot on it, but the other missed, and I almost ended up straddling the thing. That would have hurt. As it was, taking the impact on one leg jarred me all the way up my spine to my teeth. I held back a groan, hoping Temi hadn’t seen the awkward landing from her perch. There were a few needle-filled branches between us.

“I’m going to wrap this whip around the neck of whoever took our ropes,” I growled, bringing the other foot to the trunk and shaking the jarred leg before starting up.

“What if it was Simon?”