Considering that, it was odd that he felt so much anticipation.
19
Sarah followed Jotaha without knowing where he was leading her, mostly because she had no other options. Of course, even if new options presented themselves, nothing short of a teleportation device that would deposit her back in her living room could convince her to leave Jotaha at the moment. She couldn’t bring herself to face the darkness alone again. Not even if the glow beetles lit her way through the seemingly endless maze of caves and tunnels.
In fact, even if she could return to her townhome, she wasn’t certain she would take that opportunity. She couldn’t imagine what she would do after that. With Beth’s abandonment, she’d lost the last person in the world she trusted and counted on. It didn’t take much reflection to realize that Beth had taken advantage of her isolation and introversion. Sarah had no other close friends, and her co-workers were mostly introverts like herself.
She certainly couldn’t turn to her parents. They had tried to re-establish contact with her after she’d given Shayla up for adoption, but she’d told them in less-than-polite terms that she never wanted to speak to them again. Even the traumatic things she’d been through wouldn’t change that.
That meant that she’d end up sitting alone in her newly purchased townhome, in a newly built development, surrounded by strangers living lives completely ignorant of what lay beneath their comfortable and civilized world. She couldn’t tell anyone what she had seen. No one would believe her, except for those who already knew that her stories were real. Those people probably wouldn’t let her live long enough to convince anyone else.
As much as she wanted to deny it, she couldn’t return to the life she’d left behind when she’d made the fateful decision to follow Beth on this venture. She knew too much, and couldn’t bury that knowledge and slip back into blissful ignorance.
She looked up from the ground beneath her feet to see Jotaha’s back a few feet in front of her, leading the way through the tunnels, his body glowing softly beneath his armor.
There was no way she could walk away from the mystery he presented, not without answers to so many questions she couldn’t ask him yet. Questions she may never be able to ask him.
She’d remained mostly silent on their journey through the tunnels, even when they stopped for a rest in the larger caves that had heat stones in them, like little campsites. Her throat still hurt, though the tea Jotaha gave her helped to soothe it. Eating was still difficult, but the blood bars mashed into a disgusting paste that was easier to swallow than a granola bar.
He pulled other food from his pouches and pockets to feed them as well. Mostly the blood bars, though he did offer her a strip of meat that could have been jerky. It was clear his kind were primarily carnivorous, though the sweet bun he’d given her had been made of something that tasted more like beans than meat, so they did round out their diet with plant matter to some extent.
She had to turn everything down that wouldn’t be easy to swallow, which left her eating the blood bars and wishing for a nice, cold ice cream instead to soothe her throat.
For his part, Jotaha seemed to prefer the blood bars with their squishy, chewy, gristly bits to the sweeter stuff.
They rested three times, sleeping for short stints that didn’t feel nearly long enough to Sarah, but probably were significant, since her body ached a little less each time, despite the pace he had them moving through the tunnels. She had no idea how long they had been traveling since they’d left the first campsite, but Jotaha had filled his waterskin a half dozen times at various water sources within the caves, the last being a small river that rushed through a cave. The water that came from that was icy, and as clean and fresh as bottled water, lacking the heavy mineral flavor of the other fast drips and natural wall fountains where Jotaha had filled the skin.
Following that river led them through a sloping tunnel, the water rushing past them down into the depths they’d just left. The temperature steadily grew colder as they moved closer to some surface that Sarah didn’t think was the desert she’d left behind when she’d entered the wildcat mine. When she began to see actual daylight spilling downwards from an exit ahead of them, her steps sped up, until she was so close to Jotaha that she was practically walking on his heels.
He increased his speed at her eagerness, perhaps eager to stand up straight himself, since much of their journey had seen him forced to hunch somewhat due to his height. He’d still moved much faster than her, despite his burdens and his wounds, though he’d never let her fall too far behind him.
That first step out of the cave system and into a bright, sunny day was glorious—and blinding. As Jotaha’s body stopped blocking the exit, Sarah followed him out. Her boots crunched on a snowy ground, her eyes squinted against the sunlight. She held one hand up in front of her to shade her eyes until they adjusted.
It was a pity she’d lost her sunglasses in the mines. She could have used them now, though there had been a time when she’d worried she would never see the light of day again. While she was blinking, her eyes watering and blurry, she felt the weight of a heavy fur settle on her shoulders. Jotaha had unwrapped one of the furs and put it on her to keep her warm. It was the one he must have slept on, because his scent still clung to the soft fur that surrounded her. She clutched the edges of the fur at her neck with one hand, finally lowering the other as she glanced his way.
“Thank you,” she said, hoping her tone and body language was enough to let him know she was grateful he’d thought of the temperature change and had considered her comfort.
She watched in surprise as he made his stone dagger glow, then wrapped it in a small length of fur and tucked it into his armor. She wondered how it put out heat to keep him warm without somehow burning the fur. She would have loved to ask him how the glow stones worked, but realized the futility of such attempts at complex communication. It would be too frustrating for them both. At least for now.
Jotaha took her arm to guide her forward. It was clear that he didn’t want to linger in this area long. She could understand why, since the cold breeze chafed her cheeks and slipped under the fur like a knife.
Her eyes soon adjusted to the sunlight, and she saw that Jotaha led her down a narrow foot path paved with flat stone steps, his hold on her arm keeping her from slipping.
The breeze remained chilly, though the air grew drier as they descended the slope of a mountain. He didn’t give her the time to stop and look around, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she had started shivering even with the fur or if it had to do with him being cold. If he was, he didn’t show any sign of discomfort. Then again, he almost always seemed stoic.
Her prolonged silence had not made him more talkative, either. If anything, the less she said, the less he tried to speak to her, communicating with her only through gestures as they’d traveled. She’d learned to read some of his body language, but even that changed as they moved through the tunnels in near complete silence. She feared that he had changed his mind about trying to communicate with her unless he had to. His head spines remained flat, his tail steady, his expression almost always inscrutable and unchanging. There was very little change in his demeanor to allow her to gauge his mood.