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Part 2: Stone and Sinew

August had been told that hiking was relatively safe. They weren’t going rock-climbing or anything dangerous. They were going on a walk with spectacular sights basically. That sounded fun. And it was heavenly—until the mountain came collapsing over them. He saw his aunt and uncle buried under an avalanche. August briefly remembered how avalanches could wipe out entire villages. Then he was part of the avalanche.

There was a moment of brief respite. He’s landed next to his cousin. They were surrounded by rubble, but he noticed a cave—smooth, deep—it looked undisturbed. Sturdy. Stable. Sheltered. He moved towards it immediately. Sonora followed. She was saying something but he didn’t understand the words immediately. Everything was being drowned out by an omnipresent ring, a familiar rumble—too immediately familiar. His eyes snapped up to see a second wave of rocks tumble down. And that boulder was coming directly at them.

Before he could think it through, August grabbed Sonora and pushed her as hard as he could towards the cave before jumping aside. He glimpsed her roll into the cave before the boulder crashed between them. No scream though. If she was dead, it had been too fast to suffer. Otherwise, she was safe.

Meanwhile, he was playing dodgeball with the remaining rocks. He moved quickly—faster than he thought himself possible away—no, towards the wall. But not fast enough. A stray fragment flew into his shoulder and he stumbled. The next one slammed into his left leg. He cried out as a burst of pain shattered his calf and flashed up the rest of his leg. He tugged on it anyways, and the jerking motion only pulled him the rest of the way to the floor. He glanced up fearfully—any one of those rocks could hit him now, and he’d just be a goner.

Luckily, none of them did. He breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes for a three-count. When he opened his eyes, everything seemed a little blurry and his ears were ringing. He remembered his leg. And then the pain returned.

He tried moving it again and was reduced to a puddle of tears mewling into the dust. My leg is broken. I can’t hear anything. This is it, I’m going to die.

But finally he stopped. I’m being overdramatic, he told himself firmly. No crybabies are allowed. He closed his eyes and took a deep shuddering breath. He was alive. That had to count for something. First order of business then—was Sona okay?

“Meyling? Where are you? Are you hurt?” There was no answer. He called out again to no avail. His heart felt a little heavier. There had been nothing—nothing at all—from her since he pushed her into the cave.

August tried shifting his leg again and winced. He scrutinized the way the stone was jammed against the other and pushed as hard as he could. He didn’t think it honestly would work, but to his surprise there was a little pop and his leg came free. He sucked in a sharp breath as the rock rolled over his shattered leg and aside. Stupid thing hurt like hell.

“She has to be okay, right? She got into the cave. Unless the cave collapsed too.” If that had happened he might as well throw himself off the side of the mountain as well. Getting both his aunt and uncle and his favorite cousin killed in one fell swoop was one sure way to get him killed by association.

“I can check that out,” he realized. The cave was right next to him still—and all that separated them was a slab of stone. He crawled to one knee, balancing himself on the small knapsack that had somehow survived the crash. But when he tried standing, his right leg collapsed, his ankle flaring in pain.

“Stupid leg,” he cursed.

So, broken leg, twisted ankle. His vision was perfectly fine though, and his hearing seemed fine as well. He took a deep breath.

“It must be broken. What do people do with broken legs?” He cleaned up what he could with water from his canteen and a handkerchief. It wasn’t as bad as he thought, even if it still was a mess. He imagined the ghost in his room teasing him.

“Yeah, well, ghosts can float through rock,” he said. Imagining someone to talk to helped. “Stupid ghost. Stupid leg…stupid rocks.”

He still didn’t have any feeling in the leg except pain when he tried to move it, but the bleeding was mostly contained to a thin but steady trickle. He was reminded of a problem in his math homework set that summer and the grim lesson he’d taken from it—a tank that was constantly leaking would eventually run dry.

“I wonder how long it’d take for me to just bleed out at this rate?”

He squeezed the blood out of the handkerchief and pressed it against the leg again. His mother would have called the question “tangentially relevant”—the better question was how he was going to stop it.

———

When he was fairly sure there was nothing else he could do for his leg, August turned to searching the knapsack for anything that could lead to a rescue: Water, a half-eaten peanut-butter and jelly sandwich he’d not finished yesterday, small pile of granola bars and trail mix. He devoured the sandwich immediately. A windbreaker he’d been told to bring just in case. Someone else must have been carrying the sunscreen. Oh, but he had a calculator he thought he had lost while packing. He screamed at it. He was tempted to throw it off the cliff, but instead set it next to him, solar-panel facing the sun. Maybe he could do his math homework while he waited for a rescue—but of course he didn’t have the papers.

———

August took off his bright red shirt and tied it to his backpack to fly off the top of the tallest rock he could reach—not very high at all. With a little throw he was able to lodge it on top of the boulder in front of the cave—or the rock pile. If he was lucky, someone would spot it. Meanwhile, he bundled into his windbreaker, thankful he’d been told to bring it despite the warm day. His empty canteen stood next to him.

He laid himself out on the warm rock and stared up at the clear sky overhead. The sky, the panorama of the valley, the gentle breeze—at least they were still beautiful. If he was going to die, he was glad it was going to be somewhere so pleasant.

Part Four: Turtle and Tunnel


“Mummy? May I go explore?”

Sonora tugged on her mother’s dress a little. “Stay near,” her mother said, but let the little girl run around.

Sonora wandered amongst the party guests. A man stopped her to ask where her parents were. With a cheerful smile, she waved off to the other side of the banquet hall and assured they knew she was around and would not cause trouble with a confident tone and polite smile. He grunted and let her go. She took a few strawberries from the buffet table and hid them in her dress pocket to snack on as she wandered. But soon the adults grew boring. It was so much more interesting when Zina or Mir were here. So, she decided to go for a little walk, like she and Zina did all the time during the day: They’d walk down the halls until they got lost, then find their way back again.

As she walked, Sonora imagined her friends walking with her. Zina would probably talk about class. Maybe they would make up stories about the guests again. Sonora imagined the man in the man with the funny green suit who had stopped her. The suit made him look like a frog. Or a turtle. She decided he was a reptile keeper who was attending the banquet because he had just gotten back from a wonderful adventure where he had discovered the home of the last lion-turtle and was looking for someone to help him write a book about it. Meylian would enjoy that, she thought, rounding a corner absent-mindedly. She would have to tell her cousin next time—lion turtles who traveled the world, giving honest travelers golden watches and epic tales.

Sonora soon found herself looking at a ladder that led into the darkness in both directions. There was a bucket hanging from a rope next to the ladder with a sign on it.

“This way to Hell,” she read aloud, then looked upwards, in the direction of the arrow. “Well then the other direction must be Heaven, right?” She giggled a little, noticing that there was even a light on down the ladder, faintly visible from the top. She glanced around. There was no one. But at the same time, this definitely seemed like somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

Meylian would be telling her to go back. She had to check back in with Mum and Dad every so often after all. Zina would explore. It wasn’t even that bad of a ladder. They could definitely go down, look around and then come back—no one would be the wiser and they’d learn what was down the mysterious shaft to darkness. At least in one direction. Mir…honestly Mir wouldn’t have left the party.

Adventure won out. She stepped onto the ladder and climbed down. A few short rungs later, she found herself peering down a tunnel. There were lights on every few yards, enough to light the entire hallway in a warm glow. It looked like any other hallway, just plain and undecorated.

She continued down the hall way to a fork. Directly ahead of her was a door that led outside. The path to the left led up to a few stairs and a set of double doors. She headed that way. By now she could hear the sound of conversation and party banter above her. Perfect. She climbed the stairs and over to the door just as an employee was about to close the door. She slipped inside with a small smile.

Inside, the hall was awash in a warm but dim light and a disco ball was turning slowly, throwng colorful flashes of light into the air. Onstage, a band was warming up. The dancing part of the event must have been starting, Sonora realized; She must’ve been gone longer than she thought. She worked her way quickly through the hall to where her parent’s table was, slipping unnoticed between tables and tall people. The table she expected was seated with people—none of whom were her parents. Huh. She must’ve gotten the table wrong. She combed through the tables again, more careful.
Onstage, the band was introducing themselves. She paid them little mind, intent on finding the table. But when she had wandered by all the tables, she still hadn’t seen her parents—or anyone familiar for that matter. She stood at the corner of the room, gazing over the entire room. None of the tables looked familiar. For that matter, no one looked familiar.

Her heartbeat was faster than she thought it should be. Something was wrong. She hadn’t understood what the band was singing, but she hadn’t been paying much attention and figured it was just poor articulation. But that wasn’t the case. She knew the song they were playing—she didn’t understand the language. She listened in to the conversations around her. She didn’t understand any of it.

Sonora glanced around, looking for the door again. She must have gotten the wrong party. No matter.

But for whatever reason, the closed doors seemed blended in with the rest of the wall. Servers and guests alike mingled in the fringes. A few guests walked by her en route to the buffet table. She followed them, but still couldn’t understand anything or find a door. She started walking around the perimeter faster, searching for a door, a familiar face, someone. It felt like a snake was running down her spine— fear, cold and anxious, wormed its way down the bones of her back. Then it was running down the bones of her fingers. She wrapped her arms around her bare shoulders and moved faster, ballroom decorum forgotten. Her foot caught on the hem of her dress—or maybe just the carpet—and suddenly she was tumbling into a table. She crashed against it, murmured a hasty apology and continued dashing around, glazed-over eyes on the walls that seemed to stretch on forever.

The warm lighting of the ballroom seemed to be an oppressive glare now, The ballroom seemed to shrink with every round she made. Her feet rooted to the ground as she scanned the wall. It was entirely illogical, but she had been moving back and forth around three-fourths of the walls. She couldn’t find the door, and all she could remember was the guard closing the door just as she slipped in. He’d mentioned she was lucky to get back before the doors were locked. Did that mean they had locked the doors? Had she locked herself in to the wrong party?

“What are you doing here?” Sonora whirled around, tears in her eyes. But they were tears of surprise and hope—she understood these words, however accusatory they were.

It was the man in the turtle suit.

“I-I got lost,” she admitted. “This isn’t the right party.”

“No, it isn’t, Come on. I’ll take you back.”

He walked away with a slight glance back to make sure she was following. The turtle man walked up to a wall and opened a door out of nowhere. She scampered outside immediately, still holding herself as though she might fall apart.

The turtle man followed her out and set a brisk but easy to follow pace back around the halls.

“How did you get to the wrong party?” He asked kindly.

“I-I climbed down a ladder,” she admitted, wiping her tears away. “I-I’m sorry I just wanted to see where it went and I thought it came right around and back.”

“You’re okay. Don’t worry. You must’ve gone through the tunnels that connect the two hotel wings. No big deal.” He led her outside and across the immaculate lawn of the hotel. She shivered again, but this time because of the cold. Her nerves were quickly calming down, eased but man’s kind if raspy voice and his reassurances.

“How old are you?” She could hear laughing now, coming from inside the building they were walking towards.

“S-seven,” she replied.

“Not a bad age to be exploring. But consider telling an adult and bringing a friend with you at least next time.

The turtle man opened the door before them. Open—no lock. Then another door. Across a short foyer, and another closed door.

Sonora spotted her dad immediately, talking to a man in a suit. She ran up to her dad with a giant hug and the server chuckled a little behind her. She was crying her misadventure into his shoulder now, and he led her to the foyer to listen. But when she got to the about the turtle man, she realized he’d gone missing. Maybe he’d gone back to the other party. At that thought, she remembered the twinkle in his eyes when he mentioned the tunnels and recommended she bring a friend next time—and for some reason, she thought she would run into the turtle man again sometime.