The Sentinels of Eden, Books 1-4

Chapter 32

Okay, so that was pretty brilliant. He offered me the phone and I tried to think of what note to write. What was I supposed to say? Hi, Harry, hope you’re enjoying your holiday. Come back soon so I can still enrol for uni and by the way, are you my real dad? Instead I wrote, ‘Harry, I’m ready to talk now. I have lots of questions. Meet me here. We’ve set the alarm for you.’

I had tried writing ‘Meet me at the sword’, but of course even trying to type the word ‘sword’ was impossible. Even what I did write made me feel as guilty as if I had run over a kitten. I badly needed this meeting though, so I mentally sacrificed the kitten and hit save.

Bane set the alarm for 6pm the following day, then wrapped his phone tightly in a sock. Tomorrow’s hike home was undoubtedly going to be very uncomfortable for him.

With pedantic care, he widened the hole a little more and just managed to squeeze one arm and his head through. My heart skipped a few beats and something deep inside me stirred restlessly as he leant towards the threshold between worlds. I fought to suppress my compulsion to drag him away from there, while behind me Noah was pacing the floor like a weaned calf.

It was almost pitch dark with Bane blocking the sword’s light, so we couldn’t see him throw the phone to the other side, but he pulled himself out quickly, blowing on his scorched fingers. Hopefully he’d tossed it gently enough not to damage it but far enough away from the sword not to be affected by the heat.

‘Should we try to call it?’ Noah asked, squinting through the gap to try to see where it landed.

‘Are you nuts? Bane can’t even get reception here, let alone in another dimension.’ I dialled the number into the sat-phone anyway, just in case Eden was actually a super-technologically-advanced civilisation, but it wasn’t and I was strangely comforted by the idea that at least some of the laws of the universe still seemed to apply.

‘Well, I guess that means we’re coming back tomorrow,’ I said as I slumped down onto a lumpy rock.

By the time we stumbled out of the cave the sun had almost completely set, leaving a dull golden haze against the top of the hills. Tessa was eager to explore and look for other ways through the ridge but we all talked her out of it. Not all caves began horizontally, and discovering the vertical ones in the dark didn’t seem like a great idea.

We polished off the rest of the oranges and tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible for the night. The warm rocks we had brought from the cave were great but not the cosiest things to cuddle. After some amusing experimentation, I ended up putting two small ones into my socks and cuddled a bigger one against my chest. It made me feel surprisingly safe. I thought about gathering some sort of bedding material but felt too lazy. Chances were I would probably regret that before morning.

We tried to settle ourselves near the mouth of the tunnel so the overhang would keep the dew off us. Noah and Tessa curled up together on a flattish bit of almost grass. At least they would keep each other warm. I was relieved, however, when Bane chose a sleeping spot well away from mine—I still wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing by him earlier so I was grateful not to have to decide between what I wanted and what I felt was sensible. My rebellious body ached to close the distance between us but I was determined to suppress such a selfish idea. If he could keep his distance then so could I.

Tessa lasted almost half an hour before the mosquitoes drove her into the cool tunnel. Noah followed to help her find somewhere dry to sleep. Mozzies had never bothered me much, which made me wonder if it was a Cherub thing, but Bane didn’t seem to be too bothered either. Unless he was just hiding it well.

We lay there for a long time listening to each other breathing. It was obvious he wasn’t asleep. Then I remembered that he could always feel when I was awake so I tried really hard to relax. It wasn’t easy, and when I finally began to drift off all I could hear was the poignant echo of the river. The melodies wove themselves inexorably into my mind, far more powerful now that we were so close to the cave.

I dreamt of my mother. She was crying. Holding me but crying as if her heart was broken. Irritably I pushed away from her and climbed onto Aunt Lily’s lap instead. She tickled me and sang me songs. Songs that made me laugh. But I could still hear my mother crying. Now she was crying because of me. Because she had lost me as well, so I tried to go back and comfort her but Aunt Lily held on to me too tightly. She pulled me away as I tried to reach for my mummy. I wanted to tell her I was still here, and that she hadn’t lost me. I wanted to hug her and make her better, but Aunt Lily carried me out of the room. In my childlike distress I screamed at her to let me go, to take me back, and I struggled frantically to get her to release her hold but she held me like a vice. I wanted Mummy, not her. I needed to make her better; why wouldn’t she listen? I screamed louder. Mummy needed me, she was so sad!

‘Lainie! Listen to me!’ Aunt Lily was shaking me. You should never shake a child, I thought angrily as I continued to struggle.

‘Lainie, please listen, you’re just dreaming!’ Bane’s voice sounded frantic and his hands burned where they gripped my shoulders.

I sat up with a jerk and blinked at him in utter confusion.

The grassy clearing glowed eerily in the moonlight while a trillion stars looked down disapprovingly at the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. Someone was sobbing loudly and I hoped futilely that it wasn’t me. I needed time when I woke up to compose myself before anyone could see me, but Bane was right there. There was nowhere to hide.

A few hiccupy breaths helped as I tried to dry my face with my hand. My salty tears made my fingers sting, and looking down at them I realised it was because they were covered with grazes. Bane pried the fingers of my other hand away from the rock I was still clutching. I must have been wrestling with it in my sleep if I’d made myself bleed. No wonder I’d woken him up.

‘Oh! Sorry, Bane, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it. Here,’ I said, offering him my hands as if I was under arrest.

He held my wrists and we both watched as the cuts closed over. I was dazed by the sight, and it distracted me nicely from the sorrow still lingering in my ears. Tingling warmth spread up my arms and my shoulders began to relax. I hadn’t realised how cold I was.

‘The music’s worse here,’ Bane guessed, his fingers lingering on my palms.

I nodded. I should have shrugged him off. I should have played it down and made some smart remark. Instead I just stared at his hands holding mine as if they were made of fragile crystal. Despite my emotional exhaustion, I knew it was unlikely that I would get back to sleep again. For his sake I should have at least been willing to try, but I just didn’t want to move. At all. Ever. My watch had given up after one too many river crossings, and Bane’s phone was lying in a stinky sock in another dimension, so I couldn’t even check what time it was.

A violent shiver broke me out of my stupor and I considered picking up the rock again but I didn’t dare, and it had probably long since gone cold anyway. Wordlessly Bane leant back against a granite boulder, drew me into his arms and pulled me against his chest. He was so warm. Breathing in the scent of him helped me to ignore the poignant echoes of the symphony that still bounced around my skull. He smelled like eucalyptus and sweat and … well … Aeroguard. It was ludicrously comforting. Pulling my head down onto his shoulder, he sighed as he felt me relax. He was far kinder to me than he needed to be. I was messing with his emotions big time and it was not going to end well. I felt as if I had slipped him some sort of love potion and I knew that at some point we would find a way to break this hold I had over him and then he would wake up with a massive case of ‘the morning after’. He was really going to hate me then. I should be protecting him from himself. It would be the honourable thing to do …

His heart beat a steady rhythm under my cheek.

Maybe if I just avoided the kissing. I had managed for seventeen years to live without this feeling he was giving me; surely I could survive without it, but until I had to, just being held by him would be okay, wouldn’t it? I closed my eyes, selfishly relishing the feeling of being wanted, and cared for, and protected. And I tried like crazy to ignore the fact that it wasn’t real.

A flock of cockatoos screeched from the top of the cliff, waking us both with a jolt. Those birds were seriously loud, especially when there were about fifty of them together. Blinking stupidly, I was surprised to see the sun starting to rise. I had never expected to get back to sleep at all. My face was wet again, and sure enough, Bane’s shirt looked as if someone had thrown a drink at him. How embarrassing.

My first attempt to peel myself off the ground resulted in a nasty reminder of the stones I’d put in my socks. When I tried again, so many leaves and sticks were imprinted onto my skin that I looked like a Year 8 art project. Stretching the kinks out of my back, it cracked so much it sounded like someone had stepped on a bag of chips and I hoped Bane wouldn’t feel the need to have to heal me again. He looked up at me appraisingly, obviously trying to decide the same thing, and the mussed morning look of his dark hair almost had me leaning back down to smooth it out for him. Instead I backed away clumsily and went to wash up in the tiny creek.

When I felt capable of acting more or less sensible again I returned to the cave, but Bane was gone, so I sat down and daydreamed about bacon and eggs and wondered how long it would be before Tessa would wake up. She wasn’t farm-bred, so she could sleep until midday for all I knew, but she emerged from the tunnel a few minutes later with more bounce in her step that any of us had a right to.

‘Noah’s dead to the world,’ she said brightly. ‘Where’s Bane?’

‘No idea. It doesn’t work both ways,’ I replied, trying not to sound grumbly.

‘Do you think he’d mind if we did some exploring now? Just for a little while?’

As eager as I was to get home to my hot shower and breakfast, I couldn’t help thinking that there could be some other tunnel, just around the corner somewhere, that might give us another way into Eden. The memory of my dreams … my mother crying her river of sadness … She could be just around the corner. All we needed was another cave like this one.

‘We don’t need his permission, Tess. Come on. It isn’t like he can’t find me if he wants to, and I expect you’ll feel it when Noah wakes up, so we’ll know when to come back.’

Enjoying the freshness of the new morning, we made our way along the base of the cliff, trying to understand the lay of the land. The uneven wall formed part of the lower edge of the massive ridge that we had ridden up on the morning of the fire. It was possible that the cave kept tunnelling right under the ridge and exited into the ravine beyond, although how closely that matched what happened on the other side of the Event Horizon was anyone’s guess. Was there another way into the valley? And was it a normal valley or was it filled with the Garden of Eden? I wanted to know if there were more caves. And more ways in.

We hiked for nearly half an hour before Tessa found another possible cave entrance, which turned out to be a shallow dead end. We kept going. The day was warming up quickly and I knew Bane would come looking for me soon, but each time I thought about turning around I would see another promising overhang that I just had to check out. None of them were any good. Then Tessa discovered a small gap between some rocks we were climbing over. It was barely large enough to squeeze into and yet she plunged down into the hole like she’d seen a magic ring, totally ignoring the nice long scrape she gained on her thigh when she slipped on the way down. Yet again, I realised that going to school with someone for years didn’t necessarily mean you knew who they were. She was proving to be much tougher than she looked.

We wormed our way through the shaft using Tessa’s phone as a torch, listening to the echoes of underground water nearby. Falling into a subterranean river didn’t seem like a safe idea to me but Tessa led the way boldly, squeezing through tight gaps and twice needing me to pull her back out again to find an alternative route when she got stuck. The girl had no fear. When she started going backwards and headfirst down a skinny chute I had to say something. She told me not to be such a wuss and wriggled away before I could get to her.

‘Ah, see, I told you not to worry,’ she said, her voice bouncing around. ‘Hurry up.’

I took a deep breath and shimmied down after her, silently cursing Noah for expecting me to grow so tall. The chute opened out into a nice wide passageway—big enough for us to stand up easily—and I could feel an icy breeze blowing up out of it. The air was just like in the cavern with the sword. It smelled like limestone and unsafe promises. It gave me a feeling of such deep reverence that when Tessa’s voice blurted out from the darkness ahead, I jumped a mile.

‘He’s awake,’ she announced. ‘That’s amazing! I really can tell when he’s awake! I think he’s heading towards us.’

‘Congratulations, Tess. You are now officially as creepy as the rest of us.’

Her pretty face, reflecting blue light and shadows, looked delighted. And then, without even needing to discuss it, we both totally ignored our resolution to head back.

We clambered up and through another twisting tunnel that opened out into a chamber full of delicate straws hanging down from the low ceiling. Each one was gravid with a precious drop of moisture ready to fall. We were reluctant to move around too much in case we broke any, so we stayed close to the driest-looking side wall, and what we discovered there almost made Tessa drop her phone.