The Whipping Tree

II: Charcoal and Cerulean (REVISED)

(**EDIT 08/28/2014: The text flanked by the asterisks (*) are the changes I made. You should probably make note of these modifications, hinthint.)

II
Charcoal and Cerulean

         Joan can tell they’re drawing nearer to where the Nocens live when they speed from walking to a near jog. It is the morning after Eliza’s injury when they reach Otius Mountain. The young girl’s leg is swollen, the skin drawn taut and shiny. The infection is nauseating to look at, and Joan’s guilt is also nauseating to acknowledge, but she can’t bring herself to forgive Eliza for trying to get her killed.

         The Nocens take the girls to the base of the mountain. Joan is sure that she must climb, just as she is sure the climb is steep; there isn’t a shred of doubt in her mind that she won’t be able to make her way up, not without rope and possibly someone to pull her along, and certainly not in the state she is in now.

         The group stands in silence gazing upwards. Joan forces herself not to sway from lack of sleep and is about to raise the question of how they are planning to take her up when the first Nocen makes his move.

         He launches himself towards the first visible handhold in the mountain face. Rocks tumble and clack against more rocks as he scrambles up to the smallest of outcroppings. Front pressed flat against the natural wall, he tilts his head back and searches for his next landing, and when he finds it, he propels himself up again, scaling the rock face until the next ledge, and the next, and the next.

         “Forgive me, but how in Imorda’s name are we going to climb this mountain?” Joan says as the second Nocen begins his ascent. The first looks doll-like in size now. She follows him with her eyes until he hops onto another outcropping and disappears from view.

         “We will...escort you.”

         And perhaps Joan has a different perception of “escort,” but she has no chance to ask what the word means to the Nocens, because she is being scooped up by one of them and slung over his back.

         “I suggest that you hold on.”

         Before Joan really has the time to be terrified, the Nocen is already halfway up the mountain. Her grip would have hurt anyone else carrying her, but the Nocen doesn’t let her vicelike hold deter him.

         She chances a look over her shoulder and feels a lurch in her stomach, turning her head and burying her face into her arm. The Nocen carrying her chuckles and in another few seconds, they reach what is supposed to be the entrance, but is simply another wall of rock.

         *He sets her down and Joan stands wobbly-legged to the side. The Nocen runs his hand along the rough surface, then guides hers in the same motion.

         The second her palm leaves the rock, the ground beneath them shakes and the stone rumbles apart. The space is just big enough for a person to slip through.

         “Follow me,” he says, stepping towards the opening.

         Joan wonders why he isn’t afraid she’ll escape, but she thinks again and laughs to herself, because where would I even go?

         He ducks to avoid hitting his head on a piece of rock jutting out from his right, and vanishes into the dark of the cliff face.

         Joan hesitates. She peeks over the edge to see if Eliza is following, and when she sees in the distance a white-faced girl and hears screams rebounding off the rock, she turns back. Hastily, she plunges into the darkness after the Nocen. The last thing she would want is to be trapped, wedged between two magically separated hulks of rock that may or may not reclose without warning.

         She jumps the moment she moves forward. The rock does start to close behind her, throwing her into darkness as the light from outside shrinks to nothing.

         Every step she takes the rock closes after her, nipping at the hem of her dress and keeping her heart pounding. She walks as quickly as she can, but the mountain only swallows her faster.

         She stumbles over the uneven ground in her haste, and feels a stinging in her nose when she runs into the Nocen ahead of her.

         He takes her arm and pulls her along behind him at a brisk and practiced pace. Despite herself, Joan feels safer when he does. She still loses her footing and scrapes against the walls, but she does not hurt herself beyond that. She is needed here though she does not know why, and the Nocen has orders not to kill her, to keep her mostly in one piece. Her status as Brevinham’s sacrifice is keeping her from harm, at least for now.

         Upon realizing the passage always closes one step behind her, she relaxes marginally. She gathers the flouncy parts of her dress into one hand to keep it from being caught.*

         When they leave the passage there is a clacking sound reminiscent of when Joan first heard the rocks move.

         “Follow me,” the Nocen says again.

         And she does, again, and he leads her deeper into the cave. She waits for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light, but they don’t.

         She never feared the dark before, not even as a child. She always imagined it being a friend, a very big friend, that enjoyed giving hugs, so much that it hugged you for half a day at a time, and only let go when you needed to be up and walking about.

         That was when she was a child, however, when the only thing she had to fear was getting scolded by someone older than her: perhaps her father or Vera, definitely her mother.

         Now as she shadows the Nocen, she has much to be afraid of, and thus darkness is no longer her friend.

(**A/N: According to the word count, this is 900 words? I have a hard time believing that because it's really so tiny. Ah well. Here's another update! Let me know what you think. Comments always make me grin.)