Belle and the Prophecy of Bane

Chapter 7

"Echolocation?" said Gregor blankly. "You're going to teach us echolocation?" He, Belle and Ripred were standing in a circular cave deep beneath Regalia with nothing but Gregor's mini-flashlight.

Ripred slouched against the wall. Honestly, even for a rat he had terrible posture. When he fought, everything about him seemed to crackle and align and click perfectly into place. The rest of the time, he wasn't much to look at.

As if even slouching was too big of an effort, the rat slid down and lounged on the floor. "Yes, echolocation. Tell me what you know about it."

"I know bats use it. And dolphins, I think," replied Gregor, thinking. "It's like...their own personal radar system. They make a noise and it bounces off something, and then they can tell where it is without seeing it. But people can't do that. We can't do that."

"Anybody can do it, to some extent," Belle said. "In the Overland, some blind people use it with excellent results. Most humans here do not give it much attention, but--"

"In this, they are fools," Ripred interrupted. "All the rest of us down here use it to some extent."

"You mean, the roaches and the spiders..." Gregor started.

"All of us. Generations in the dark have helped the skill evolve. But if you two could master even the most rudimentary elements of it, echolocation would be invaluable to you," said Ripred. "Say, for instance, if you lost your light in a cave with a rat."

Gregor saw Ripred's tail coming and raised his hand to block it, but this time the rat was ahead of him. It was actually his hind foot that smacked the flashlight out of his hand and sent it spinning through the air. But this was the advantage of having a partner. Belle thrust her hand up and caught the light, pointing it back at Ripred.

"Excellent reflexes," he commented. "But that is not why we're here." The tail lashed out again, knocking the light out of Belle's hand. It skidded across the floor and hit the cave wall. The beam pointed into the stone, leaving them virtually in the dark.

Belle clicked her tongue and turned in a circle, trying to find Ripred. Ares and Bastet had both tried to teach her to echolocate before, with little success. She had never really needed it before now. Hence, Ripred's voice startled her when he spoke again.

"And now I'm back here," he said from behind her. She felt Gregor's hand clasp hers, and they turned together. "Over here now!" came Ripred's voice, somewhere off to their left.

The flashlight came rolling back and bumped against Belle's feet. She picked it up and saw Ripred slouching against the wall again, on the far side of the cave.

"So teach us," said Gregor, looking unnerved.

Ripred began by having them stand on opposite sides of the cave. They each closed their eyes and clicked their tongues against the roofs of their mouths. Then they had to listen very carefully to how it sounded. Belle knew it should have sounded different when directed toward toward the cave wall as opposed to toward Gregor, but she couldn't really tell the difference. Next, Ripred had them take turns turning off the flashlight and clicking and listening and pointing it wherever it sounded like their partner might be.

"Focus, Overlander! This could save your life!" Ripred snarled as Gregor miscalculated Belle's position for the tenth time in a row.

"This is stupid, Ripred--it all sounds the same to me!" Gregor retorted, pushing away from the cave wall. "I can't do it, okay?"

"No, not okay--" Ripred began, but Belle cut across him.

"We will practice," she said evenly, crossing to them. "Every time we have a chance down here, and you, Gregor, when you get home--"