Tik and Jin stood looking at each other in silence for several minutes.
Dem and Tir, on the ledge, were also silent. The soft sounds made by the two deer, where they lay together in the sand, could be clearly heard.
Finally Jin swallowed. “Wow . . .” she softly intoned. “Want a . . .
mushroom?”
Tik smiled and nodded, then looked up toward the ledge. “Me and Jin have some tunnels to explore. You guys have some Angels to find. If we don’t see you again . . . be happy. I trust you’ll know what to do with the deer.
Maybe that leg will heal enough so they can go off on their own again . . . I don’t know.”
Tir was silently crying. “We’ll . . . take good care of them, I promise.”
Dem could also feel moisture gathering in his eyes. “You guys be happy, too.”
Tik accepted a mushroom from Jin, offered her his hand, and together they disappeared into one of the small tunnels that led out of the bottom level of the pit.
A few minutes later, Dem and Tir both realized they were sitting on a ledge looking into an empty, silent pit.
“Time to give the little ones something to eat,” Tir said as she got up.
“And us, too,” Dem added.
Tir chuckled as she wiped her tears onto her sleeve and started working
NEBADOR Book Ten:Stories from Sonmatia 76
her way along the ledge.
Once they were seated on the sand near the deer and everyone was eating, Tir took a hard look inside her mushroom bag, and glanced at Dem’s. “With feeding the deer, about a day.”
Dem was silent for a long moment as he looked into his bag. “At the most.”
They both ate quietly for another minute.
“I guess . . .” Dem began, gathering his thoughts, “. . . you and me started this journey . . . and you and me were meant to finish it, just a brother and sister.”
“How does that fit with your dream?” she asked, looking at him with her head slightly cocked.
Dem looked at the sand and remained silent for a long moment. “It’s . . .
exactly what happened in the dream . . . but I was . . . too embarrassed to tell you before.”
Tir smiled at her brother, although he didn’t see it, and then decided it was a good time to change the subject a little. “Well . . . we know Fim and Tol won’t be finishing the journey with us, and Bel, Fen, Jin, and Tik aren’t on the right path . . . at least, according to the Map . . . but we still have no idea if we can finish it.”
Dem looked up. “I guess . . . there’s nothing to do but try.”
“Yeah.”
Without discussing it, they both knew this was the point of no return.
From the area of the pit, they could get back to the mushroom patch in the big cavern before starving to death.
They both looked in that direction for a moment, then turned and considered the unknown darkness ahead. The tunnel appeared to slope slightly upward away from the pit.
“Water must have come from both directions,” Dem thought aloud, “and drained into the pit.”
Tir nodded. “Maybe Jin and Tik will find out where it once went, and there will be birds, and mushrooms, and maybe even deer, just like in the big cavern!”
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“Maybe,” he said as he shrugged out of Tir’s old coat and handed it to her.
“I know I’m going to stay warm carrying the little one and walking uphill.”
She hesitated, then accepted the coat. “Okay, but it goes over both of us when we’re sleeping.”
“Agreed,” he said, picked up the little female animal, and side by side with his sister, began the next leg of their journey.