Two hours later, Tir stood looking up at the smooth rock walls all around them and sighed. “I should have guessed. Exactly the same as the other end.”
Both deer were also looking up, one from Dem’s arms, the other from the sandy floor.
“Ummm . . .” Dem intoned thoughtfully after slowly turning a complete circle, “. . . not exactly the same. That broken edge up there is only about eight feet up.”
Tir frowned. “Okay, so you’ll give me a boost up . . . then what?”
Dem set down the little female and held his glow-stone over his head.
“Hmmm. Then . . . you’ll pull me up!”
Tir frowned even more deeply. “O . . . kay . . .”
After a mushroom for courage, Tir realized that her shoes wouldn’t really help with the climb, and would probably hurt Dem’s shoulders, so she took them off. “You can toss them to me once I’m up.”
Dem
nodded.
The two deer watched as Tir first stepped into Dem’s clasped hands, then up to his shoulders. From her wobbly perch, only the nearby wall kept her from falling.
“Okay,” Tir called from above, “I can get my arms over the edge.”
Dem couldn’t see anything. “Now you have to hold yourself up so I can switch to pushing on your feet.”
NEBADOR Book Ten:Stories from Sonmatia 79
“There’s not much to . . . hold onto . . . maybe this little . . . crack in the rock. There.”
Dem felt Tir become lighter, so he changed positions quickly and pushed.
“Climb!”
She scrambled for anything she could grab, causing several small rocks to rain down on Dem and the deer. Finally, her upper half was over the edge, her feet now out of Dem’s reach. “Sorry about the junk,” she gasped out.
Dem glanced at the deer. “We’re okay.”
Tir pulled her legs over the edge, sat up, and got out her glow-stone to examine her new environment.
“Wow . . .” she breathed.
“What?”
“Stalagmites . . . flowstones . . . old water channels . . . big, but not as big as the bird cavern.”
“That matches the Map,” Dem said from below. “Shoes coming up!”
Tir giggled as they landed nearby.
Getting the deer to the upper level was not so easy. Held as high as Dem could reach, the little female cried in pain. Tir lay on her belly and stretched her arms down as far as she could. She feared she would over-balance and fall, but was able to get her hands around the deer’s middle. Dem continued to help by pushing on the little animal’s dangling hooves, avoiding the injured leg.
Finally, Tir and the little female flopped onto the rocks and both gasped for breath.
“Sorry it’s not soft sand, little one,” Tir said in a comforting tone.
The male deer was a different kind of problem. He had never before needed any help, and indeed had never let any of the humans touch him.
But now his mate was eight feet up, and he had no way of crossing that gulf by himself.
He strutted this way and that, tried to climb the walls under his own power, and ran back down the tunnel a few yards before returning.
Both Tir, above, and Dem, on his level, weren’t sure whether to laugh or
NEBADOR Book Ten:Stories from Sonmatia 80
cry. They understood what he was going through, but couldn’t think of any way to help that didn’t involve touching him.
The little male creature made heart-rending sounds that expressed his frustration.
“What’re we gonna do?” Tir asked from above.
Dem sat down and pulled a mushroom from his bag. “Just wait, I guess.”
Tir sighed, and got out mushrooms for herself and the little female.
An hour later, fighting every instinct in his mind and body, the little male hung his head in front of Dem.
“I think he’s as ready as he’ll ever be,” Dem called up to his sister. “Get ready for one scared critter in your arms.”
“Oh,
joy.”
As soon as Dem picked him up, the male’s little legs started moving, but Dem ignored them, and the resulting scratches on his arms, as he hoisted the animal up.
“Poor thing, he’s so scared . . .” Tir said in comforting tones as she reached, grabbed, and pulled.
The male was running toward his mate almost before Tir could put him down. She couldn’t suppress a chuckle.
Then she remembered her brother and looked down. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just a few hoof-scratches. I should have been wearing the coat.
Didn’t think of it.”
“Me neither. Sorry.”
Dem rested, ate another mushroom, then tossed his bag and glow-stone up to his sister. “Okay, that’s everything . . . except me.”
Brother and sister pondered the situation in silence for a few minutes.
Dem could reach up about six feet. From her belly, Tir could reach down almost two feet. A leap would add a little. Dem took the next quarter hour to pile up as much sand as possible.
As life-long cave dwellers, they knew that clasping hands would do no good. Their only hope was to get ahold of each other’s wrists.
Dem took several deep breaths, than sprang. Their hands and wrists met.
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Tir screamed in pain as her ribs were crushed against the rock beneath her.
Dem scrambled with his feet for anything that would allow him to get higher.
Tir ignored her pain and pulled with all her might.
Dem found nothing that gave him any traction.
As much as she wanted to find the strength to pull her bother up, it was nowhere to be found in her slender arms.
They both stayed in that painful, frustrating place a moment longer, then let go.
Dem fell onto the sand and gasped for air.
Tir’s mind filled with the pain from her ribs, arms, and hands, and she began crying deeply, right where she lay.
After her tears had run their course, Tir was still lying on her belly, her mind numb and her body sore, when a wet nose touched her cheek. She turned her head slightly to find the male deer looking at her.
“Yes, little one, we’re in a pickle. Dem’s down there, I’m up here, and your sweetheart has a broken leg. Pickles all around.”
The little deer made a sound in his throat.
“I’m open to suggestions, but you’ll have to explain your idea a little more
. . .”
Tir suddenly quit speaking, and her mouth hung open. She propped herself onto her sore elbows and looked down. Her brother was sitting up now, dealing silently with his own frustrations.
“Guess what I just realized!” Tir called down.
After sniffling once, Dem looked up. “What?”
“We can do this! We just need to put the one with strong arms at the top, because that’s where they’ll be needed, and the one who weighs less at the bottom!”
Dem thought for a moment. “But . . . that’s the exact opposite of where we are!”
Tir made her favorite rude noise.
Dem smiled, but it soon changed to a frown. “That means I’d have to
NEBADOR Book Ten:Stories from Sonmatia 82
stand on your shoulders.”
“I can handle that. And I might not be able to push you up like you did for me, but I can make footholds against the wall with my hands, and you can pull yourself up!”
Dem thought about it, then grinned up at his very smart sister.
Tir swung her legs over the edge, hung from her hands, then let go and dropped to the sand below. Dem steadied her when she landed.
The male deer looked down from the edge as if the silly human female had just lost her mind.
Tir started wondering the same thing when she felt Dem’s weight in her clasped hands. She was sure of it when he went to her shoulders. “Ouch!
Don’t stay there any longer than you have to!”
“I promise!” He reached over the edge and felt for the crack his sister had used. “That better?”
“Much. Now hold on while I support your . . . right foot. Unless you prefer the left.”
“Don’t care. Okay, here goes.”
She pushed, or at least tried to keep his foot in the same place, and he pulled with all his might. The effort caused him to roar like a lion, even though he only knew of lions from picture books. The male deer jumped back in fright and stood guard over the female.
When Dem had most of his weight on the upper level, he fell silent and looked up. “Sorry,” he said to the frightened little animals.
“I
think that was the hard part,” Dem said, receiving his shoes as Tir tossed them up.
“I’m
sure it was for my shoulders!”
Dem frowned. “The next part isn’t going to be nice to your shoulders, either.”
Tir sighed. “Just give me a few minutes,” she said, swinging her arms,
“then I really don’t care what happens, as long as I’m up there. Here comes my glow-stone.”
“Got
it.”
NEBADOR Book Ten:Stories from Sonmatia 83
Tir took several more minutes to feel ready, all the time flexing and stretching her arms and shoulders. While pacing, she mentally took stock of their possessions — one coat, two glow-stones, two nearly-empty mushroom bags, and four old shoes. Everything was at the top, waiting for her.
“I’m ready,” she declared. “You?”
Dem was swinging his arms too. “If we aren’t ready soon, we’ll starve to death, right here.”
Tir chuckled. “That’s motivation, if anything is. Here I come, ready or not!”
Dem got down on his belly. He received Tir’s wrists, and this time roared like a dragon, which he had not seen in picture books but thought it probably roared even louder than a lion. He pulled with all his strength and hope, going up to his knees in the process, while Tir did her part by bending her arms and scrambling to get her feet over the edge.
They collapsed together onto the rocky floor of the upper cavern and just breathed. Both their bodies screamed at them with pain, which they completely ignored.
After getting over the fright caused by the dragon-roar, the two deer looked at the two humans with deepened respect.