Chapter 73 – Stew and Stones

  A stew bubbled in the small iron pot, steam carrying the mingled scents of boar meat, herbs, and smoke. It was as good a meal as they’d had in days, yet Pit scowled into his bowl as though it had mocked him.

  “When are we leaving this reeking place?” he asked, spoon scraping the side. “What’s next? This place stinks worse than a tanner’s yard. Water’s foul, air’s foul, and the fog makes my skin itch. Say the word, Caelen, and let’s be gone.”

  Caelen shook his head, chewing slowly before answering. His words came short and broken, but steady. “No. Staying.”

  Pit groaned, throwing his spoon down with a clatter. “Staying? Here? In the Hollow? Veil, save me! This isn’t a place to stay—it’s a midden! Even the boars don’t linger, and they are pigs!”

  Across the fire, Tib stirred the pot with calm patience. “What’s in rattling in your mind, Caelen?” he asked, though there was already a knowing edge in his tone.

  Caelen pointed to the cliffs, then the stream, then the fog that curled low across the valley floor. “Tib… go. Nova Spes.”

  Tiberan nodded once, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “New Hope, and then what?”

  “Bring them here!” Caelen said, “Will prepare here.”

  Caelen leaned forward, his voice firm. “Pit help. Bring water here.”

  Pit stared. “No water to drink in the Hollow, and you want me lugging skins back and forth until I drop dead? And that’s if the boars don’t gut me along the way!”

  Caelen shook his head again, a stubborn spark in his eyes. “No, no, no, no. We not walk water. We bring water here.”

  Pit blinked, utterly lost. “That’s still the same thing!”

  Tiberan set the ladle aside, folding his arms. His voice was calm but sure. “No, Pit. You don’t see it. He’s not talking about carrying skins. He’s talking about making the water come to us.”

  Pit’s jaw dropped. “Oh, perfect. Another one of Caelen’s bright ideas. Last time, it was poking at shiny rocks; now, it’s moving rivers. And let me guess—my part involves a shovel, a pickaxe, and being covered head to toe in mud.”

  For the first time that evening, Caelen smiled. His teeth flashed in the firelight as he pointed his spoon at Pit. “Yes. Dirty. Very dirty. Then you look… just like pig.”

  Tib chuckled into his bowl. Pit groaned and pulled the blanket over his head. “If I wake tomorrow with tusks, Caelen, I’ll blame you.”

  But though he muttered, the stew still warmed his belly, and the strange fire in Caelen’s eyes made him wonder whether—just maybe—the mad idea could be more than smoke.

  …

  The Hollow felt emptier after Tib’s departure that morning. His calm demeanor balanced Caelen’s surety and Pit’s complaints. Now, only two remained in the mist-cloaked valley, tasked with scouting the ridges of the south.

  They climbed early, boots crunching loose stone, breath drawn thin by the steep ascent. The Southern Ridge that Pit said loomed like the back of a sleeping boar, scarred and rough with outcrops that jutted like broken teeth. The climb was punishing—jagged rock cut at their palms, thornbushes snagged their cloaks, and the fog from the Hollow drifted upward in tendrils that stung the nose with its sour bite.

  At the crest, they split. Pit, grumbling as ever, was told to search eastward for a clean spring or lake. “Water,” Caelen said with that stubborn glint in his eye. “Good water. Look.”

  “And if the boars find me first?” Pit muttered, but Caelen had already turned westward, disappearing along a narrow goat path.

  For two hours, Pit clambered across broken ridges, following gullies, searching for the glint of water among stone. At the height, he found nothing but trickling streams that reeked of sulfur and earth, but down the other slope, at a distance, he saw a waterfall feeding a lake. His throat grew dry, and every time he stopped to drink from his skin, he cursed Caelen for making him deplete his.

  When the appointed time came, and Caelen did not return, worry gnawed at him. He retraced his steps, heart thudding, calling once or twice into the wind, though he knew the boy would not answer.

  At last, rounding a bend of crumbling shale, he saw him.

  Caelen sat upon a wide, flat ledge of stone, so near the edge that Pit’s stomach lurched. Beyond him stretched a world unlike any Pit had seen.

  To the south, the land fell away in vast, tumbling slopes—hills giving way to forest, bleeding into the glittering sweep of the coast. The sea was a sheet of hammered blue, broken only by white crests where the wind tore at its surface. And far beyond, rising black against the horizon, stood a volcano.

  Old lava flows, which clinted and gleamed in the sun like rivers of obsidian, scarred its slopes of black stone with a deep split on the southern slope. Smoke and ash rose from its crown in a pale, steady plume, drifting eastward on the high wind. Now and then, the smoke thickened, curling upward with a reddish glow, as though fire stirred deep within its heart. At its base was an empty ground, parched and shattered, as if the mountain consumed all things.

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  The expanse amazed Pit with awe and terror in equal measures. He could feel the vastness of the wide world looming over him, and the sea’s salt was even detectable at this height. The world went on forever, wild and untamed, reminding him that his world of Avalon was but a small corner of something more.

  Caelen did not turn when Pit approached. He sat utterly still, hands on his knees, eyes fixed on the smoking giant in the distance. His face was calm, almost serene, as though the volcano had reached across the leagues and set some secret fire in his heart.

  Pit swallowed hard, uneasy with the closeness of the cliff’s edge. “You’re going to fall off staring like that,” he muttered. “And if you don’t, I will, just looking at you sitting there.”

  Caelen finally glanced back, the faintest of smiles tugging his lips. “Not fall,” he said simply. His eyes returned to the horizon. “See… world. Big. Strong. Waiting.”

  Pit shook his head and eased himself down onto the stone, keeping a cautious span between him and the sheer drop. The wind tugged at his hair and cloak, sharp with the tang of salt, and though he told himself not to, his eyes followed Caelen’s out to the horizon.

  The volcano smoldered in the distance—vast, unyielding, a mountain crowned in fire. From its summit, smoke rose, and the sea continued, seemingly without end. Looking at it, Pit felt a shiver that was not fear but a recognition between it and the boy. Here was something ancient, immovable, and dangerous, yet full of promise.

  And in that moment, he understood why Caelen sat so entranced. He saw it too—the same quiet, relentless force that smoldered in the boy beside him. Caelen was no longer just a sickly youth clinging to life; he was like the mountain itself, something shaping, something becoming.

  For a long time, neither spoke. The silence of the Hollow was behind them, and on the ridge there was only the ceaseless wind and the faint, distant rumble of a world still remaking itself.

  Caelen broke his silence at last, his voice low and certain. “Pit. Found water. Need help.”

  Pit groaned but hauled himself to his feet. “Of course you did. And of course it’s uphill. Let me guess—if I slip and break my neck, you’ll tell Tib I did it in the name of Spes?”

  Caelen only tilted his head toward the ridge and began climbing.

  They reached it half an hour later, and Pit forgot his complaints. Before them tumbled a sheet of silver water, leaping from the southern face of the mountain in a long, unbroken fall. The spray cooled their sweat, and the pool at its base was clear as glass, rushing onward in a stream that cut east toward the sea.

  Pit knelt and drank deep. “Sweet as anything. But it doesn’t help us. The Hollow’s back that way on the other side.” He jerked his thumb toward the misty vale behind them.

  Caelen stood at the pool’s edge, eyes half-shut as though he were seeing more than what lay before them. “We… take part,” he said. “Redirect. Hollow must drink.”

  Pit’s eyes narrowed. He turned, looking back the way they had come. Two ravines dropped jaggedly into the Hollow, split by broken shelves of stone. If water ran that way, it would wander the length of the valley, pooling foul in the farthest reaches, nowhere near their camp.

  “That’s a walk of half a league at least,” Pit said. “Water will sit and rot before it reaches us. You’ll have us carrying buckets just the same.”

  Caelen shook his head, sharp. “No. Not pool. Not far. Flow. In line. To camp. To fields. To… future.”

  Pit let out a bark of laughter. “Fields, he says! I’m still tripping over pig roots, and he’s planting cabbages in his head.”

  But Caelen’s eyes were fixed, steady as stone. He handed Pit the spade from his pack. “Dig trench. Shallow. Here. Water follows.”

  Pit muttered every curse he knew but set to work, boots braced, arms straining. The spade bit into gravelly soil, each stroke pulling up stones and grit. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, and his palms blistered quickly beneath the haft. The ground was stubborn, unwilling, and more than once, he nearly hurled the tool into the ravine.

  While Pit dug, Caelen vanished into the brush. When he returned, he carried two saplings stripped of their branches, straight and thin as spears. He worked them at the mouth of the first ravine, lashed together with a cord, and wedged them into the walls until they created a large curved bridge within the ravine. He then fetched stone after stone. Some he split with a sharp crack of his pickaxe, others he fitted whole, turning them in his hands until they sat snug.

  Pit paused in his labor, leaning on the spade, breath ragged. He watched as Caelen built—no hesitation, no fumbling. Each stone seemed to know its place, sliding into the frame of saplings until an arch began to take form. He worked fast, sweat shining on his brow, but with a precision Pit had only ever seen in seasoned masons.

  “Gods,” Pit muttered, shaking his head. “You build like you’ve been at it for twenty years. Where’d you learn to shape stone like that? Last I checked, you were barely able to work a spoon.”

  Caelen only smiled faintly, setting another block with a sharp tap of his pick. “Know it. In here.” He tapped his temple. “Clearer now.”

  Pit blinked, unsure whether to laugh or be unsettled. He turned back to his trench, spade biting the earth again. Dirt clung to his boots, sweat ran down his spine, and still Caelen’s arch rose stone by stone, clean lines forming where there should have been only chaos.

  By the time the sun lowered, Pit’s arms trembled from the day’s labor. His trench stretched rough and crooked, but water would find its way to the arch. He sat back on his heels, filthy and sore, watching Caelen set the keystone atop the arch. It held.

  He could see the plan now; they would make a river that flowed not with the contours of the earth but by the design of man.

  Pit whistled low. “You’ve gone and done it. Mad as you are, you’ve pulled water out of a mountain and bent it to your will.” He wiped his brow with a muddy sleeve. “And me? I look like a pig wallowing in its pen.”

  Caelen’s laugh was soft, but real. “Yes. Pig.”

  But though his body ached, he felt the same strange awe as when he had watched Caelen smile at the volcano. The boy was becoming something else—something that made even stone obey.

  For the next five days, they worked with the stones, dirt, and mud to build a system that would direct clean water into the hollow, a structure Caelen called an aqueduct. Where it ended was an even bigger surprise to Pit, even more so the system itself. The first time they let the water flow, he followed it to the end and found a shaped rock like a bowl that looked like a cistern, but he was confused because it had two paths for the water to flow out. When he followed them, he found another, larger depression, but it was strange, as it had another entry point for water before it exited into the smelly stream.

  The night the water was released, the system worked, and after two hours, only clear water flowed.

  Caelen seemed very excited and went to the larger depression, where he removed a wooden plank that allowed the hot spring water to enter the basin. He then removed another plank, letting the fresh water mix. He worked for an hour, mixing the waters until late in the night, when he seemed to reach his goal.

  “Won’t smell like pig anymore,” he called out in this broken cantor. Soon, he stripped out of all his clothes and stepped into the water. “Pit, bath, feels great.”

  Pit quickly joined him, feeling warm and clean for the first time since coming to this cursed hollow.