5:4
Ivan, Patti, and Prairie stood around the edges of the hole while Dan lay on top of it. And they waited, each of them in their own way, to hear Gwen’s verdict on Ben’s condition.
Ivan planted his hands on his hips and began to pace. One-two-three-four-five. Stop. Pivot. Turn. One-two-three-four-five. Patti counted each move. It gave her brain something to focus on instead of the endless landscape – she’d exhausted it as visual stimulation pretty quickly, the possible cave opening across the pit – it’s darkness beckoned but they weren’t going there until they had the whole group together again, and the pit with Dan lying flat on top of it. Prairie crouched on the safe side of the pit and talked quietly to Dan who answered in equally hushed tones.
Patti narrowed her eyes on Prairie and Dan. All this doing nothing was… well, it was boring but it was also frustrating. Sure Gwen leaping on top of Kim while Kim dropped into the pit had been reckless but at least she’d *done something*. Patti was not going into that pit. No, sir. Just the thought of it made the bottoms of her feet itch. She wasn’t afraid of heights, so much. But afraid of falling…? Anyone who claimed differently was lying. Or was one of those thrill seekers who jumped out of planes. Patti was so glad that as a Magicker that was not a thrill that would ever be an option for her.
An idea flirted at the front of her mind as she looked at Dan and Prairie. “What about we try to get Dan off that? If we can he’ll be one less obstacle to calculate for when trying to figure out how to get the others out of the pit.”
Ivan stilled his pacing and pivoted to focus on Patti. It was clear by his expression he had already seized on the idea as a means of distracting himself from what was happening to Ben.
“We could do that. Too bad we don’t have a reach-weapon that doesn’t have an edge.”
“Yes. That would be good.” Dan’s words didn’t say it but his tone conveyed a clear ‘way to state the obvious’ to Patti’s ear.
“And the landscape offers nothing but grass.”
“Again. Valid.”
“We could try pulling a stick out from the structure holding you up.” Ivan suggested to Dan.
“And I’m the marble on top of this Kerplunk tower? My vote is no on that.”
Ivan screwed his face up in thought, shifting his gaze around the landscape in search of an answer.
“We could have someone lie on the surface and reach for Dan, like a human chain. They do that when people fall into frozen ponds.”
Ivan turned at Prairie’s quiet suggestion. “That! That could work.”
He strode over to the edge of the pit facing Dan, squatted down, and assessed the surface. “He’s only about eight feet out. Maybe nine. I could reach him easily if I laid down.”
“And,” Patti pointed out what should have been obvious, “your weight would immediately cave in the surface holding him up. Then we have five people in the pit and only Prairie and I as the ones to pull you out if that ends up being the solution.”
“I can do it.”
Ivan turned and scowled at Prairie’s suggestion. “You can not.”
“Look here, Ivan!” Prairie planted her hands on her hips, took a defiant stance, and tilted her head up – way up – to scowl right back at him. “I am a fully capable member of this team. I am not made of glass. I can put myself at risk just as well as anyone else can!”
Ivan threw up his hands. “You said it – at risk!”
“It is a calculated risk!” Prairie took a step closer, right up in Ivan’s grill. “I am the smallest and therefore lightest person and therefore the least likely to break the sticks. It makes the most sense for me to be the one to do it. I lie down. Dan grabs my hands. You and Patti pull me back. it’s a good plan!”
“It’s a good plan,” Dan agreed, earning a pivot and glare from Ivan. “I’m not falling into the pit because you need to protect Prairie. She’s a big girl. She can make her own decisions.”
“I may be a damsel. At least in your eyes.” Prairie reached up to poke Ivan in the chest with a stiff finger. “But I am *not* in distress. And I *can* handle this.”
Patti bent and looked at Sass. Sass looked at Patti. Then they both raised their hands in a shrug. ‘What you gonna do?’
“I think this was a confrontation a long time in coming,” Patti mumbled to the mouse.
Sass reared back on it’s back legs and slapped it’s hands together. Patti nodded. Yep. Smack down long coming.
Ivan muttered. Ivan paced in a tight circle. Ivan turned and stared at Prairie. Prairie did not move and her jaw remained firm with determination. Finally Ivan threw his hands up. “Fine! But we need to figure out a way to get you out there where you aren’t shifting your weight around and breaking the surface.”
“She could take off her coat, or you could, and then toss it on the surface. That shouldn’t break the sticks.” Dan suggested. “If you toss it to me I should be able to flick it flat. Then have her lie down and grab on to the cloth and I’ll slowly draw her out until she’s in range to grab my wrist.”
Ivan chewed over the idea. He eyed the coat. Assessed it’s length and sturdiness. After several moments, in which Patti watched ideas and possibilities and chances course across his features, he gave a short nod. “That could work. Prair?”
Prairie had gone back to the fist planted on hips stance. “Yes?”
“If you can get the coat under you so the sticks don’t catch. We won’t be able to do that for Dan but at least you’ll have a surface that skims along the sticks and makes it easier to pull you back.”
Sliding out of her jacket, Prairie handed it to Ivan. “Can you throw it?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Ivan balled up the material and gently tossed it underhand to land a short distance from Dan with barely a thump. Dan very slowly shifted his arm from out at his side to forward and stretched his fingers to snag the cloth. Grasping it in his hand he flicked his wrist and snapped the cloth out, retaining his grip on the edge so it unfurled and landed flat on the sticks. Or should have. Instead it landed as a lump. Swallowing his frustration he drew the cloth back and cast it out again. This time it landed smooth and flat.
“Can you reach it?” He called to Prairie.
“Let me see.”
Prairie crouched at the edge of the pit then lowered herself gingerly to her belly. Stretching her arm to it’s full length she reached for the cloth. Her fingers shook as she pushed herself to extend a bit further. Her fingertips brushed the cloth. She wriggled herself a minute bit forward and grasped the cloth.
Dan put his head down and projected through the surface cover and into the pit. “We’re trying something up here. If you see the surface buckling call out.”
Kim’s voice answered. “Got it. Hey!”
“What?”
“Remember those thread, worm, tendril things from when we found Diana? The ones that grabbed you?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a bunch of them under the sticks you are lying on. Kind of woven all into them. It dimmed their glow so I didn’t really see them until just now.”
“Huh.” Dan grunted.
“What was that?”
Dan pitched his voice to carry through the surface. “I said ‘huh’!”
“Good huh? Bad huh?”
“Just huh.”
“Okay! Thought I’d mention it.”
“Appreciate it. So, we’re going to do this thing now.”
“Okay!”
His short conversation with Kim had given Prairie time to firm her resolve. The look in the eyes that met Dan’s was determined and strong. She’d managed to get a portion of her upper body onto the cloth. It was a testament to her size that he’d barely felt the flex of the surface beneath him when she did so. She’d been right. She was the right person for this.
“You ready?”
She nodded. “Yes. Try pulling me towards you.”
One arm was not going to be enough for this so Dan slowly moved his other arm from his side so he could grasp the cloth in both hands. Then very slowly reeled the cloth in, pulling Prairie forward. Her knee caught on a stick and the surface creaked. Dan stopped pulling and they froze, holding their breaths and gazes until the sound stopped. Prairie nodded for him to continue. Slow, arduous moments later her reaching finger came in contact with one of his hands. She rolled her shoulder, giving her arm an extra inch or two reach and closed her hand around his wrist.
“Gotcha!”
“You do.”
“I got him!” she called out louder so Ivan and Patti could hear.
“Okay!” Ivan started to grasp both of Prairie’s ankles then hesitated and turned to Patti. “Can you take one. I should be able to pull both of them across but why risk it?”
“Sure.” Patti carefully unhooked Sass’s house and placed it a short distance from the edge of the pit then stepped up, stooped, and grabbed the ankle Ivan wasn’t holding.
“On three?”
“Three.”
Ivan counted “One. Two.” On “Three,” they both drew back very carefully on Prairie’s ankles.
Between the combined weight of Dan and Prairie and the awareness that any quick movement could break the surface, they progressed slowly. Patti started singing Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved quietly.
“Well, that’s uplifting,” Ivan muttered in her ear.
“Hush you!” Patti picked up where she’d left off, singing of needing someone to heal.
Prairie’s sweet voice joined Patti’s on the line about needing someone to know.
“I know this one,” Ivan murmured then joined in a rumbly voice, singing about numbing pain. He paused to ask, “You good Prair? Dan?”
“Yes. Good.” Dan grunted. As the tail end of this human chain he was definitely feeling the effect of physics on the arm Prairie had linked both hands around. “Keep going.”
“Prair?”
“Good! You are interrupting the song.” The words were cross but the tone was Prairie’s usual soft and gentle caress.
“Sorry,” Ivan grunted.
Patti picked up the thread of the song as she and Ivan inexorably dragged Prairie and Dan across the sticks, crab walking backwards on their butts and using the press of their legs to control the movement.
It was as she was sliding into the line about pulling the rug out from under someone when a combination of sounds broke her focus. Sticks cracked, Dan shouted, and his lower body fell through the surface.
“Shit!” Ivan grunted and gave up all pretense of gentleness. “Pull! Hard!”
Patti didn’t waste any time in complying. She and Ivan both rose to their feet and backpedaled like mad. Prairie, who had been very close to the edge by that time, flew onto solid ground with her legs and upper body clear and her arms hanging over the edge. It was clear by the tears pouring from her eyes that she was in pain but she still held tight to Dan’s arm with fingers white from the force of her grip.
“Hold on Dan,” she gritted out. Dan replied with a grunt, then announced, “I’m letting go!”
“No!” Patti, Ivan, and Prairie replied in unison. Ivan and Patti dug in their feet and pulled as hard as they could. Prairie’s arms cleared the pit, revealing the choking grip she held on Dan’s wrist. His hand was in a fist, causing a block that locked on the cage of her hands. He swung his other arm up and clamped that hand over the other, locking them tight.
Slowly, inch-by-inch, they dragged Dan from the pit. He kept his body as limp as possible providing the least resistance for Patti and Ivan, though the broken sticks seemed determined to dig through his clothes and into his skin. The only thing he tensed was his neck, arching his chin up so it didn’t scrape across the ground.
When he was firmly on the ground he pressed his head to the ‘grass’ and contemplated kissing it. “That’s a good song,” he said instead.
Patti said quietly, “Thanks.”
“The pulled the rug thing, that didn’t make the sticks break?”
“Don’t know.” She stooped and picked her mouse’s carrier, tying it to her belt. “Maybe? Huh. I hadn’t made that connection.”
“Something to think about.”
“Hey!” Now that the immediate danger was passed they could hear the sounds from within the pit.
“Yeah?” Patti called back to Kim.
“We just got pelted with a ton of sticks and hay and – pah! – mud. A little warning next time?”
“We just got Dan off the pit!”
“Oh, complaint rescinded. Good job!”
“How’s Ben?” Ivan called down.
“He’s still unconscious but Gwen doesn’t seem too worried. She said she’s more focused on the three broken ribs, the two broken fingers, and potentially his broken coccyx.”
“Coccyx?”
“His butt bone!” Gwen called. “Now stop interrupting me!”
Patti looked at Ivan. Ivan looked at Patti. Then they both lost their fight to remain serious, though of course the situation was.
“He broke his butt bone!” Patti choked out on a laugh.
“Coccyx! To channel Gwen ‘that sounds dirty’!” Ivan snorted.
Prairie, still on the ground though she’d pivoted to run a careful hand over Dan to assess him for injuries, shook her head sadly. “You two are awful.”
Dan smiled and swatted her hands away. “Coccyx does sound dirty.”
Prairie firmed her chin. “There is nothing funny about breaking your but…” She stopped. Rolled her lips. Closed her eyes. “Your butt bo…” A giggle startled out of her. “This is serious!”
“And funny,” Patti amended.
Prairie looked down and then darted a glance up at Patti. “And funny.”
“Do you think Gwen is laying hands on it?” Patti raised her brows.
And then they were all tittering like ten-year-olds at a fart joke.
Down in the pit Kim watched Gwen who was, yes, laying hands on Ben. In various places. Not just his butt. Though possibly she let her hands linger a second there. What? It was a nice butt.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Then why is he still unconscious?”
“It’s his brain’s way of dealing with the pain.” Gwen tapped her chest just below her breastbone. “I feel him in here. He’s kind of drifting, but there’s still twinges of pain getting through. So I’m going to fix up all the physical stuff, if I can, before trying to wake him up. it’s too bad we don’t have any of Siobhan’s healing potions.”
A look of dawning crossed Kim’s face, eerie in the flickering light of the globe of light she held in one palm.
“Check his pockets.”
“What?”
“His pockets. Check them.”
“You want me to pick his pockets while he’s unconscious? What so when he wakes up and wonders who did it you can claim innocence?”
“I only have one hand free and I’d rather check his pockets over grope him, which is what I’ll end up doing with only one hand. He might forgive us riffling his pockets but I think he’d be a little more twisted over us molesting him.”
“I will molest him if I want to.”
“Sure you will. Just check. I have never known Ben to not pilfer one of Siobhan’s potions. it’s like a compulsion with him. Maybe he has one in a pocket. If we’re lucky maybe even two.”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
“Ugh!” Gwen very gingerly dug through Ben’s pockets. Pants pockets turned up coin and some gadgets that didn’t immediately scream “I do this!”. Gwen put those back, although there was a temptation to poke at the gadgets to see what they did. Nope. Moving on.
The exterior pockets of his jacket produced several throwing daggers, a tinder box, a set of lock picks, another set of lock picks, two padlocks, and a few more mystery items.
“This jacket is like a bag of holding!”
“Try the inside.” Kim gestured with the fire ball. “There are pockets there too.”
Gwen then unearthed in no particular order: a coil of rope, a single leather glove, a wind-up toy horse, three pieces of butterscotch – the kind wrapped in yellow cellophane that old ladies kept in the bottom of their purse, a sap, two empty vials with some kind of potion residue in them, a collapsible grappling hook that sprang out when she pushed a button and made her jump, two burned out flashlights – she slid the on-off switches several times to confirm, and a pair of socks.
The fourth of the five pockets on the interior of the jacket – FIVE POCKETS – contained two vials with a single-dot on each of their tops. “Paydirt!”
Gwen maneuvered around until she could elevate Ben’s head in her lap. Then she teased his mouth open, poured one of the potions in, and massaged his throat to make him swallow. Almost instantly the strain that had been holding his features relaxed and he slumped against her.
“Okay. I’m going to keep this second one for after he wakes up. No point in using it if one was enough.”
“Is he steady enough that we can move him now?”
Gwen felt along his limbs then nodded. “Everything is aligned and I think they are mending. Siobhan likes to stack a broken bone cure in with her healing so I’m thinking let it run through him and then check in a few to make sure that’s the case with this one. Good call on the potion being on him.”
“Ben is, though he’d be offended to hear it, surprisingly predictable.”
“Glad he was this time. So,” Gwen settled back against the wall and leaned her head against it. “You think they are coming up with something to get us out of here?”
“You might have thought about that before diving on top of me.”
“Really? Again?”
Kim shrugged then took up a spot next to Gwen against the wall. “I expect again and again but I’ll call a moratorium on it until we’re out of this pit.”
“Okay.” Gwen closed her eyes. “I’m kind of tired now.”
“Go ahead. Take a nap. I’ve got this.”
Staring into the darkness beyond her fireball, Kim smiled as Gwen laid her head on Kim’s shoulder. After a few moments Gwen’s breathing deepened and she slumped her weight on Kim.
“You had better not drool,” she muttered in a voice quiet enough to not disturb Gwen. It was the principle of the thing.
Enter The Woods 