Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
He fumbled for his camera and managed a few pictures with shaking hands.
If there was a ledge on the left side of the cave with fossil traces, Truman was gonna lose it.
“Can we go in?”
“Yeah, just watch the foam. It’s slippery.”
Bruce bounded over rocks to the mouth of the cave easily, and Ash followed. For a large person, he sure was light on his feet. Truman followed, forcing himself to look at where he was stepping rather than stare in wonder at the cave. But as he got close, he couldn’t help peering deep into its darkness.
It was vertiginous and the cave echoed the sound of the waves back at him like a giant ear.
“Whoa!”
Ash’s arms shot out, and Truman stumbled into them on his last step into the cave.
He found himself held tight against a broad, warm chest. Ash wrapped his arms around him and said very softly, “You okay?”
“Ugh, yeah, sorry, jeez. I promise I don’t usually wander around just falling over. Today isn’t indicative of my typical ability to, like, be upright.”
He felt Ash smile against his hair and then let him go slowly.
Reluctantly?
Truman didn’t let himself believe it. That was what got you into trouble: believing that people who caught you so you didn’t faceplant into rocks had feelings for you because they didn’t let you face-plant into rocks.
The cave was bigger than it had looked from outside, the ceiling vaulting to an apex. Something roosted there. In the book it had been atbaj, batlike creatures with heads on both sides of their bodies so they could sight for predators in 360 degrees. But as he watched, one of the creatures descended, and Truman saw that they were seagulls perched high above.
He walked to the left-hand side of the entrance, but there was no ledge, just sea-wet stone and sand clinging in the crevices. Same on the right-hand side. Truman didn’t want to be disappointed—after all, it could still very well be the place; surely, authors added fictional details all the time—but he was.
As he approached the triangle of light making it through, he realized that the cave went farther back than he’d first realized.
“Is it safe to go through here?” he asked Ash.
“Yeah, just don’t be surprised if you find sixteen-year-old me and my buddy Lorin trying to do witchy sea rituals in there.”
“I’m very intrigued, and I do want to hear all about that in a minute.”
Truman crouched low to get through the opening and looked around the dimly lit area. Once through the entrance, it was tall enough to stand at full height and roomy enough for three or four people.
And there, on the left-hand side of the rock…
“Holy shit,” Truman said worshipfully.
It was a stone ledge. When Truman shone his phone’s flashlight on it, he could see whorls of fossilized shell studding its worn-smooth surface. He ran a finger over them and got goose bumps.
He was standing in a place where Agatha Tark had surely stood, was touching the rock she had likely run her own fingers over. The same fingers that had penned the Dead of Zagørjič.
Truman took pictures of that too, and with a flash, they came out well. The flash also made visible something scratched into the wall at the corner of the ledge. Truman got on his knees to peer at it closely.
There, incised in stone, was the symbol of owl wings surrounding a diamond. The sigil of Illmarčzia.
Truman couldn’t breathe. Was this how paleantologists felt, unearthing proof that dinosaurs walked the earth? He let his knees give way and sat on the floor, blinking up at the sigil.
“You summon anything in there?” Ash said breezily, sticking his head in. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he said immediately at whatever he saw on Truman’s face.
Truman pointed and blinked.
“Oh, yeah, isn’t that cool? It’s been here as long as I remember.”
“It’s her. It’s really her.”
Truman explained about the sigil, and Ash sat cross-legged beside him.
“Wow, I can’t believe that all the times I came here as a teenager, I was seeing something from the same author you were reading thousands of miles away.”
Truman felt a tear tickle his cheek before he was aware he was crying.
“Oh, hey,” Ash said. He looked stricken.
“I’m just overwhelmed,” Truman assured him. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
“I’d like to,” Ash said gently.
At first, Truman wasn’t sure how to put it in words. Then he just started talking.
“When I first read the series, it was like a whole world opened up to me that I’d never known could exist. I don’t mean because it was fantasy. I mean because it was these people living in ways and having thoughts and feelings that I’d never experienced. And even though it was fantasy, the things they went through and did felt more real to me than my own life. I was twelve when I read them, and it opened up all these new thoughts, I guess. Like it was a lens I saw the whole world through.”