Excerpt
They had stopped in the shelter of an enormous old tree, their shadows blending seamlessly into the moonshade it cast. Once Cara’s gasping for breath had quieted, the noises of the night crept up.
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“Sounds like a river. Come on. That’s our road to town.”
Cara opened her mouth to tell him that she had never learned how to swim, then closed it again as he grabbed her wrist and plunged ahead. There would be time enough for that later; right now she had enough to do in keeping up with him. Her sandals had been made for nothing more strenuous than dancing on polished parquet. They slid and twisted beneath her feet and offered neither any support nor any protection from the litter on the forest floor. On the big rocks they were positively treacherous, giving no security whatsoever.
The rocks got bigger as the noise of the river got louder. There was no way to step down or up; the only way to navigate was on all fours. Cara crawled and slithered and scrambled over boulders as big as Volkswagens, trying very hard not to think of how dirty they must be or of what the soft stuff in the crevices where she put her fingers really was.
Dave Burkhart sat gingerly on a lip of rock and slid off into a pool of shadow, grunting as he hit the ground.
“Are you all right?”
He nodded; he had thought the ground further down and the sudden impact had jarred the breath out of him.
“Dave?”
Of course. He was deep in the dark; she couldn’t see him. He looked up to where Cara was fearfully peering over the rock edge. Moonlight and shadow distorted distance. The edge of the rock was only a foot or so above his head. He wished the light were better so he could see her face; from this angle it was nothing but an oval of shadow. This was the first time she had called him Dave.
“Okay...just a bit of a rough landing.” He reached up his arms. “The ground’s uneven. Let me help you down.”
Cara balanced on the rock’s edge, then swung her legs over. She could see Dave’s hands reaching up out of the shadow as if out of dark water.
“Come on...I’ll catch you.”
Cara cautiously scooted closer to the edge, then froze. What was the matter with her? Normally she didn’t have any trouble with heights and, as Dave Burkhart wasn’t an excessively tall man, this wasn’t much of a height.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“Why should I?” she asked, then slid forward into his waiting arms.