Yellowhair: An Elf Hollow Prequel

TEN | The Crossing Ceremony

CHAPTER TEN

The Crossing Ceremony

At first morning's light, Qello ate all the left over tea berries and had to throw up. Her feet were quite swollen and she remembered what the trader had said, "If you want, you can find the herbalist who lives higher up." Was he near? "He works on his treatments out of a cave, on this side of the ravine, not far in the forest."

Needing to rinse her mouth, Qello gathered some grass. It was still moist. She sucked the dew out and nibbled soft ends of each blade she pulled out from the stems. Her thirst was extreme. At the top of the gorge, water had accumulated overnight in a tiny shallow. She soaked up the pool, squeezed it into her mouth from the scarf and then mopped more moisture and spray from the rocks. She felt the power of the falls, watching mists shooting high.

Qello realized that the area the trader's voice had warned her about, must be this spot, up on this hill. She swallowed. He had said it, while she drifted in and out of her sleep. "Thar village has called it Devil's Dive. They are scared of it." Was she close to that same village? Was this Devil's Dive? Qello's heart clenched. She could see from the height, how people would die. By the luck of her River, she had not crossed with the light going down. You are still with me! The heights made her dizzy. She tipped and leaned in over the void. Water crashed so far into it, she couldn't see much for the mist, but she held tight to a branch she had checked for its strength.

She might not make it crossing, but she had to take the chance not only for Luu, but because she needed more food than she knew how to gather alone. Crossing was the only thing to do. In the full sun of the morning, Qello could still see buzzards, far down the river circling above where her mother might lie. It was surprisingly far below her, now, across the ravine and down. She was reminded again of her feet.

I'll have to take this slow way climbing, Muma. I'm coming. She longed for her bird. Hawk, I need you. Please! Make them go, please. She needs you. Please, make them go! But the hawk didn't appear and the buzzards still flew.

She surveyed her target tree-log and swallowed. There it was, stretched—a limbless climb—across to the other side, but with nothing to hold onto. The buzzards took turns dipping down, low now, while new ones circled. Her heart frozen, she watched them and her hand cut into from squeezing a part of the rock she gripped to steady herself. She was clutched with much more sickening dread—such fear for her mother, as she again fought back images from scenes on the bank. She cast her eyes up.

The sun was blinding. The light made great pain in her head. Suddenly, Qello knew what she would prepare to do next—just in case this doesn't work.

She sat and unlaced one of her moss padded leather foot bindings. Blocking the pain, but needing to hop, she went out to the meadow. She gathered grasses and some live, tougher, but flexible stems, using the thongs of the shoe to haul them, tied in a bundle.

Unconsciously, Qello acted with a much quicker sense of things, now. She was beyond being effected by feelings. Numb with new white space, ringing in her awareness of all she could see, feel or touch—expanding the sensation, hissing, slightly louder—she constructed a case for her doll from the leather she had.

Some kind of innate instinct took over. She made the one shoe wrap into a bag, filling it with leaves for extra padding then she slotted the padded bag into a woven grass mesh and knotted it tightly all over. She left an opening, wide enough to put the doll into it, when she was finished. She talked to her sisters, Mr. Groote, her father, if he should return—and dear Eldrid. If you don't see your Muma and me— She gulped and couldn't touch on the pain any longer, even in quiet, alone in her mind. She knew she might be joining unfortunates, down in the gorge. Had they tried to cross too, and just slipped and fallen? How many were there? She knew the reality well from climbing—how far it was to the bottom. She blocked it all out. She put her weaving work down.