you into my cave," Ralph said, "but I'm afraid that it's not allowed."
"Their very particular," Ember translated.
"Because of the nest," Ralph continued.
"What nest?" Edeline asked.
"I can't tell you," he said. "I'm sorry. Truly, I am."
"Right," Edeline sighed. "Well, goodbye then, I guess," and she started to walk in the direction they'd been going before.
"Hold on there," Ember called after her. "You can't go like that. You have to make it up to him now."
Edeline stopped in her tracks, and turning around, she said through clenched teeth,
"Make it up to HIM? Make WHAT up to him? I swear you people don't make any sense."
"You frightened him," Ember s told her. "Can't you see that? The poor man is suffering now. He's terrified, he's worried, and on top of all that, there's this nest thing going on too."
"Do you even have any idea what you're saying?" Edeline wanted to know. "I think you're just messing with me. You're just playing one of your games. Well, I've had enough for one day. Changing places. Running away. Face Painters popping up out of nowhere! Stupid incomprehensible nests!"
Edeline threw up her hands and walked off. She really had had enough. She was going to go back down this hill, back to the lake, find that man Gowdy and ask for directions. He seemed like a decent sort, unlike this Ralph thing. She hadn't gone very far, however, when Ember caught up to her, and blocked the path.
"Let me go," Edeline barked, trying to get past her. She almost said something insulting about people of certain sizes and ages, but gritted her teeth, remembering that Ember had treated her decently up until now.
"Look, it won't take a minute," Ember said. "And it's easy. All you have to do is go where he tells you and do what he asks."
"Are you serious?" Edeline could scarcely believe it. "And what is it you think he's going to ask?"
"Nothing bad," Ember said, tossing her curls. "Trust me. I know."
Edeline took a deep breath. The thing seemed important to Ember somehow, and if she was right, if it was easy and wouldn't take long, then they could be on their way.
"Oh, okay," she relented, and they turned back to where Ralph remained, standing, half bent, as if still concentrating on where Edeline had fallen.
"Here I am," Edeline announced. "Now what?"
"Would you please come see my cave?" Ralph was pleading. His big eyes looked sad behind the dripping red paint.
"Sure, but I thought that it wasn't allowed," Edeline said.
"Now allowed to go in," Ralph corrected her. "But you can see."
"All right then," she held out her hand. "Lead the way."
Ralph turned, but not toward the path. Instead, he lumbered straight up the hill behind the huge boulder. He scrambled up on hands and knees, and Ember and Edeline followed. The hillside was steep and covered in patches of brambles with small thorns that scratched and tore Edeline's skin in small stripes. The cuts healed quickly, however, and didn't hurt much. Rather, they tickled, and she had to keep herself from giggling, while at the same time panting and beginning to sweat. After what seemed like much more than "a minute", they came to rest on a narrow ledge formed of loose yellow rock that seemed extremely precarious. Above them the hill went up even steeper, impossibly so, it seemed to Edeline, nearly ninety degrees going straight up, like a cliff. There was no way they could possibly scale it.
"Now what?" Edeline asked. The three of them stood on the ledge looking out over the valley. The view was magnificent, she had to admit. It seemed they could see the whole forest from there. Below lay the shimmering lake, and beyond it the trees went to stretch on forever. To her right, Edeline saw more hills and valleys, and to the left an endless descent.
"This is my cave," Ralph said, turning around. Edeline looked, but didn't see anything cave-like.
"Where?" she asked, puzzled.
"Right here," he replied, and stuck his finger into a hole in the side of a slab. The hole was only as deep as his fingernail.
"That's a cave?" Ember too was bewildered.
"No one could fit into that," Edeline muttered. "Even if they were 'allowed' to."
"See the nest?" Ralph went on.
"No," Ember said.
"No," Edeline agreed.
"Ralph heaved a big sigh.
"That's the problem," he admitted. "Nobody sees it but me."
"Wait," Edeline said, "Let me have another look. Could you move over?"
"Okay," Ralph said, getting his hopes up. He stepped aside and Edeline gingerly made her way over to where he'd been standing, praying she didn't fall of the ledge and roll straight down that brambly hillside. When she got there, she stuck her left eye right up to the hole in the rock and studied the darkness closely.
"I see something blue," she said softly.
"Yes!" Ralph leaped up with excitement and when he landed the ledge crumbled a bit. For a moment he teetered and Edeline thought he might slip, but he didn't.
"Kind of a diamond-shape," Edeline continued.
"You see it," Ralph breathed, "You really do see it."
"I do," Edeline had to admit, and she wasn't making it up. There in the deepest recess of the crack, she did see a blue diamond shape. She wouldn't have called it a 'nest', but if that's what he wanted, well, hadn't she gone where he told her and done what he asked?
"Thank you," Ralph said. "Thank you so much. Now we go down."
He turned, and using his toes and his fingers like claws, he made his way backward the way they had come. Edeline and Ember did likewise. When they reached the path once again, Ralph bowed several times, thanking Edeline over and over again, until finally they made their escape.
Twenty
"When you said caves," Edeline teased Ember, "I thought you meant like, you know, actual caves?"
"Apparently Ralph has a different idea," Ember struck back, "and anyway, I did mean real caves. We're in Face Painters country now."
They were striding easily now through the gentle slopes that wound around the hills in those parts. Periodically they'd emerge from cover into a sunlit section of bare rock stuffed with overgrown weeds. They heard, rather than saw, small creatures dashing in and out of the shrubs, probably mice and lizards and snakes, Ember said. Occasional raptors soared overhead in the otherwise quiet and peaceful surroundings. The path here was wide and easily walked. Anyone observing the two women casually strolling and chatting would have had no idea they were on a mission, or had been separated from their companions.
Anyone, that is, who wasn't a Watcher. Soma had almost creeped out of the forest to get a better look at the Ralph misadventure, and was muttering furiously about the words she was missing. It might have been super-important and she would never be able to report about it. Squee tried explaining to her that anything involving a Face Painter was not going to be serious.
"They're all crazy, you know," he informed her.
"That doesn't matter," Soma retorted. "Even if they are, which I doubt very much. They must have a reason to do what they do. Everybody does."
"Yeah," Squee countered. "Because they're all crazy," he insisted.
"We can't tell about that," she snapped. "We have to get closer. We're missing it all."
"There's no way," Squee advised. "We have to stay under wraps."
"I know," Soma grumbled, "I know."
Her spirits rose after the women departed from Ralph, and when she overheard them joking about it, she realized Squee was right, that it wasn't a great loss to miss it. Something else began to bother her, though. She was beginning to sense the presence of Smackers. As a Watcher, she'd had run-ins with them many times. The two groups occupied similar space high up in the trees, though where Watchers were methodical and purposeful while on the job, Smackers were careless and reckless, and didn't pay attention to where they were going. Watchers considered them rude and considerably unprofessional, while Smackers didn't worry about them. To a Smacker, anyone else might as well be a squirrel, just
creatures that got in the way. Many times they'd knocked over Watchers or stepped right on top of them, with no apologies given, no concern when a Watcher had fallen as a consequence of their unconscious action.
"What do they want?" Soma queried and Squee sniffed,
"Same thing as always. Their stupid game."
What made the game stupid, in Squee's educated opinion, was the rather odd fact that Smackers weren't strictly members of teams. Teams consisted of Strikers, Saviors, Gatherers and Hunters. The rest of the field was all one big Smackfest. They stole balls from the Gatherers, then robbed them many times, from one another, and eventually described them to Strikers, but their comings and goings were utterly random, and there was no way to trace a deliverance from its original theft. Strikers had to live on the edge of unknowing, for a ball, which could be anything, might be revealed to them any time, at which point the Striker would have to engage the ball with their mind and direct it toward a legitimate goal.
"Sometimes they smell it," Squee said with a serious look that made Soma laugh.
"It stinks?" she said jokingly.
"No, really," Squee lectured. "Right when a new ball comes into play, Smackers all go where they think it will be. Then there's a scrum where they all fight for possession. After that they roar through the forest, chasing each other, stealing and stealing it back. It gets wild. We want to stay out of their way."
"But they're everywhere now," Soma said, "This is going to make our job hard."
"I say we stick to the ground," Squee suggested, and Soma agreed. It would be more difficult tracking the women this way,