* * * * * * *
He woke some time later, with the smell of smoke in his nose. He coughed, and opened his eyes to the sight of flames. The cabin was on fire!
The smoke was already so thick that it burned his throat and made his eyes water, and probably the only reason it wasn’t worse was because of the open windows and door. Through the smoke, he saw that almost the whole wall and part of the floor near the chimney were already engulfed in flames, and the fire was spreading fast.
It was already so hot inside the cabin that Brian was in danger of passing out, and he stumbled frantically for the open door close by.
He staggered outside, coughing and gasping for air, and quickly realized that Rachel must still be inside.
“Raych!” he cried, but there was no answer. He doggedly took a deep breath and plunged back into the house, looking through bleary eyes to see if she was still on the bunk.
He could see nothing, and in desperation he reached into the top bunk to see if he could feel her instead. His groping hand met her shoulder, and he shook her violently.
“Come on, Raych, the cabin’s on fire!” he yelled, but there was no answer.
He grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her off the bunk, not caring about gentleness anymore. Her dead weight was more than he expected and he fell to the floor with her body on top of him, skinning his left elbow against the floor planks and nearly twisting his ankle.
He struggled out from under her and got to his feet. He couldn’t carry her like that, but he was pretty sure he could drag her. It wasn’t that far to the door.
He grabbed her hands and hauled her outside, choking and gasping, but he dared not stop so close to the house. He dragged her as far as the pear tree before his legs gave out, and then he collapsed onto the ground beside her, unable to get up or even to do anything except gasp for air like a beached whale.
Presently his head cleared slightly, and he was able to sit up and look at back at the burning cabin. His eyes stung and his cheeks were running with tears from the smoke. He could still feel the heat from the flames, even this far away.
He checked Rachel, and saw that she was still breathing at least. He turned his face away and hacked up a wad of black mucus into the grass, and he felt sick and exhausted.
After a while, Rachel opened her eyes and coughed up her own wad of smoky snot. Her hair was singed by the heat, and they both smelled like they’d just been wrestling in a giant ashtray.
After burning fiercely for a while, the fire had consumed most of the cabin and started to die back down. Brian and Rachel sat there and watched it burn, all too aware that they could easily have died. She reached out and grasped his hand, and he clasped it back, numbed by the almost-disaster.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“You would have done the same thing,” he told her.
“Yeah, but thanks anyway,” she said.
“Well. . . you’re welcome,” he said, for lack of anything better to say.
“Do you think it was the fireplace?” she asked.
“That’s all I can think of. It must have had a crack in it, or maybe a coal popped out on the floor,” he told her.
“It’s a good thing you woke up when you did, or both of us would have been toast by now,” she said.
“No doubt. But it’s not over yet, though. What if somebody saw this? I bet you could see that fire for miles in the dark,” he said.
“Does it matter? Even if somebody did see it, we’ll be long gone by the time they could get here to check it out,” she pointed out.
“I’m not so sure about that. We might not be as far from other people as we think. We better get gone pretty quick, if we don’t want visitors,” he said.
“I don’t know if I can make it very far, at least not yet,” she told him, apologetically.
“I’m not sure I can either, till we rest for a little while,” he confessed.
“Then I tell you what. Let’s pick some more pears to take with us, like we talked about earlier. Then maybe by the time we’re done with that, we’ll be rested enough to move on for a little bit,” she suggested.
“We’ll see,” he said.
They both staggered to their feet and started reaching for pears, quickly filling the backpack as full as they could stuff it. Then Brian took one of his extra t-shirts and tied off the arms and neck, and they used that for a sack to hold more.
“All right, then. We better get a move on. Are you up to it, now?” he asked. He wasn’t at all sure he was up to it himself, but it had the proper gallant sound.
“No, but if you can do it then I can do it,” she said, setting her jaw firmly.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, and after consulting the amulet again, they moved off through the woods.
They were forced to go slowly, both because of the darkness and because of their recent ordeal by fire. But nevertheless, it didn’t take long to put the cabin far behind them.
“You don’t think it’ll catch the woods on fire, do you?” she asked after a while.
“No, I don’t think so. It’s been pretty rainy lately, so it ought to just die down and not spread anywhere,” he said.
“Do you think we’re far enough away from the place so we can sit down and rest awhile longer?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Let’s start looking for a place,” he said.
Eventually they came to a creek flowing beside their path, with a wide sandbar near the water. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
“This is good enough. Let’s stop here for a little while,” she told him.
They hollowed out body-shaped depressions in the powdery sand to make it more comfortable, and then lay down.
Brian slept like a log for the rest of the night, perhaps not surprising after what he’d just been through. By the time he woke, the morning was already far spent, and the sun was halfway up to noon. Rachel still lay sleeping in the sand, and for the moment he let her be.
He felt horribly grungy from the sweat and the smoke, and he decided it was high time for a bath while he had the chance. He went a little downstream out of sight of the sandbar, stripped off his clothes, and dived into the water. He quickly scrubbed himself from head to toe, and then washed his filthy clothes before wringing out as much water as he could.
He put them back on still dripping, knowing the sun would dry them out soon enough. Then he went back to the sandbar and woke Rachel.
“Hey, Raych. Wake up,” he said, shaking her. She took a deep breath and sat up, rubbing her eyes and reaching for her glasses.
“Slept late this morning,” she said, with a weak smile.
“Yeah, me too. But I guess we needed it, after last night. You want a bath? There’s a pool down the creek a little way. I already had one,” he told her.
“I’d love one. You have no idea how nasty I feel right now,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ve got some idea,” he replied dryly, and she laughed.
“Yeah, I guess you probably do, at that. Wait just a sec and I’ll be right back,” she said, and quickly disappeared around the bend in the creek.
It didn’t take her long to finish, and she returned in her dripping clothes looking much fresher than when she left.
“That was fantastic,” she told him.
“Yeah, I think it was the best bath I ever had in my whole life,” he agreed.
They both ate another pear for a late breakfast, and then got back on their way. Nothing interesting happened for the rest of the day, and they saw no one. If the burning cabin had attracted any attention, then they were far enough away from it to be safe from whoever showed up.
Brian was beginning to think they’d never find the Fountain, or that they’d have to walk through the woods for a hundred miles before they ever saw any sign of it. So far there’d been nary a clue.
But eventually they came to a rocky place in the side of a steep slope, and here they found a hole in the
ground not much bigger than an oven door. It was almost hidden behind a clump of wild blackberry vines, so that Brian would probably never have seen it at all unless he’d been following the amulet.
His heart sank, but no matter which way he walked or turned, the pointer always swung around to point straight to the hole. Their journey through the woods was over.