Page 70 of A Spark So Bright
"Wisps lead humans into swamps where they will trip and die," Rose replied. "We know them as harbingers of ill will. They lead someone to certain death, but we cannot stop following them because they are so beautiful."
He sucked in a breath. "Right, I'd forgotten that. Humans don't trust them."
"And for good reason."
"Well, you're with a troll. I highly doubt they're leading us any way other than... out." Although now that he was looking at them, Gunnar wasn't all that certain they were leading him, anyway. The wisps seemed to be clustering around the two ofthem, but certainly not guiding. Maybe they didn't even know the way out.
That would make things difficult.
"Do you know where we're going?" Rose asked, her voice chattering a bit with the cold.
"No."
"Ah."
He was doing a horrible job reassuring her. He should be the one who knew what they were doing, how they were getting there, and when they were going to get there. So he had to act more certain they were going to make it out of this than he was currently.
Gunnar took a long, steadying breath and paused as the cave split. "We're looking for a path. Any path. Trolls always make paths wherever they go into caverns like this, just in case someone else does the same thing they did. That way, we help others long after we got ourselves into a difficult position. Which means someone has to have left signs."
"What if no one has been here before?"
He shot her a look over his shoulder. "There isn't a part of this mountain that hasn't been explored by trolls, I promise you that. We just have to make sure that we find what they left behind. All right? We're going to be fine, Rose."
She nodded, a determined expression on her face, because obviously she was going to help him. Why wouldn't she? The woman had proven to be brave in the most dire of circumstances, and now she was going to continue being brave.
Just a little while ago, he wouldn't have had that thought. After all, she had flinched at everything, withdrawn whenever someone spoke to her, and generally hidden herself from the world. But now he knew those actions for what they were. She hadn’t been hiding. She'd been healing. And now she was ready to face the world.
He turned, peering through the cavern that was getting tighter and tighter the farther back they went. All he needed was a single sign. Just a rock tower that looked out of place, perhaps some markings on the wall...
"Like that?" Rose asked as she came up beside him.
He'd been looking too high. The crosshatched marks on the wall could only have been made with claws, and in a pattern that couldn’t have been made by an animal.
Relief poured through him. "Yes," he replied. "Just like that."
The crosshatched markings led deeper into the cave, though. He would have gone in the other direction. Perhaps the tunnel was a little tighter, but at least it seemed to go uphill. The path indicated by those markings declined.
Frowning, Gunnar turned to look behind them. The stream led to a wall of stone and disappeared beneath it. There wasn't another path for them to take, and it seemed like whatever troll had survived before them had gone in this direction. Everything in him was screaming this was wrong and they should keep looking elsewhere, but his training told him to trust the troll who had left these marks.
Rose touched his back. "I can see the mountain's magic," she whispered. "It goes this way too."
He had no idea what that meant, but if she agreed, then this was the way they would go.
They continued following the crosshatches through weaving tunnels that were so small sometimes he had to bend over just to fit through them. And all the while, the wisps followed them.
Soon enough, claustrophobia set in. Gunnar had spent years learning how to beat the feelings back, but he didn't think Rose had the same luck. She was breathing a little harder, and not from exertion. He heard a little sound come out of her mouth when there was a scurrying from the shadows behind them, almost as though they were being followed.
"Tell me something about your life before all this," he rumbled, his voice echoing in the tunnels. "But remember, we only speak of the good in darkness. You let the nightmares win if you entertain dark thoughts. So we only tell happy stories when we are stuck in situations like this."
"Happy stories?" she scoffed. "I don't have a lot of happy stories, Gunnar. I was a street urchin. Poor, abandoned, or orphaned, we never really knew. And then come to find out, we could have been living in a castle because our father happens to be the same king who put me in the labyrinth. I suppose he was more of a semen donor than a father though."
Gunnar laughed. "I like thinking of him like that. The man wasn't a father to any of his children. That much was certain. You know I saw the princess when I was in the labyrinth?"
She stuttered, tripping over a rock before righting herself. "I forgot you were in there too."
"Many do."
"It's just... There are a lot of people who were in there for years. But it must have been very frightening for you."
