“Jahrra! Why did you bring us here?” Gieaun said again, a little more forcefully this time.
“I didn’t know about the words on the arch until just a few minutes ago when we looked at the map again,” Jahrra insisted. “I swear. I couldn’t see the faded writing in the shade at the grove!”
Jahrra looked desperately between her two friends. Gieaun’s eyes told Jahrra that she wanted to believe her, but her brother’s eyes were stony and untrusting.
“Why are we really here Jahrra?” Scede’s calm question was sudden and cold and Jahrra felt all of her efforts to hide the truth slowly melt away.
“What do you mean?” she tried to recover. “We’re here because we wanted to take a camping trip.”
“No, that’s your cover up story,” Scede pressed. “Why are we really here? This whole trip was planned by you, and we’re just the unsuspecting pawns in your little game. You have a reason to be in this very place, to be here at the entrance to Ehnnit Canyon, and it’s not because it looked like an interesting place to visit. You knew how to get here, someone told you how. Who was it? Was it Eydeth, or was it Ellysian? Was it another stupid dare that you felt you just had to take?”
Jahrra was taken aback at the disdainful spite that seasoned Scede’s speech.
“No, it wasn’t a dare,” she answered automatically.
“Then what?” Scede’s frustration was building, and Phrym moved nervously under Jahrra’s tense weight.
“Jahrra,” it was Gieaun who spoke next, sounding calmer than before, “just tell us why we’re here, you owe us that much.”
Jahrra took a deep breath, looking first at Gieaun and then back at Scede. When she spoke it was in a low voice, her eyes glued to the parched earth below them, “Denaeh asked me to get something for her, something from this canyon.”
She risked a glance at her friends, frightened of what she might read from their expressions. Gieaun still had that look of disappointment on her face, but Scede’s expression, if possible, had grown angrier.
“What?!” he hissed. “We wasted two days’ travel in blazing heat to do a favor for that old want-to-be-seer?!”
“Hey!” Jahrra snapped. “She is not a want-to-be-seer, she’s a Mystic! You are just angry because I led you out here unknowingly!”
The moment the words tumbled from her mouth, Jahrra knew she shouldn’t have spoken them.
Scede, now a horrible shade of red, looked absolutely livid.
“That old bag has you wrapped around her finger!” he growled. “You would do anything for her, just look where you are right now! You’re at the foot of a canyon that no one we know has ever visited; a canyon where people go and never come back. She wants you to go into this canyon, you, a fourteen-year-old girl, to fetch something for her. It had better be some great treasure or the key to eternal life. Don’t you see? She’s just using you Jahrra, using you to get what she wants.”
Scede’s angry words poured from his mouth like ash spewing from a volcano. Bhun, sensing his master’s agitation, began stepping nervously beneath him.
“How dare you?!” Jahrra breathed, yanking back on Phrym’s reins in her anger. “You’re just jealous because she sees potential in me!”
Jahrra knew this was a weak response, but it was the only way to dull the sting of Scede’s words. She had never before been on the receiving end of Scede’s wrath, and now that she was, she found it to be very painful.
“Jealous! Are you kidding me? You should take a good look at yourself. You would do anything to fit in, wouldn’t you? Especially with someone older and wiser like Denaeh. Do you think if she likes you that it won’t matter that no one else in our class does?”
Scede had lost control of his temper long ago, and it was only getting worse, “You’re lucky to have us as friends! Imagine how we’d be treated now if we had ignored you that first day of school! Do you think Ellysian and Eydeth would be treating us as outcasts too? Why don’t you think about someone other than yourself for once!”
“Scede!” Gieaun gasped in horror. “Stop it right now! You know none of that is true!”
Jahrra blinked back the burning tears that had been forming in her eyes. She was shocked, angry, humiliated and hurt, but what hurt the most was that it was all true. She gathered her tangled nerves and tried not to let her emotions show.
With a raw voice she said, “If that is how you see it, I’m sorry. But I made a promise to a friend of mine that I would try to get what she needed, and I’m going into that canyon with or without you.”
Jahrra shot a vicious glare at the two siblings and kicked Phrym towards the incline that led up to the great stone arch, looming overhead like the cavernous mouth of a great beast waiting to swallow her whole.
“Jahrra! Don’t be ridiculous!” Gieaun shouted frantically after her. “Scede is just suffering from heat exhaustion, plus he’s a stupid boy! He didn’t mean it!”
Jahrra heard Aimhe trot up beside her and Phrym, but she was determined to look straight ahead. Her tears had subsided and now she was running on pure fury. Fury aimed mostly at her own stupid, selfish actions. She was finally seeing the situation from her friends’ point of view and Scede was absolutely right. She had only been thinking about herself and how best to please Denaeh. She’d used her friends horribly and was ashamed of herself, but she was too proud to admit it. Jahrra turned her head away from Gieaun and clicked Phrym onward.
“Jahrra! Stop! This is madness, you can’t go in there!” Gieaun sounded slightly out of breath.
“It’s alright Gieaun, Scede is right. I shouldn’t have deceived you two. I’ll go on alone; you don’t have to come.”
“Jahrra! That canyon is evil! Didn’t you hear what Scede said? I remember those stories too!”
“Don’t be ridiculous; those stories aren’t even half true,” Jahrra said angrily. “That’s why they’re stories. Adults tell them to us just to scare us so we won’t get lost in the wilderness. We’re old enough to find our own way now. I’m sure there are no monsters to capture us and eat us alive. Remember the hag that was supposed to live in the Belloughs of the Black Swamp? Remember what that came to? And the lake monster? This is the same exact thing.”
Jahrra continued leading Phrym toward the base of the canyon mouth as Gieaun reluctantly fell back. Phrym climbed the steep incline of the rock pile, pushing many of the loosely piled stones noisily down the slope. As each small boulder clattered down the fan wash, the racket of the falling rocks seemed to echo off the dome of awkward silence that had enveloped the three friends. Jahrra tried not to let her anger at Scede’s words overwhelm her, but the long journey and hot sun only grated at her temper. She fumed inwardly, determined to defy him and his sister. Yes, she had lied. Yes, she was being selfish. But now she had a task to complete, and focusing on that task would distract her from the hurtful words that had been traded today.
Phrym struggled up the steep slope, sending an avalanche of stones scattering down to the smooth plain below. When he and Jahrra finally reached the top and the sprawling pebbles finally settled, Gieaun yelled up at them, “Wait!”
The energy that the Resai girl put into her voice made Jahrra stop and turn in the saddle. Her friend was at the base of the wash, thirty feet below, and Scede was still a few dozen yards off where Jahrra had left him.
“We’re going with you!” Gieaun shouted.
Scede looked up suddenly from his brooding posture and kicked Bhun over towards Aimhe.