“There was a dead yeti at the bottom of a cliff, but I couldn’t get a good luck because of a recent rock fall. Recent enough the dust hadn’t settled yet.” Peter heard Egbert saying from where he sat against the rock, neither awake or asleep. He opened his eyes to see what was going on, but moving his head hurt. “We should probably get moving. Do you think he can walk?”
“I’m not sure he can even stand right this minute. I almost wish that dryad he’s caught the eye of was here to fix that.”
“Dragging him through wherever they go when they disappear probably took a lot out of her, otherwise she might have healed him before they parted.”
“She said she couldn’t heal me, but it sounded like she meant she couldn’t stop my panic attack. I didn’t even notice I was sore until I woke up. Walking will do me good. Is my staff on the mule or lost in my fall?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No,” Peter said, fighting a headache.
“Maybe if you had had this with you, you wouldn’t have fallen,” Egbert said, offering him the staff.
“I think it will be a while before I willingly part with it again.”
“Let’s see you on your feet, then we’ll know if it will be enough,” Marla said, arms crossed.
Peter rolled his eyes and lurched up to his feet. He didn’t fall over, and he wasn’t going to tell Marla that his vision blacked for a second. “I think it has more to do with how thin the air is up here,” he said. He walked over to one of the giant goats and grabbed its lead.
“Okay, but we’re taking it slow. And let us know you need a rest before you collapse. Agreed?”
Peter looked Marla in the eye, realizing she was dead serious. “Agreed,” he said. He shouldn’t have had to, but she shouldn’t have had to demand it, either.
Peter slept soundly that night and didn’t leave sight of the pack animals for the next three days. The little trickle of a stream they found met with another and doubled in size, then another and another, quickly growing to the point of being difficult to cross most of the time. Between that and the occasional waterfall, they often had to backtrack to find a way to keep going.
While fording a tributary, Peter stepped on a rock that moved. The strong current pulled his feet out from under him before he could catch his balance, and he landed in water deep enough he didn’t hit bottom. He tried to get his feet under him, but he was pulled into deeper water and kept smacking his legs on boulders.
As he was swept away, Peter could hear shouts of alarm but couldn’t keep his mouth above water long enough to yell back. Judging how fast he was moving, or how far he had travelled, wasn’t possible. He past multiple tributaries on either side and joined at least two larger rivers before he fell over a waterfall and was tumbled around until he nearly passed out. Finally able to get his feet under him, Peter hauled himself out onto dry ground and lay in the sun, contemplating taking off his clothes to see if they would dry faster.
The best thing you can do when you’re lost is stay in one place. Especially when you have friends whose path will lead them to you, but you can’t identify the path back to them. But he was soaking wet with only a belt knife and his staff, and they could be days behind at the rate they had been moving.
Ringing out his clothes and hanging them on bushes was his first order of business, followed by trying to start a fire. Peter gathered the fuel, used his knife to prepare it, and rubbed a stick into the tinder on a piece of bark until there was a wisp of smoke. He carefully blew on it, coaxing it to grow into a flame. Three times he put it out before he got a proper fire started, though even then he spent nearly an hour watching it carefully and adding just enough wood of an appropriate size to encourage it to become useful.
“There are far easier ways of doing that,” said someone behind him.
Peter turned to see Honeyhips laying on a rock with her chin resting on her hand and her elbow on the rock. He had been so absorbed in his task he had no clue how long she had been watching. “Yeah, well, my options were limited by a lack of tools.”
“Tools? Can’t you just … oh, right. You don’t know how.”
“What, start the fire by thinking at the wood?”
“Don’t be silly. Magic isn’t just thought.”
“Okay, but I still haven’t been able to learn anything about how to use it.”
“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. Where are your friends?”
“I fell in the river. They’re somewhere back there, I don’t know how far.”
“It was funny at first, but it got scary when you didn’t get out of the river.”
“You saw the whole thing?”
“Of course. Your friends are about two days behind you now. Do you have anything to eat?”