She’s going to try to jump for it, using the vine as a swing.
“You’ll never make it,” I say. The vine is long—she cut one of the ones that comes in from outside, but who knows how strong it is?
“I’m never going to make it across that bridge with this thing,” she says, holding up her cane. “It’s this, or nothing.”
And then she ties the vine around her waist and darts forward as fast as she can, flying into the ravine.
“Wooooohoooo!”
“Quinn!” I shout. She swings for a long, harrowing moment, and it looks like she’s going to make it.
But then the makeshift rope begins to slow.
“Fuck!” shouts Ronan, reaching out with his single shadow tendril.
I send mine after his, his pushing and mine pulling on Quinn’s dangling body until it reaches the other side. She tosses her cane onto the ledge then scrambles up it.
“Yes!” she screams, resting her weight on her good leg and pumping her fists in the air. “That was so much fun. I wonder how much it would cost to live here—”
“You’re insane!” I shout back, but I can’t help but laugh.
“Come to the edge. I’ll throw you the rope.”
We help Seth across first. He swears the entire way, his hands slipping on the vine, but I wrap my shadow around his wrists to keep him from falling.
“What’s over there?” I ask Quinn as Seth throws back the rope.
There are three doorways visible on the back wall. Quinn groans when she approaches them. “Water.”
“As in…?”
“As in the halls are flooded. All of them. And it’s pitch black in there.”
That’s a problem for future Sylvie. Present Sylvie needs to work up the nerve to take this vine over a ravine.
I lean over from a foot or so away from the edge. The depths are so fathomless my shadow-born vision doesn’t help me see the bottom. Then I look up to where the vine enters the cave through a narrow gap. “Maybe we should try the bridge.” Sure, there are a couple of loose planks, but if we take it at a run, it should be alright.
“If the bridge breaks when we’re on it, we’ll have to climb up, and we might not be on the right side,” says Ronan.
“And if the vine breaks?”
“We grab the ledge with our shadows and pull ourselves up.”
I’m not completely certain our shadows are strong enough to do that. Most of Quinn’s weight was supported by the vine.
“You go first,” I say. I don’t say why, but I’m sure Ronan can tell I’m thinking that if something were to happen to me, he wouldn’t be able to make it across.
“But if I fall, it would doom you as well.”
“Together, then?”
Ronan picks me up, tying the vine around us both. “Together. In three. Two. One!”
Ronan breaks into a run, leaping for the chasm. The vine makes a terrible scraping sound against the rock, but it holds as we cross over the lowest part of the ravine.
And then the tendrils begin to snap, sending shockwaves through the vine. “Shadows!” I shout.
I throw out my shadows as Ronan throws out his, gripping onto the ledge. Our forward momentum is almost enough to get us there, if the vine could just hold on a little longer—
