I studied the base of the column. The scorch marks were there, as I had supposed, the same pattern as the meadow grass, the same signature I had been tracking for days without telling Sammy what I was tracking. The alicorn dust had been used here. With craft and intention, shaped into something that was not a weapon but a snare.
The imp had been here. Had built this. I knew it in my bones.
At the far wall of the cave, almost invisible in the shadow, three more scorched marks had been burned in a triangle pattern. Anchor points, I suspected. The thing you would set if you wanted the construction to hold without constant tending. This had been planned in advance.
I filed it. I would tell Sammy all of it. Later.
For now, I put my hand on her shoulder, steady and present, and let her have the moment. We had found one of her friends at last.
Sammy
I couldn’t move.
Which was not, in my experience, how I operated. I was a mover. I was someone who, when confronted with a problem, began doing something about it, even if that something was making a list or naming a sub-quest or writing endless notes.
Forward motion was my default state.
I stood in a cave behind a waterfall, staring at my frenemy suspended in a column of crystal. And I could not move.
She looked like herself. That was the thing. Not like a person in distress, not like someone afraid or suffering. Her expression was the same one she wore in the moments before she said something devastatingly accurate: that slight composure, that almost smile, as if she knew something and was deciding whether you deserved to hear it yet.
She looked like she was waiting.
Something loosened in my chest so suddenly it hurt.
She was okay, and she was waiting. Had been here the whole time? Had she been tucked behind the water, held by something in this crystal? Now that I was close, I could see the craftsmanship of it. The crystal had a base, a seam, something set rather than grown. She was held by something that was not her choice.
But she was okay.
She does not have it in her to be afraid for long.
I stepped forward and touched the amethyst surface.
The crystal was warm under my fingers. Not feverish, not unsettling, rather that deep-from-within warmth that radiated outward. It pulsed once under my palm, the light brightening for a half-second and then settling back.
As if it knew I was there.
As ifsheknew.
My throat tightened. I pressed my hand flat against the surface and stared at her face: the composure, the almost-smile, the blonde hair drifting. I felt every mile of the road behind me and every promise I had made to myself since Berry had first pointed east, days and yet a lifetime ago.
“I found you.” I whispered, almost immediately swallowed by the sound of the falls behind us. I pressed my forehead to the crystal. “I found you, buttercup.”
The crystal pulsed again. Twice this time. Stronger. Strong enough that I felt it in my palm, in my forearm, in my sternum.The light inside it illuminated and held for a full breath before settling.
Something inside it was aware. Something inside it had heard me.
Guruk’s hand was on my shoulder, steady and present. I covered it with my free hand without looking away from Raine’s still face.
I stayed there for a long moment. The falls roared behind us. The amethyst light moved softly inside the crystal, its own slow tide.
Then, I took a breath.
“Okay,” I said, to Raine, to Guruk, to Berry who I could hear arriving at the cave entrance behind us, to myself. “Okay. We found her.” I straightened. My hand stayed on the crystal. “Now we figure out how to get her out.”
Guruk
I held tight to Sammy’s shoulder, offering my silent support.
