The group spends a few quiet moments staring at Cellu’s bedding, contemplating the strange centaur who had accompanied them on their journey. “Should have knowns” and “this whole times” begin to float from their mouths in horrified amazement. He was so quiet, yet none of them were ever quite comfortable with his peculiarities; but how do you accuse someone of being different? Now they understand that his puzzling behavior was justifiably concerning. Pixie feels sick for being so foolish. She realizes that she did not take the incident with the boat as seriously as she should have. That thing was clearly there because of Edna but it was not calculating, it was just insane. Cellu has been calculating, and she should have known. This should not have been a surprise; it should have been expected.
“We need to act quickly,” Pixie says. “We don’t know what Cellu’s plans are.”
“What if we don’t get the cane back?” Edna asks. “Is the prophecy ruined?”
“No,” Pixie says. She is perplexed but her words conceal it. “A prophecy can’t be ruined. Not if it’s legit. It’s like a glimpse into the future. We’ll get your cane back, but we need to be smart. And we need to have some idea of what Cellu’s up to.”
They slip quietly back into the dragon’s village, sneaking from tree to tree until they find what they are looking for. They find a large crowd of dragons that are standing around a flowery hill, listening and cheering. On top of that hill stands Cellu, piercing the sky with the cane.
“… and you don’t have to be afraid anymore!” Cellu yells. “I’m here to intercede for you. I risked my life, fighting off that old human and her evil group. I am for the dragon! We will beat the prophecy!”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Edna whispers.
“What should we do?” Twynne asks, looking at Pixie.
“I don’t know,” Pixie says, eyes still on Cellu and his dragons.
“We need to be quick, dragons!” Cellu yells. “Let’s capture our enemies while they sleep.” Suddenly, Cellu begins to gallop towards the trees that hide Edna and her friends, and the dragons follow. Luckily, the dragons are so focused on their task—eyes straight ahead—that neither dragon nor centaur notice anyone in Edna’s group.
“When they find our bedding empty, they’ll look for us and not stop until they find us,” Pixie says. “I doubt Cellu’ll be satisfied until they catch us. He won’t want us looking for help.”
“You all should just go,” Edna says. “You can’t escape fast with me. Save yourselves and get Kadiatu out of here, she shouldn’t be in the midst of this.”
“No, Grandma, I stayed here to help you,” Kadiatu says.
“Absolutely not!” Pixie says. “We aren’t going to leave you, Edna.” She looks at Kadiatu and sighs. “But one of us should take the child to safety. This is not her battle. It’s time she is moving on to her world.”
“I’m not leaving! I’m here to help, too!” Kadiatu says with a quivering lower lip.
Gargana puts her hand on Kadiatu’s back. “We can’t send this child back to her world now; she’ll go through life unsettled and never know why. It won’t be good for her, I can tell. “And she may be safer if we all stick together, anyway,” Gargan adds, “since sending children back home can take a while, sometimes, right?”
“That’s true,” Twynne says, nodding his head in agreement.
They all nod their heads and look at Pixie, the unofficial leader.
“Those are good points. And you’re right, we may not be able to get her sent home before being caught. Well, we need to do something, quick.”
“We can hide in the caves.” Gargan says.
“But wouldn’t we be trapped down there?” Edna asks. “And I shudder to think what those ol’ dragons would do to us if they catch us near their treasure.”
“It’s a risk,” Gargan says, “but the little creatures we saw in there might be able to help us; show us a way out.”
“Or they’ll report us to the dragons. I’ll be willing to bet on that, sure enough,” Edna says.
“But what else can we do? Where will we go? The dragons’ll be on our tail in no time.” Gargan says.
Edna breathes a heavy sigh when she thinks of the long distance they have come. The caves are closer, anyway; it might be the least tiresome risk to take.
“Actually, Gargan,” she says, “I think you’ve got a pretty good point.”
“Well, if that’s what we’re gonna to do,” Pixie says, “we best act quickly. Those dragons will’ve found our empty bedding by now.”
They head to the cave closest to them and slip behind the silky curtain without having examined the beauty of yet another dragon cave. But as they walk past the piles of treasure, they momentarily forget their urgency, letting their hands glide over the sharp gems and soft gold. Kadiatu runs ahead of them and motions with her hand for them to speed up.
Feeling foolish for needing to be reminded that they are in a hurry, they speed up.
They continue to creep deeper into the cave, following the trickling sound of the river. The river is farther down in this cave than it had been in Drake’s, but they find none of the little creatures that they had seen before. Even in the quiet they hear no living sounds, just the soft flowing of gold-speckled water.
The cave walls are as black as a starless night sky, and the thickness of its color gives the stone a beauty on par with the colorful gems embedded within it. Edna is reminded of the black rock that her hippie neighbor had given her as a gift many years ago. Edna had not known what to do with it, so she put it outside in her garden, and this pleased her neighbor who seemed to think that the vegetation and the stone would enjoy each other’s company. Edna cannot remember the name of the stone, but her neighbor told her that American Indians made arrowheads from it. This was when it was correct to say American Indian. Edna has always tried to remember to say what is correct because, in some way, she feels she understands. What she understands is what it is to have been stripped of something, something very important, yet never having intimate understanding of what it is that is missing because the thieves, her thieves, were always quick to plaster the void they left her with, with labels, accusations, and dominance.
“Ouch!” Gargana suddenly cries out. She has stepped on a bit of sharp stone. All along the ground are sharp black shavings from off the wall, and a few instruments for mining. The bit of stone Gargana has stepped on is lodged into the ground on one side, leaving the other side at an angle that has cut into the edge of her foot. A few of the tiny black creatures suddenly appear from a hole in the wall that no one had noticed. About ten of them surround Gargana and take a tight hold of her wounded foot.
Gargana begins to laugh awkwardly, then Kadiatu begins to laugh because Gargana is laughing. The creatures stop what they are doing and look at Gargana; not with any particular expression, neither kind, nor angry. They just look at her, and then at Kadiatu, with large commanding eyes that close and open a few times, separately, one eye then the other, until the laughter stops. The creatures look nothing like owls except for the eyes, but they have a wise and solemn look and feathery soft fur that give the impression that they are more owl like than anything else. They begin to communicate amongst themselves, in grunts and animal sounds. They seem to nod to each other in agreement, possibly in reference to the state of Gargana’s wound. Edna and the others are surprised to find animals with such seemingly sapient behavior.
Suddenly, to the groups’ surprise, one of the little creatures whispers, “you must follow us immediately.” Edna and her friends look at each other astonished. But the creatures do not wait, they head towards the hole from which they had appeared; one looks back and waves dramatically at them to come. Dumbfounded, they all follow. Gargana limps a little, but her foot has been wrapped in a bit of material that one of the creatures must have had with it. The opening in the rock is rather compact. Pixie, Kadiatu and Twynne are small enough to crawl through it, though they are not quick like the little creatures. But Edna cannot even contemplate climbing in with her damaged arm, and the giants are too big to fit in the hole and crawl at the same time.
The little creatures notice the dilemma and begin to speak to each other again in their secret animal language. Twynne tries to ask them how they know a language no one else can understand, but two of the creatures shush him immediately. One of the creatures, who has gone deep into the opening, comes back with a long piece of brown material with a coarse texture and a thick, loose weave. The creature points to Edna and then to himself, then he lays on the material with his arms across his chest and his legs straight out. He gets up and motions Edna to do the same. Gargana and Pixie help Edna onto the fabric, just as the creature had demonstrated, and in an instant Edna disappears into the tunnel. Another little creature comes back with more material and points to Kadiatu. Kadiatu disappears into the tunnel as soon as she lays down.
Edna finds herself deep in the tunnel in a spot that has widened, though it is still too small to stand in. Soon Kadiatu is at her feet, and then Pixie. While Edna is waiting in the dark for the rest of her friends, her breathing begins to quicken, and she is overcome with the desire to stretch her arms and legs out. They hear the pounding of large feet and the scraping of talons, and the sound is getting louder. Edna’s breaths are almost choking her.
Kadiatu reaches an arm to Edna’s leg, holds onto a veiny calf, and says, “it’s okay Grandma, I’m here.”
The little creatures work quickly as they bring each of Edna’s friends into the widened crawl space. The footsteps are getting louder, and Edna can hear shouting from the dragons who have spotted their escaping enemies. Gargana and Gargan are now in the tunnel and all that is left is Twynne.
Edna can hear Cellu’s voice, “use your fire! Don’t let them escape!” The group anxiously watches the dark tunnel from where they came. Twynne suddenly appears, and a few heartbeats later they see a flash of light, hear rock rolling against rock, and feel the stone that surrounds them warm up. They now lay in total darkness.
The black stone is so dense that it offers protection from the inferno, but it also gathers the heat and holds it in place like a sauna, and Edna and her friends are soon soaking in sweat. They do not know what has happened to their little friends, though they all fear the worst. Edna’s strangled breaths can be heard in the silence, as they listen expectantly.
Suddenly the creatures appear from another hole right in front of Edna, and they immediately busy themselves in the dark. Again, Edna and her friends are pulled deeper into the tunnel. This time they find themselves in a room with a little bit of light that is large enough to stand in.
“Now can we ask what’s going on?” Edna whispers.
One of the creatures motions for silence as he slides a thick curtain across the tunnel entrance that had led them into the pocket of space they are now in. He then motions them to follow him through another heavy curtain that leads into a slightly larger tunnel, and through yet another heavy curtain held to the side by another little creature. Once they are finally through the tunnel, they find themselves in a large black cavern with an assortment of lighted lanterns and a sea of feathery black creatures.
These creatures, upon noticing the new arrivals, crowd around their guests with an appearance of hopeful anticipation; but they are silent. They seem to find Edna’s presence to be significant, so significant that none of them know what to say.
Pixie breaks the silence, “is it safe to talk here?” She whispers.
“Yes, we can speak now,” one of their rescuers say.
“How are you able to speak to each other in a language we can’t understand?” Twynne asks.
Just as with humans suddenly appearing from another world, Storia creatures aren’t baffled by the seemingly impossible phenomena of there being multiple languages that are only heard in one’s own tongue. Yet, her friends are absolutely flummoxed by the seemingly impossible phenomenon of a language that they do not understand.
“It’s not really a language as you might understand a language to be,” one of their rescuers says. “You’ll understand best with some background.”
“Oh yes,” Pixie interjects, “who are you all? I’ve never seen creatures that look like you.”
“We are Huldu. My name is Heldul. You’ve never seen our like because we’ve been enslaved almost since the beginning; not the very beginning, mind you, we had a wonderful life before the dragons came. But we lived a quiet life and kept to ourselves, so we didn’t meet many others before we were enslaved.
“You’re slaves?” Edna asks.
“Yes,” Heldul says. “This land was ours, and these mines were ours until the dragons came. Have you noticed how fat and lazy they are? And infantile? They weren’t always like that. Their extravagant lifestyle has dulled them over time, but when they first enslaved us they were clever. They had been watching for quite some time, until they knew our routines. At the end of a working spell our whole village would eat together outside to celebrate the fruits of our labor. After dinner we sang, played music, danced, and then we’d fall asleep in the fresh open air.
“It was on a night like that they attacked us. They didn’t breathe fire back then, but it was still impossible to fight back because their skin is like armor; it’s impenetrable. They forced us down into the caves to live and to mine gold and jewels for them, and they took residence in our homes. And our homes, now their homes, hold the only openings to the outside.
“And they can keep us under surveillance because of the way we engineered the mine. We constructed the caves in such a way that all voices, even whispers, echo through the tunnels and are amplified in various spots near the caverns. We did this so anyone who might be injured, anywhere in the mines, can call for help. Now that the dragons have control of the cave entrances, they have access to those areas and can hear everything we say, except down here, and only with the many drapes that cover the tunnel openings.
“We wanted to be able to communicate with each other while we worked, without the dragons understanding us, so we began to pair certain phrases and words with animals sounds. It’s not a complete language, however, merely enough to exchange important information. We weren’t sure if it would even work, but it seemed not only to work, but to be quite advantageous.
“The span of days and nights since our capture has been convenient for the dragons; they’ve grown forgetful. They believe we’re simply animals; their animals. They bring us food and necessary supplies, and otherwise leave us alone as long as we are providing them with jewels and gold.
“We tried to escape only once. We thought that if they really believed us to be no more than livestock, they wouldn’t be keeping as close of surveillance on us anymore. Our plan was to send a group to search for help; so in the middle of the night five of us crept through one of the tunnels. We were as quiet as can be, but somehow a few of the dragons heard us before we even made it to any of their caves.
“When they attacked us, they were more ferocious than before. I believe the memory of what they had done and what kind of creatures they really are was the reason for their rage. They were not just angry that we were trying to escape, but that we had reminded them of all they had successfully forgotten. And, at that point, they had developed the ability to breathe fire because of the indigestion from the abundance of rich foods they gorge themselves on daily. The stomach acid of a dragon, we’ve learned, is incredibly flammable.”
Heldul is silent for a moment. His eyes moisten. “I was the only one who survived. Since then, we haven’t wanted to risk anymore lives, so we’ve decided to wait for the days of the prophecy. It’s taken a long time to get the dragons to forget again, but we’ve finally gotten them to think of us as livestock. At least until today. They know we helped you; I’m sure they remember once again.”
The cave fills with silence. The silence of Edna and her friends consists of both indignation and compassion. The Huldu’s silence is pregnant with anticipation.
“So, you all know about the prophecy?” Gargana says softly, understanding now that this is why the Huldu crowd around them with such expectancy.
“Yes,” Heldul says and points at Edna.,“we know she must be the maiden of the prophecy. We knew it when we saw you earlier with your walking stick. You fit the description and you had authority over the dragons.”
“Is that why you risked your lives to save us?” Edna asks.
Heldul looks surprised. “We’re not like the dragons. We don’t care only for our own lives; we saved you because your life is just as precious as our own, whether or not you can help us.”
Edna looks at her empty hand which had been relying on the arms of others to keep her steady. “The centaur who was with us stole the cane.”
“Yes, this is how we knew you were in trouble when we saw you just now in the caves.”
“So, why do you all look so hopeful?” Edna asks.
“Because it’s a prophecy, not a prediction. And it’s not a prescriptive prophecy. There are no instructions to it, right?” Heldul asks.
“That’s right,” Gargana responds. “No instructions. It has always been passed along as an assurance of what will be.”
Heldul smiles at Gargana and nods. To Edna he says, “then you’ll get that cane back, somehow.”
Another Huldu has found the nerve to speak. “You all must be famished. Let’s get you fed before we figure out what our next steps should be.”
Renee Rushing 
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