Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls by Elliott James

Author:Elliott James [James, Elliott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780356504155
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2013-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

At 5:30 the next morning, Sarah turned on a battery-operated CD player next to the river. It was three miles away from the Bonaparte Falls, but that didn’t matter. The being we were after would be attuned to sounds carrying over water. Sarah had warded the player to make it harder to find, and I was hoping the combination of magic and music would make the fossegrim curious.

* * *

The Bonaparte Falls were not breathtaking in their majesty, nor was there an obvious cave at their bottom, but I had not expected there to be. An accessible teen hangout would not have made a good lair. I was staring at the top of the falls from my perch on a large rock that jutted from the river, my rappelling line anchored around its base.

“She’s chained to a wall in there,” Isaac said curtly. I was seeing a new side of Isaac, the Marine on mission. It looked good on him. “I didn’t see anything else with her.”

“Where’s the entrance?” I asked. I was wearing a pair of swim trunks with deep pockets and a tool belt with a mallet and several glow sticks looped at my hips.

“I’ll lead you to it,” he said, squinting in thought. “It’s going to be a tight squeeze, but you should be able to make it.”

“Good work,” I said.

He looked at me oddly and turned back. Isaac was walking on the surface of the water. He did not look remotely Christlike.

I let the current take me to the top of the falls and regained my footing. These were not rapids, and the rocks sloped rather than being a sheer drop. As long as the line did not get pinched and kept feeding through the biner, I would be fine. I began to walk down the side of the falls.

The entrance was a narrow crevasse, hidden by falling water and located some thirty feet above sheer, slick, stone. It was skin-scrapingly tight, and I had to bend my body at awkward angles twice, but I made it through. I didn’t need the glow sticks. There was a soft blue light suffusing the tunnel. When I made it through to the cave, I saw why.

There were will-o’-the-wisps floating about the cave. They must have been enthralled by the fossegrim’s music and set here like living lanterns. Otherwise, the fossegrim’s idea of interior decorating was fairly simple. There was gold draped over the walls or embedded in cracks, necklaces, rings, earrings, bracelets, watches, lockets, and in some cases coins. Possessions lost to the river over the centuries. A huge stack of driftwood had been piled and dried in the corner, and a small fire was actually burning, fish bones scattered about its base. A waterproof guitar case was leaning against the wall. Fossegrim played violins or fiddles in the old tales, but some things change with time.

Some things don’t.

Courtney Stewart was huddled in the shadows of the northeast corner. There was a rusty manacle around her right ankle, linked to a chain that had been anchored in the cave wall.

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