Beyond the chamber of hanging mineral flowers, the cave floor sloped downward and the air grew thick enough to taste.
Ysabet paused with her left hand braced on Mother Suth’s ash walking staff, letting her breath come shallow and slow. Every deep pull of damp heat pressed against the dark bruises along her left ribs where the trap-line beam had struck her two days ago. Inside her coat pocket, Oru’s shed throat crystal lay wrapped in soft leather, a cold, solid weight against her hip, while the wooden beetle guide rested silent beside it with its carved wooden legs folded tight.
Ahead of her, the stone walls narrowed into a ribbed throat of yellow limestone. The draft that had kept the mineral blooms open behind them should have been stronger here, near the lower vents, yet the air hung heavy and sour, smelling of boiled cabbage and wet chalk.
Pip walked a pace in front of Ysabet’s boots, its six mismatched legs picking a careful path over slick calcium ridges. The strips of Suth’s old moss cloak tied around its fractured antlers looked dark with cave sweat. Inside its warm belly pouch, the original field mouse poked its nose over the rim, sneezed at the stale air, and tucked its head back under the fold; they had shifted the mouse from its half-covered boot-nail box into Pip’s pouch when the descent grew steep, leaving the empty wooden box lashed beneath Chaska’s folded glider struts.
