20

The Hollow

Reven gathers in closer to me. “It’s okay. I have—”

“Purple…tentacle.” I barely get the words out, lips and jaw locked and voice raw with agonizing terror.

Without turning around, I can’t see him, but I can tell that Reven holds at my words, the muscles in his arms at either side of me rippling, his grip turning into fists. Even his breathing stops. He doesn’t ask if I’m sure or if what I might have seen is a manifestation of my own fear. Instead, he leans closer to whisper, “Where?”

I force my mouth to move. “Two rungs below your feet.”

He swears.

But that one word confirms I’m right about what this is. The Hollow.

The Devourer that legends say is a massive octopus-like creature that crushes its prey with its many arms, then sucks the juices from their bodies with a hideous beak until they are hollow shells of bones and skin.

That is what lurks below us. Within reach.

What is it doing this far from home? The Hollow is supposed to wander the seas to the west between Aryd and Savanah, on the other side of Wildernyss.

“Faster,” Reven says.

A new terror overrides the whole plunging-to-my-death idea. I was wrong about that being the worse thing. Being pulverized by those tentacles, then sucked dry of all my bodily fluids is off-the-scales petrifying.

As fast as we can, we quietly make our way carefully down the ladder. But we’re still only halfway there, and suddenly it feels like miles. Reven’s shadow moves with us, hiding us from view of the creature lurking below.

“Where are you?” That slurping, sucking voice pulls at my consciousness. “I can feel you.” The amulet gives another sharp throb. Only it doesn’t seem to be answering—more like screaming.

That can’t be good.

“Duck.” Reven’s muttered order is abrupt, but I act instantly, jerking my head down with a gasp as a shadow, different from that below us, passes overhead. Behind me, Reven wrenches back, the motion violent enough to jiggle the ladder, and I hold on so hard I worry I might break the strong bamboo just with my grip.

Then a pause, and I hold my breath, not daring to look.

“Move!” he orders.

I scramble downward, trying not to look around. Faster. Faster. Have to go faster.

Reven’s curse reaches me right before I’m yanked off the ladder and into the air by a hand of shadow.

“I feel you.”

A tentacle tip wraps around where I’d been. With a terrifying series of cracks, it tests the strength of the ladder. A miracle it doesn’t break in half right then.

From my vantage point dangling in the air, I watch helplessly as Reven suddenly disappears and reappears, like becoming shadow himself, but in a stuttering motion like he’s running out of power. The tentacle passes through where his body was but, as he solidifies, returns for him again. As if the monster below knows it’s being tricked.

Reven swings around the underside of the ladder and hangs there by his hands, muscles straining, for a breathtaking minute. Then he looks straight up at me, and his expression hits me like a punch to the gut.

He’s afraid. For me.

The air whooshes from my body. That hand of shadow moves again and deposits me well below him on the rungs with surprising gentleness. I am almost to the end. I can see it now through shadow that is fast dissipating.

“Go,” Reven mouths.

I shake my head. I can’t leave him.

A tentacle reaches out between us, snarling up and toward him, cutting off his way down.

“Please.” The word punches from him.

I don’t need him to ask again. I go.

As fast as my shaking limbs will let me move, I’m scrambling my way to the ground. Even so, I don’t look down but keep my gaze trained on Reven. Instead of coming with me, he goes back up from the underneath, like a monkey the King of Tropikis once gave Grandmother as a birthday gift, swinging from limb to limb of the trees in the courtyard.

Twice Reven has to twist or float away from not one but three tentacles now feeling their way along the shabby crossing, as if the Hollow can sense the vibration of Reven’s movement, like a spider in a web.

My feet hit snow and ice before I realize I’ve made it that far. Then I take off running, slipping and sliding over the barren ice-covered field, headed inland. While they live in the water, Devourers are known to come onto land after their prey. The Hollow more than most.

The dominion of Savanah is protected on three sides by massive rocks their goddess—a kind goddess, the patroness of fertility and animals who blessed her people with honesty—had placed there before she disappeared, just like my dominion’s walls. But for the long, unprotected fourth side that faces the channel between them and the other dominions they border, including Aryd, the people have had to build wooden walls which they maintain and patrol vigorously. Because of this creature.

Finally, my feet hit more solid ground far enough away that I stop running. I pitch forward, hands on my knees, sucking in air, even as I turn to search for Reven following.

But there is no sign of him.

I have to go back. No idea why, but the need is a compulsion. I won’t just leave him—

I take a single, hopping step back toward the water before a crack—cannonball loud this time—splits the air, and the ladder breaks. The half on the Tyndra side tumbles into the ocean with a resounding splash, sending spray high, parts of it splintering as it hits icebergs.

The waters boil up around where the ladder falls, and suddenly all eight tentacles of the monster in the ocean consume the remnants, pulling it underneath the surface and disappearing from view.

I stare in horror, only able to hear the labored sounds of my own breathing, which hitches.

Mother goddess…Reven.