Alma couldn’t have been any more surprised if it was the Starling herself sitting next to her.
Actually, she had hoped it was the Starling. She had imagined, as she lay there, that instead of her finding the Starling, the Starling had come to find her. She had imagined that the Starling had gathered her up and held her tight and that their quintessences had connected and that the flawed, all-wrong emptiness that kept opening up inside her had been fixed in that instant, fixed for good and forever.
But it was Dustin. The last person in the world—in the universe—that she wanted to see.
“Why are you here?” she asked, sitting up. “Did you follow us?”
Dustin scowled at her. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re stuck in a hole in a cave. Maybe we can talk about that later.”
Alma looked around her then. The quintescope was on the ground, and so was her flashlight, illuminating a small circle of stone. Dustin was holding a flashlight too, and in its light, she could see the pit she had fallen into. The pit Dustin had, presumably, leaped into to help her.
The pit they were stuck in.
She nodded. “Okay, we’ll talk later. How do we get out of here?”
They stood next to each other, surveying their predicament. Dustin was tall, but even when he jumped, his fingers didn’t quite touch the lip of the pit. The sides of the hole were so smooth that there was nowhere to wedge a hand or a foot. They both tried to scramble up with no success.
“I would boost you,” Dustin said hesitantly. “But you’d never be able to pull me out of here.”
Alma eyed Dustin. He was a lot bigger than her, taller and heavier, but if she pulled and he braced himself against the rocks, she thought they could probably do it.
“I can get you out,” she said.
Dustin considered her, doubt etched into every feature of his face. “I guess we can try.” He paused for a minute. “What will you do if I’m too heavy?”
There was something in his voice that made Alma look closer at him. His eyes were narrowed and his arms were crossed, but Alma saw suddenly that he was afraid.
“Do you think I’ll leave you in here?” she asked, surprised.
Dustin’s glare deepened. He looked like he was going to deny it, like he was going to yell at her. Then his stony expression seemed to crack and beneath it his eyes were wide with fear. “Yeah,” he said. “I do. Why wouldn’t you?”
Dustin had been nothing but mean to Alma since she’d moved to Four Points, that was true. He had been nothing but mean to her friends. Still, it would never have occurred to her to leave him trapped in a hole, even if he hadn’t climbed into that hole to help her. Even if he hadn’t spoken to her so kindly, so gently that she hadn’t recognized his voice.
“I won’t leave you,” Alma said. “We’ll both get out.”
Dustin studied her in the flashlight beam for a long, searching moment more. Then he nodded and crouched, making a platform with his hands.
With a boost, Alma was able to scramble over the edge of the pit. When she looked back in, Dustin was scowling again, scowling up at her.
“You are going to leave me in here, aren’t you?”
Alma shook her head. “I already said I wouldn’t do that.”
He handed up the flashlights and the quintescope. Then she leaned down as far as she could without feeling like she was going to fall back in herself. She held out her hand.
Dustin reached up and grasped it.
It took a few tries, including a particularly terrifying one where Alma almost tumbled headfirst back into the pit, but finally, when they were both drenched in sweat and coated in dust and out of breath in the thick Deep Downs air, finally, Dustin was out. They lay on the ground, side by side, catching their breath.
Alma got up first.
She wanted to get out of the cave right away, but she had come for earth.
She reached her hand down to Dustin again.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I can look as I walk.”
This time he didn’t glare at her. He half smiled, and he took her hand.
“Look for what?” he asked as Alma pulled him to his feet.
Before she answered, Alma pressed the quintescope to her eye. And right there, right underneath where Dustin had been lying, she saw it.
There was a stone there the size of a fist. It was shining with a dark russet gleam, like iron ore. Beams of light shot out from its surface, dappling a pattern on the cave ceiling.
And Dustin: he was shining too.
“Dustin!” Alma cried. “You found it!”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, following her gaze. “This?” He picked up the stone. Without the quintescope it was dusty and dirty and not one bit special.
He didn’t know, Alma realized, about any of it. He didn’t know about the elements or the Starling. He didn’t know why they were here in the middle of the night. She felt a surge of panic as she thought about him laughing at her, calling her a weirdo. Then she held the quintescope out to him.
Hugo had been right. This was Dustin’s element, not hers. He would see.
“Look at it through this,” she said.
“Whoa,” he breathed a moment later. “What’s making it shine like that?”
“I’ll tell you about it,” Alma replied, “under the stars.”
Together, they hurried out of the cavern, down the tunnels, and then out into the open air, where Shirin threw herself at Alma.
“Oh my goodness! Are you all right?” Shirin cried. “What happened? I was about to go get help!”
“I’m fine,” Alma said. “Dustin helped me. And look—” She took the stone from Dustin’s hands and held it up.
It was a plain rock, but Hugo and Shirin knew—even without looking through the quintescope they knew.
It was true earth.