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I DOZED next to the waterfall, having been lulled in and out of sleep by the sound of running water.
Valcas kept watch for a while, and then alternated between exploring the caves and checking on me. It became increasingly darker near the waterfall each time he returned, which surprised me. I’d thought the glow of the fire on the outside of the Fire Falls would be continuous, and that we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between day and night. But the light faded as the day went on, as if the inside of the Falls were affected by the rising and setting of a sun. I couldn’t remember seeing a sun on the outside of the Falls. Not that it mattered. Had I not thought about that puzzle, my mind would have just raced on about something else. I squeezed my eyes, tightly, as if it would still my thoughts, so I could get some rest.
Eventually, Valcas gave up his watch for the night, covered me with his jacket, and then stretched himself out in the backmost part of the cave. There, anyone passing through would jolt him awake.
The next morning came and went. Nothing exciting happened other than finding something that was absolutely necessary: a latrine. It’s amazing how exciting such things become when your only source of water is the same one you count on for food and drink. We’d found a rocky room in one of the east branches of the caves with a stream that ran not into, but out of, the freshwater pool beneath the interior Falls. We figured that would work until something or someone else presented a better solution.
By mid-afternoon the novelty of the caves and my hopes of finding my father began to fade.
Valcas found me brooding while I attempted to weave baskets out of dried seaweed, so we wouldn’t have to eat and drink everything straight out of our hands. It was a poor attempt.
“Shouldn’t someone have found us by now?” I asked, wrapping a thin band of gnarled seaweed around a seaweed-basket drinking cup, as if that would keep it from falling apart. My question sounded about as pathetic as my drinking cup looked.
Valcas raised his shoulders into a shrug. “I thought I would have stumbled upon someone by now.”
I sighed and dipped my cup in the pool to test it out. Instead of praising my resourcefulness, Valcas laughed.
“What? Think you can do better?”
“Let me guess,” he said. “You haven’t camped outdoors much before meeting me.”
He was right. Despite all the time I’d spent during the summers near Lake Winston, I’d always stayed indoors in a house or hotel. Since meeting Valcas, I’d spent one night in a sod hut and another in Ivory’s cabin, the closest I’d ever come to camping.
I shrugged. “Is it that obvious?”
He grinned and nodded toward my seaweed drinking cup. The cup held the water well enough, but had become soft and squishy in my hand, threatening to form a gelatinous pile of goo. I drank the water out of it quickly, choking on globs of seaweed that had already softened and loosened. Then I tossed it in the pool. Stupid cup.
“So when did you become Mr. Wilderness? I didn’t see any campsites at the White Tower.” I stood up with my hands on my hips, looking Valcas straight in the eyes, imagining how proud Ivory would be of me in that moment.
Valcas smiled and crossed his arms. “Did you look behind all of the doors in the hallway?”
My ego deflated. He had a good point. Each of the doors in the hallway inside the tower—the Grand Entrance—led to all kinds of different places, including lakes, seas, vineyards, hiking trails, living quarters... The list went on and on. I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that there were also campgrounds somewhere behind one of the doors.
But I wasn’t going to let him off that easily.
“You went camping inside the White Tower?” I shrugged, unimpressed. “What did you do, order a servant to pack you a picnic lunch, walk across the hallway and then open another door into a picture-perfect wilderness, complete with a fire ready for roasting marshmallows?”
Valcas’ eyes crinkled at the corners. His mouth opened in mock surprise. “How did you know?”
“Wait—you did that?” I furrowed a brow. Even I thought he hadn’t learned that easily. Was I missing something?
“Yes, when I was about eight years old.” He bent down and reached into the pool. “Since then I’ve gained a lot more experience. But you’re right. I didn’t learn all that I know now at the White Tower.”
I watched as Valcas pulled several long, muddy leaves out of the water and rinsed them one by one. When he was finished, he laid them out next to the pool to dry.
“We can prepare our food and eat off these,” he said. “Also, if you bend them properly, you can use them to scoop up water to drink.”
“Ah,” I said. “Where did you learn that? Somewhere outside of the White Tower?”
Valcas nodded. “I had no choice but to learn. I’d run away from home several times since the age of eleven.”
“How did you get out of the White Tower? The security there is intense.” My eyes widened. “Had you already learned how to travel with an unofficial object?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “I didn’t realize that I was traveling back then—I was too young to understand the system. And I didn’t use any type of object, which of course bewildered the TSTA. They still charged me with an infraction, though—for underage self-transportation without a license.”
I winced. I had no idea what he was talking about, but the fact that the TSTA would charge a child who didn’t know what he was doing with an infraction was just plain cruel. I could relate.
I pressed my fingertips to my eyelids. “So, wait. The TSTA charged you with your first infraction when you were eleven years old?”
“Yes. My parents were able to pay the fine, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.” He shrugged.
“How much was the fine?”
Valcas’ lips pulled down into a small frown. “In your currency, it would have been about twenty million dollars.”
“Whoa. Just for being underage without a license?”
A grin of pride and amusement played across his lips. “That warranted only about two million. The remaining amount was the penalty for the particular method of travel, something that is kept under tight control and for which special permissions are required.”
“How did you do it? What was your method of travel?”
“It just happened one day—the first time I decided to run away. That was when I learned my travel talent.” His jeweled green eyes looked into mine. “Like my parents, I’m a World Builder.”