Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

She tried to blink it away as she dragged the lance back into the shade. Leaning against the rock wall, she rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, the sound of her lids against her dry eyes like the click of claw on stone. She squinted across the canyon and waited for her vision to return to normal.

Pulling the cloth map from her sleeve, Molly traced her finger across the branching lines. She had no idea where she was now—the canyon had split and joined too many times to keep up. Getting out of here, however, should be as simple as leaning into the wind.

Worthless as a guide, then, she wiped the map across her face, soaking up the sweat. She peeled her hood off the rest of the way and swiped the cloth down her throat, absorbing the moisture that had gathered in the depression at the top of her sternum. After wicking up as much as she could, she folded the damp cloth several times and placed it on the nape of her neck, the evaporating sweat cooling the blood that flowed up to her head, the pointed ends of the makeshift handkerchief hanging around in front, dripping precious wetness down her suit. Molly tucked the tips inside her collar, letting the water run down her belly and chest, pulling away even more heat.

With her vision returning and the wind cooling her exposed head, Molly rose to give her improvised flashlight another try. She moved the boot out into the sunlight again, this time looking toward the rock wall while she adjusted the angle. A bright spot of white sunlight splayed out near her knee. She experimented with different ways of maneuvering the lance until she felt some degree of control over the beam.

Moving the light up the wall, she brought her head level with the large hole and directed the reflection until it shone straight down it, illuminating an interior acclimated to eternal shade.

She looked in.

Something else was looking out.

After another kilometer of arduous hiking, Cole finally found a hole big enough to crawl inside. He felt utterly convinced a family of these lizards would make their home in a nice, cool cave like this. If not, he wasn’t sure he could wander much further into the daylight. He’d been marching for dozens of kilometers, certainly further than Drenard children could be expected to go.

He had explored a few holes with his lance along the way, scraping nothing but rock. If he couldn’t find anything in the cave, he’d start heading back, searching the ground he’d already covered.

Crawling inside, he felt immediately refreshed in the cooler air. The sweat chilled his skin, giving him a renewed vitality; he berated himself for having just considered giving up. He paused in the entrance and enjoyed the echo of the canyon’s moans as they filtered through the rock around him.

The air felt less dry in there as well, like moisture was somehow stored up in the stone.

Looking deeper into the hole, Cole wished he had some way of making a fire or shining a light; he didn’t want to step on these little critters if he could avoid it. At this point, he would take the easy way out happily, bringing back a Wadi Thooo egg rather than a juvenile or an adult.

Once he felt somewhat rested, Cole pushed his lance ahead of him and began crawling into the darkness. After a few meters, he looked back, comforted by the circle of light behind him. He was accustomed to the blackness of space, but the absence of illumination ahead was different. It pressed in on him from all sides, and with the weight of solid stone behind it, rather than the vacuum of the cosmos.

Cole froze, imagining the rock giving way and collapsing on his back. He would be trapped there, unable to breathe. He could feel his stomach crawl up his neck in panic; he took a deep breath and hurried the wild thought out of his mind.

He concentrated instead on his environment. The details. Under his hand, he could feel the walls weren’t perfectly smooth—they had even indentions running along their length. It didn’t feel like erosion or anything geological. A deep part of his brain worked on this problem as he scrambled deeper inside.

A noise.

Cole whipped the hood off to free his ears. What was that sound?

Something poked him right between the shoulder blades, making him spin to his back in fear. He tried to get his lance out from underneath him, and he could feel a draft of air descending from the ceiling.

Another tap on the chest. The sound of his metallic suit crinkling as something struck. Cole reached down with one hand and felt something wet.

He brought his hand up to his face. It didn’t smell. He touched his finger to his tongue, but couldn’t taste anything. Another drop hit him.

Cole reached up into the darkness, searching the ceiling for the source, but his hand kept going up, further than the tunnel was wide. He tried to sit up—and banged his head on the rock, falling back down.

“Damn!”

He rubbed his forehead and another drop impacted his suit.

Reaching up again, Cole found the large hole his hand had entered. He could feel a ledge encircling the lip and a thin stream of fluid gathered on it. He probed just over his head and noted the hole didn’t extend quite that far, could feel where he had bumped it.

He tested the fluid again and felt certain it must be water. Fresh water. Just a trickle, as if condensation collecting from somewhere. Perhaps the difference in temperature between the cave and the canyon? Could moisture gather on the cool rock and run together through these strange holes?

Cole reached for his map and soaked up as much of the fluid as he could. He squeezed the cloth over his tongue, letting some of the juice run into his mouth.

It felt great.

Refreshing.

He wiped the cloth over the rim, looking for some more moisture; he gathered it up, unappreciative of how natural and universal that tendency would be in other living things…

When Molly saw the two eyes, further apart and larger than she thought they’d be, she jerked her head back in fear.

The eyes launched out after her.

She tried to bring her lance around, but the boot tied to one end made the weapon unwieldy. The creature was on her head before she could even react.

She dropped the lance and brought both hands up, clawing back at the thing clawing her. It was in her hair, then back around her head and inside her hood, and everywhere at once. She could feel slices of agony across her face as claws opened her flesh to the dry, dusty air. As soon as she got one hand on it, she felt a sharp pain as teeth sank down to bone, gnawing on her wrist. She screamed and pushed away from the wall, falling to the ground in a heap. The vicious thing thrust off her, scampered up the wall, and wiggled into its hole.

Molly looked at her hand—it was dripping blood and burning as if on fire. She touched her face and felt the scratches, the pads of her fingers coming away slick with more blood. The sight of so much of it made her feel faint. Reaching behind her neck, she groped for her map, a perfect bandage—but it wasn’t there. She rolled over on all fours, looking around on the shady path.

The handkerchief was gone.

That damn thing had stolen her map.

No, she realized, it stole my sweat!

These things go after wetness . And they’re much bigger than she thought they’d be. Meaner, too.

Molly peered up the wall at the dozens of holes gaping back at her. She glanced left and right and saw hundreds, thousands more of them ranging up and down the canyon. Looking over her shoulder, across the river of sunlight and at the other wall, she realized she was surrounded.

The holes weren’t a geological feature—they’d been chewed out of solid rock!