Dreamwalker's Bride - Chapter 390

Chapter 390: Thought experiments
Mia reached out for Ford’s hand before they followed the others into the tunnel. Yesterday, she’d been so preoccupied with the aftermath of his kiss that she hadn’t truly thought about following Martin through his cave.

She’d simply moved, her mind racing through the implications of Ford’s declaration of feelings for her. Now, she shied away from the darkness that reminded her of the first time she’d been in a cave with Martin.

He squeezed her hand, seeming to understand that she needed him in more ways than one.

Martin led the group with his torch. Anaisa and Grandpa followed behind, with the young couple bringing up the rear. Of course, no one but Martin would have commented on their hand holding.

No one spoke much along the way. Martin’s warnings of things deep in the earth had raised Mia’s fears, and she looked for the nearest dangerous creature on impulse.

The direction of the pull told her almost nothing at all, of course.

If it were on the surface of the mountain, sleeping, or in the ground digging towards them at a rapid pace, it would be the same.

At least it wasn’t straight ahead, she supposed. That would be obviously worse.

Time was difficult to gauge here. Martin’s tunnel had occasional narrow holes, no wider than Mia’s thumb, leading to the outside. These creations provided steady airflow as well as some light and idea of the weather outside.

It was cold out there, and colder still as they continued.

“How long is the tunnel?” Ford finally asked. Mia shot him a grateful glance.

Not wanting to be perceived as whiny or needy, she’d kept her mouth shut even as her feet grew tired from walking.

“Not much further til the other side of the area with the birds,” Martin said over his shoulder. “You all should be grateful. Took me time to make all this and you just get to waltz on through like it’s nothing.”

“We’re very thankful for you and all your work.” Anaisa assured him, and Martin snorted.

“First time for everything.”

“We were grateful for your help years ago, as well,” The redheaded woman’s voice hinted at some irony. “Only, the matter of your then-recent role as kidnapper may have dampened our expression of it.”

“People change.” The old miner turned to look forward again. “You and your man played a part, to my understanding, in ending Barnabas’s life?”

Mia’s eyes darted to her aunt, but in the darkness, and from behind her, Anaisa’s expression was impossible to see.

“Yes. We played our part, and then we dropped his body down the bottomless pit in that cave.”

Anaisa’s flat declaration made Mia cover her mouth with one hand. She hadn’t heard that part before!

“I guess maybe I owe you for that. Though the man was why I got powers in the first place, if you hadn’t killed him, he’d have hunted me down and killed me years ago. Vindictive. Terrible fellow.” Martin shrugged off the death as if it were nothing.

It took Mia a moment to feel the change in Ford’s posture. His grip on her had tightened ever so slightly, and she glanced at him.

The light from the lamp he held flickered across his tense expression, and her eyes widened. Of course, they might be talking about this father!

She shifted her hand in his, and he immediately loosened how tightly he was holding onto her. Silently, she ran her thumb along his knuckle, trying to convey understanding and comfort.

The group plodded onward, in the shadows of Martin’s tunnel, following him as it curved around the side of the mountain. The difference between this and a natural cave was how smooth the floor was; no one really had to think that much about where they were stepping, even in the dark.

With no sights to occupy her thoughts, Mia began to let her mind wander. She looked for the quickest path to Uncle Trace, and it was straight ahead.

Curious, she began to play with her power a bit. On the open plains of her home, there had been no particular physical barriers, other than the walls of her home, to impede her progress towards anything.

She also hadn’t been with magic users who could affect paths, like Martin.

Though her magic would take her directly to something if she searched for it, her powers ignored barriers that would stop her entirely, like a deep gorge between her and where she wanted to go.

Almost subconsciously, when Mia actually wanted to go somewhere rather than simply locate the positioning of someone or something, she’d trained herself to look for the path to what she wanted, instead of just the thing itself.

Would her magic take Martin’s presence and aid into account?

Biting her lip in concentration, she searched for the shortest way out of the tunnel. The pull was forward. Alone, that wasn’t informative, but next she searched for the shortest path Martin could make to outside.

The pull dissolved, and she frowned. She searched for outside, and a tug drew her gaze directly to the wall on one side.

She supposed that her magic couldn’t find things that didn’t yet exist. She could direct Martin to make a tunnel in the direction of outside, but couldn’t search for the tunnel he hadn’t made yet.

Her brow furrowed, Searching for the best spot for Martin to begin tunneling to go directly to the outside. The pull directed her to the wall.

Because the best spot to begin digging did exist, even if the tunnel didn’t yet.

That, she supposed, explained why she was able to search for the best entrance to the tree’s cave and happen upon Denholm’s tunnel. Her magic must have considered his tunnel an entrance even though it hadn’t been fully opened to the cave yet.

A few other experiments later, Mia became cognizant of a growing ambient light. At first she thought Martin’s air holes were becoming more frequent, but it actually seemed that the end of this tunnel was in sight.

And that it was still daylight! With how long they’d been walking, she hadn’t been entirely certain of that fact one way or the other.

Carefully, still gripping Ford’s hand, she reached the edge of the tunnel and stepped into the daylight.