Golden Hawk, Black Raven (5 Jul 2001) The "Golden Hawks" explore the cavern in search of Princess Angel's earrings.

Outside the Secret Cave
A small dirt clearing prefaces the cave in the side of One-Eye's Hill, bordered by some rocks and shrubs, shrouded from view by a circle of trees. The hill slopes away on the left, with some visibly broken branches on the bushes there. There may have been animal tracks at one time, but they have been scoured away by the blowing of the wind. In the back of the cave is the hole that would lead to a rather steep drop, and some rock outcroppings nearby would allow one to anchor a rope.

Making little noise in the underbrush of the forest, Tom makes his way toward the cave in the hillside. His pack is slung over his shoulder, rope slightly sticking out the top. He grins, a look of excitement in his eyes as he approaches the cave. He shifts his hat slightly, adjusting it to make sure it's firmly on his head, then looks back over his shoulder. "C'mon, Agatha! We're almost there. Looks like we'll be the first here," says Tom. He then adds, "They're such slowpokes."

Trudging along behind Tom, Agatha finally catches up. "Maybe they had to change or something?" she suggests, and takes off her heavy camping backpack at the mouth of the cave.

Ascending the hill by an easier, if more circuitous route, comes a freckled, red-haired girl in belted, faded blue jeans and slightly-too-large hiking boots. She carries a knobby walking stick almost as tall as she is, and glances over her shoulder as she turns the curve of the slope. "Alice?"

Behind Rebecca, a smaller girl with long blonde hair hurries to catch up, burdened with a large purse. "Coming, Rebecca!" she calls out cheerfully.

Tom shrugs slightly in response to Agatha. "Perhaps. Perhaps Rebecca had to convince Alice to come along. Who knows?" He glances about the scenery, looking for a candidate branch from which he could obtain a decently firm stick in case they encounter something dangerous.

There seem to be a fair number of branches that might serve, in varying degrees of greenness and leafiness.

"Simon's coming too, right?" Agatha asks as she leans against the side of the cave opening.

"I think so," replies Thomas. He grabs a decent-looking branch, not too green as to be springy, not too dark as to probably be rotten. He gives it a firm pull.

The branch seems reluctant to part company with the tree.

Rebecca waits for the smaller blonde girl to catch up to her, then goes to meet the other two at the cave entrance. "Golden Hawk Rachel Antoine, ready to begin the exploration, m'lord," she reports with a little salute to Tom.

Simon pushes through the underbrush on the left side of the hill, huffing and puffing, wearing a flannel shirt and frayed pants, a thin branch serving him as a makeshift walking stick. "Hey, guys, sorry I'm late! My uncle wouldn't let me go 'til I'd straightened up the place," he says, looking apologetic. A hood of green over his shoulders and head suggests he's been busy with scissors; Simon picks away twigs that have adhered to the roughly cut cloth.

"Ah! Rachel, glad you could make it," replies Thomas, taking a short break from tugging at the branch. "Glad to see you're okay. I had heard you got into quite a scrape with the natives who live on the isles off the coast of Africa. The ones who like to walk backwards, or so I heard. I guess those stories were exaggerated, eh?" He then returns to the branch he was tugging on. After Tom twists and turns the branch some, the tree finally relinquishes the limb.

Simon looks up at this. Rachel? He gives Tom a quizzical look.

Alice accompanies Rebecca over to the others, though at a much slower pace, exhausted by the trip so far. "Hi, Tommy, Agatha," she greets two of the gang, then spots Simon and waves to him too. "Hi, Simon!". Today Alice is wearing a denim jumper with a white top, about as close to adventuresome clothing as she tends to get. Denim at least can manage some dirt.

"Oh, they do walk backwards, Thomas. Almost all the time, in fact. They believe it improves their memories." Rachel leans against the side of the cave, watching Simon approach. "But they didn't give me much trouble for walking forwards, no ... though they professed to quite pity my poor recollection of events."

Tom grins and whispers to Simon, "We kind of decided to make this a 'Golden Hawks' expedition. After all, a princess and sorceress wouldn't put themselves in direct danger. They'd hire someone to go instead. Rebecca appears to have chosen a persona."

Alice puts her purse down several steps away from the cave. She peers into the darkness for a moment, then quickly turns away from it and hugs her arms around herself. "Tommy, I brought a lot of medical supplies. I'll be your nurse on this trip. Nurse ... " She pauses in the sentence as tries to invent a name.

Simon's eyebrows go up at this. He whispers back, "So I'm a Golden Hawk now? What are they, er, we like?"

Agatha looks to Tom. She hadn't come up with a Golden Hawks name in advance either.

Rebecca stage-prompts Alice, "Angelique."

Thomas continues the grin and says to Simon, "And it's good to see you again, Minstrel Sam. Without you, we'd never have had any of our travels so, er, so colorfully recorded. Glad you could make it. I'm sorry we had to pull you away from the tavern. I know the travelers there were probably in awe of your talents."

Simon pulls a face. "Verily, colorfully recorded our travels shall be, yet forgive me an' they be colored green, if we must endure thine cooking, ..." he parries. He shoots Tom a look that seems to be inviting him to fill in the blank and supply a form of address.

Trying to pronounce the name silently before she says it, Alice then offers, "Angeli ... Angelique Baker." The last name is inspired by the fact that she had a cookie on the way here.

"Weaponsmaster Redtail reporting in, sir!" Agatha says, and gives a salute to Tom. "I'll make sure no Hawks get their wings clipped on this foray."

"Angelique" perks up and says, "And if anyone's wings are clipped, I have plenty of band-aids to fix them!" She beams a smile to everyone.

Tom nods to Simon. "Surely you haven't forgotten me, ol' Thomas Windrider? Why, if it wasn't for my mapmaking abilities, we'd never have escaped alive many a time. Of course, my cooking abilities were always fairly limited. So there probably have been a few times you'd rather we not have escaped, preferring prisoner gruel over anything I could come up with. One day, perhaps we'll actually hire a real cook, not just one who lives off the land. Anyway, glad you all could make it. It has been ages since we took a foray into danger together. I hope everyone is up to it?"

Simon, or perhaps it is Sam now, starts committing names to memory. "So to the Dark Cave of Doom did the Golden Hawks foray, five bold adventurers fighting for the glorious day," he recites. "First was the mapmaker, plotting out the way..." He tries to figure out the next line, scrunching his forehead as he brings out a yellow pad of paper and starts writing.

"Well ..," Alice turns around and looks in to the cave again, her smile fading in to a frown of uncertain consideration, " ... I, ... I think so ... Lo- ... Officer Mel is nearby, if we ... I need him." She reaches down to pick up her purse and wraps her hands around it.

"Then we're not expecting any of the others, Windrider?" Rebecca inquires. "I am prepared enough, I think." She pats her backpack, and fishes out a flashlight. "I've my torch at hand."

Agatha, a.k.a. Redtail, opens up part of her backpack and removes the horseshoes she collected, with some rawhide straps tied to them so they can be worn around the neck. "I've brought some ... eh ... enchanted armor!" she says, smiling at that last bit. "Enough for three Hawks, proof against elven weapons and fey creatures."

Tom hmms and glances at Simon. "Your skills have either decayed in the past few years or I'm just remembering you better than you really were." He rubs his chin and muses, "That would explain the tomato stains on your back." He then turns to Rebecca and says, "Sadly, no. Most kindly refused the offer. They are happily retired, some even with families. What you see here is all that is left of your group." He then nods and digs in his pack, producing a flashlight and a coil of rope. "I've also come prepared for the venture into the cave." He looks to Simon again. "And I may need to borrow your paper, should we require a map. In my haste, I'm afraid I forgot mine."

Alice suddenly blinks. "Oh! I almost forgot! Rebecca ..." She removes one hand from around her adult-sized purse and pulls out a silver Star of David by its matching chain and holds this out to Rebecca. "I bought you a ... a ... " She looks to the older girl to name the amulet properly, or perhaps to give it a fitting mysterious title.

Tom accepts the horseshoe and looks at it, saying, "Um, many thanks, Redtail. How, uh, exquisite." He puts it around his neck.

"Then came the flame-hair'd warrior, seeking monsters to slay," mutters Sam, jotting down notes. He looks up curiously at the horseshoes, then skips down a few lines and writes, "Brave their banners and steely their horseshoes, er, shields shone, as they, into the cave ventured in search of treasures that within lay..." He whispers to Tom, "Did you have to make me a minstrel?"

Hawk Rachel casts a skeptical eye on the "armor", wrinkling her nose, then shrugs. "'Tis your area of expertise, Weaponsmaster," she concedes. She glances to Alice, and smiles. "That's a Star of David, Angelique. It's very pretty." She reaches out her hand, laying it against the back and admiring the jewelry.

Agatha offers the remaining shoes to Simon and Alice, since Rebecca already has a magic talisman of sorts ... and didn't seem too thrilled about horseshoes.

Tom leans over and whispers back to Simon, "Well, no. But I figured it would be entertaining. I could also make you the advance scout if you like?"

Minstrel Sam accepts one. "Thanks, Weaponsmaster!" He pales at the return whisper and shakes his head. "Minstrel is fine," he whispers back.

After the silver piece of jewelry is handed to Rebecca, Alice reaches over to take a horse shoe ... and almost drops it as it slips into her hand. The girl almost loses her purse as well as she scrambles to make up for the apparently unexpected weight of the iron shoe. "Oooo ... it's heavy."

Tom pats Simon's back. "'Atta boy." He grins.

Agatha hmms at the Nurse, and whispers to her, "Do you have a way of carrying your medicine bag that lets you keep your hands free?"

Sam staggers a bit under the weight of his horseshoe, too. "Uh ... Maybe you better take this back, Weaponsmaster," he says. "You're more likely to go into battle against the forces of darkness!"

Tom nudges Agatha, "Hey, aren't horseshoes supposed to be hung with the ends up? That way the luck doesn't drip out or something like that?"

Once she has the horse shoe in her hand, Alice stands straight and nods amiably to Agatha. "Oh! Yes, I do," the girl answers. She switches the horse shoe to one hand then slides the strap of her purse around her left arm, letting it hang there. "But ... this armor is kind of heavy, We- ... Weaponsmaster."

Rachel slips her new necklace around her throat, letting the star rest on her shirt for a moment. Then she frowns thoughtfully, and tucks the pendant inside, instead. She flips on her flashlight, and shines the beam into the secret cave. "Will you scout the way for us, Lord Windrider?"

Hawk Redtail accepts the shoe back from the Minstrel. She didn't think they'd be too heavy for the others. "I guess I can carry the armor for you both until it's needed." She holds out her hand to take Angelique's horseshoe as well.

Hawk Windrider flips on his flashlight. "But of course. I will endeavor to keep all of us out of harm's way. Redtail, would you please follow fairly close behind me? I may have need of your skills in case monsters should rear their heads ... or whatever they rear with. Who knows with monsters." Slowly, he starts into the cave, shining the light about and listening for any odd noises, like growling.

Minstrel Sam leaves off thinking up rhymes for the moment and eyes the cave. "Glad you're going in first, Master Mapmaker," he says. He shoulders his pack, picks up his walking stick again, tucks his pad and pencil under his other arm, and follows.

Alice returns the horse shoe to Agatha with an apologetic smile, and instead she reaches in to her purse again and pulls out a little crystal vial with a gold stopper. The bottle is tied to a string, and this string is in turn put around the girl's neck so that the bottle rests against her jumper. Inside, distorted by the vial's surface, is a crimson strand of hair. "Officer Mel will protect me," she tells Agatha before stepping a bit closer to the inside of the entrance of the cave.

Agatha hangs the extra horseshoes around her neck by their straps, and shoulders her pack again. "I'm on your tail, Windrider."

"You don't really have a tail, do you, Mr. Windrider? I was at school ... nurse school ... and I thought you were outside teasing me, but it couldn't be you, because you don't have a tail," says Alice. She quickly adds, "Right?"

"Right," replies Thomas.

The back of the cave looks pretty much as Tom remembers it from before. There is a dark tunnel where the tunnel leads down, a short drop of about three or four feet, and thereafter, it continues deeper in. There is a slight musky smell, but perhaps that's just the forest, because everything seems quiet enough now.

Tom moves in slowly, carefully looking about. He looks for any firm rock outcropping where he can secure a rope before dropping back down into the dark tunnel.

"Be careful, Tommy!" calls Alice worriedly.

As luck would have it, the closest rocks that might serve for the purpose are near the front of it, rather than the back. Otherwise, a tree outside might serve as an anchor, given that the rocks are boulders not directly attached to the ground, and might under sufficient weight come loose.

Behind him, Rebecca helpfully shines her light on the cave walls and floor near Tom, to aid his search.

"Into the throat of darkness did the Golden Hawks go that day, where the great dragon Uptonogud did stay," Minstrel Sam mutters.

Agatha grins at Simon. "You're getting better, I think."

"And Growlers came ... and I ran away!" adds Alice, her face wrinkling in distaste of the memory.

Tom turns and walks back to the front. He hands an end of the rope to Rebecca. "Hawk Rachel, would you please tie this end firmly to a tree? I want a good anchor in case we need it later." He then heads back inside, letting the rope slowly unravel behind him as he approaches the tunnel.

Simon grumbles and whispers to Agatha, "I was never any good at poet-tray," pronouncing the word to rhyme with "-ay" unconsciously.

Tom makes his way back to the small drop into the tunnel. As before, he shines his flashlight into it, trying to see if any creatures await their descent.

Rachel was starting to look a little bored with following Tom's progress, so she responds promptly to the request, shoving the end of her flashlight into one pocket to free up her hands. She picks a fairly thick trunk near the entrance and ties several square knots in hopes of making it secure.

Disappointingly, there is no scurrying of bats, no scuttling of lizards, not even a scampering of squirrels. It's a short drop-off, and Tom's footprints from his last venture down are still there.

Meanwhile, Alice makes do with peering in to the little bottle hanging from her neck. She shakes it with a hand until the red strand inside becomes more readily visible, smiles, and then lets it return to its resting place as she peers into her purse again.

Minstrel Sam looks at Alice's gesture curiously and whispers to her, "What's that? Is it some kind of magical amulet?"

Tom looks back at Agatha and says, "Time to venture into the abyss, Weaponsmaster." He then shouts back to Rebecca, Simon, and Alice, "The entryway is clear up to here. You can approach safely. I'm going ahead with Redtail."

Alice looks up to Simon and smiles at him before looking down at the bottle which hangs from her neck. "Oh. I got a little bottle to put the piece of Officer Mel's hair in. It's good luck!" she explains.

Agatha follows Tom over the drop, and looks around. She expected at least some debris to show that kids had been this way before.

The steep drop of the tunnel levels out again here -- big enough for a kid to walk through, stooped over a little, though a grown-up would have to crawl on hands and knees -- and opens out into a large cave...

It is pitch black save for the light from flashlights, but some examination reveals that this is a long rock ledge which serves as a balcony jutting out onto a large open space. There seem to be enough hand-holds and slope to allow kids to climb down without too much trouble. The cave's floor is uneven, sloping down toward some unseen depression in jagged curves.

After finishing with the rope, the freckled girl follows them into the cave. She holds the rope loosely between the fingers of one hand, letting it trail through them as she approaches the drop off, where she waits for the signal.

Tom pauses, inspecting the area, and is a bit unnerved that it's similar to what he daydreamed. He shrugs and gives the rope a light tug, guessing that he just has a very good imagination. "Shall we continue on?" he whispers back to Agatha.

"Wow," Redtail says quietly, impressed by the size of the cave. "Yeah, there might be another opening somewhere. I feel a breeze."

Simon shinnies down the rope soon after. "Wow, dark," he mutters, feeling his way toward the others with careful little footsteps.

Once she feels the tug, Hawk Rachel heads down fairly promptly. The drop leading to the ledge is long and steep, and she waits at the bottom of it, looking nervously up. "Be careful climbing down, Angelique," she says unnecessarily. If anything, the blonde girl will probably be too careful and not get down at all.

Tom nods to Hawk Redtail. "Onward it is, then." He then says to Rebecca as she approaches, "We're heading a bit further. You stick together there, okay? Don't let Angelique out of your sight." He then continues forward, slowly and hopefully carefully making his way down the slope, shining his flashlight about to inspect the area.

Rather than being left alone for too long in the place where she previously encountered the "Growler", Alice makes her way down as well. It's a slow climb, as she tends to cling to the rope for a few seconds any time her hands feel loose. "Coming! Wait for me," she calls down.

The cave floor drops in a series of ripples, and the ceiling rises up in a rough curve to some distant apex. The footing is somewhat slippery, as Tom and Agatha occasionally find themselves treading upon rock that falls away under their feet.

"We'll wait," Rachel promises. She shines the light on the walls for their nurse, trying not to shine it into the girl's eyes and night-blind her. She glances over to the other explorers, and their flashlight, growing distant.

"This is a weird cave," Agatha whispers to Tom. "Think it's an old geyser or volcano, something like that?"

With Rebecca's help, and comforting presence, Alice is able to make her way down somewhat faster than she had been. Finally she drops from the rope to touch the ground and proceeds to dust herself off with a hand before scooting over to stand closely to Rebecca. "It's ... it's kind of scary in here," she whispers to the older girl.

Tom makes his way down the treacherous incline. At one point, his foot slips out from under him and he starts to go down. At the last moment, he's able to pull his foot back into place and regain his balance in time. "Whoa," he mutters softly, "that was a bit close." He responds to Agatha's question as he's pausing to calm his racing heart, "Don't know. Perhaps an old stream used to flow underground here and cut this. It doesn't look volcanic to me. Rocks aren't smooth enough, I don't think." He starts moving again, still trailing the rope slowly, as it may come in handy in getting back up the incline should they need to do so quickly.

Quietly, Agatha puts her gloves on after Tom nearly slipped. She doesn't want to cut her hands on the loose rocks if she falls, since the pack would make it hard to recover quickly. "Have you got gloves, Tom?"

"I know," Rebecca says, patting Alice's shoulder reassuringly. "We'll be fine." But how are we going to get you back up? she wonders privately, looking at the steep rocky incline. Not wishing to alarm the younger girl unduly, she says nothing about that concern. Instead, she takes Alice's hand. "Let's go join the others, okay?" She whispers without thinking about it, as if worried that to speak louder would attract unwanted attention.

Minstrel Sam sits on the edge of the ledge and looks down at Tom and Agatha, and the way that the beam of light flashes around to illuminate the cave. "Hear any dragon snoring, Master Mapmaker?" he calls to Tom.

Tom shakes his head and says to Agatha, "No. Didn't think of them." He hears Simon shout and pauses in his movement. He shines the flashlight around the room again. He particularly shines it toward the far end, looking for a dark passage. "No," he replies slowly but loudly, "No signs of monsters yet. Just a breeze."

"Okay," agrees Alice. The attempt at keeping the girl's attention away from the precarious incline seems to have worked, for she approaches it without much hassle. She does however hold Rebecca's hand fairly tightly and keeps very close by.

"How close is this to your daydream, Tom?" Agatha asks keeping her voice low still to avoid echoes.

Tom shrugs slightly as he looks about, replying, "Well, it does have the shelf and this is a huge room, like I imagined. Thankfully, the bones I imagined aren't here. No odd breathing sounds, either."

From this vantage point, it seems as if the cave is roughly dome-shaped, and the ledge intersects it as a balcony to the southwest, leading down the "seats" to the floor. The rope ends a little short of the smooth floor, which seems to have been carved out by long-ago erosion of water...

In fact, up to the north, Tom's flashlight picks out reflections that might be wet rock surrounding a shallow stream, one that describes a gradual curve from west, where there seems to be a pool, going to the east and bending southward. Beyond this stream, it's too far to see anything but darkness, suggesting that at least, the cave doesn't end to the north.

The two girls join their minstrel at the edge of the "balcony," and Rebecca pauses a moment there. Getting the sense of watching the other two exploring where the "stage" would be, the shorter redhead says, "Shouldn't you be down there performing, Sam, and them watching?"

Agatha pauses, and takes a closer look at the shards of loose stone under her feet. Rocks, not bones.

Minstrel Sam blinks up to Golden Hawk Rachel. "Well, I guess I was waiting for them to say, 'It's safe, come on down!'..."

As if on cue, Thomas shouts back, "Looks safe. Feel free to come a bit further."

"Watch your footing though," Agatha warns, calling out as well. "There's a lot of loose rock."

Rebecca considers Simon for a moment, as if trying to decide how to explain her point. At Tom's call, she shrugs and abandons it. "There's your signal, my good bard. We tarry not, Mapmaker Thomas!" she calls, then takes a few steps down the incline before pausing to help Alice.

Minstrel Sam grins wryly. "I guess that's my cue, Golden Hawk. I'd better get down there." He takes hold of the rope and starts working his way down.

Alice hesitates to head down at first, but with Rebecca waiting, she does indeed come along. Carefully, she extends a foot down the incline, then another with more certainty.

Tom shines his flashlight just in front of his feet. Carefully, he approaches the stream. He moves slower than normal, eyes carefully scanning the ground, looking for prints.

"Worried about quicksand?" Agatha asks she walks alongside Tom, noticing how intent he is on the ground.

"Animal prints, fungus, and mud," replies Tom. He then explains, "Animals would be attracted to water. Also, the water might cause fungus to grow, or mud, which can be very slick. We need to know where the dangerous parts are."

"Oh!" the Weaponsmaster says, blushing a bit at not having thought of that herself ... not that Tom can see it happen anyway. She starts looking for those things as well now.

Having somewhat shorter legs than Rebecca or Simon, Alice's descent is a slow one. She has some difficulty managing sudden drop-offs and has to ease herself past each one. She keeps careful watch on the floor as she goes, using Rebecca's flashlight to mark her path.

"Keep a look out for 'cave ice' too, Redtail. That's basically thin rock, where water wore away underneath it. It can be very dangerous," adds Thomas.

Up closer, it looks like this is in fact one of two streams that cross from west to east, one arcing to the south, one farther off to the north, though it's not easy to make out with the way the rock floor bends. Both end in the rock wall of the dome-shaped cave to the east, where they trickle away into the rock, and to the west, they run into the northern and southern ends of a somewhat triangular-shaped pool. The rock near the streams is slippery and wet, and there are some faint tracks ... more to the west, in the direction of the pool. From this position, it's difficult to see if there's more around the pool itself.

The cave appears to join another cave to the north. It is as if this stream defined the front of the "stage", and the second might describe the back and lead into a "backstage" cave. The exact shape of the second cave is hard to describe at the moment, however.

Though she looks impatient with Alice's slow progress, Rebecca holds her tongue and stays with her friend. She keeps looking towards the others longingly.

"What does it look like?" Agatha asks, more cautious of her own steps now.

"Usually a bit like 'mother of pearl'," Thomas replies, "somewhat shiny and a bit transparent." His eyes follow along the stream, toward the pool. "Let's head that way," he says, then starts to head along the stream and toward the pool.

Minstrel Sam picks his way through with difficulty, trying to get closer to Tom where the cave is more brightly lit. "The Dragon Uptonogud that day was away," he composes. "So the Golden Hawks were free to play... Pfft, that doesn't sound right."

"Downright awful," remarks Thomas.

"Wouldn't it be cool if this underground stream ran all the way from the silver mine?" Agatha asks. "We might find real treasure then, if it washed some silver into the pool."

The pool seems to be three sided: two long curving sides where streams meet and run off from it, slightly raised so that water trickles downward in broad strips, one side blocked by a rock cliff which looks as if it would be difficult to climb up onto from the cave floor. One might be able to get there by climbing back up to the first rock ledge, and then inching out to where the rock cliff seems to meet it, but it looks chancy.

The water looks clear, and is calm enough to use as a mirror, save that images waver slightly, and given that the streams are pouring away from it, there must be some kind of spring in the dark depth. There are tracks much like the one Simon and Tom found earlier near the statue, liberally crossing the area from here into the "backstage" area.

Alice manages to reach the bottom just about now, and as she clambers with some haste to be done she releases one of her hands from around Rebecca's. "There isn't any monsters here, right Tommy?" she asks.

Simon sulks. "I probably would have made a better thief, but I guess the Golden Hawks aren't so big on stealing stuff, right?" he mutters to Tom. He peers under Tom's arm at the tracks. "Hey, those look familiar..."

Tom kneels down near the tracks and inspects them slowly. "Redtail, see these prints?" he asks. "Those are like the ones we found near the statue. Curious," he says, then grins up to Simon. "But you're more entertaining as a minstrel." He elbows Simon gently. "And right, we're explorers, not thieves."

Tom shines the light from various angles onto the prints, trying to determine how fresh they are.

"Rats," Agatha says, her romantic notion of finding silver dashed. "It looks like it's just an artesian well." Turning to the tracks, she asks Tom, "What sort of wild animal would come all the way into town, though? Could they be coyote prints?"

The prints don't look freshly made ... but they're definitely recent, and not, say, something made years and years ago. They go in all directions, around the pool.

"You can be a thief next time, Simon," Rebecca says absently. She releases Alice's hand to take a long step across the near stream, then kneels beside the pool. "Isn't this an odd shape for a pool?" she says, tracing her finger along the edge of it.

"Actually, they're more like raccoon prints. I went to the library and checked them out in some books. These are recent, but not fresh. That's good," replies Thomas. He then turns and shouts back to Rebecca and Alice, "Looks like whatever came near the statue has also been here! The prints near the pool look the same!"

"Odd how, Hawk Rachel?" Redtail asks, looking at the outline of the pool.

The little blonde girl walks to the other side of the stream opposite Rebecca, and moves as close to the pool as she can and still avoid "icky mud". "Th- ... the shadows are here? The Growlers?" asks Alice, her voice almost a whisper and marked with definite worry. She wraps her arms around her purse again, hugging it to her as if it were a doll or stuffed animal -- something comforting.

"Something with a similar print was here. Don't worry, Angelique, it wasn't recent. We're safe," says Thomas in an attempt to comfort Alice.

Minstrel Sam scoops up a handful of water from the pool and lets it run out onto the ground. "Looks good..." He licks his palm and concludes, "Better than the water at home! Ours tastes like rust."

Tom casts a sharp glance to Simon, "Minstrel! You should know better. What if this is a faerie pool? You know drinking the waters from one is very dangerous, right?"

Agatha thinks to herself that the prints are too big to be raccoon. Maybe a bear would be big enough, now that she looks closer.

"You could be a hex!" exclaims Alice quite seriously.

Minstrel Sam yipes. "Um-- how dangerous? As in 'take you away to Elfland for a year and a day' dangerous?"

"And you weren't even wearing your anti-elf armor!" Redtail chides.

"Something like that, Sam," comments Tom.

Rebecca shines her flashlight along the contour of the pool, arcing gradually south and west. "It makes such a smooth arc. And the way the streams come out of it seems odd, too. Is that a third one up there, at the tip of the pool?" She points her torch that way, but the beam doesn't reach that far. She starts to walk that way, then stops, looking back at Alice on the other side of the stream. "I'd rather live in Elfland for a year and a day," she declares suddenly. "It'd be better than here."

Minstrel Sam tries to spit out the water onto the ground, then gives it up as a bad job after a while and wipes his hands on his pants. "Licking a few drops doesn't count," he says nervously.

Alice begins to follow. "Why do you say that, Rebecca? I like it here," she asks curiously, though nervousness still lurks in her voice.

Tom gets up and comes over to stand next to Rebecca and asks, "Yeah, what's wrong with here? I think this place is pretty neat." He then looks ahead, toward where Rebecca was pointing. "Hawk Rachel may have a point about the pool. Let's move ahead and check over there."

Agatha looks along the curve of the pool as she follows along, and holds her canteen out to Minstrel Sam. "You might want to wash your mouth out, just in case."

Minstrel Sam hefts his walking stick. "I'll be okay," he assures Agatha.

Rebecca moves back to the stream to help Alice across -- and proves the rashness of her haste when she slips on a loose rock. With a startled cry, her feet slide out from underneath her, and one leg skids into the stream before she lands, ungainly, on her rear against the rock beside it.

Thomas has made his way safely across, but sees Rebecca's fall when he turns about. "Hawk Rachel!" he exclaims.

"Reb- Rachel!" Redtail cries as she sees the other girl slip. "Are you okay?"

"Rebecca!" Alice cries out, taking a step back, then casting aside her earlier hestitation as she runs to hurry to Rebecca's side, leaping across the stream to do so.

Rebecca looks more annoyed with herself than hurt, and accepts Alice's assistance with poor grace. "I'm fine," she grumbles, dusting off the seat of her jeans and shaking out her wet leg. "Really, I'm fine."

Simon watches with amazement and starts to move across to try and help Rebecca, but as his foot starts to slip, he spins down onto his hands and knees. Grumbling, he takes a great deal more time to cross than Alice, getting back up slowly before making the crossing.

"Well, that was an adventure, eh?" says Thomas, looking relieved that no one seems hurt. "Would you like me to go ahead and check it out?"

From the "stage", more of the "backstage" is visible. There is a slope near the far wall that rapidly becomes too steep for climbing, and playing the flashlight over the ceiling suggests that the northern cave is also dome-shaped. A rock fall is just visible to the northwest, and as Golden Hawk Rachel thought, the northeast tip of the pool forks into two streams, one curving to the east, one to the north.

There is a small pile of debris in about the center of the northern cave, though it's only visible as a shadowy form from here. A western cave opens to the west beyond the pool as well, but much of it is covered with rock fall.

Alice helps her friend out readily, then looks her over for a moment. "Are you really okay?" she asks. She peers at the girl's leg, tilting her head. "Do you need a band-aid, Reb- ... Rachel?"

Rebecca leans against the ledge that terminate the southwest end of the pool. "I'll wait here for a moment, Thomas. Get the water out of my shoe. You go on ahead."

"You and Angelique wait here, then. Redtail, Sam, and I will continue on," says Thomas. He motions to the two and moves onward, along the stream. "When we get to the fork, let's check the north branch first, okay?" he says to them as they walk.

Minstrel Sam says, "Got it, Mapmaker Tom. I'll be right behind you..."

"It looks like part of the roof fell in over there," Agatha says, pointing to the pile of debris in the middle of the northern cave. "These caves must run under the whole hill."

The youngest girl nods her agreement, then lowers herself to balance on her feet with her right hand bracing against the rock to keep her from falling over. From here she inspects Rebecca's leg. "Does it hurt?"

Alice peers past Rebecca's leg and to the water beyond. She stares for a moment, then stands up again. "I think I've seen this before," she tells Rebecca.

The other girl busies herself rolling up her drenched pant leg, and squeezing some excess water out of it, then starts unlacing her shoe. After Alice speaks, she stops and glances at the blond, her hiking boot in her hand. "Huh?"

Tom grumbles as he makes his way across the next stream so they can get to the northern one. He almost slips once, but catches himself and hurries across. "Whew," he sighs, then shines the light ahead. He turns his head and shouts back toward Alice and Rebecca, "You two are all right, right?"

The younger girl beside Rebecca lifts a hand and points at the stream. "Doesn't it look familiar?" She follows the stream south, then points at the little pond again. "The shape. It kind of reminds me of the park."

Agatha hops over the northeast branching stream behind Tom without any problems.

"Showoff," comments Thomas.

"That's half the fun of being a Golden Hawk though!" Agatha says with a grin.

Rebecca pulls a soaked sock out of the boot, peering at Alice. "I don't see how--"

Minstrel Sam follows closely, trying to see his footing in the residual light from Tom's flashlight... "Yea-- aieee!" His foot slips, his arms windmilling as he falls toward the pool. *SPLOOOOOSH!*

Rebecca's sentence is cut off by the scream. "Simon!"

Tom facepalms, then makes his way back over to the stream quickly. He shines the light at it and calls out, "You okay, Sam?"

"Eeek!" cries Alice with a start. She jumps back against the wall and pulls her purse close to herself, peering over it.

Agatha spins around and looks for Simon, not having seen him fall. "Wha?"

The purse drops from in front of Alice's face and she suddenly begins to move when she hears it wasn't some water monster risen from the stream. "Simon! Are you okay?" she calls out as she tries to find him.

There are plenty of splashes coming from the pool to identify Simon's location, and as Tom's light plays over the pool, he eventually sees a shape flailing around under the water. It appears that Simon's not very good at swimming.

"Do you have any more rope we can throw to him?" Agatha asks Tom as she takes off her backpack.

Sock and boot forgotten in her hands, Rebecca feels her way along the side of the pool to the spot where the minstrel fell in, shining her light over the water to the point where he's flailing. Muttering under her breath, she drops her boot and sock, and starts to pull off the other boot.

Tom switches his flashlight to his left hand and extends it back toward Agatha. "Redtail, grab my arm, please. If you direct your light toward Simon, hold me; we might be able to pull him out safely. You'll be our anchor. How's that sound?"

Agatha nods and takes the light, clasping onto Tom's wrist with her right hand.

Alice finds Simon but is in no position to help, not that she could with her clothing and purse. Unable to do anything but fret and wait she clutches her purse and calls out reassurance, "You'll be okay, Simon! Tommy and Redtail will save you!"

Agatha shines the flashlight on the pool, trying to find Simon. "He's gone under!"

By dint of enormous struggling, Simon seems to be making some headway up in the water. Maybe he's getting the hang of it, or realizing that kicking the wrong way only propels him downward. He seems to be trying to find the source of the light.

Tom lets go of Agatha and sticks his arm into the water and checks the current flow. "Dangit!" he shouts, realizing Agatha was right. He looks back at Agatha and says quietly, "If the flow is low, I'm going in after him."

Rebecca fumbles with the laces on her boot, trying to loosen them with slick fingers. She says things under her breath that Alice would be shocked by, if she could hear them, and struggles to get it off.

The water doesn't seem to flow very fast ... and Tom notices that the edge of the pool is raised a little. It flows out from the pool into the streams, rather than from the streams into the pool.

"I'll be right behind you if you need me; I can swim pretty good," Agatha promises, and starts to pull off her gloves and horseshoes.

Tom sets his pack onto the ground along with anything in his pockets and his flashlight. "Agatha, keep your light on Simon. I'm going in." He takes a deep breath and jumps into the water, near where they can see Simon.

"Be careful!" calls out Alice as Thomas jumps in.

Agatha grabs up the flashlight and holds it steady, kneeling down at the lip of the pool in case she needs to pull someone out.

As Tom plunges in, diving quickly to Simon's depth and approaching him, Simon reaches out and grabs hold of his hands! Panicked, the younger boy grapples, trying to get hold of Tom. Simon is secured, but getting back out could be a problem, unless he can calm the boy down.

Tom tries to grab Simon's arms firmly with his hands while kicking to keep himself steady in the water. He tries to hold tightly and squeeze firmly, trying to indicate that Simon needs to quit moving.

Without moving the light, Agatha calls out, "Alice! I need you over here. There's a blanket in my pack -- please come get it out."

Finally, Rebecca wrestles off her boot, and flips around to face the pool, taking a moment to orient herself to the pair before diving in.

Alice looks surprised at first, then nods and releases her purse so that she can hurry over and drop to her knees next to Agatha's pack. There she begins trying to extract the blanket.

With some difficulty, Tom manages to secure Simon's arms, then to swim to the side of the pool where, with Agatha's help, he is able to pull them both out of the pool. Simon gasps for breath, coughing out some water.

With blanket in hand, Alice rushes over to Simon's side and moves to try and wrap it around the boy. "Simon, you have to be careful," she says, concerned. "I was worried!"

Tom flops onto his back, taking in deep breaths of air. He doesn't even notice how wet he is; he just rests and tries to slow his racing heart. After a few moments, he sits up. "You okay, Simon?" he asks.

Simon coughs. "Yeah..." He looks quite vividly embarrassed, judging from the red flushing his ears.

The other redhead looks enormously relieved to see the two boys make it out in one piece, and picks up her boots again to make her way over to where they came out. "You had us worried, Simon! How could you be so careless?"

"Lay on this," Agatha says, rolling out a big padded blanket with Alice's help. "And I'm not giving you mouth-to-mouth, so don't try faking anything!" she warns.

The younger boy gratefully accepts the blanket, and then looks dismayed as he realizes his notepad is gone. It's presently a yellow sodden mess that floats on top of the water. "Oh no, my notes!" he says.

Alice helps Agatha lay out the blanket, taking up one end of it. "We can get more notes." She nods, then smiles at the soaked boy with the page boy cut. "But we can't get another Simon," she adds.

Rebecca shines her torch across the rippling surface of the pool. 'Well, you're sure not going to get that one back," she remarks. "I hope you didn't keep your homework in it."

Tom grins weakly at Simon. "They've gone to a far far better place, I'm afraid. Perhaps in a new life, they'll actually make a good song." He then glances at Agatha. "And why would I want that? Yuck!"

"I guess I'll..," Simon says, then coughs. He finishes, "... just sit down and dry out." Taking off his shirt, the little boy starts to wring it so as to squeeze out the worst of the water. "You go on ahead, Tom."

Agatha looks momentarily tempted to push Tom back into the water, but recovers her backpack instead. "Want a Coke or an apple, Simon? I brought some stuff for making lunch later."

Tom looks at himself, then Simon. "Hey, I'm as wet as you are. I need to wring out as well." He follows suit, removing his shirt and trying to wring out as much water as he can, grumbling, "I'll be ready in a short bit."

The youngest girl seems relieved that everyone is more or less okay, and turns to walk over by the pool again. Her expression changes from worried to considerate as she looks to the pond then across the cave and back again. After a moment she gingerly lifts her foot and puts her toe to the ground and begins tracing a line in the dirt.

"I dunno." Rebecca looks at the two of them, folding her arms over her chest. "I thought my mom was going to be mad at me for getting wet, but look at you two! And it's kinda cold down here. Maybe we should call it quits and get back into the sunlight so you can dry out. Or even go home and change...."

Simon grins. "Mapmaker saves minstrel ... from humiliating fall in the pool. I don't know if I should write a song about that."

"You lost your notebook, so what would you write it on anyway?" Agatha points out, and then looks to Rebecca. "Yeah, we're just burning the batteries down right now."

Tom frowns at Rebecca, "It's just some water. You want to quit already? We haven't even found a trace of the earrings yet." He then looks at Agatha and says gloomily, "I brought more batteries."

Alice stops as she begins to pass out of flashlight range, and her line ends for the moment. She turns around and asks, "Can I borrow a flashlight please?"

Agatha sits cross-legged on one end of the blanket. "In that case, anybody want lunch? I've got beefy-dogs, and maybe the boys will be dry by the time we finish." She waves her flashlight to Alice.

Hawk Rachel starts to hand Alice her torch, then pauses. "I'll come with you. What do you want to look at?"

Tom watches Agatha for a bit and concedes, "Well, if we are gonna have lunch, perhaps we should go back up. We can always come back, I guess." He sulks a bit. "Not much of an exploration, was it?"

Simon watches Alice, from where he's putting his only damp shirt on. "What are they doing now?" he whispers to Tom.

"I just need some light," answers Alice quietly. When the flashlight is close enough that she can see again, the youngest of the girls traces her line a bit more, then stops. She walks back to the pool and begins tracing another.

"Are you up to climbing back up that slope in wet socks?" Agatha asks Simon and Tom, while watching Rebecca and Alice.

Tom whispers to Simon, "Maybe she saw hoof prints or Lord Mel or something." He then glances back toward Agatha, "Sure. Squishy feet isn't horrible. I can wring them out up there."

Simon takes off his socks. "Maybe after I wring them dry..." He starts doing so.

Tom watches Simon for a bit, then shrugs. He quickly takes off his shoes, then strips off his socks and starts wringing them out as well. "I guess if he's going to, I might as well not waste time and also see if I can get some water out."

Alice pauses a step in to her new line, frowns, then abandons it. Instead she walks back over to the others and begins tracing a diagram of sorts in the dirt. "The pool is here ... and the flag pole would be here, too," she says as she traces a curved triangle.

Trying to figure out what Alice is drawing over yonder, Agatha hardly hears Tom. "Wha? Go make water in one of the caves if you have to, but don't tell me about it."

Simon sniggers and then looks over at Alice's drawing. "Flag pole?"

With her torch pointed at the diagram Alice is making in the dirt, Rebecca's expression is shrouded in shadows. "What about the Siege, Alice?"

Tom swats Agatha with one very wet sock.

"Ow!!" Agatha yelps and grabs her neck where the sock stung her. "I've got a sword, you know!" she growls back at Tom.

Alice traces more lines, then a square, and she points back to the pool while takes a few steps to the north east. "Sidewalk ... square ... angel!" She points directly northeast, and her diagram appears completed for all to see.

Tom scowls back. "Then quit picking on me."

"Simon, Tom picks on you, so feel free to zap him with your sock," Agatha grumbles, and rubs her neck. I hope it doesn't leave a mark. GAH! Father will think it's a hickey if it does!

Tom grins smugly. He turns to Simon. "Hey, are you doing okay? Sorry for dragging you into this. I shoulda come alone."

"Oh, quit bickering," Rebecca says, irritably, still trying to puzzle out Alice's point.

Simon mutters. "For joy, for honor, for the proof that life's living, did the mapmaker and warrior engage in battling..." He shakes his head as if shaking off a thought, and looks up. "Hmm, what?"

Tom shakes his head and goes back to wringing out his socks. "Never mind. Forget it."

Agatha turns the collar on her jacket up, and gets up to retrieve her horseshoes and gloves.

As Agatha takes in the diagram, it occurs to her that the debris pile he saw at the north would be ... right about where the angel would sit in the square, if the diagram were accurate. At that moment, there is a faint noise from the north, a kind of bird-like caw.

Tom pulls his still very damp socks onto his feet. His shoes quickly follow, his face scowling as they squish disgustingly. He now pays a bit more attention to what Alice has drawn, brow furrowed.

Agatha draws her wooden sword and turns to face the northern cave. "Who goes there?" she calls.

Tom gets up and looks at himself, then the stream to the north. He then looks at Agatha. "Who goes what, huh?"

There is a fainter sound, but it's hard to make out exactly what it is from this distance.

The blonde haired girl looks at her diagram, then the cavern and to the pile of rock she finds herself pointing at. With an excited squeak she walks over to the edge of the stream and puzzles at it only to look up when the others start shouting at something.

"Someone's in that cave," Agatha hisses, pointing towards the pile of debris to the north. "Didn't you hear that noise?"

Tom's head then snaps toward the sound. He grabs his flashlight from the floor and shines it in the direction he thinks he heard it from.

Simon looks alarmed at the thought he might have to cross the stream. "Uh, I'll just stay right here," he suggests.

"I'm already wet. Want me to go check it out?" suggests Tom.

A red glint reflects from the flashlight as it swings around, then something flutters before disappearing from the diffused beam.

Agatha hands her sword to Tom. "Take this. I'm coming, too," she says, and goes to her pack to unlash the crowbar from it.

Tom turns the sword over in his hands. He tests the weight, then heads off to the northern stream, keeping the flashlight aimed at the debris beyond. He takes a short running start, then gracefully leaps over the stream, landing on the side with the debris, sword in one hand, flashlight in the other.

At the southern stream edge, Alice draws back when she catches sight of the flash of eyes. Unable to quite draw her purse up, she just clutches her hands to her chest in fright, and does not approach.

Agatha hurries after Tom, and stumbles this time herself trying to jump the stream as the loose rock slides under her shoe. She falls to her knee and drops the crowbar, which takes her a moment to recover and puts her further behind Tom.

The pile at the center of the northern cave turns out to be ... quite a collection of junk. There are rags and old clothes, broken fishing poles (at least judging from the stump of one that sticks out), an old cloth Raggedy Ann doll, a selection of socks (one of which has red ribbons tied about the top), some old chewed-on pens and pencils, some tiny screws, parts, ribbons that might have been hair ties, scissors, cloth hangers...

As Tom pans his flashlight over the debris pile, he hears again the flapping of wings. Then, he catches the source once more in the beam: a large black bird, perched on top of the pile. It has its face cocked in profile to him, a single eye regarding the boy. With the light upon it, the pupil reflects red at its depths.

With considerably more caution, Rebecca approaches the northern stream, her right foot squelching slightly, damp inside her boot.

"It's a dragon!" cries Alice as she catches sight of the bird.

Simon, having gotten his only slightly damp socks back on, wraps the blanket around like a cloak and stands near Alice. He doesn't look sanguine at all about trying to cross the stream again. "Let's wait here," he suggests to her. "I don't think any of us are cut out for fighting dragons..."

The raven's answering caw sounds a little like laughter in the gloom. It flaps its wings again, taking a new perch on the pile, and pecking at the debris, its beak pushing aside bits of junk.

"Yeagh!" cries Tom, and he raises the sword. He takes a couple breaths, then lowers the sword. "Man, Tom," he mutters to himself, "A bird freaked you out. What, are you believing Alice now?" Instead, he examines the bird from a distance now, curious. He calls back a few moments later, "Hey, there's a bird over here and a whole pile of old stuff. It's like a dragon's hoard, cool!"

Recovering her crowbar, Agatha catches up to Tom. "That bird carried all that junk down here?" she asks incredulously.

Alice turns to look at Simon, then sidesteps over to stand behind him and grab his arm. There she hides behind the slightly older child and peers nervously around him. "I don't want to fight a dragon, I always get captured by dragons, I don't want to be captured!" she rambles.

"Cool," the bird caws after Tom, then resumes its work. It pulls out scraps of cloth and pieces of things, shifting them to different sides.

"Oh I doubt that," comments Thomas. "Perhaps the water washed in the junk and the bird collected it." Slowly, Tom approaches the bird, unable to resist the lure of the unknown.

Simon whispers to Alice, "Always? How many times has this happened now?" He tries to peer through the darkness at what's being illuminated by the flashlight.

"It's not a dragon," Rebecca says, sensibly, after recovering from her initial surprise. "It's just a bird."

As Tom draws near, the bird caws again, then flaps its wings and hops to the far side of the pile, regarding Tom again with its single-eyed gaze.

From behind Simon, Alice answers, "Lots of times!" She eases up, then begins edging around him. "I don't want to captured by a bird and be bird treasure either."

Tom uses the sword tip to move some of the junk around from a distance. "I think the bird is harmless. He seems to be keeping away from me," he says loudly.

Simon eeps, and tries not to lose his footing, settling for sitting down. "It doesn't look big enough to pick you up," he assures Alice.

"And it's not going to capture you, Angel. It's not even as big as your purse," Rebecca says, though in truth it's hard to tell the bird's exact size from here.

"Well ... well ... maybe it could," offers Alice. She sounds far more relieved now that it's just a bird, despite her protests. "Maybe it took my earrings?"

The debris shifts harmlessly under Tom's sword point. A pair of scissors tumbles to one side, and the bird leaps back from it, cawing irritably. "Could!"

Agatha steps over to examine the junk pile as well. "It's some odd stuff to end up out here. I mean, in a cave!"

Tom looks up at the bird, "Could? Could what?" He pauses, then exclaims, "Why am I talking to a bird?!?!?"

"Could not!" calls Alice from next to Simon in response to the bird's caw.

"Yeah, why are you talking to a bird?" Simon calls.

The bird lands on a new part of the pile. It seems to prefer landing on rags, avoiding the wires and the like. "Because you want answers," the crow caws.

Tom's jaw drops. "Buh, what?" he stammers.

"Ahhh!" screams Alice. She immediately bolts behind Simon and clings to him for all she's worth.

"What? What?" Simon asks.

Tom blinks repeatedly and asks, "Um, bird, did you say something?"

The little boy, embarrassed, tries to get Alice to stop hugging him.

"Because you want answers," the crow repeats, quite lucidly. It pokes at the rags, pulling out a long pale blue ribbon.

Agatha stares suspiciously at the bird. "What's your name, bird?"

The little girl pokes Simon repeatedly. "Bird talk! Bird! Talking!"

Simon blinks, though it's hardly visible in the darkness, and calls to Tom, "Hey, Alice says the bird talked! Did you hear something or was it just imitating you or something?"

Tom rests the sword point on the ground and leans on it like a cane. He turns his head and shouts back, "Um, it was awfully clear for an imitation. He, or she, I dunno, said 'Because you want answers.'"

Rebecca says to Alice, "Crows can be trained to talk, you know." Her eyes are rapt on the scene before them, and she makes her way cautiously across the stream.

Simon looks up. "Well, do you?"

Tom shouts back, "Yes!"

"Then why don't you ask for some?" Simon calls back logically.

Alice continues to huddle behind Simon and continues to ramble, "I don't want to be bird treasu- ... " Her rambling is cut short as she considers Rebecca's words, and she eases back away from Simon and slowly, very slowly, begins to rise and peer over the boy.

Tom blinks and mutters, "Duh!" He looks over at Agatha and shrugs, then repeats Agatha's question, "What is your name, bird?"

"It could be someone's pet," Agatha suggests.

"Ryland of Avarre," the bird answers. It pokes at the ribbon, then turns its head and drops it, letting the cloth flutter to the ground on the bare spot of the cave floor.

Tom almost falls over. He quickly regains his balance. He shakes his head and says, "Okay, um, Ryland. How can you talk?"

Simon mutters up to Alice, "I feel like an end table or something when you do that..."

"W-w-well that's a n-nice name," Alice stammers. She peers at the bird a bit more, then to herself, and seems to find some ease as she considers the situation a bit more. The girl places a hand on her chest and lets out a breath. "V-very nice."

"Talk?" The black avian repeats. It claws at the rags beneath its feet, uncovering a hanger. It caws, sounding upset or irritated, fluttering off the pile and into the air before landing on a new spot.

Tom looks at Agatha and shrugs, asking, "Do you think Ryland understands us? Or is he just repeating things he's heard?"

"I don't know much about birds, if this is a bird," Agatha says. "If it just looks like a bird, then it probably understands us, right?"

Agatha holds out the crowbar near the bird's feet, to see if it'll perch on the iron.

Tom ahems and turns to face the bird again and asks, "Where are you from?" A simple and direct question.

The little girl gives Simon a non-comprehending look for a moment, then begins forward again to the edge of the stream. With a deep breath, she moves to try and cross it.

Simon calls to Alice, "Hey, be careful!" but fails to get up in time to stop her.

As the crowbar draws near, the avian caws and leaps back from it, circling into the air and screeching. "From? From? From?" it echoes, sounding angry.

Tom glares at Agatha. "Put that down!"

Agatha hmms, and lowers the metal bar. "Rats. If it got on, at least we'd know it was a real crow."

The other redhead says, "It's a wild animal, what do you expect?" having made it safely, if slowly, across. She stands not far off.

The bird, having settled down again, claws at the back of the debris pile, pulling out a slim silvery cylinder from its depths.

Alice jumps across the stream once more, but when she lands, she nearly stumbles into the water. She staggers sideways, flailing, until she manages to recover and stumble a few steps forward. She comes to a stop, then takes a moment to recover from her near-fall.

Simon peers through the darkness, trying to track Alice. "Tom, give Alice some light!" he calls.

At the boy's call, Rebecca responds as well, sweeping her flashlight to track on the sound of the scuffling. "Alice?"

Tom looks to Agatha, then back to where he heard Alice land. He shines the light in that direction, along the ground so as to not blind her.

And there Alice stands in the dark, hunched over and breathing quickly. She straightens when the light shines on her and reaches to shield her eyes. "I'm okay!" she calls back. "I wanted to meet Mr. Ryland too!"

"Are you okay, Alice?" Agatha asks, not thinking the bird is wild at all.

"Agatha, can you go help Alice come over here? I'm gonna try to talk to the bird more. He just pulled out something I want to see," says Thomas.

"Sure," Agatha says, and lays down the crowbar before heading over to guide Alice.

Alice waits for Agatha to come over, and when the older girl draws close enough that her light illuminates the ground, Alice moves to join her and walk with her back. "I have some questions too," she informs Agatha.

There's a scratching noise, and then a "Drats!" from the south side of the stream.

The crow drops the cylinder to one side and behind him, away from the pile, then goes back to digging at the pile.

"Simon, are you all right?" Rebecca calls out to him.

Agatha pauses and shines her light back towards Simon.

"My matches are wet," Simon's voice calls back. "I'm just going to wait here 'til you're done, okay?"

Tom turns back to the bird and tries to move a bit closer. "So, tell me, Ryland, what are the answers? What is this place?" he asks.

Turning the light back on the ground, Agatha heads back to the others with Alice ... and looks for animal prints this time as well.

Ryland, if one can believe a bird's introduction of himself, ignores Tom. It pecks carefully around the handle of a pair of scissors, then seems to give up on that part, turning to a new spot in the pile. "Place?"

As she walks along with Agatha the young Westfield digs in to her purse and produces a wrapped up cookie from its depths. She looks at the cookies, then off towards the bird. "Place where angels stand, Tommy. It's where the statue would be and where Lord Mel scratched his horn," she calls out to the boy.

Tom shakes his head, deciding the bird must've just been mimicking things it heard. He shines the flashlight around the trash pile, toward the cylinder it produced earlier.

There are a number of the same kind of bear tracks that Agatha saw earlier, on the other side of the pool. They're evident around the debris pile, too.

The cylinder looks like a silver pen -- a familiar pen, at that.

Agatha whispers to Alice, "Keep an eye out for hoof prints, okay?" once she sees all the other prints.

Tom tries to move around the pile and pick up the pen.

"Okay," responds Alice. She tilts her head and turns to look for hoof prints.

The crow, seeing Tom move around for the pen it discarded earlier, whips its head about, then dives for the cylinder. It snatches the silver object back into its beak. Tom has time to think, that's my pen! and then it is fluttering for the other side of the debris pile, where it dropped the ribbon earlier.

"What was that, Tom?" Agatha asks between looking at animal prints around the pile.

Tom scowls and grumbles, glaring at the bird. "Stupid bird!" he calls out.

"That's mean, Tommy!" says Alice as she follows Agatha and looks for hoof prints in the dirt.

"Stupid bird!" the black-feathered animal repeats, victoriously, after dropping the pen on top of the ribbon. It turns back to the pile, eyeing Tom with the same head-cocked stance as earlier.

Tom nods firmly. "That's right! You're a stupid bird." He sticks his tongue out at the bird for good measure.

"You know, this junk couldn't have just washed in here," Agatha claims. "This isn't stuff you'd find out here, and no crow would make a pile this big and ... neat." Pointing to the tracks, she adds, "Wouldn't these animals have rummaged through the pile and spread it all over the place? It looks like they come to it often too."

"What's going on?" Simon calls to Tom, seeing the commotion.

"Maybe it's just acting stupid," Rebecca muses, watching them. "It did answer two questions."

Alice arrives near the pile with Agatha, and here she steps forward and kneels down a little to hold out the cookie. The snack is held by its wrapping with the cookie part exposed away from Alice, where it could be bitten. "Do you know Lord Mel?" she asks the bird. "And do you want a cookie?"

"Cookie?" The crow pivots through a hop, to watch the nearby girls. It gathers up the ribbon and pen in its beak.

Tom shouts back to Simon, "This annoying feather duster is trying my patience, is what. I think it's someone's lost pet."

"Okay," responds Alice. She edges forward a little and holds out the cookie more. "This is a cookie. And it's yours if you want it."

"Careful, Alice," says Thomas, "It might peck you."

Agatha watches Alice and chews on her lower lip. "Maybe you should just lay it down where it can reach it, instead of holding it out."

"Yes," the bird says, courteously, after dropping the ribbon and pen. "I would like a cookie, thank you." It hops forward and stretches out its neck to accept the present from the child's hand.

Nodding, Alice gives the cookie to the raven. "You're welcome," she tells him with a smile.

Tom blinks again, now very confused. "How, what, huh ... " he says quietly.

Ryland crunches noisily on the cookie, then hops away again, moving closer to the two items it abandoned earlier.

Simon calls back, "Finders, keepers, losers, weepers?" to Tom and watches the goings-on curiously.

Tom glares at Simon and says nothing.

"Well, there's the pen you wanted, Tom," Agatha says, smirking and gesturing to the silver tube.

Simon grins widely.

Tom makes another attempt for the pen, eyes narrow.

Alice stands up and folds her hands in front of her, watching the raven as it moves away. "Have you seen my ..," her eyes drift to the ribbon, " ... oh! My ribbon ... well, your ribbon now I think. Mr. Ryland, may I have my ribbon back?"

Distracted by the cookie, the crow doesn't notice Tom's lunge for the pen until the boy has snatched it away. It pounces on the spot where the object had been a moment too late, and caws in distress. It flutters into the air, and circles around the black-haired child, as if contemplating trying to retrieve the object.

Alice blinks at the sudden retrieval of the pen, then turns around to regard Thomas with a disapproving look. "That wasn't very nice, Tommy. You didn't even ask politely," she tells him.

Tom holds the pen close. "Hah!" he shouts at the bird, grinning. He peers down at the pen, examining it for damage.

The pen looks rather the worse for wear, with visible tarnish in the silver and a bent clip.

"Alice," Agatha asks, "was that really your blue ribbon the bird had?"

The girl turns away from Tomas, frowning more, then turns to look at the ribbon. "Yes it is," she answers. "Or was. I was going to ask for it back till Tommy decided to be a meanie."

"Where did you lose it?" the taller girl asks the blonde.

Tom holds tightly onto the pen and looks back up at the bird. He then says, "Ryland, if you really can talk and understand me, I'll offer a trade. You can have the pen back if you quit playing with us and talk straight, okay?"

"Okay?" the bird caws. It circles a few more times around Tom's head, then returns to the ribbon, which it takes in its beak before flying back to the pile and poking at it once more.

Tom holds onto the pen tightly. "You get it if you answer our questions," he says firmly, trying to ignore Alice and her chastising.

Alice glances back to Tomas and sticks her tongue out at him. "Be nice," she tells him before turning back to consider the ribbon again. "I don't know where I lost it. But ... maybe Mr. Ryland might give it back."

The blonde haired girl adds, "But he doesn't have to. I have lots of ribbons. If he likes it, he can keep it. I don't mind."

Agatha starts to really look at the objects in the pile now, to see if there's anything that doesn't look like it was lost by a kid.

Ryland of Avarre sets the ribbon down, eyeing Alice for a moment, then Tom. He shifts his wings, and pecks at the pile again.

Most of the objects in the pile could've been lost by anyone, kid or adult, though many of the bits and pieces have a childish look to them -- pink pens, sparkling hair bands, plastic-handled scissors. Some of the socks are adult-sized, though.

"Why don't you just ask him something again?" Rebecca says. "He did say 'okay'. Maybe he'll answer now."

Tom continues to check over the pen, keeping an eye on the bird. "Well," he says, voice softening, "What is this place, Ryland? What is this pile?"

Agatha blinks, and tries to pull out some of the socks from the pile.

Alice glances back to Tomas again, then turns to the bird and ventures to ask, "Is ... this the place where all the lost stuff goes? Like ... like lost socks, and pens, and things?"

Ryland places one claw over the ribbon. "This is the Siege of Stone and Water," he answers. "The pile is not where all lost things go. These things are not lost; they are stolen by the jruuh."

"Oh," says Alice.

Tom nods, "Very interesting. What is the 'jruuh'?"

"Creeps me out the way he does that," Rebecca murmurs.

Agatha stops looking at socks, and tries to find another blue ribbon like the one Ryland is holding.

The crow ignores Tom's next query in favor of scratching at the pile again.

"The jruuh are those shadow-dogs? They growl ... Growlers?" asks Alice.

"Hey," Agatha whispers, and reaches for something shiny like a miniature sword near the bottom of the pile. "That's my letter opener."

"That is right," Ryland answers. He digs into the pile, and pulls out most of a knit cap from it, trying to worry the rest of the article loose.

Tom nudges Alice. "Ask him about your earrings we're looking for."

"They ... they fight against someone else, don't they? Lord Mel tries to stop them," asks the blonde haired girl.

Alice adds, while rubbing her side, "You have my earring here. I just know it. It's true, isn't it?"

Ryland pulls free the rest of the cap, and caws victoriously. It stuffs the ribbon into the cap, then hops to the edge where Agatha is worrying loose the pewter sword.

"Ouch!" Agatha says as her hand gets scratched by something else in the pile, but she manages to retrieve the letter-opener.

"I think we should take turns. Tommy, ask him a question please?" offers Alice. She reaches over for the boy's arm to bring him forward some.

Tom tries to speak smoothly and softly, moving forward just a bit, "Ryland, we came looking for two earrings that belong to Alice. They're important to her and it's my fault she lost them. Have you seen them? We'd be very grateful."

Ryland tilts its head to watch Tom and Alice, then returns its attention to Agatha. It takes the knit cap into one claw, and flutters to the edge of the pile, near where Agatha is holding the item.

Agatha eyes the bird suspiciously. "It's just one item from each person, isn't it?" she asks the bird.

"I wonder if he's old One Eye, like in the stories?" Alice asks Tomas, her eyes following the bird.

The crow caws, "It?"

Rebecca stands and throws up her hands. "It's an impossible creature! Why do you answer just some of our questions and not others?"

Tom looks at Alice and shrugs slightly. "Don't know," he says.

As with most of the questions asked of it, the bird makes no response to that one, either. Instead, it eyes the letter-opener covetously.

Offering the little pewter sword back to the crow, Agatha asks, "Do the ... jeroo ... just steal one item from each person, Ryland?"

The bird flutters forward, diving to snatch the pewter object from the girl's outstretched hand.

Alice frowns just a little, then reaches for the bottle hanging from her neck and holds this up so she can peer at it. She stares a moment, then perks up. The bottle is dropped back against her chest and she digs in to her purse to pull forth ... Lord Mel!

Lord Mel regards the bird with a steady gaze. "Lord Mel says hello," Alice informs the bird.

Agatha forces her hand to stay steady as the bird snatches at it.

Ryland retrieves the object without so much as scratching the girl. It returns to the knit cap and ribbon it recovered earlier, and sticks the sword in next to them, then carefully gathers the cap so that the other two objects will remain inside. With a muffled, "Hello!" cawed out, it launches from the pile, soaring into the air, heading southwest, towards the pool.

"Simon!" Agatha calls out. "Watch out for the bird. It's heading your way!"

Simon's voice calls back, "What do you want me to do?"

Tom looks at the pen still clutched in his hand. He turns it over slowly, then holds it up. "Ryland," he shouts, "You forgot something. I promised I would give you this if you answered my questions. For the most part, you did, and I keep my word. Here it is."

Alice tucks Lord Mel under her arm as she moves to follow the raven. "I think Lord Mel knows the jruuh. I saw him fighting with them twice," she informs the bird, voice raised so he can hear her. "I saw it at the Siege de Anges."

"Uhhh ... don't let it steal your socks!" Agatha warns.

There's a snort and then Simon says, "I think I'm safe."

The crow circles over the children for a moment, then dives down, one claw reaching out, to grasp the offered pen.

"Maybe we need to give him something new, Tom," Agatha suggests. "Alice gave him a cookie. I've got hot-dog buns in my backpack."

Tom holds his hand steady, loosely gripping the once treasured pen for the bird to take.

"Oh!" exclaims Alice. "That's a good idea. I think I have some ... band-aids ... and ... " She uses her free hand to begin searching her purse for something to offer.

The bird snatches the pen, clutching it tightly in its talons. Its flight path wobbles some, laden down as it is, but it recovers and wings for the pool again.

"Where are you going?" Rebecca calls out. She aims her torch at it, trying to track the rapidly leaving bird.

Agatha starts to head back towards Simon and her backpack. "The pool is the flagpole. It's where Lord Mel appeared, right Alice? It's the link between the sieges or something?"

Alice pulls forth a few band-aids and some bits of costume jewelry she recovered from Simon earlier that week. "I think so, Agatha. I was just going to ask," she answers the older girl.

Tom shakes his head slowly. "I think I'm gonna head back up," he says quietly and looks at Alice. "I may be mean, but I keep my word." Thomas starts walking back toward the stream, occasionally looking up to watch the bird as Rebecca tries to track Ryland with the flashlight.

At some point over the pool, the red-haired girl loses her target, and she cannot find it again. The flutter of wings is gone, and no more cawing pierces the relative silence.

Agatha stops to add her light to the search. "He vanished?" She shines it over the pool and its edges, to see if the bird just landed. "Did you see anything, Simon?"

The young Westfield meanwhile continues to advance towards the pool. "Okay, Tommy," she tells the boy as she goes. And then, as she finds she cannot find the raven any longer, she stops a few paces away from the body of water. "I don't see him anymore either."

Simon gets up slowly. "I don't feel quite so damp anymore," he says. "No, but maybe he just..." The younger boy points up to the ceiling. "... vanished into a vent to another cave or something."

"He just ... vanished," Rebecca says, slowly.

Tom stops by Agatha and offers her the wooden sword. "Hey, thanks for letting me borrow this," he says. He then glances out over the pond. "I wager Simon's right. He probably went up a small passage in the ceiling."

"Why didn't Simon vanish when he went to the pool?" wonders Alice out loud. She leans over to peer in to the pool curiously, then reaches over to untie the bottle from her neck and hold it over the water.

Agatha sheathes her sword, and shines the light towards the ceiling.

"Maybe." Rebecca doesn't sound convinced. She plays her torch over the ceiling above the pool. The diffuse beam doesn't light the shadows of the rocky roof very well. "I don't think so."

Simon regales Tom as he returns,

"'Twas in the dungeon of despair, Mapmaker Tom did seek the crow's lair;
Socks and rags did he find there, unlikely treasure neither rich nor fair
Yet of all these, did the crow err? 'Twas his pen it claimed as souvenir."

Alice lets the bottle, and the strand of hair within, dangle above the water as if testing something. "Maybe ... maybe we need the key ... " She reaches another hand out and waves it above the pond. "I wonder what it could be."

Agatha returns to the pile of lost trinkets to retrieve her crowbar, and fingers one of the horseshoes hanging from her neck as she walks back to the blanket.

Tom grins slightly at Simon and shakes his head. "Not bad, Simon. That was actually bearable," he comments before shouting out, "Come on, let's get out of here while we can. I'm not even sure how long we've been down here, and our parents might be getting worried." He snatches up his backpack and slips it up onto his shoulder, saying, "The exit is back this way. I'll try and lead all of you out safely."

The Weaponsmaster repacks her backpack after rolling the blanket back up. "Let's just hope the way out leads to the same place we came in from," she says.

Previous Log: Heading Off Tom	Next Log: The Jeruuh

Thread Links
	Previous Log: Heading Off Tom Next Log: The Jeruuh		Previous Log: Equipping a Princess Next Log: Girls Only
	Previous Log: The Red Strand Next Log: Girls Only		Previous Log: The Red Strand Next Log: The Jeruuh
	Previous Log: The Red Strand Next Log: The Jeruuh		Previous Log: Heading Off Tom Next Log: The Jeruuh

---

This site serves as a chronicle of sessions in an online roleplaying campaign moderated by Conrad "Lynx" Wong and May "Rowan" Wasserman. The contents of this site are (c) 2001, 2002 by Conrad Wong and May Wasserman except where stated otherwise. Despite the "children's fantasy" theme of this campaign, this site is not intended for young readership, due to mild language and violence.