She'd never done it in this life, of course. But Hana of the Three Rivers had done it all the time. She'd made knives, scrapers, drills... and hand-axes.
She would have preferred flint to work with; it fractured much more regularly. But quartz was fine.
I can feel in my hands how to do it. ...
Okay. Stay calm. First, find a hammer stone.
It was too easy. There were rocks all around her. Hannah picked up one with a slightly rounded surface, weighed it in her hand. It felt good.
She pulled her legs in, set the angular chunk in front of her, and started working.
She didn't actually make a hand-ax. She didn't need to. Once she had bashed off a few flakes with long sharp edges, she started sawing at the rope. The flakes were wavy and irregular, but they were as sharp as broken glass and quite sufficient to cut the hemp.
It took a long time, and twice she had to make new flakes when the ones she was using blunted. But she was patient. She kept working until she could pull first one length of rope, then another and another free.
When the last strand parted, she almost screamed in sheer joy.
I'm free! I did it! I did it!
She jumped up, her weakness and fever forgotten. She danced around the room. Then she ran back and picked up her precious lantern.
And now-I'm out of here!
But she wasn't.
It took a while for the realization to dawn. First, she walked back in the direction that Maya had come.
She found what felt like miles of twisting passageways, sometimes so narrow that the walls almost brushed her shoulders, and so low that she had to duck her head. The rock was cold-and wet.
There were several branching passages, but each one led to a dead end. And it was only when Hannah got to the end of the main passage that she realized how Maya had gotten into the mine.
She was standing below a vertical shaft. It soared maybe a hundred feet straight up. At the very top, she could see reddish sunlight.
It was like a giant chimney, except that the walls were nowhere near that close to each other. And nowhere near irregular enough to climb.
No human could get out this way.
I suppose they had some sort of elevator or something when the mine was working, Hannah thought dazedly. She was sick and numb. She couldn't believe that her triumph had turned into this.
For a while she shouted, staring up at that square of infuriating, unattainable sunlight. When she got so hoarse she could scarcely hear herself anymore, she admitted that it was no use.
Nobody is going to come and rescue you. Okay. S(c) you have to rescue yourself.
But all I've got is rocks.... No.
No, I'm free now. I can move around. I can get to the scaffolding.
I've got rocks-and wood.
Hannah stood paralyzed for a second, then she clutched the lantern to her chest and went running back down the passageway.
When she got to her cavern, she examined the scaffolding excitedly.
Yes. Some of this wood is still good. It's old, but it's hard. I can work with this.
This time, she made a real hand-ax, taking special care to fashion the tip, making it thin and straight-edged and sharp. The final tool was roughly triangular and heavy. It fit comfortably in her hand.
Hana would have been proud of it.
Then she used the ax to chop off a length of wood from the creaking, groaning scaffolding. All the while she did it she whistled softly, hoping she wasn't going to bring the whole structure down on her head.
She used the ax to shape the length of wood, too, making it round, about as thick as her thumb and as long as her forearm. She knocked off a quartz scraper to do the finer shaping.
Finally she used a flake to hone one end of the stick to a point. She ground it back and forth against an outcrop of gritty stone to bring it to maximum smoothness and sharpness.
Then she held out the finished tool and admired it.
She had a stake. A very good stake.
And Maya was going to get a surprise.
Hannah sat down, turned the lantern off to conserve the battery, and began to wait.
Chapter 16
It was a very long time before Hannah heard footsteps again.
She distracted herself during the long wait by whistling songs under her breath and thinking about the people she loved.
Her mother. Her mother didn't even miss her yet, didn't know she was gone. But by tomorrow she would. Tomorrow was May first, Hannah's birthday, and Chess would give her mother the letter.
Chess, of course. Hannah wished now that she'd spent more time saying goodbye to Chess, that she'd explained things better. Chess would have been fascinated. And she had a right to know she was an Old Soul, too.
Paul Winfield. That was strange-she'd only known him a week. But he'd tried to help her. And at this moment, he knew more about Hannah Snow than anyone else in Montana.
I hope he doesn't start smoking again if he rinds out I'm dead.
Because that was probably how she would end up. Hannah had no illusions about that. She had a weapon-but so did Maya, and Maya was much faster and stronger. She was no match for Maya under the best of circumstances, much less when she was weak and feverish. The best she could hope for was to get Maya to kill her while she was still human.
She thought about the Circle Daybreak members. They were good people. She was sorry she wouldn't have the chance to know them better, to help them. They were doing something important, something she instinctively sensed was necessary right now.
And she thought about Thierry.
He'll have to go wandering again, I guess. It's too bad. He hasn't had a very happy life. I was starting to think I could take that sadness out of his eyes....
When she heard a noise at last, she thought it might be her imagination. She held her breath.
No. It's footsteps. Getting closer.
She's coming.
Hannah shifted position. She had stationed herself near the mouth of the cavern; now she took a deep breath and eased herself into a crouch. She wiped her sweaty right palm on her jeans and got a better grip on her stake.