They stopped for a quick meal around midday. Everyone ate standing. Jane could barely taste the bread and dried meat Hugh distributed from his pack. When Frank passed around a water skin, she drank mechanically, not because she was thirsty but because she knew she should.

  "How much farther, do you think?" Allen asked Otto quietly.

  The hunter shrugged. "Hard to say. We're making good time, but we don’t know how far she got. We might pass her on her way back, for all I know.”

  "We're not stopping for dark," Jane said.

  Everyone turned to look at her. She met their gazes steadily, trying to look more confident than she felt.

  "I can make light. Magical light. Bright as day. If Otto says it’s alright, I mean, we can keep moving."

  "Signs get harder to read in any light that's not natural sun," Otto said. "But I appreciate the offer. We'll see how far we get before we have to make that choice."

  The afternoon wore on with agonizing slowness. Jane's legs ached. Her feet were blistered, despite her good boots, and her head had started to pound from the constant tension. But she didn't suggest stopping.

  Otto's pace never changed. He moved with the same steady, purposeful gait he'd maintained all morning. Jane found it helped to match her breathing to his footsteps.

  The trees began to thin as they climbed higher. The air had taken on a sharper quality that made each breath feel colder and cleaner than the last. They were getting close to the upper elevation, where the forest gave way to bare rock and mountain grass.

  "Hold."

  Otto's hand went up as he stopped at the edge of a small clearing. Everyone froze.

  "What is it?" Frank whispered.

  Otto didn't answer immediately. He was staring at something across the clearing. When Jane followed his gaze, she saw it too.

  There was an opening in the rock face ahead of them, a natural cave carved by wind and water over countless years. And in front of that opening, sitting in a rough circle of stones, were the remains of a campfire.

  Jane's heart leapt into her throat. She started forward, but Allen's hand caught her arm.

  "Wait," he said. "Let Otto check it first."

  "But…”

  "Please." Allen's grip tightened slightly. "Just wait."

  Otto approached the fire pit slowly, circling around it before crouching to examine the ashes. He picked up a charred stick, tested its flexibility, and let it drop back into the pile. His hand hovered over the stones ringing the fire, just close enough to feel for residual heat.

  After what felt like an eternity, he stood and turned back to the group.

  "Fire's been out for at least a full day, maybe longer. Stones are completely cold. But someone made this recently. Within the last few days, I'd say. Looks like one person." He pointed to scuff marks in the dirt around the fire, then indicated a smooth patch of ground. “They sat here for a while. Long enough to burn through a decent amount of wood."

  Jane pulled free of Allen's grip and crossed to the cave entrance. The opening was perhaps eight feet tall and maybe six feet wide, leading back into darkness. She couldn't see how deep it went.

  "Aunt Cecelia?" Her voice echoed off the stone. "Are you in there?"

  "Maybe she was here and moved on," Brit offered. "The fire's old, right? She could have kept going."

  "Or she could be inside," Frank said. "Hurt, maybe. Unable to call out."

  Otto had moved to the cave entrance and was studying the ground there with the same intense focus he'd brought to every other stop. "Can't tell much from the stone. No boot prints, no clear signs of entry or exit. But that doesn't mean no one went in."

  Jane made a decision. She held up her hand and let a small light bloom in her palm, a soft white glow that pushed back the afternoon shadows.

  "I'm going in."

  "Not alone, you're not." Allen was beside her in an instant. "I'm coming with you."

  "Me too," Brit said.

  Frank stepped forward. "All of us, then. We don't split up."

  “Most of us,” Otto corrected. “Hugh, you stay outside with the pack. Rest up. We might need to move fast when we come back out." He turned to Jane. "That light of yours. Can you make it brighter?"

  Jane cupped her hands and focused, pouring more power into the spell. The light intensified until it drove the shadows back several feet.

  Otto nodded. "That'll do. Now stay behind me. If there's anything dangerous in there, I want to be the one who sees it first."

  They entered the cave in single file. Otto led, with Jane and her light directly behind him. The floor sloped downward almost immediately. The cave was deeper than Jane had expected. They walked for perhaps ten feet before the passage opened into a wider chamber.

  Jane raised her light higher, trying to see the full scope of it. The chamber was roughly circular, maybe twenty feet across. In the center of the chamber, arranged in a careful pattern that made Jane's magical senses scream in recognition, were the unmistakable remains of a magic circle.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "She was here," Jane breathed. "She was definitely here."

  The chalk lines were faint but visible, drawn with the precision that came from decades of practice. Jane recognized her aunt's hand in the specific curves and angles, the small modifications to the standard patterns that were uniquely Cecelia's style.

  But the circle was incomplete. A good quarter of it remained to be drawn. Whatever her aunt was trying to do, she hadn’t finished it.

  "What does it mean?" Allen asked quietly.

  "It means she was doing something. Something big enough to need a full working circle. And either she decided she didn’t need to finish it, or…”

  "Or something interrupted her," Frank finished.

  Jane didn't want to think about that second option. She stood and walked around the circle, examining every detail. And then, near the far wall, she spotted something else. Her light just barely caught it shimmering on the floor.

  Another button. This one connected to a coat.

  There, sprawled out on the rocks, was a figure.

  "Aunt Cecelia!"

  The figure didn't move.

  Jane ran. The light in her palm blazed brighter as she closed the distance to her aunt's motionless form, her boots slipping on the damp stone. Behind her, she heard Allen and the others following, their footsteps echoing through the chamber.

  "Aunt Cecelia." Jane dropped to her knees beside the crumpled figure, her hands hovering uncertainly. "Aunt Cecelia, can you hear me?"

  Nothing. Her aunt lay on her side, her traveling cloak twisted around her, one leg bent at an angle that looked wrong. There was blood. Not a lot, but enough to worry over.

  Frank's voice came from just behind Jane. "Is she breathing?"

  Jane pressed her fingers to her aunt's throat, searching for a pulse. For one terrible moment, she felt nothing. And then, there it was, faint but steady: a rhythmic beat.

  "She's alive. But her leg…" Jane moved her light closer, examining the injury. The blood was mostly dried, darkest near a gash on her aunt's calf that looked like it had been made by something sharp. A fall against a rock, perhaps? “We need to get her outside. Into the sun. I can't do anything for her in here."

  Otto moved forward without hesitation. "Brit, help me. We'll take her shoulders. Frank, you and Allen get her legs. Be gentle with the injured one."

  They worked with the efficiency of those who had clearly moved injured people before. Jane kept her light trained on them as they carefully lifted her aunt. Cecelia made no sound, no movement.

  That terrified Jane more than anything else. Her aunt was never quiet. Even in sleep, she hummed or muttered or shifted position. This stillness was wrong.

  The journey back through the cave passage felt longer than the trip in. Jane's light flickered once, and she had to pause to steady her emotions to keep it going. By the time they emerged into the afternoon sunlight, her hands were shaking.

  Hugh had already cleared a flat space near the cave entrance and was spreading a bedroll across the ground. They laid Cecelia down on it as gently as they could, and Jane immediately dropped beside her.

  "We need water. And something to clean the wound. And…" She trailed off, realizing she didn't actually know what else they needed.

  "Here." Hugh was already pressing a water skin into her hands, followed by a stack of neatly folded clean cloths. "I packed for emergencies."

  "Thank you." Jane's voice came out rough. She uncorked the water skin and carefully lifted Cecelia's head, trying to get some liquid past her lips. Most of it just ran down her chin, but a little seemed to make it through. That was a start.

  "Let me see the leg." Otto had knelt on Cecelia's other side and was already examining the injury with characteristically careful attention. "Good news is that it doesn't look infected. Bad news is, it's deep. She's lost blood, and she's been here a while without food or water. That's what's keeping her down, as much as the injury itself."

  He turned to the others. "Frank, get a fire started. We'll need to boil water to clean this properly. Brit, help him gather wood. Allen, check the perimeter. Make sure there's nothing nearby that might cause us problems."

  Everyone moved to their tasks except Jane, who sat frozen beside her aunt. She should be doing something. She should be helping. But all she could do was stare at her aunt’s pale face and try not to think about how small and fragile Cecelia looked.

  "Jane." Allen's hand touched her shoulder gently. "I'm not going far. Just a quick check around. You'll be fine."

  She nodded without speaking. They were as safe as they could be, given the circumstances. The others were working. There was a plan. All she had to do was not fall apart.

  The fire came together quickly. Frank and Brit returned with armloads of deadfall, and soon there was a cheerful blaze crackling away. Otto set a small pot of water over it, waiting for it to boil while he laid out supplies. More clean cloths. A needle and thread. A small flask of something that smelled like alcohol when he uncorked it.

  "We'll clean it first," Otto said, mostly to Jane. "Then see if it needs stitching. If it does, we'll do it. If not, we'll bind it and hope for the best. Either way, she needs rest and food and water. The body heals itself if you give it what it needs."

  "And if it doesn't?" Jane heard herself ask. "Heal itself, I mean."

  Otto met her eyes. His expression was kind but honest. "Then we get her back to town as fast as we can. To proper healers. But let's not borrow trouble before we need to."

  Allen returned then, slightly out of breath. "Nothing moving out there except birds. We're clear."

  "Good." Otto pulled the pot from the fire and let it sit for a moment to cool slightly. "Jane, I'm going to need you to hold her leg steady while I clean this. Can you do that?"

  Otto worked with the same methodical care he brought to tracking. He soaked a cloth in water and began cleaning away the dried blood, revealing the full extent of the wound. It was a gash perhaps three inches long, ragged at the edges but not as deep as Jane had feared.

  "Boar," Otto said after a moment. “See the shape? That's from a tusk. She must have startled one. They can be nasty when they’re surprised.”

  He continued cleaning, working with a gentleness that seemed at odds with his weathered hands. When he was satisfied, he rinsed the wound one more time before reaching for the alcohol.

  "This will hurt," he said, though Cecelia was still unconscious. "Even in her sleep, she'll feel it. Jane, hold tight."

  Otto poured the alcohol over the wound. Cecelia's body went rigid, her face contorting, and a sound escaped her lips that was something between a groan and a gasp. But her eyes didn't open. After a moment, the tension left her, and she went still.

  Otto examined the wound again, testing the edges with careful fingers. "It's clean enough. I don't think it needs stitching. We'll bind it tight and let nature do the rest."

  He wrapped her leg with clean bandages, working from the ankle up past the injury and then back down again, creating layers of protection. When he was done, he sat back and nodded, apparently satisfied.

  "Best I can do out here. Rest will do more for her than anything else now. We should try to get more water into her."

  Jane took the water skin and tried again, lifting her aunt's head more carefully this time. She managed to get a little more liquid past her lips. It would have to be enough.

  Beside the fire, Hugh had begun taking food from his enormous pack. Not just dried meat and hard biscuits, but actual cooking supplies. Jane’s eyebrows rose as a small pan appeared, followed by vegetables and a bag of dried beans. There was even a small packet of salt.

  "I packed for the long haul," Hugh explained, seeing Jane's expression. "Figured if we were going to be out here for days, we might as well eat proper food. Can't do good work on an empty stomach."

  "Days?" The word came out hollow. Jane had been thinking hours. Get in, find her aunt, get out. She hadn't really considered what it would mean if they had to stay out here.

  "Well, we're staying tonight at least," Frank said gently. "Your aunt can't be moved like this. Not safely. We'll camp here, let her rest, and see how she is in the morning."

  Jane looked at her aunt’s pale face.

  "I can help," she said quietly. "With the healing, I mean. I'm not a healer, but there's a spell. Something basic. It encourages the body to do what it wants to do anyway, just faster. I can try."

  Otto looked up sharply. "Will it hurt her?"

  "No. At worst, it just won't work.” Jane took a deep breath. “At best, she'll be strong enough to walk tomorrow."

  "Then do it," Allen said. "Whatever helps."

  .

  !