Chapter 15: Iron Shadows

James’s directions led them up a narrow path that seemed to wind like a copper wire around the mountain’s ancient bones. Hannah traced each word in his letter with her memory as they climbed, his familiar handwriting floating before her mind’s eye: Follow the path where three peaks cast their shadows. Look for the stone that bears the mark of the setting sun.

Thomas’s breathing grew slightly labored as they ascended, but it wasn’t the desperate gasping she remembered from Coghaven. Here, in the clean mountain air, his lungs seemed to find new strength. Still, Hannah kept their pace steady, one hand always ready to steady him on the treacherous path.

“Listen, Mama,” Thomas whispered suddenly, freezing in place. “Did you hear that?”

The sound came again – a distant cry that seemed to scratch against the sky itself, metallic and organic all at once. It echoed off the mountain faces, multiplying until Hannah couldn’t tell which direction it had originated from. She pulled Thomas closer, feeling his small fingers dig into her arm.

“It’s just the wind in the rocks, love,” she said, but the words felt hollow even as she spoke them. The wind didn’t make sounds like that – like steel being torn apart by something ancient and hungry.

They pressed on, following James’s meticulous directions. The path narrowed further, hugging the mountain’s face so closely that Hannah had to press her back against the cool stone to edge around certain bends. Each step required careful consideration; each handhold tested before being trusted.

“There!” Thomas pointed with his free hand, the other still clutching Hannah’s arm. “The mark Papa described!”

Hannah’s heart leaped. Carved into the rock face was a simple symbol – a circle with three lines radiating from it, like a child’s drawing of the sun. James’s mark, waiting patiently for them to find it.

The cave entrance was exactly where he’d said it would be, little more than a shallow indent in the mountain’s weathered face. Hannah stood before it, James’s careful words floating through her mind: Look below the mark, where green defies stone. Her eyes caught on a scraggly bush clinging to life beside the cave’s mouth, its stubborn leaves rustling in the mountain breeze like whispered secrets. The plant seemed almost defiant in its existence, finding life where the mountain offered little welcome. Just the sort of detail James would have noticed – would have trusted to guard his precious cargo. As she knelt beside it, her fingers brushed against something solid beneath its twisted branches, and her heart leaped with excitement.

But where the crate should have been, there was only empty space.

“Mama?” Thomas’s voice trembled slightly. “It should be here, shouldn’t it?”

Hannah swallowed hard, forcing down the panic that threatened to rise in her throat. “Yes, love. But don’t worry. Your father was clever – he might have hidden it better than we think.” She looked closer, running her hands along the rough rocks, searching for any sign, any clue.

The cry came again, closer this time. Thomas’s grip on her arm tightened painfully, his fingers leaving impressions she was sure would bruise. But she welcomed the pain – it helped her focus, kept the edges of panic at bay.

“We need to search the area,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Remember how Papa used to hide your birthday presents? Sometimes the obvious place isn’t the right place at all.”

The mountains stretched around them in every direction, each shadow a potential hiding place, each rocky outcrop a possible sanctuary for James’s precious cargo. Hannah felt the weight of time pressing down on them like a physical thing. The sun wouldn’t wait for them to solve this puzzle.

Thomas stayed close as they searched, his earlier excitement replaced by a quiet tension she could feel in every movement. The mysterious cry had stirred something in the air – a sense of being watched that made the hairs on the back of Hannah’s neck stand up.

They found a small patch of twisted trees clinging to the mountainside, their roots somehow finding purchase in the unforgiving stone. Hannah searched among them systematically, trying to think like James. He would have wanted the crate safe, but accessible. Protected, but not impossible to retrieve.

The cry came a third time, so close now that Hannah could hear the harmonics in it – layers of sound that no human throat could produce. Thomas pressed against her side, trembling slightly.

“Mama,” he whispered, “I don’t think that’s the wind anymore.”

Hannah looked up at the sky, judging the sun’s position. They’d spent too long searching already. Every minute they stayed increased the chance of having to travel through darkness – or of discovering what made that terrible, beautiful cry.

“Just a little longer,” she promised, as much to herself as to Thomas. “Papa wouldn’t have made it impossible to find. We just have to think like him. We have to…”

Her voice trailed off as Thomas’s grip suddenly tightened on her arm, his small body rigid with fear. That otherworldly cry split the air once more, and this time, Hannah could tell exactly which direction it came from.

She turned slowly, pulling Thomas behind her, and faced the source of the sound that had haunted their search. What she saw made her breath catch in her throat, wonder and terror mingling in her chest like opposing winds meeting before a storm.