Tivi's Dagger by Alex Douglas Page A

copy! It’s my duty to study as much as
I can, even if it means I must wear the same clothes and reek
appallingly for the duration of the pilgrimage.”
    Kari approached the table carrying a thick
wooden bowl full of scrambled eggs and shreds of smoked fish,
decorated nicely with fresh herbs. “Breakfast, both of you. We
can’t have our pilgrims and scholars starving to death.”
    “ Or reeking appallingly. Of course
I’ll take your things,” I said to Kel as Kari placed bowls in front
of us. “Where are my brother and Lana?”
    “ They have gone to re-set the animal
traps and scout the tunnel and the other path Kari mentioned, with
the drop of death to the side.” Kel shoveled a spoonful of eggs
into his mouth. “This is delicious, Kari. Health to your hands! It
is a shame the three of us will have to eat it all by
ourselves.”
    “ A shame indeed,” I agreed, tucking in
heartily and cheered at the thought of having Kari all to myself
for the day.
    After we finished breakfast Kari and I left
Kel to his books and walked into the forest behind the Keeper’s
hut. The sky was bright and blue with only some streaks of white
cloud high above. The sun shone between the peaks of the mountains
to our left. Their caps, from all I could see through the canopy of
lush leaves above us, were white with glittering snow. The morning
birds were in full song and the horrific events of the previous day
faded in my mind.
    We followed a faint path through the trees
which in no time became a steep climb. The undergrowth had recently
been hacked back, presumably by the Keeper on his way to the
lake.
    “ Why is it called the Vanishing Lake?”
I puffed as the slope began to take its toll on my thighs. “What if
it’s not there when we arrive?”
    Kari laughed. “I assume it’s because the
waters diminish in the heat of summer, not because the lake moves
around the world. You are most amusing when you pretend to be
stupid, Ned.”
    Too out of breath to comment, I watched Kari
forge ahead through the trees which soon thinned as the terrain
around us grew more rocky until finally, when I was about to give
up and flop down onto the path, the path flattened out. Before us
lay one of the most stunning views I had ever seen in my life.
    The lake was small but deep, glistening like
a sapphire in a ring of sharp peaks and fed by a nearby waterfall.
The shores were lined with trees, the like of which I had never
seen before. Ancient and gnarled boughs stretched over the water,
dotted with pink and purple blossoms shedding petals on every
breath of wind. Beneath the flowers the green leaves of summer were
beginning to unfurl. To the right lay a huge rockfall which Kari
pointed to with a smile. “Let’s sit among the rocks. We can drape
the clothes across them to dry. This lake is more beautiful than I
could have imagined, is it not?”
    I nodded, still catching my breath, and
followed Kari to a sheltered spot near the waterfall, a clearing of
springy grass among huge boulders where he spread out a rug that
smelt of the Keeper’s hut. I flopped down on it and covered my eyes
against the glare of the sun.
    “ If only we had thought to find the
Keeper’s nets, we might have had fresh fish tonight,” Kari
lamented.
    “ Fresh clothes will be good enough.
Let’s get the damnable washing done so we can relax and enjoy this
wonderful spot. I have no desire to hang around that hut for longer
than necessary, and it feels already like an age since the sun
touched my skin.”
    Never having washed a cloth in my life, I
was somewhat embarrassed to admit that I did not know where to
begin. I watched Kari scrubbing at the stinky shirt we had lifted
from Brin’s room with a bar of soap, rinsing the foam and wringing
the water out and then beating the garment against a rock. His
fingers were long and strong and his hands stroked and squeezed and
scrubbed, dripping and shining with water and white bubbles — a
sight which I found unexpectedly