8 Forest Discovery

  Sara woke up the next day and remembered that David and Draco were gone. She quickly realized that this didn’t mean that the day would be easy. She did what she knew would be her morning tasks. She filled her trough, gathered the eggs, started a fire, and then had potatoes and eggs for breakfast. She took the parts of the potatoes that David had said they needed to plant and set them back in the cellar as David had told her. She took the extra eggs to the spring with her bucket so that she could begin filling the buckets and barrels in the house.

  Once she had done everything, she knew she needed to do, she sat down and planned. She thought about going into the cave, but after seeing Draco shoot flames at her and the threat of being dropped, she decided not to.

  “It seems I have time to see if David was telling the truth about there not being a way out of the valley,” Sara told herself. “I just wish I had some shoes.”

  The ground around the house and farm wasn’t hard to walk on, but Sara knew if she was going to other places, the ground might not be so easy to walk on.

  “Maybe I can convince David to get me some shoes or teach me how to make some sandals.” Sara laughed. She saw the irony. A few days ago, she would have been horrified about the idea of making shoes, and now she was excited about it.

  Sara looked around the house and found a water skin she had overlooked before. She also went back into the cellar and grabbed an empty bag in case she found something she wanted to bring back as she searched. She tried to think if there was anything else she needed to do but didn't see anything. She got up and began exploring the valley.

  Now that Sara had taken the time to study the area around her, she realized the mountains around her weren’t as large as she had originally thought.

  “Of course, if the mountains were too tall, they would shade the valley, and there is a lot of light in this place,” Sara said, looking around again at the valley.

  But even if the mountains are small, I can’t climb a thirty-foot cliff wall. Sara told herself. Sara decided that if she was going to discover a way out, the only way to do this was to walk the outside edge of the valley and see if the cliffs were all as impossible to climb.

  Sara walked behind her house to the cliff wall and turned in a northerly direction and started walking. She hadn’t gone too far when she had to step across the small stream of water that moved away from the wall of the cave and over toward the pond that sat behind the area that held the two pigs that Draco and David had. The stream was fed from the water which flowed out of the cliff near her quarters and split, one side going towards the pond and the other a little further along the cave wall to disappear into a cave not much taller than her hand and about four feet wide. Sara listened if the water went into a much larger cave, but other than the gentle sound of moving water, there wasn’t any sign that this could get her out of here. Even if it did, the temperature of the water Sara knew would quickly kill her, so she continued moving.

  She knew the valley was large, but after an hour of walking, she began to realize it was bigger than she thought. David had walked her across the width of the valley, and that had taken over an hour.

  Walking along the cliff, Sara began to get an idea that this valley wasn’t what it had appeared to be. After an hour and a half, she came to the northern side of the valley that David had taken her to see. She was further east than they were the day before, and here along the cliff wall was a large pond. Sara thought that maybe she could have David teach her to fish, so she moved faster, also thinking of a nice swim. Rinsing off some of the smell that still lingered from the day before would be great.

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  When Sara moved closer to the pond, she saw mist coming up off the water, and once she was standing near the pond, she could see it was a hot spring. Fishing or swimming were not going to happen here. It was at least 300 feet across and over 200 feet wide. She hadn’t ever seen one before but had read about them. The heat in them could vary from comfortably warm to boiling. The water, as she remembered reading, wasn’t always safe to drink either. The books mentioned that some could smell of brimstone or rotten eggs. Sara had smelled neither one of them before, but since she didn’t smell anything, she hadn’t before she assumed that the element wasn’t in this pond. Sara thought about waiting and asking David, but quickly just knelt next to the edge of the pond and slowly lowered her hand to just above the water. It was easy to feel that it was warm, but since she had started boiling water, she knew what that felt like, so she gingerly took one finger and lowered it into the water. The water was warm but about as hot as the baths she took at the castle.

  Sara had an urge to jump in, but in the last two days, she began to realize she didn’t know as much about life outside the castle. She thought that perhaps a small test could be done and put her left hand into the water.

  “Oh, that feels good,” she told herself, but resisted doing more than sticking her hand in until she felt the bottom. The water was just above her wrist, and she held it there for a minute and took it out. She could feel the heat in her skin, and the palm of her hand held a reddish tent. If there was a place where she could step in and not worry about sliding into deep water, she might have been tempted. She knew that water as hot as this could be dangerous, because though her bath water started hot, it quickly cooled, and this water wouldn’t do that.

  She sat there for a minute and considered whether the water trough could be brought here but quickly dismissed it. A hot bath might be nice, but the walk back to her quarters would negate the benefits.

  “I’ll see if there is some other way to take advantage of this hot water.” She told herself as she got back to her feet.

  Sara began walking around the pond to get to the cliffs on the other side so she could finish her survey of the valley. There were trees on this edge of the valley, but as Sara looked at them, none of them were even close to the size of the trees outside of her castle. She guessed that the trees were planted here since most of them seemed to be the same size. There weren’t any trees closer than twenty feet to the pond. Here she spotted what she thought were hazelnut trees, but wasn’t sure, as David had only pointed them out once. She was just happy that she was remembering. David showed her a lot of trees and bushes so remembering one was a success for her.

  Once she got to the other side of the pond, she was hoping to find a spring that fed into the pond but was disappointed not to see any. She had envisioned cool water coming out of the cliff wall, like she had near her quarters, filling the pond. She had imagined that the place where the waters met could be a perfect spot where the water might be just the right temperature to bathe in. Her hopes were shattered as was her hope that the trees might be high enough that climbing one next to the cliff could get her to the top.

  There was a space of at least thirty feet between the trees and the cliff. More discouraging was that the cliff along this wall was higher than it had been before. The cliff went up to what she guessed was over seventy to eighty feet.

  Seeing this unnatural space between the trees and the cliff wall, Sara realized that these trees had been planted here. She could only guess because this area of the valley got more sun, but it didn’t explain the break in any vegetation other than some grass from the trees to the cliff wall.

  Sara saw some dark patches on the bottom edge of the cliff. After walking further, Sara walked over to the cliff and rubbed her finger against the dark stone.

  “The dragon has to be coming through here to keep the forest from getting closer to the cliff,” Sara observed, as if she rubbed the ash between her fingers. Looking back and ahead, it was clear that this space was a part of a plan. The cliff wall, being much taller than the trees, made this area impossible to use as a method of escape.

  Continuing, Sara spotted several trees that she knew would bear either fruit or nuts. However, for the next half mile, there wasn’t anything but the trees, the cliffs, and some small animals. At one point, Sara thought that she saw a fawn, but it moved so quickly that she couldn’t be sure. Just thinking she saw the little creature brought a smile to Sara’s face.