On the third day, Gretched's woodfire was sending up its column of smoke. The moon returned full that next night, casting long shadows through the trees. Fiona made the turn at the switchback, and her nose twitched. Something was different tonight; the air smelled cooler and bluer. The fire was still there, but the ogress' musk barely loitered in the air. Indeed, when she arrived at the shelter, Gretched was absent.
The fire was burning, maybe she was just doing her business and would be right back. Fiona sat on the bench and waited, listening to crickets and watching stars creep by the gaps in the treetops. A good ten minutes passed. Who needs to poop for ten minutes?
Fiona studied the scene with greater attention. No tools were left out; Gretched hadn't run off in a hurry, or been dragged away. That was a relief.
But her absence was still unexpected. Since those scary weeks when Gretched had vanished, she had taken two more cross-country gathering journeys. Gretched would always invite her, but of course they were overnight, so Fiona couldn't go. But Fiona knew Gretched was going, and had a rough idea for how many days. And the fire would be extinguished, too. This wasn't a scavenging trek.
Fiona looked around carefully. Two daggers were stuck in the target round, so Gretched had taken the third; that suggested she'd gone for more than a poop. Oh! The burlap harvest bags were gone, too. She'd probably gone off to bring back more dried fish to cure for the season. Funny she chose to do that at night, but no reason Fiona couldn't help with the project.
Fiona set off down the trail on the hour-long walk to the creek.
Just a half mile before the creek, Fiona approached the brook delta. The hair on the back of her neck tingled. She stopped; something was wrong.
How did she know that? Something was wrong with Gretched. How could she possibly know that? It was her scent. It was much duller than usual, fewer components. Just skin and breath, and sweat, clammy sweat tinged with fear.
Fiona froze. Whatever scared Gretched would utterly terrify Fiona. She listened attentively, but the texture matched her vision. She looked around carefully.
A big round rock in the sandy delta caught her eye; it had hair, parted down the middle. It was Gretched's head! By itself, eyes closed, lying on the ground as if decapitated. Fiona gasped and ran towards the grisly scene.
"NO! Stop!" Gretched yelled. Fiona pulled up short. Gretched sunk a little bit into the ground. She steadied her breathing, then spoke very calmly and quietly, barely breathing: "This is quicksand. Don't come near."
Fiona peered at Gretched, lying in a pool of still sand. Her head and bosom were still visible above the muck, and her arms floated out over the sand, stretched out to either side. The rest of her great body was submerged. Fiona stretched a leg out to test the sand with her toe.
"Don't do it," Gretched halted her. "Don't disturb the sand, you'll send me under. And you may very well end up in the same soup."
Fiona's eyes widened. She took a step back, backing up to a trunk at the tree line. Her feet rested on the solid soil around the tree's root ball. "What do I do?" she gasped.
"There's only three ways out of quicksand. Float out, get pulled out with a rope, or sink to the bottom. If it's soft enough, I can float my way up to the top," Gretched said. "On the other hand, I've been trying that for the last hour. Pretty sure that's not going to work."
"Sinking to my death is definitely a last resort option," her smile flashing craggy teeth, but careful not to chuckle. Every oscillation resulted in an average trend down into the muck. "So you can imagine how delighted I am to see you here. But, and I'm going to be honest with you, I wish you had a rope with you."
"Oh!" Fiona exclaimed. "I could get one!" She paused. "I mean, I don't have one," she said, her tone turning down. "That was actually the first thing I looked for in the tower once I thought I might leave it," she said. "No rope anywhere; the chandelier is hung with cast iron bar. I thought about chaining bedsheets, but I didn't have enough. Lucky the door turned out to be unlocked, huh?" she chuckled, blushing.
"Well, there's a marine supply shop in town, just a hundred miles southeast in Duloc," Gretched suggested. "I mean, I'd definitely have sunk by the time you got back, but it's a thought."
"How long do I have?" Fiona asked.
"Well, I stepped in and was up to my knees sometime mid-afternoon. I've kept the sink rate slow, but as you can see," she gestured with the very tips of her fingers, "I've probably got two or three hours before I'm only a green nose."
Tears welled in Fiona's eyes. Her companion was doomed. Her thoughts flashed back to that horrible time, a month after she arrived, after she had met Gretched, but believed the ogre had vanished. How much the loneliness had crashed in around her. Her tower door open to an uninhabited countryside, imprisoned in her own mind.
Hell if that was going to happen again.
Heat washed over Fiona's skin. "I'll find a rope. I'll be back, even if I have to loop it through your nose to pull you out." She turned around, and hiked right back into the woods.
She knew where she was going. At the hunter's campfire, the trapper's kit had sported a big coil of rope, likely for building snares. She glanced up at the moon – it was a hand over the crest of the hill; she easily had eight hours left under the cover of night – more than Gretched had hours of breathing. She broke into a run, putting the dirt track behind her feet with a steady thumping.