Torrent(43)

“Temi?” I risked calling up.
Somewhere high above a peregrine falcon screeched. I tried to decide if that was a bad omen or not. At least it wasn’t a vulture.
“Temi?” I called again, louder this time.
Simon sprang up, trying to touch the walls at the bottom of the hole. He didn’t come close, managing only to get both of us wetter.
“You jump like a geeky white guy,” I said.
“Yeah, there weren’t a lot of NBA teams scouting my high school.”
“Is this the high school you’ve mentioned before that had a hundred and fifty students?”
“That’s the one,” Simon said.
“Did it have a basketball team?”
“Of course. Football too. If we hadn’t had jocks, who do you think would have tormented me between classes?”
“The girls you tried to woo by quoting Star Trek episodes?”
“No, I would have been happy for such attention from them.”
When my calls didn’t produce a rope-dropping savior, I reluctantly uncoiled my whip. It was already wet from my trek through the river, and I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to crack it through a hole, much less get the popper to wrap around something up there, but I might as well try. It’d distract me from how cold my lower body was—not to mention the slimy something that had just brushed past my hip.
I prodded around with a foot, searching for a rock to stand on, something that would get more of my body out of the water. “Can you give me a boost?” I finally asked.
Simon eyed the whip dubiously. “Do you promise not to hit me?”
“I’ll try.”
“That wasn’t a yes, was it?”
“Sorry, this is going to be awkward. I might hit myself.”
“That doesn’t make me feel as good about being whipped as you’d think,” Simon said.
“I’m not even sure the hole is wide enough for what I plan. Boost, please.”
Simon grumbled under his breath but clasped his hands together to make a step for me. He sank down, hissing at the coldness of the water, so I could clamber from there to his shoulders. When he stood, I could reach the bottom of the hole. Too bad the stone was too slick to climb. At least I could brace myself with one hand.
I’d never tried to snap the whip directly over my head, and it took me a minute to find a position where I could send the thong through the hole. It took several more minutes to figure out a technique that would get the popper and the fall out of the hole up above. At last, the whip made a muted crack. Now if I could find something for it to latch onto... Unfortunately, our friends had cleared away all the foliage around the hole. But there’d been a stump a couple of feet up the bank. Maybe...
“Not to complain,” Simon said, “but every time you snap that thing, your clod-stompers grind into my shoulder.”
“While I appreciate your uncomplaining support in holding me up, I feel compelled to—” I snapped the whip again, knowing it’d be luck and repetition rather than skill that wrapped it around the stump, if I managed the feat at all. “Compelled to point out that they’re running shoes. The heel isn’t hard.”
“It is when it’s under a hundred and—”
“Careful,” I said, as the whip, failing to grasp anything, tumbled back down to be coiled again. “I might forget our deal not to hit you.”
“Right.”
I snapped the whip again. This time, to my surprise, it didn’t flop limply back into our hole. It’d caught on something. I was about to give it a tug to see if it would support our weight, when someone up there finally spoke.
“That would be my ankle,” Temi said.
“Oops,” Simon said.
“Temi, is it safe up there?” I asked. “Can you lower our rope?”
“Your rope was... incinerated. I’ll see if I can tie the whip to this stump.”
“Incinerated?” Simon asked.
I thought of the glowing eyes. What else could Eleriss and Jakatra do? I let go of the handle to give Temi some slack.
“Can you reach it?” she asked a moment later.
“I can, though we’re going to have to think of something else to pull up Simon. He won’t be able to reach it. It seems he wasn’t on his high school basketball team.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “I have more tape in my pack. I’ll make another rope.”
“I hope duct tape is tax deductible.”
“Given that it’s being used in our pursuit of pictures of monsters that are going up on our webpage to make us advertising money, I should think so.”
“I’d love to be in the room when you explain that to the IRS auditor.”