She looked for the light, hoping to use it as a point of reference despite its movement, but it was gone. All around her was absolute black. The totality of it was so disorienting that she felt a bit dizzy. No horizon to line up with. Uneven shifting ground made standing more challenging. I don’t want to fall. I’ll lose all direction if I do. And what if my arms plunge into that muck? Will I be able to retrieve them? And at what cost to my legs? This is bad.

No Teshlors. No net, she remembered, and already she’d literally put her foot in it. Farilane took a breath. She needed to calm down. It’s just mud . . . Or is it? In the dark, this slime could be anything. The water did feel oddly tepid for such a chilly night. A creative mind, she discovered, was a gift and a curse.

“This way,” Kile called out of the dark.

“What way is this way?” she asked.

Kile didn’t answer, at least not with words. Instead, he began to whistle a merry tune. She’d never heard it before, and at that moment the melody was more beautiful than the song of a nightingale. The intricate lilting composition proved Kile to be an expert whistler. She faced the music and stepped—once, twice, three times—and then her feet met firmer ground. After a dozen more steps, she blundered into Sheldon. Together, they followed Kile’s whistling through the trees, some of which they found the hard way. Before long, they escaped back to the green ring they once thought to be a road, coming out remarkably close to their tents.

“How did you do that?” she asked Kile, spotting him in the meager moonlight that clawed through the overhead clouds and leaves.

“Whistle?”

“No—how did you find your way back so well?”

He held up her spool of thread, not nearly as neatly wound as it had been. “You said you had needle and thread in your pack. I borrowed it, tied one end to a branch, and let it out. Lucky you stopped when you did. I was almost at the end of my tether. Hope you don’t mind. I suppose I should have asked permission fir—”

She kissed him. She had aimed for his cheek, but he turned in surprise at her approach and she caught his lips. “Thank you.”

“The thread did all the work,” he told her, his voice halting and awkward.