“Bitterblue,” he said, crouching before her, meeting her enormous, frightened eyes. “I’m just going down once. I’ll find her and free her. Then we’ll both come back up again. It’ll be over in a few minutes. Okay?”

She whispered, “Okay.”

“The rope is safe,” he said. “We’ve checked and double-checked every knot, and I’ll climb wherever I can to minimize the strain on it. Do you understand that?”

“No, but it comforts me that you do. Will you give me a math problem?”

He would’ve smiled if she hadn’t looked so sick. “Square integers for me,” he said. “When I come back, I want you to tell me how far you got. Okay?”

“You promise you’ll come back?”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” she said.

He kissed her forehead. Then, returning to the others, he approached the cliff’s edge, got down on the ground, and peeked over. The ocean was very, very far below. The water pounded against rock. Giddon saw no cave opening.

He checked with the rope team, swung himself over, and began to climb down.

—

The cliff face was slippery. Cracks and knobby places abounded, but his cold fingers couldn’t grasp slick rock. He slipped once, his full weight yanking down on the sheet halter, and the team above held on. Below him was the tiniest ledge.

I’ll climb down to the ledge, he told himself. I can make it to the ledge.

After a few more minutes of wedging his fingers hard into cracks, he achieved it, his feet touching down. It wasn’t much of a ledge, narrow, running sideways around an outward-curving bend to a part of the cliff wall Giddon couldn’t see. But it held his weight while he breathed, refocused, and tried to examine his surroundings. He spotted no doorway to a cave.

Giddon took another, calmer breath, quieted his shaking, and looked harder. He saw one bird, then another, come from the sea and shoot straight toward the part of the cliff face he couldn’t see, at a speed that was either suicidal or indicated that there was no wall to stop them.

Then he understood. That was the opening, on the other side of that bend. He began to move sideways along the ledge, trying not to think about how the rope would swing him like a pendulum if he slipped again. The route became smelly, and slimy with bird droppings, then with blood that seemed to be seeping from one of his hands. The ledge grew narrower, and still he saw no cave opening.