Jenny choked on a scream as her body stopped falling hard enough to strain the tendons in her shoulder joints. The fiery wave of heat and sulfur washed over her, the wild burning of the lava pit far below beginning to singe her exposed skin.
“Barb!”
“Hold still.”
“We’re in a volcano!”
“I know, Jenny.”
“We’re in a volcano!”
“I know, Jenny!” Barb jerked behind her, bound to the same chain. “Shut up!”
“I can’t shut up, Barb, we’re in a volcano, and we’re going to catch on fire and die really awful deaths and I haven’t been on a date yet!”
The chain jerked fiercely and began to swing as Barb’s weight shifted.
“Stupid ropes,” Barb muttered. “Stupid chains. Stupid Centaurs and their stupid volcanoes.” Her voice faded to incoherent grumbling.
A loud clanking sound echoed above them. Jenny glanced up at the winch lowering them into the heart of the cindercone, and the massive gear at its peak began to turn.
“Barb!”
“Hold on!” One of Barb’s arms wrapped around Jenny’s waist from behind.
Wait. Barb was free?
Jenny didn’t have time to comment. The chain dropped again. The heat spiked around them. Every breath stung, filling her lungs with poison and fire.
“God.” The pressure of Barb’s head pressed into Jenny’s back. “Hang on, Jenny.” Her voice was rough, as though her teeth were grinding.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Jenny trembled.
“Don’t talk like that.” Barb’s tone turned lighter, event though it still sounded like every word was a torment to speak. “That’s quitter talk.”
“Are you loose?”
“I am.” Barb’s other hand came around and began picking at the ropes binding Jenny’s wrists to the chains.
“How’d you get out?”
“I’m good at what I do.”
Jenny gazed past Barb’s bleeding fingers tearing at the coarse ropes, up to the rim of the ceremonial pit. If she strained her ears, she could hear the Centaurs above chanting.
So Barb was out. Great. Once Barb got Jenny loose, they could just climb up the chain, right? And then what? Fight a whole mountain of Centaurs alone? Unarmed?
Barb had broken ribs. She had to. And a deep gash in her chest area. Probably a broken jaw too—or at least a broken nose. If she hadn’t been so insistent on insulting the Centaurs, they might have gone easier on her.
Maybe.
Jenny winced as one of her shoes began to burn. “Barb!”
“Kick it off.”
Jenny snapped her foot, and the ballet flat tumbled end over end and evaporated in a puff of sparks before it reached halfway to the lava below.
“What are we going to do once we get out?”
“One step at a time, Jenny.”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of important to know.”
“I can only do so much.”
“No, you’re doing great.” Jenny forced a laugh. “I mean, top notch, Barb. The next time I get thrown in a volcano, I really want you to be with me, because I won’t be able to get out by myself.”
“Stop talking.”
Jenny blinked. “What?”
“Stop. Talking.”
Jenny twisted back to look at her friend’s face. “Stop talking?”
“Why are you repeating it? Do you have ash in your ears?”
“We’re in a volcano. I might.”
“Shut your mouth please.” Barb hissed.
“I tried once. Didn’t take.”
“Try again then!”
The chain shuddered and the gear overhead began to crank.
“Barb, it’s falling again!”
Barb wrapped her whole body around Jenny’s, and Jenny squeezed her eyes shut, the fingers she could move wrapping around the chain link as though clutching it would prevent Barb from letting go.
The jerk of the chain stopping felt rougher this time. The ache of it echoed in Jenny’s arms, and Barb’s grunt was more like a sob as the ferocious burning air around them tried to consume them.
“Okay.” Barb peeled herself off and went back to picking at the ropes. “Good news, almost got this.”
“Yay.”
“Bad news?”
“You want the bad news?”
Jenny blinked as tears spilled from her eyes. “I like to know my options.”
“Ha.” Barb scoffed. “What if there is no bad news?”
“We’re going to burn to death in a volcano, Barb, that’s pretty bad news.”
“Almost. Almost—okay, Jenny, grab the chain.”
“I am.”
“Grab it harder.”
“How?”
Barb snarled and shifted somehow as she tore the rope off Jenny’s wrists. The burning rope peeled the skin off Jenny’s wrists, and Jenny fell. She scrambled to hold on to the chain link, but the iron seared her fingers.
“Barb, I can’t hold on!”
“Grab me.” Barb wrapped her legs around Jenny’s waist as she clutched the chain. “Grab me, Jenny. Grab me and hold on. Do not let go!”
Jenny scurried up Barb’s leg and clutched her arms around her waist. Barb smelled of sweat and grime and blood.
Blood. So much blood. She’d been wounded worse than Jenny thought. How was she still doing this?
“All right.” Barb gasped. “Okay. Step one.”
“Step one.” Jenny mumbled into Barb’s stained white tank top. “We’re home free now.”
Barb barked a half-laugh and groaned as she shifted her grip on the chain.
“Jenny,” Barb said, “do you trust me?”
Jenny turned her face up and stared at Barb’s green eyes, blown wide with pain and a possible concussion.
“You gotta trust me, kid.”
“I trust you.” Jenny nodded.
“Okay.” Barb took a slow, deep breath, muscles in her jaw twitching. “I am going to hold us up with one arm. You take my other arm. And you take your underskirt off.”
“My underskirt?”
“Jenny, you have to trust me. Please.”
Jenny nodded. “Okay. Okay.”
“Hurry, because they’re going to drop us again, and it’ll be too late. Just hurry.”
With a roar of effort, Barb lifted them both, hooked one arm through the wide chain link, and hooked her other arm through Jenny’s.
“Ready?”
“Ready!”
“Go!”
Jenny released her hold on Barb’s waist and held herself up on Barb’s one arm. She reached up under her kurti and peeled the stained underskirt off from around her waist. Swinging back and forth over the pit of lava, the heat wafted up around them. It burned the inside of her nose. Her skin felt like it was on fire.
“Jenny, hurry!”
Jenny got the skirt off and straightened, climbing back up Barb and resuming her position clinging to her waist like a monkey. Barb reset with both hands on the chain link.
“Okay.” Barb cast a glance above again. “Okay, wrap the skirt around me.”
“Barb, what?”
“Jenny, just do it!”
It didn’t make sense. What was Barb thinking? What was a skirt going to do?
Crying openly, Jenny climbed up Barb’s hips, waist, and shoulders and wrapped the skirt around her neck, tying it loosely.
“Good. Good.” Barb wasn’t looking at her, her gaze focused on something else. “Now, here’s the hard part.” Tears streamed down Barb’s face, her cheeks red and eyes bloodshot. “And you have to trust me.”
“I do.”
“No, more than you do now. You have to trust me that I will never let anything happen to you, okay? That if I do something that hurts you, your sister will gut me.”
Jenny laugh-cried into Barb’s neck. “I trust you.”
“No.” Barb laughed. “Trust Meg.”
Jenny scrunched up her face and tried not to sob.
“When I say—and not a moment before,” Barb said slowly, “let go of me.”
“I can’t.”
“Jenny, you have to trust me. I can’t hold on much longer. Please.”
Jenny bit her lip and nodded.
“All right. Hold on. Hold on!”
With a grunt, Barb began to swing. The chain creaked and groaned. The burning air felt like it was melting the skin off Jenny’s flesh as their bodies rocked back and forth over the pool of lava. Sparks floated around them like hellish spirits, as though the underworld itself had belched them into the cinder cone.
“When I say!” Barb screamed.
Jenny prepared.
“Not yet.”
Jenny squeezed her eyes shut.
Barb swung them backward, and the chain shifted, their bodies leaning forward. At the apex of the swing—“Now, Jenny!”
Jenny released.
Sailing through burning air across a pit of bubbling lava was much less exciting than it sounded. It took longer than Jenny expected too. Overhead, she could see the great winch turning again. She could hear the crank turning. And she still flew until—
Jenny’s back hit the hot, rough surface of a ledge jutting out from the side of the volcano wall, and the brimstone skittered around her as she slid. She gasped in shock and wide-eyed awe as her body came to a stop against the hot rock wall.
A cave? A ledge?
Barb had swung her into a cave inside the volcano?
“Barb!”
Jenny scrambled to her knees.
She’d said if the chain dropped again it would be too late.
What did that mean? Where was Barb?
The heat from the lava pit below struck her face like a stormfront, and Jenny caught her breath. Below, Barb still hung from the chain, wrapping her hands in Jenny’s skirt, began to climb the chain.
One link at a time, one breath at a time, Barb climbed and climbed, higher and higher, until she was high enough to swing. She swung and gracefully landed on the ledge next to Jenny, rolling with the impact, but not able to stand once she skidded to a stop.
“Barb!”
Jenny ran to her and knelt. She peeled the charred remnants of her underskirt off Barb’s burned hands. Barb gasped for air beside her.
“Okay?” Barb asked.
Jenny nodded. “Yeah.” She wrapped her arm under Barb’s shoulder and over her back, standing up. “Come on. Let’s see where this goes.”
“I don’t care,” Barb mumbled. “As long as it has air conditioning.”
Jenny bit back another half-laugh, half-sob. “How did you do that?”
Barb rolled her bloodshot eyes. “I saw the cave just as they threw us in.”
“So,” Jenny tilted her head and smiled. “Do you make a habit of death-defying escapes from volcanoes?”
Barb smirked. “Not usually. But I think I’ll add it to my resume now.”