Priya pointed ahead and to the right: the suggestion of a gravel road emerging from the ravine wall — the forestry track's southern terminus, where it met the main ravine channel and then ran up to the plateau.
They had forty minutes of walking left. The sun was three hours from setting. They were going to make it.
Aryan turned to tell this to the group.
Tanya was not at the back of the line.
He counted. He was at the front. Kabir was behind him. Priya was behind Kabir. The space where Tanya should have been was empty. The ravine behind Priya stretched back to the curve they had come around, ten metres away.
"Tanya." He said it quietly, the first time — the calm call, the one that leaves room for a reasonable explanation.
No answer.
"TANYA!" The second call was different. The ravine walls took it and gave it back.
Nothing.
Priya was already moving back toward the curve. Aryan caught her arm. "You don't go alone."
"She was right behind me—"
"I know. But you don't go alone." He looked at Kabir. "We go back to the curve. All three. Together."
They went back to the curve. The tight section of the channel beyond it was empty as far as they could see. The walls were silent. The floor of the channel showed nothing — loose shale, undisturbed in the way that ravine shale was always undisturbed because it was everywhere and moved constantly.
No Tanya. No sound of Tanya. No sign of which direction — the channel going back into the ravine, or some side path they hadn't noticed on the way through.
"The tight section," Priya said. "There was a crack in the left wall — I didn't look at it directly, it wasn't wide enough to seem like a path."
"Phase three," Kabir said. Very quietly. "It happened in the tightest section. Where we were most focused on getting through and least focused on each other."
Aryan stood at the entrance to the tight section. He had two choices and he knew it and neither of them was good. Go back in and look for Tanya. Continue to the exit and get help.
