Only the floor of the cave was different.
Grainy sand, black sand, it seemed to stick to the soles of her boots.
The cave went neither up nor down; it appeared determined to cut straight across the inside of the mountain. They were thankful for a flat surface. It gave them a chance to catch their breath. Also, the farther they walked, the warmer it got, and they were able to take off their jackets.
The increase in temperature surprised Ali. She knew most caves got colder the deeper you went into them. She wondered what it meant.
For a short spell Paddy ended up in the back with Ali. She took the opportunity to question him. “Do you have a mountain like this in your dimension?” she asked.
“Aye. Tall one like this.”
“Is it exactly the same?”
“Nothing is the same here. Nothing stays the same there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Missy must know.”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t answer so she tried another question. “If we have a big oil spill in our world, say down at the beach, does it show up in your world?”
“Aye. Something bad shows up. Doesn’t have to be oil.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Humans hurt this world, it hurts ours.”
“But the damage could take another form?”
“Aye.”
“What if you guys damage your dimension? Does it hurt our world?”
“Don’t know, and don’t care.”
“Are you still mad at me for dragging you in here?”
“Missy has the power. Paddy’s just a leprechaun.”
“I don’t feel that way. I value your opinion.”
He gave her a look as if to say: gimme a break.
“I do, really.” She added, “Thanks for sticking with us.”
He waved his hand. “Paddy is here. Tries to help.”
“Why do you want to help us?”
“Missy and Paddy have a deal.”
“You want to stay in our dimension, right?”
“Aye.”
“And build up a big pot of gold?”
“Aye. Paddy has never had much.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She hesitated. “Do you have a wife? Kids?”
“No gold, no wife.”
“Is that why you want gold? So you can get a wife?”
Her questions might have gotten too personal. The leprechaun lowered his eyes. “Paddy used to being alone,” he said quietly.
She changed the subject. “This cave is square-shaped. Do dwarves like that shape?”
“Aye. Dwarf caves always square, like their brains.”
Ali smiled. “Is that a leprechaun joke?”
“Aye. Paddy can joke.”
“I’m sure you can. Maybe when this is all over we can trade jokes. But I need to ask you more about the dwarves. This cave wasn’t made in the last few days. Dwarves must have built it in the past.”
“Don’t know, never asked.”
“Is it possible elementals came into our dimension many years ago? We have so many stories about them in our books.”
“Don’t know, and don’t care.”
“Did you ever talk to an elemental that had been here before?”
“Leprechauns don’t ask questions. Mind our own business.”
“You said that Lord Balar was angry at Lord Vak. But they have joined forces to attack humanity. Is that right?”
“Aye. Elves and dwarves fight together for first time.”
“Are you sure they intend to fight together? Could they just be acting like they’re together?”
“Not understand, Missy.”
“This is a dwarf cave. You’re afraid we might run into dwarves. But you also said the dark fairies live here. Is it possible the dwarves are working with the dark fairies?”
The idea shocked Paddy. “Dark fairies have no friends, only enemies.”
“Then who is letting them come through the Yanti?” she asked.
He hesitated. “The dark fairies . . . they must come from somewhere else.”
“Where?” Ali asked, surprised. Nemi had said nothing about another entrance into humanity’s realm.
Paddy averted his eyes. “Best not to talk about.”
“Do the dark fairies work for the Shaktra?” she persisted.
She had hit the wrong button, or else the right one. The leprechaun fell silent and absolutely refused to speak. She had got out of him all she could for the time being, she thought. Quickly, he moved up front to walk beside Karl and she was left alone with her questions.
What was the Shaktra? Was it a powerful elemental? Or something else?
Ali turned her mind to her last conversation with Nemi. He had said he could not help her with her next test, yet he had given her hints on how she might face it.
“Air is a mysterious element. Consider what is carried through the air—the greatest of all human inventions.”
What was the greatest of all human inventions? Atomic energy? No, that was a brilliant invention but one couldn’t say it was great. Atomic bombs killed people; besides, there was all that radiation to worry about. Rocket ships? Rockets had taken people to the moon and back, an amazing feat. Only, rockets were the one thing on Earth that did not travel through air.
Ali felt frustrated. Nemi had been purposely vague, she had no doubt. He didn’t want to hand anything to her on a plate. For that matter, he did not seem overly worried if she got killed trying to reach the Yanti. Perhaps there was no such thing as death to him.
Back to the riddle. What was carried through the air? Dust? Pollen? Kites? Balloons? Airplanes? Planes were cool, they brought people from all over the world together. But what did they have to do with her?
Absolutely nothing. It was driving her crazy!
Ali tried to remember more of their conversation.
“Something else troubles you.”
“Yes.”
“You feel something is wrong that you’re not seeing.”
“Yes. How do you know?”
Something wrong that she was not seeing? She could not see air.
But what did it mean? What had he said near the end?
“. . . You have learned to trust your feelings. There must be something important that you are missing. It could be right in front of your face.”
“And that’s the test of air?”
“It might be.”
Ali tried to match the clues. Something carried on the air. Something she was missing. Something right in front of her face. All related to her feelings, which she was supposed to trust.
“This is the stupidest riddle I have ever heard of,” she said aloud.
Then she had it. The answer, it came to her in a flash. The stupidest riddle she had ever heard of? What did she hear? What did all of them hear all the time?
Words. Language.
Language was the greatest of all human inventions. It was because of language that civilizations had formed. Language was carried through the air, between people. What words were right in front of her face that were troubling her? The question could have only one answer.
They had to be words that were not true.
Nemi had been telling her that someone was lying to her.
The test of air was unlike the other tests she had taken. She was not going to be swept away by a hurricane or lifted off to Oz in the center of a tornado. The test of air was the test of hearing what was true and what was false.
Unfortunately, the solution to the riddle raised even bigger questions.
Who was lying to her? Why were they lying to her?
Would they all die if she didn’t figure out the answers?
All of them except one? The one who was lying to her?
Ali’s thoughts swam. Her friends couldn’t be lying to her, could they? Farble was too stupid to lie. Wasn’t he? Paddy lied all the time, but so did all leprechauns. Or did they?
Ali had a headache. Fallin
g back a few steps, she let the others walk ahead. Her trust was shaken to the core. All of a sudden she was not sure if she wanted any of them for traveling companions.
They came to a fork in the cave; or rather, they ran into three metal doors, set one beside the other, arranged in a shallow semicircle. Perhaps to accommodate the doors—they were larger than those on normal houses—the cave swelled in size. The metal was dark and slightly dusty, cold to the touch, and all three were simple rectangles, devoid of special markings, although each had a domed curve at the top. Ali wondered if the doors led to other sets, if tunnels covered the entire interior of the mountain.
They stopped for a break. They had been walking underground for two hours and they were thirsty. Of course there was nothing to drink. Except for Karl, they sat against opposite walls near the three doors and stared at each other.
Their impromptu break was a sign of how exhausted they all were. Obviously they had to go through one of the doors to continue on their way and—it was almost a joke—they didn’t even have the strength to study them. Or perhaps they all assumed Karl would check them out. Basically, he was the one leading them forward.
“Turn off the flashlight since we’re not walking,” Ali told Karl. He went to obey but Cindy freaked out.
“I don’t want to sit here in the dark!” she said.
“We should save the batteries,” Karl said.
“Why do you always take her side?” Cindy asked.
“This isn’t about sides. If the light runs out, we’re all in trouble.”
“Leave it on then, we won’t sit here long,” Ali said.
“So now you’re deciding how long our breaks are going to be?” Cindy said.
“You want the light on, I told him to keep the light on,” Ali said. “What else do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Cindy grumbled.
“Oh brother,” Ali muttered.
“Stop it,” Steve said. “We have bigger problems. Or am I the only one who’s worried about the three choices we have in front of us? Which door leads out of here?”
Karl, who had never sat down, tried opening the door on the right. But the black handle refused to move; it appeared locked. Yet it was interesting—there was no place to insert a key. Karl tried the door in the center, and they were relieved to see it swing open. Especially when the door on the left also refused to budge.
“We might not have a choice after all,” Karl said. Stepping through the door—which appeared to simply extend the cave they were in—he stood silent for a moment, occasionally holding up his palms to feel the air. He even sniffed a couple of times, softly, before striding back through the door and walking over to Farble, who was sitting near Ali. Karl spoke to the troll.
“Does the central door lead outside?” he asked.
Farble nodded. “Outside.”
“Karl!” Steve exclaimed. “We’ve been over this with Ali. Don’t ask Farble to confirm what you think. First ask him what he thinks.”
“He’s probably agreeing with you because he wants you to like him,” Cindy said.
Karl nodded. “My mistake. But I’m pretty sure the middle passageway is the right one. It has a faint breeze in it. You can feel it.”
“What difference does it make?” Cindy asked. “It’s the only door that’s open.”
“It makes a huge difference,” Karl said. “If I didn’t feel fresh air, I would hammer on the other doors until we got them open.” He added, “I wonder if we shouldn’t do that anyway.”
“With what?” Steve asked. “Our heads?”
Ali forced herself to stand, and stepped through the central door. Like Karl, she could definitely feel a faint breeze, although the air continued to be warmer than expected. Because the open door was two feet thick—and solid metal—she didn’t see the point in Karl’s last remark. If the doors were locked, they were locked, they were not going to break through them. She tried each one to be sure, and it was as if the knobs had froze in place centuries ago.
Ali glanced at Paddy. “Do dwarves make doors like these?” she asked.
He hesitated. “No.”
The answer surprised her. Did dwarves avoid domes at the top of their doors? “Who does? Elves?” she asked.
“Paddy has never seen doors like this before.”
Again, his response surprised her—particularly since the doors did not have an elaborate design. They were thick, though, she had to admit that much, and they were heavy. The central door swung smoothly, the hinges did not even creak, but because of the sheer mass of the door, she had to lean into it to get it to move.
After ten minutes of rest, they continued on, through another square tunnel that seemed to lead nowhere. But just before they left the area, Ali lagged a little behind and tore a button off her shirt and set it in the crack—on the floor—where the door would fit if someone tried to close it. The button was on the large size and it was made of wood. It was possible—not likely, but possible—it could help wedge the door open if the breeze, or even a dwarf, tried to close it. She was paranoid of the door closing on them. Yet she was afraid to leave anything substantial behind—like a scarf—in case the dwarves saw it and used it to track them. One good thing about the button, it was painted black, and was hard to see on the floor of the cave.
Ali quickly caught up with her friends, and as they moved on, the cave began to angle upward, which Ali took to be a good sign. They had to go up sometime if they were to reach the top of the mountain.
Unfortunately, the altitude came back to haunt them. The air was no thicker inside the cave than outside. The increase in the slope demanded more effort. They got winded fast, especially Steve. Because Farble was bent over, trying to keep his head from hitting the ceiling, he was unable to carry Steve. And they only had the one light; they could not split up. They ended up having to take more frequent breaks.
Another couple of hours dragged by; these two were deadly. Ali didn’t know their altitude, but it must have been over twelve thousand feet. The floor kept getting steeper. As a group they would walk fifty feet, then stop and breathe for five minutes. Soon they were taking ten steps and stopping.
Despite Karl’s warnings, Ali could never have imagined the altitude bothering them so much. It felt as if they were hiking through an airless cavern on the dark side of the moon. Even when they did stop, Steve could not catch his breath. In the dim light, his skin shone with a blue tinge. He was slowing them down, and the clock kept ticking.
Ali wondered if taking the cave had been a mistake.
They came to another fork in the road, and the cave grew extremely wide—it was almost as if they entered a small cavern—because here there were seven doors to choose from, all neatly arranged in a deep semicircle. The doors were similar to the previous three, made of metal, with featureless handles in place of knobs, and with neatly designed domes on the tops. However, there was one major change. Each door was a different color. Starting on the far left, there was a red door, followed by an orange one, a yellow one, a green one, a blue one, a violet one, and on the far right there was a white door.
The colors intrigued Ali. She immediately stepped forward and tried to scratch at the blue paint—on the fifth door—to see if it would come off, and almost broke a nail for her efforts. It was as if the color was intrinsic to the door, not just a coat of paint that had been brushed on.
The Fifth Door. She had called it that in her mind without thinking.
The Blue Door. Something about it intrigued her.
She noticed there was no dust on these doors.
As a group they tried the doors, but only two opened—the red and yellow ones. Ali felt a stab of disappointment. She was not sure why. She had wanted the fifth door to swing wide. But five of them appeared locked and, once again, there was no place to insert a key.
Beyond the open doors, the red and yellow ones, the caves looked identical.
Identical to the cave they had been hiking in. At
least, up until it had expanded.
“It looks like we have a choice this time,” Steve said.
Ali finally turned to Farble. “Which door leads outside?” she asked.
The troll pointed to the yellow door.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Farble nodded his head.
“Have you been this way?” Ali asked Farble.
The troll shook his head.
“Oh no,” Steve groaned.
“Have you been through the red door?” she asked.
The troll nodded. Then shook his head.
“Are you confused?” Ali asked.
Farble glanced at Steve and nodded. “Sorry,” the troll said.
“But he liked the yellow door. That was his first choice,” Karl said.
“It means nothing,” Cindy said.
“I disagree,” Karl said. “I think we confuse him when we ask a lot of questions. His first choice might count for a lot. Also, I think the air is a bit fresher in that cave. It feels cooler. Plus the yellow door is more in the center.”
“What if both doors lead to the outside?” Ali said.
Karl nodded. “That’s possible. But if I were a dwarf and I was designing the layout of my tunnels, and had only one door that led to the outside, I would put it more in the center.”
“Now we’re getting into dwarf psychology,” Cindy muttered.
“The green door is the central door,” Ali pointed out.
“Yes. But it’s locked,” Karl said. “The yellow door is the next best thing.”
“You don’t want to pound the green door open?” Ali asked. “You considered that at the other doors.”
Karl shrugged. “I was being foolish. These doors are thick. We’re not going to force them open.”
“I wonder why only two are open?” Ali mused.
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