by Holly Hook
"It is," Brie said. "I can't tell if there's a tree on it. Or a cave."
"We have to get closer," said Stilt. "It's still miles away. I don't like this. The ravens could hide behind that."
"We need to take the risk," Brie said. "We can't leave that kingdom to Alric."
"Why are you so willing to risk yourselves?" I asked. I couldn't understand how someone could care so much about a kingdom that had given them nothing.
"It's complicated," Brie told me.
I thought about my experience. "Did you do something you regret? That you feel you need to fix?"
Brie kept walking, avoiding my gaze. Stilt joined her. I could sense the tension in the hot air. A breeze blew, cooling my face. I took another drink of the water, thankful it hadn't sickened me yet.
We drew closer to the cliff, and the flock didn't return. I thought I spotted something dark on top of the cliff, and it took another hour of walking to confirm that it was, in fact, a tree, a dead one like the ones we had left in the desolate grasslands.
"That's it," I said. "The tower is behind that."
Mother wanted to send me out here.
To live.
I focused on the dread feeling in my stomach. It was still there, resting like a sleeping beast.
And she had never hugged me.
I turned Brie's words over again and again, wishing I had looked at Mary's book of answers.
The cliff drew closer and at last we stood near its base. The tree stood right above us like a sentinel keeping watch over whatever was behind it. I reached out and touched the stone. I relished standing in the shadow. It felt great to cool off, and we leaned against the cliff, drinking our water.
My skin was red and painful to touch on my arms. So was Brie's and Stilt's. "What's happening?" I asked, rubbing my finger down it.
"They're sunburns," Brie explained. She eyed the sky. "Even though there's no sun out here. I guess in the dark region you still get all the bad things about deserts."
"Is there any way past this?" I asked. The rock wall was even higher than my tower. There were no handholds, no loose bricks to put the toes of my boots on. "Or a way around? The old elf mentioned a cave between two boulders."
"We can check," Brie said. "I don't think someone would put a tower behind this if there wasn't a way in."
"Maybe there used to be a settlement out here," Stilt said. "Someone was trying to protect us. But this is the dark region. We can't expect anything good. Let's find those two boulders."
We walked along the bottom of the cliff, leaving the faint road far behind. I could imagine that there was an ancient settlement out here, buried under the dust. This place held secrets. The stone wall looked as if it had jutted up out of the sands like a monster. It seemed impenetrable. How was Henry supposed to get through here if it was his story to wander to this place?
Then I spotted it.
The two boulders, standing like guards at the base of the cliff.
And an opening in the stone, far ahead.
"There," I said. "I see a doorway."
"A cave," Brie said.
We reached the cave and took another drink of water. I peered inside. The opening looked like a dark mouth opening into the underworld itself, but the ground inside sloped upward, not down. That made me feel better.
"I think this is the way in," Stilt said. "I see no light inside and we have nothing to light our way with."
"There could be anything in there," Brie said. "Some scary bandit or some treasure trove or some monster that will come up and eat us."
I listened. The wind whistled through the void inside. I couldn't see very far into the cave but there was no other sound but the creepy wind.
"We have no other option," Stilt said. "I think we should go in. At least we'll get out of the heat."
"I don't like this," Brie said. "This is the dark region."
"I don't like it, either," Stilt said. "But we have to reverse—we have to do what we have to do."
"Reverse what?" I asked. "Did your story end the wrong way?"
Stilt nodded. "In a way."
Cawing filled the air above us and my heart dropped.
The three of us bolted into the cave at the same time. I crashed into Stilt and we scrambled uphill just as the thunder of thousands of wings sounded overhead. The ravens were here. This was their base. Once again, they were out on the search, waiting for us to come walking across the desert.
I held my breath and stood there, watching the pale light outside the cave dim with the birds. More feathers rained down, and the cawing reached a peak, then grew fainter as the ravens left. Brie uttered a curse next to me.
"This is dangerous," she said. "Alric must be inside these cliffs somewhere. There's no way we can fight him."
I felt ready to be sick. The ravens were still out there. We could wait until they returned to their roost inside the cliffs to leave, but we would have to move fast to keep them from seeing us. Or we could continue inside. Henry might be in here. So might Mother if she had stayed with Alric. Even dark, she didn't want to destroy me. Mother might still be an ally in all of this.
"We have to sneak around," Brie said before I could speak up. "Going out isn't a good idea right now. We're better off going deeper into this cave. Let's link hands so we don't get separated. And take small steps in case there's a drop off somewhere."
We felt around while the cawing continued to grow fainter, but it never vanished. We had been in that inn for a long time. Alric had time to set up camp out here. We could well be walking into death.
But at least I had friends with me.
We linked hands and stepped uphill, taking it one step at a time, because there wasn't anything else we could do. This could just be another trap like the inns. The ravens outside got louder, then grew faint again. They were searching the entire area for us. For Henry too. Henry wouldn't have a place to hide if they found him.
At last, light filtered through the darkness ahead. It was faint, but my eyes got used to picking up little things in the dark. I had practiced my entire life in the tower because there was nothing else to do. "Do you see that?" I asked.
"See what?" Stilt's voice was quiet.
"The light ahead. There's an exit up ahead."
It took another minute of creeping through the cave for Stilt to see it. "Ah," he said. "You're right."
"Well, when your hobby is looking out of your tower and watching every little detail around you, you become skilled at things like this," I told him.
The cawing faded more as if the birds had moved on to another area. I felt just a bit safer. Once we got behind this rock wall, they might return and find us there, and then there would be nowhere to run. There would be no turning neutral for them.
And worse, Alric could be waiting.
The light got brighter and my eyes adjusted. The cave sloped downwards now and the full brightness hit. I squinted as I glimpsed sand and yellow weeds. "We made it through," I said.
"Don't walk out there just yet," Brie said. "We need to see what's waiting. It could be a trap."
The three of us crept closer to the cave's exit and stopped.
It was surreal. I'd seen nothing like this.
We stared into a huge space surrounded by the high cliffs as if giants had put up a wall to protect this place. Most of the space was sand and nothing else. Some sand had blown against the walls and collected in heaps from years of wind. This place was even more barren than the desert outside as if someone had erased whatever was here.
And in the center of this desolate space stood another tower.
It rose out of the dunes as if challenging the despair. This tower wasn't as old as mine and was tan instead of gray, but it had a single window looking over the land and a dark red roof instead of a brown one. Other than the color, it was the twin of the one I had left behind.
This was where Mother wanted to send me to keep me from Henry.
I imagined sitting up there all day long with no
thing but sand and cliffs to look at. There were no flowers here. There wasn't a single patch of green.
No wonder the ravens had left. They needed to go seek food and water.
I couldn't hear any of the cawing now, but perhaps the cliffs blocked the noise. "Do you see anyone?" I asked Brie and Stilt.
"I don't," Brie said. "But that doesn't mean no one's in the tower. We need to go out there."
I wondered how Henry would get out here if he hadn't already. We might be too early or too late. I took the first bold step out into the clearing and the heat beat down on me again, even with the lack of sun. This valley in the cliffs was enormous, big enough to house a kingdom if only there could be water and life here.
The sand was hard to walk across and I was glad Stilt had found me some boots at the elf's village. The wind blew through the valley, erasing our footsteps as we went. I was glad for that, at least. We had to leave no evidence of us crossing.
I studied the window of the tower.
The structure meant to be my prison.
That was how I thought of it now. Now that I had walked across the world, through good and bad, the thought of going back to a small, circular space was unbearable. There would be no Brie and Stilt there. No Henry. There would only be Mother and my duty to her.
I would heal Mother if I found her but I would not go back in that tower.
"I think there's a trapdoor," Stilt said. He stopped at the base of the tower and pointed. "It's kind of buried in the sand, but it's here."
"A trapdoor?" I asked.
"A door that leads to the underground," Brie said.
"To the underworld?" I asked.
She wiped the hair from her forehead which was reddening. "I don't know. But there's something here. Look."
They were right. A set of doors leaned against the base of the tower. They were just as red as the roof and it was clear they belonged to this tower.
I had a bad feeling about this, but at least we had a place to duck if the ravens came back. "We need to look in there," I said.
"I was afraid of that," Stilt said.
"There's nowhere else Henry could be if he's here," I said. My heart constricted. This might be the only chance of him still being alive. Of saving my kingdom from Alric.
And there was no other way into the tower.
I leaned down, let my hair drop, and opened the doors.
Stairs spiraled down into darkness and a musty smell came up not unlike the one on the inside of my tower.
But these stairs went down. Not up.
Something was wrong here.
"Who's first?" I asked.
Brie sniffed the mustiness. "This doesn't seem like it should be out here. I don't understand what all of this is."
"There's only one way to find out," Stilt said.
I took a breath. "I'll go," I said, hating those words. "This is my story. I accept that. And I need to make it end the way it should." I let my eyes adjust to the dark as I tiptoed down the first few steps.
Chapter Fourteen
Coolness washed over my skin as the three of us descended through the ground, leaving the hot desert above us. Brie closed the doors behind her as the cawing returned, louder than ever. The ravens were returning from their scouting trip and they had just cleared the cliffs.
And then, hundreds of little feet landed right above us. The bird army had returned to its base.
They had us trapped.
"Make no noise," Stilt whispered. "They might not know we're in here."
I grabbed onto the wall and descended. I was eight years old again, going down those dangerous stairs with Mother breathing down my back. With Mother not caring if I fell and got hurt.
With Mother who might have only kept me for what I could do for her.
The bricks were mossy and slippery and the air damp. The desert hadn't stolen every drop of moisture from this place. Brie and Stilt followed me. A tiny sliver of light appeared on the steps and I walked past it. Beyond this, it was pure black.
When I was eight, I'd imagined an underworld under my tower.
This might be it.
And this time, I felt determined to explore it.
The stairs spiraled down, down. These were sturdy as if someone had maintained them. The musty smell got stronger the farther down we went until at last, a cool breeze blew against me. It was a relief after the long trek through the sands.
"Feel that?" I asked. We had left the tiny footfalls of the birds behind us.
"I do," Stilt said. "It feels like the breath of the underworld. We're headed down into it. Well, into its uppermost layers."
"Isn't that a bad thing?" Brie asked. "I mean, we banished all those wolves into the underworld right along with King Henrik."
"You what?" I asked.
"King Henrik was not a nice man," Stilt explained. "He liked to force people to spin gold for him. That's what he did with Brie and I. Our only escape from his castle was to banish him. He would have taken over all of Fable if we hadn't."
"Like Alric," I said. "Will we meet this Henrik down here?"
"Henrik fell a hundred leagues into the earth," Stilt said. "That is much farther down than this. I doubt we will see him soon."
I didn't ask for any more information. We continued down, and then a space opened and the cool breeze overtook me. "We've reached the bottom."
I shuddered and held my braid close. A void waited before us and I couldn't tell which direction was what. But then I spotted a light ahead, a faint one that flickered. "Do you see that?"
"This time, I do," Stilt said. "I think that's a torch."
I didn't ask what a torch was. It must have been something like a lantern. We scrambled around and linked hands again, then walked forward into the darkness. I wasn't sure how we would find the stairs again.
My new boots clicked against the stone. Or brick. I couldn't tell what it was. The musty smell cleared, and we drew closer to the light. As we did, I realized it was a fire on a stick, anchored to the wall with a metal bar. This was a torch. Light fell on Brie and Stilt as we entered its glow. Shadows grew and shrunk under their eyes, making them both look creepy.
"I think we'll take this," Brie said, pulling the torch out of its mount. Heat fell on me as she did. "Someone's been here if this is lit. Let's hope it's this Henry you were talking about." She managed a smile at me.
"Henry might be blind. He wouldn't light this device," I said.
"Oh," Brie said. The smile dropped off her face. "Good point."
With the torch in tow, we moved in our little circle of light. Bricks. Lots and lots of bricks lined the hallway that we were moving down. We walked for what seemed like forever. Several passages branched off from this one and archways led off into darkness, but I heard no sounds other than our breathing. We had touched on some kind of underground network. I hadn't imagined that it was even possible to build under the sands like this.
"It looks like the lower level of a castle," Stilt said. "Almost like the dungeons. Only, it's not. I think these passages might lead to other parts of the underworld."
More dread filled my being and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. "I don't like that."
I blinked, and a few more lights—torches—lit an area far ahead. As we approached, I noticed a large space at the end of the hallway, a chamber of some sort. Shapes that might be shiny tables stood everywhere and a large one was straight ahead. The firelight reflected off of it. Glass. I had seen enough of it now to recognize what it was.
"Brie," Stilt said in a tone that carried so much more. "I think we might be in the wrong story."
He stopped and frowned at us. I didn't understand.
"Wrong story?" I asked. "This is Henry's and mine. Alric even said so. Mother planned to send me out here. No other place around here is like this."
Stilt waved us forward. "It might be, but it's also another story. Let's see what's in those boxes."
We stepped forward. The chamber ahead was huge, the siz
e of several houses. Then I saw what the shiny things were.
Glass boxes. With things inside of them.
I stopped by the first one as the room opened. A tiny village sprawled out inside a large, wide glass box that rested on a pedestal. Stilt brought his torch closer as the three of us gathered around. The plants inside of it were green and real looking. Tiny flowers dotted the village in splashes of color. Even a castle stood in the center of it all, complete with red and white flags. Nothing moved inside. A tiny horse stood in a tiny field, head down as if to eat grass. White dots that must be chickens stood still between houses I could fit on my finger. It was as if someone had shrunken down an entire kingdom and stuffed it inside this box. Was such a thing even possible?
"Alric," Brie said. "Alric did this. I don't know which kingdom this is. It might even be the one we escaped that one time."
“It’s not,” Stilt said. “This is different. The other one had its castle up on a hill.”
I shuddered. "Alric shrunk a whole kingdom and stuffed it in this box? Is this where he keeps his victims?" I searched the room. There were so many glass boxes and jars in here. Dozens. No. Hundreds.
“It must be,” Stilt said. “I know Alric can keep his victims in jars as clouds of vapor but I didn’t know where he kept his victims until now.” He moved away, breathing heavy. “Your Henry might be here.”
We moved through the room, which was light enough to see. More boxes stood on pedestals. There were so many that I felt we were standing in an army of glass. Colored vapor swirled inside each prison as if spirits had remained trapped down here for a long time. There were jars, too. They stood stuffed in between the boxes and were also filled with vapor. Brie paused and put her hand on one.
"I've seen this before," she said. Her hand was shaking. "I've seen Alric turn people into vapor and put them in these jars. There is at least two kingdoms' worth of people down here. I think we should go." Her face was pale in the firelight.