by Holly Hook
We had to keep the group together.
I had already killed once and I vowed to only do it one more time.
Everyone had stopped. The brothers all stood there, waiting for something to happen. Wesley spread his arms like he was challenging me to attack. The guy had nerve. Ignacia and Mica stayed together to my right and the other princes gathered in a tight group like they weren't sure what to do.
"Come on," I said to everyone. "We're leaving."
I was shocked when the brothers all remained silent. Everyone hung together like they weren't sure what to expect. These guys had been too easy to fight.
And then the worst possible thing happened.
"Annie!" Wesley shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth. "They're escaping!"
Chapter Nine
"Time to go," I said, picking up my pace.
Wings fluttered. She had been watching this the whole time. Brie passed me the wand while we ran and Candice stayed by my side. We all squeezed out through the gate and through the golden trees. The fluttering stayed with us. She was coming. She must have gotten here before we did. Annie had all night to roam the tunnels while we slept. The tunnel to the castle was the most promising, the most obvious. Of course she would have taken it over the others and gotten here before we did.
And I'd heard something about seven league boots...
"They're running!" Wesley said.
We squeezed through the second gate and past the trees of silver. The fluttering got very close. I ducked my head and kept the wand tucked to my chest.
I had forgotten the book.
I'd dropped it during the fight. I could only pray that Annie hadn't noticed.
"Go!" I yelled at Candice. She ran ahead of me and I put myself right behind her. Ahead was the shore and the boats. They all waited there like silent servants, bobbing up and down in the water. We would have to row while I held Annie off.
Candice jumped into a boat and it splashed. Everyone scrambled to get into one and I dared to turn around. Annie the raven dove right down towards me and I shouted the one spell that popped into my head, the throwback one. The raven hit an invisible wall and flew back towards the castle, hitting the brick with a thud. She fell to the ground, stunned, and fluttered her wings.
I could have killed her, but I hadn't. I turned and boarded a boat with Candice. Annie might go after my girlfriend to make me surrender the wand.
"Row!" Mica shouted.
Everyone had boarded a boat and Stilt and Henry had wound up together. There was no time to look awkward. Everyone took the oars. Candice took ours. "I'll row. You hold her off."
The boat hesitated, then left shore. The raven was recovering. It stood up and stared us down with those soulless eyes. I had never liked ravens mostly because Alric had a thing about them.
Candice rowed faster. I wanted nothing more than to help her, but I was the only one who could hold Annie off. My mind scrambled for a word that would stop her, that would take her flight away. Alric had used another to shift forms before and it was on the tip of my tongue.
"Kill her, Shorty," Candice said. "Don't hold back. Everyone knows you can use magic by now."
I tensed. I couldn't do it and I knew I could, which scared me. This was Candice here. Annie was evil and would kill her. No one else knew the real truth about me yet.
If they did, our team would fall apart. I knew how it worked. Nori didn't even want me and I was her flesh and blood.
The raven took flight.
She dove right down at us. There was nowhere to hide. Behind her, the prince brothers all waited on shore.
I lifted the wand at her and shouted, "Mensch!"
There was an explosion of black feathers and Annie appeared out of them.
About thirty feet above the water.
She floated there like a cartoon character who's just realized they walked off a cliff, looked down, and fell, screaming.
There was a huge splash, so big that Candice and I got soaked. One of the other girls screamed as the cold spray fell. One of the prince brothers shouted and I lowered the wand into my lap. The water calmed and a single red flower floated towards us. It was the reddest flower I had ever seen. I wondered if Annie had dropped it.
Candice scooped it up and turned it over in her hands. The flower was dry. That strange detail stuck out to me as she threw it down in the boat.
I watched as the surface of the water remained still.
And then Annie surfaced, gasping for air and flailing her arms.
"Annie!" Wesley shouted. "Are you okay?"
I got on the other oar and helped Candice row faster as she continued to cough and gasp for air. Annie hadn't been expecting this. I had forced her to change shape. She must know I could do some serious magic now.
The boat lurched and I realized we'd made it to shore. The others had as well. I scooped up the wand and Candice grabbed the flower. I didn't know what the flower was, but if it belonged to Annie we had to keep it away from her.
"Everyone!" Brie yelled. "Into the tunnel! Shorty will collapse it."
I seized the wand and waved everyone in. Darkness swallowed us as we ran and left the castle behind. Cold energy pricked at the back of my neck. Annie was ready to try something and I had the feeling I knew what.
I turned and faced the tunnel behind me. The castle continued to glow along with its lovesick princes on the other shore.
I yelled the word for collapse and the tunnel rumbled as the cold wrapped around me. My heart raced as Annie's power pushed back. She was treading water, pale as ever and glaring at me. My chest constricted and my heart raced. She was trying the killing spell on me. Dizziness overcame me and I focused what I had left on collapsing the tunnel. I was going to die. Candice would see and then she'd be free to go after them.
Stone and dirt toppled, blocking her from view. At the same time, the cold released me. My heart beat, normal and strong, as her power vanished from around me.
I fell back, panting, as the energy from the spell flowed from my body.
"Shorty!" Candice was behind me. She sounded like she was underwater. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I muttered, holding my chest. The pressure there dissipated. She'd lost focus. I was going to live. "We have to keep going. We need to get away from her before she finds a way around. The first cave in didn't do much to hold her back."
"Really," she said, helping me stand and wrapping her arm around me. I couldn't see a thing but I could smell her hair. It had a faint lavender scent. "I agree. I don't ever want to see any princes ever again."
"Hey," I said, poking her in the ribs.
"Except you."
"I don't really consider myself a prince, anyway." I was so relieved to be alive that I didn't care. My knees trembled, but I got them under control.
"Everyone," Mica said. "We need light. And we need to move. The next step is to find where Alric has his prisoners. We free them first. Then, we need to destroy Alric."
I could hear the fear in his voice. This was the most dreadful step in the whole thing.
My energy slowly came back as we walked. Mica let me eat some of the jerky he'd taken from the surface. That helped. First, we all walked up the tunnel in the dark, holding onto each other and following the sight of the purple ball of yarn that Ignacia held. I didn't want to give us light in case Annie could see through the cave-in or change her shape to something that could get through.
We walked for what felt like minutes through the dark tunnel in silence. It wasn't until the air changed and the draft returned that I knew we had made it back into that central room with the tunnels. It was only then did I do the spell to give us light.
Everyone squinted as the light filled the chamber. Tunnels spread out in all directions and I had to close my eyes for a bit to let them adjust. The brick-lined tunnel stood out among the rest. The other tunnels were plain and made of stone. There wasn't much dirt down at this depth anymore.
I listened, but no fluttering wings fo
llowed.
"That was close," Rae breathed. We were all trying to calm down the best we could. Rae gathered her hair, which was soaked from the ride across the river. All of us were drenched and the air was cold, making me shiver.
"I don't hear Annie coming," I said. "I wonder how she managed to get through that first cave in. This second one won't hold her forever if she got through the first."
"She could have found a way around," Candice said. "Or she used a spell to clear it. It was a big cave in. It would have taken her a while."
"Well, we don't have time to go back and check," Henry said. "The only way to go is forward. Whichever way that is."
I turned and faced all the tunnels. I couldn't even tell which one we had come out of. This would be utterly terrifying if it wasn't for the magical yarn that my grandmother had made.
"Shorty, where's the book?" Mica asked.
My stomach lurched. "I dropped it. Candice was a little more important," I said.
Mica slapped himself on the forehead. "Annie will have access to the entire Old Language if she gets it. Those lovesick princes back there will be happy to share with her in exchange for what they want."
Both Candice and Ignacia shuddered. "You guys were out for hours," Candice said. "Knocked out. I thought you guys might have been killed by that wine. It didn't affect Ignacia and I for some reason."
"Maybe the wine was supposed to knock out anyone who's not a princess," Brie said. "They didn't have an interest in Rae and I. Just Candice and Ignacia. We dealt with some strange magic back there."
"And now Annie's with them," I said. "All the reason to keep moving."
Candice was staring at me, burning with the question I didn't want to answer in front of everyone. Why hadn't I just killed Annie while I had a good shot?
I knew why I hadn't and she did, too. Maybe I had gotten lucky and she had drowned or those princes were so desperate back there that she would do for them.
I had to change the subject.
"Candice," I said. "Did those princes...do anything? If they did, I will go back and kill them." Annie was different. If someone had ever hurt Candice...
"They just forced us to dance," she told me. "They said they were doing to dance until our shoes fell apart. I didn't know what would happen after that, but I don't want to imagine it. My shoes are fine, by the way." She pulled up her skirt a bit and showed me. "It was two hours of hell."
"Two hours?" I asked. I really wanted to go and kill those princes now.
"It's over with," Candice said. "Ignacia--can we find where Alric's prisoners are?"
Ignacia had bags under her eyes, which looked worse from the shadows being cast under them by the light. "Sure," she said, holding up the yarn. "Show us where Alric keeps his prisoners."
The yarn rose and my heart raced. I didn't know how far away we were, what kingdom we were under or even what region we were under. We had only talked a total of a day and a half but distance meant nothing down here if Stilt was right.
The yarn hesitated.
Then it unraveled, the purple string shooting down a tunnel on the far left.
I watched it unravel for what felt like minutes. Ignacia cringed more and more as it took longer and longer. The yarn ball itself didn't shrink for a while, as if there was an infinite amount of thread, but at last, it began to shrink and stopped altogether. The yarn floated in the air, a silent beacon to follow into the dark.
"We have a long way to walk," Ignacia said.
A big part of me was relieved. We had some time before we had to face Alric. We were closer, but not there yet. We must still be under the light region of Fable, at least. Not, of course, that it had much bearing down here.
I glanced down the dark brick tunnel again and wondered if those princes would starve or if they were too obnoxious for that. They might slow down Annie. That was my hope.
Ignacia had one more order for the yarn. "Roll up behind us," she said. "Don't let Annie find you and follow."
* * * * *
This walk stretched out even longer than the ones before it.
We stopped once and ate some jerky that Stilt had packed. I hadn't even thought about food down here and had forgotten to mention it when we were on the surface. Thankfully the tunnel we stopped in was dry and the light spell was easy to maintain. I set the wand down on my lap while Stilt got out the jerky for everyone to munch on. I was hungry and I probably ate too quickly.
We'd seen nothing of interest through this whole tunnel, except for a small group of neutral elves going in the opposite direction with a lantern. None of them wanted to stop and talk to us and pretended that we weren't there. They didn't even wave to Stilt, but he didn't take any offense to it. "Most elves are like that," he'd said. "Most of the time, it's better if we don't take an interest in you."
That had been one or two hours ago, and the light of their lantern had long since vanished down the tunnel. I wondered if these tunnels were like roads between underground kingdoms like we had on the surface.
This wasn't a well traveled tunnel. Stilt had said that, too. The better ones tended to have more elves and dwarves traveling in them. "Maybe they don't want to end up around those princes," he'd said. "I don't blame them."
"Or wherever Alric likes to hang out," I told him.
It felt good to take a break and munch on the jerky, which made me hungrier at first. At least the underworld had lots of underground springs full of clean water so that wasn't a problem. But if we stayed down here too long, food would be.
"So," Stilt said to me. "You're the heir to the Star Kingdom's throne. Magic must run strong in the family."
I choked on my jerky a bit. "I suppose it does," I said.
"It does, in some," Stilt said. "It's something most keep under wraps. At least, with your kind that's the case. I feel bad for you."
"You're right," I said. "We do have to keep secrets."
"It's stupid," Stilt said. "There's nothing wrong with light magic. It's only the dark kind that should be frowned upon."
"I agree," I said, a little too fast.
"So why did you decide to strike against Alric?" Brie asked.
I scrambled for an answer. "I'm not stupid," I said. "I know the darkness will get to the Star Kingdom sooner or later. There are even some dark spots forming there. We've got to do something before it's too late."
Brie looked at me like she knew there was more to it than that.
Candice changed the conversation. "He almost killed us and made our story end wrong. We want revenge. Prince Lawrence of the Fox Kingdom worked with Alric at one point from what we understand and he helped put a princess in prison."
"I heard that Lawrence is dead," Mica said. "That is the message my father got when he was still alive. An assassin killed him with magic. It's thought the assassin was connected to Alric, but he got away."
I shuddered.
Mica didn't know that the assassin was sitting across from him in this tunnel right now. It was all the more reason to keep who I was a secret. Next to me, Candice shifted. We were both really uncomfortable and I hoped this break would end sooner rather than later.
But it didn't. The others continued to talk about the growing dark spots in the other kingdoms, including the one that had overtaken Mary's village. Brie mentioned others in the forest around that same village and how even the wolves were trying to avoid it. I remembered the wolves Henrik had serving him at one point. They would tear your throat out as soon as look at you. Wolves were normally okay in Fable. Some were regular wolves and others were shifters, but only when they spent too much time in a dark area did they turn evil. Alric had enslaved many of them, turning them dark and making them serve him.
If I remembered right, the ones that used to serve Henrik had been cast into the underworld by Henrik's prisoners, leaving only the ravens.
Awesome. I had a feeling the prisoners responsible for that were sitting across from me. Not that I blamed them, of course. I had never liked those wolv
es hanging around the castle. Even when I was heading in and out with my other grandmother, they threatened to snap at me.
Our break ended once we had eaten all of our jerky. I was relieved when we started to walk again. The yarn continued to hang next to us, floating. It formed a pale purple line into the dark.
We passed another group of elves who were pushing a cart full of rocks. They looked tired and spoke among themselves in a language that I didn't know. Stilt said something to them in the same tongue and they waved to each other, then kept going. He was right that elves didn't want much to do with others. We were probably as interesting as a bug crawling up the wall.
The tunnel sloped downwards and we started seeing dwarves instead of elves. The dwarves were even more gruff than the elves and ignored us even more, even brushing past us as if we were a nuisance. I didn't want to engage those guys. Even though I had the wand, the dwarves all had long beards, ugly faces and teeth that were even more yellow than a pile of dirty dishes. They didn't smell the best, either. We passed our first group of them about an hour after we passed the elves. Three of them pushed a cart of black ore past us and we all had to get in single file to go around. One of the dwarves stared right at me and grinned, showing all his horrible teeth. I grinned back and kept walking. A smile wouldn't start a fight, right? I had heard from my nanny that dwarves usually fought with brawn instead of brains, but they were strong, even though all of them stood about four feet tall.
"Was that Doc and Dopey?" Candice whispered once the cart and its lantern were past us. "Dwarves weren't that ugly in the Disney movie."
"You're talking to someone who has never seen Disney movies," I told her. "Except for that one with the girl and the dog creature on a surfboard and that one had nothing to do with any fairy tales."
"It's just that...in the other world, people think that dwarves sing and are all cute," she said.
"I've never seen a cute dwarf." I'd seen only a few in my life. "If you called them that, you'd probably earn a hammer over your head."
"I'll remember that."