by D. S. Murphy
“I took out four at JDRI,” I said. “I saved Puriel. If I had more time at Nevah, Stephanie could have taught me more. But I left. And Matt died.” The image of Matt’s body flashed across my mind. The death I’d seen, and the one I caused. I’d been so stupid. Matt almost died protecting me from Puriel. Then I released Puriel and he killed Matt anyway, just like my vision. Everything turned to death and ash around me.
The happiness I’d been feeling a moment before turned to bitterness, and my mood plummetted. I watched Max and Jessie, sitting close together at one of the tables. Jessie fed him a grape and he whispered something in her ear.
“Does Priya know?” I asked. “About me releasing Puriel? Does she know that he was going to propose?”
“No,” Sitri said, frowning. “But we’ll deal with that later.”
“She’s going to kill me,” I said.
“I won’t let that happen,” he said.
“I would deserve it. It’s my fault. Everything is my fault. Everyone who gets near me dies.”
“It may seem that way—”
“You don’t understand! You can’t imagine what it’s like, to live like this. Nobody can. Nobody will ever understand.” I stood up and stormed off through the trees. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was suddenly fuming. I felt a rage deep within me, maybe one I’d been holding onto my whole life, and was suddenly brewing to the surface. Rage at my parents for not believing me; rage at the red car I couldn’t stop even though I knew it was coming. I made it through the thin pines to the sea. The brisk air stung my nostrils. It was cold away from the fire, and I felt both feverish and freezing at the same time. Suddenly I heaved over and puked, retching until my stomach was empty.
Purge, I heard Amaratha’s voice say. It sounded like she was right next to me. I spun around, but I was all alone in the darkness. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and splashed water on my face.
Then I made my way back to the others. I tried following the music and the light of the fire, but no matter how far I walked, they never seemed to get any closer. I thought the patch of land on the back side of the island had been small, but now it opened up like a kaleidoscope, presenting me with an array of paths. No matter which path I chose, however, I could never find my friends. I felt like somehow I was going in circles, lost in a deep forest when the fire should have been right in front of me.
My legs felt heavy and I stumbled into the brush. When I got up again, my vision was funny, affected somehow. Geometric patterns danced in front of my eyes, and the branches and leaves grew and multiplied.
I ran through the forest, picking up the hem of my white gown, and shouting for someone to come find me. Just when I was ready to give up, I broke through a patch of branches and found myself on the edge of the clearing again, with the campfire directly in front of me. The flickering light cast enormous shadows on the cliff face. A few of the girls were still spinning around the campfire. Their identical faces looked like porcelain masks. Creepy marionettes, conducted by an invisible hand.
I searched for Sitri and my jaw dropped when I found him. Madeline was on his lap, running her fingers through his hair. She looked up at me and smiled wickedly, then bent down and gave him a deep, open-mouth kiss. He ran his hands over her body and cupped her breasts with his palms.
My eyes filled with tears and I stumbled backwards into the dark forest. I felt so stupid. What had I expected? It’s not like he could touch me. I stalked off through the wood again, running blindly until I smashed into someone.
Sitri. I shoved away from him.
“How did you get over here so fast?” I asked, looking behind me.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “You disappeared. I’ve been looking for you since you ran off.”
“Bullshit!” I said. “It looked like you had your hands pretty full with Madeline a minute ago.”
He looked at me like I’d gone crazy.
“That literally never happened,” he said slowly, his palms up.
“I saw you!” I snarled, clenching my fists. The anger focused my vision and I saw his thread, floating lazily above him. Part of me wanted to grab it, and squeeze it until he crumpled on the ground. Instead I pushed past him, trying to knock him off balance. He caught me around the waist and pinned me against a tree.
“I don’t know what you think you saw with Madeline,” he said slowly, “but it never happened. I’m here for you. You’re all I care about.”
I struggled and tried to slap him, but he caught my wrist in his hand. Then he kissed me. I pulled back in shock, expecting a vision, but none came. I sighed with relief. Nothing. No bloody death. His eyes searched me for answers, and mine widened when I realized this could really happen. I grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him down to me again. He kissed me before I could change my mind.
Puriel’s kiss had been gentle and tentative. Sitri’s made my blood burn like fire. Rough, excited, like he was trying to smother me. Like I was air and he needed me to survive. His stubble scratched my cheek. His hands explored my body, one hand lifted up my dress and I felt his hand on my thigh, lifting my leg around him. I moaned into him, pulling him tighter. I could feel his warmth through my skin. My whole body trembled, responding to his touch. My skin.
Purge. Purge your fears, your desires.
I heard Amaratha’s voice again, whispering on the wind. My fears, and my desires. If Sitri kissing Madeline hadn’t been real, how could I be sure that this was?
“I can’t do this,” I said, pushing him away. My hand lingered on his chest. It felt so amazing to be touched, to be wanted. But that could wait. I wasn’t here for that. I couldn’t get distracted.
“Able needs me to get the shears to defeat Zeus. Until we do that, neither of us can afford to make any mistakes. If this is real, whatever it is, it can wait. Agreed?”
Sitri looked hurt, and I could tell he wanted to argue. But he held his tongue as I took a deep breath and backed away. This time the fire was easy to find.
They were waiting for me at the mouth of the cave. Amaratha, with her purple robe and golden crown. Eumelia with her white gown and blue tunic. She was wearing a deer skull on her head, and her hair was pulled up in tangled knots and its antlers.
“It is time,” Amaratha said.
“I’m ready,” I answered.
Then we descended into the cave.
10
Eumelia’s flaming torch barely pierced the darkness of the underground tunnels. Once we were alone, she paused and handed me a flask. I sniffed it skeptically.
“Relax,” she said. “It’s just water—to clear your head. You’re going to need it.”
“You’re not coming with me?” I asked.
“We guard, we do not enter,” she said with a shrug. In the flickering light, she looked ageless.
“But aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know if they’re really down there?”
“Few who seek the Fates find them,” Eumelia said. She chewed her lip. It looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she continued forward. We turned so many times I was completely lost, and still we went deeper. The silence was so absolute it pushed into my eardrums. The air felt damp and chilled, and condensation dripped down the rock walls.
“It’s that way,” Eumelia said, stopping suddenly, pointing up ahead into the darkness.
“Take the candle,” she said. “Be careful. Go as far as you can. Return the same way.”
I trembled, and the hair on my arms stood up.
“Is it dangerous?” I asked.
“That depends on how far you get. Few enter. Even fewer return. But you should know… even if you survive, nobody sees the Fates without paying a great price.”
She left the light with me and disappeared the way we’d come. The isolation crashed down on me. Whatever was up ahead, I’d need to face it on my own. Nothing can hurt you, I whispered to myself. I continued down the passage until I came to a dead end. There was a mural on the fl
at wall in front of me. It looked like an antique a map of the world. In the center was a tree, with long roots and branches spreading out in every direction. It reminded me of the indoor temple and tree at Able’s house in Nevah, but this wasn’t a geneology. Some of the branches connected with the roots; others seemed purely decorative.
At first I wondered if I’d gotten lost, or if Eumelia had sent me in the wrong direction… but I hadn’t seen any other turns or passageways. This had to be the right way. There has to be something here.
I pressed my fingertips against the rough rock wall and closed my eyes, trying to feel my way inside. There was magic here, the energy gave me goosebumps. There must be a hidden message; something like what we found in the painting. Something only I could see. I was getting better at shifting into my visionary state. The first time it happened, Mist was kicking my ass. After that, it mostly happened when I was in pain, or upset. A defense mechanism maybe, triggered when my adrenaline shot up. But I didn’t have to wait until something bad happened—I could control it, it just took longer.
I took a deep breath and unfocused my eyes, then stepped back until the whole mural fit into my field of vision. Gradually, I noticed it. Some of the roots were subtly glowing with energy. They converged at a spot in the lower left side of the mural. I blinked and focused my eyes on the wall again. I couldn’t see anything there, but when explored the area with my fingertips, I could feel a very tiny line in the rock. A circle. I put my palm against it and pushed.
It gave under the pressure, and I heard a heavy grinding as a doorway rolled open. The ground trembled under my feet, and I was hit by a gust of warm, sour air. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of rotting eggs. I knew from a science channel documentary that it was probably sulfur. The same show had explained that the Book of Revelations places Satan’s permanent residence on a lake of burning sulfur. This place literally smelled like Hell.
The tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern. The ceiling was so high I could barely see it, hundreds of feet above. My footsteps echoed in the empty space. The path cut through the rock and pitched down a steep flight of stairs, carved directly into the rocks. Water trickled down the walls, forming massive stalagmites and stalagtites. The steps were slick, so I held one hand against the wall and descended carefully.
My fingers felt a smooth patch of the wall and I held up the light to find a curving white stone. I could have sworn it was a tooth—a fossilized fang as long as my arm, preserved in the wall. In the center of the room were three crystal clear pools of teal colored water. The smell was stronger here, it was giving me a headache. I held a hissing noise, and found a small fissure in the rock, surrounded by black charring. Very carefully, I reached the candle out in front of me. It connected with the natural gas and erupted into a pillar of green fire, singing the hair on my arm. The fire lit up the cavern, and I gasped when I saw the wall near me.
A huge carving of three woman loomed above. It was so eroded with age, it looked like their faces were melting off like wax. Underneath the carving was an altar of some kind, and a pile of blackened remains. Hundreds of gleaming white ribs curved up from the pile of charcoal. It must have been a giant reptile of some kind. I found the skull—I could have fit my head in its jaws, and its rows of razor-sharp teeth were ten inches long. Good thing it was already dead.
One of the faceless women above was pointing a stern finger to the right. I followed it, and in the far corner of the cavern I found a narrow passageway, a crevice in the cave walls. I slipped into it sideways, slowly moving forward. I felt something brush against my foot, but it was so tight I could barely bend over. I reached my hand down with trembling fingers, casting a spotlight on the ground. Large white scorpions scuttled around my feet. I bit my lip to keep from screaming. Thank God I still had my black allstars on. The sisters had tried to get me to put on a pair of dainty sandals for the ceremony, but I’d refused. I already felt naked.
I bit my lip and forced myself forward. I felt a disgusting crunch as I stepped on one of the cave critters, and then nearly slipped on its slippery, wet insides. I was almost in tears when I finally stumbled out of the narrow chasm into a wider room. I squatted down to check the floor—it was blissfully free of the cave critters. I kicked my feet anyway. My skin was crawling, and I rubbed my hands over my skin to make sure I didn’t have any scorpions on me. I took a few deep breaths, then explored the room.
There was a long extiguished firepit, and a bare patch of stone that had been worn smooth over time. The walls of the room were covered in notes and illustrations, chiselled into the rock or written in black charcoal. It looked like Italian. I only saw one thing I recognized—a name. Oreste Zetico. Was he the last person here? That was centuries ago.
I couldn’t read the writing, so I studied the pictures. It looked like a battle scene from some primitive mythology; a stick figure man facing a giant serpent. Then butchering the serpent and burning it on a fire, under the giant statues I’d passed when I entered. Had he caught that monster and eaten it to stay alive?
Then there was something else. A man in a boat, and a small round circle, with arrows pointing into what looked like a well. I didn’t know what that one was about. Next to the fire pit I found a long white tooth. Someone had wrapped one end in leather and sharpened the edge. I picked it up, grateful to have some kind of weapon with me.
On the far side of the room were rows of single scratches, hundreds of them. It looked like some kind of pattern, but then I realized it was counting. Zetico, or whoever was here before, had been counting the days. I wondered how he could even keep track. With no natural light source down here, the nights would be indistinguishable from the days. I panicked, thinking about whether I’d have to stay down here that long.
What if someone shut the door behind me? Would I be trapped down here too? The blood rushed to my ears. It was stupid of me not to stick a rock or something in the door, to make sure it stayed open until I returned. But I’d come so far already, I wanted to see what was at the end of the path first.
Through the room there was another tight crevice, but shorter this time, and then more stairs down. At the base of the stairs, a wide cavern with a low roof opened up into an underground river.
At the edge of the water was a dock that looked like it would rot away if I stepped on it. A small canoe was tied to it with a piece of twine. Seriously? I tried to think back, in case I’d missed any other passageways. How could I be sure I was even going the right away? Then I remembered the drawing in the cave. Maybe they were directions. But if that were true, I should’ve already killed a giant snake by now, and there was no way that was happening.
I stepped carefully into the canoe and untied it. There was a long stick on the dock, presumably for steering. I grabbed it and untied the twine, shoving away from the pier. The canoe drifted forward calmly. I tried to touch the bottom, but it was too deep. I navigated by pushing myself off the walls instead. Deeper, into the bottomless abyss, the perennial darkness, the eternal unknown. I kept thinking up names for my odyssey. Maybe it would seem less scary if I made it sound like a fairy tale. The heroines of those stories always triumphed in the end, didn’t they?
Something bumped against my canoe and I saw the water ripple smoothly. Something large was moving below the surface.
Shit.
I held my candle closer to the water, but all I could see was my own reflection, wavering uncertainly over the ink-black liquid. The boat was still rocking, and my heart pounded in my chest, but I couldn’t give up now. I had to keep moving. I reached out and grabbed a stalagmite, using it like a lever to launch myself forward. I pushed off the walls to steer myself and keep my momentum. Then I hit something so hard I was flung forward. I scrambled out of the boat onto the rocky surface. I’d reached the other side. I moved away from the water quickly and continued forward, grateful to be on hard ground again.
But only a few minutes later, the passageway was blocked again. Another solid wall. Another relief had
been carved into it. The Fates again, but the carvings were clearer here. Ornamental patterns were carved around them, and it looked like they were seated on thrones of some kind. Their expressions were proud, almost haughty. They lifted their chins like royals, demanding to be worshipped. They didn’t look anything like the women I’d seen in my dream. I stayed there for at least fifteen minutes, trying to see some hidden secret in the decorations, but there was nothing.
Finally, I had to admit defeat. I must have missed something in one of the earlier chambers. I had to go back. I worked up the courage to climb into the boat again, trying to be as silent and still as possible. I was breathing so quietly, I could hear each drip from the ceiling as it spashed into the water, sending ripples across the calm surface. I breathed easier when I’d made it halfway without incident, then sighed with relief when I saw the shore and the pier I started from. That’s when something bumped against the bottom of the canoe, shooting tingles up my spine.
I clutched the edge of the boat as it tilted dangerously to the side. And that’s when I saw it. A long, green shape under the surface. It looked like a giant eel. Its tail curled up out of the water and wrapped around the end of the canoe, pulling it under. The wood splintered as the creature tightened its grip. I screamed and tumbled into the water. My lightweight dress bunched around my waist, and my black shoes felt like anchors, pulling me downwards. I paddled wildly towards the shore. The cold skin of the giant water snake brushed against my skin, and I cringed, as a vision flooded my senses. Then I knew exactly what I had to do. I dragged myself out of the water and backed away until I hit a wall. The serpent raised itself over me and I saw it clearly for the first time. Massive green scales shimmered down its long neck. It swayed hypnotically, flicking its long forked tongue. It was terrifying, but I knew I could defeat it. I’d seen it, in the water when it touched me, I saw its immanent death. Right here. It was going to die, and I was going to kill it. I just didn’t know how yet.