Downward I go, through water that is not water. Axacaya and I had only skimmed the surface when we visited the Loliga. Now, I go deeper, much deeper. The glowing entities grow fewer, and eventually I sail through the velvet blackness alone. Ahead of me, the Current will drop down into the Abyss. If I venture too far, I will not be able to return to the Waking World.
But I do not need to go that far. Soon, the form of a building rears out of the darkness. The Bilskinir Baths, drowned. No, not really the Bilskinir Baths. The Loliga’s prison. Georgiana’s Working.
This version of the Bilskinir Baths is a hundred times larger than its Waking World counterpart. It towers over me like an enormous underwater mountain; below, its foundations are invisible. Like the Working it represents, the building is crumbling. Its walls are crusted with glowing green lichen, and pieces of the facade have fallen away. The marble statues in the pediment above the main doors are missing limbs, their faces pitted with wormholes.
The Baths look abandoned. But I know that someone—something—is still inside.
Directly ahead, I can see the Baths’ main entrance. The doors are closed and I know they are locked. But I wear the Key on my finger. I can open the doors, allow the Loliga to go free.
As I arrow forward, I feel a brief tug, as though something is trying to pull me back. My Will prickles uneasily. But when I look behind me, I see only darkness. I swim a few feet further and feel the tug again. Again, I see only darkness behind me, but something is there. I can sense its malevolence, its hunger, its anger.
The Word emerges from my mouth in the shape of a glowing pink bubble. The bubble bobs in the Current, but its light is too weak to illuminate very far. I flick the bubble with my finger, and it pops, momentarily flooding the darkness with a brilliant pink light.
Revealed in that light is a monstrous shape: a nightmarish creature, half octopus, half spider crab. The horror has long spiny legs, segmented like an insect’s, springing from an oozy shapeless body. Its bulbous eyes protrude on sluglike stalks. The creature is a deep dark pulsating black, which had kept me from seeing it in the darkness. It radiates evil. And though it looks different from the last time I saw it, I recognize it instantly: The kakodæmon that Tiny Doom and I had vanquished in the Waking World. Somehow it has found me in the Current, and I do not think it has come to wish me well.
I flee toward the Bilskinir Baths’ doors. The Working may be crumbling, but it is still relatively secure. If it can hold the Loliga in, surely it can keep the kakodæmon out. I put every ounce of my Will into my flight. I have no lungs to wheeze, no muscles to burn; I am not hampered by heavy flesh. But I can only go so fast, and the kakodæmon is quickly closing the distance between us.
My Will turns molten. If the kakodæmon gets me now, it will consume me completely—I will be worse than dead; I will cease to exist completely The kakodæmon catapults over me, legs scrabbling, body inflating; now it is between me and the doors. Its bulbous eyes glow with hate. Its mantle flares open, umbrellalike; deep within the fleshy core is a sucking round mouth, which gapes wide to reveal a circle of horrifically humanlike teeth. I dart away just as the mantle snaps shut, trying to trap me inside. Before it can reinflate, I dive over the kakodæmon, brushing one of its arms as I do so. The arm, though spiny, is covered with soft black fur. At the touch, pain surges through me and I falter. A heavy dark gooey feeling begins to lap at my edges.
Now I am sluggish. I see those snappy shoe-peg teeth and try to dodge them, but I am too slow. The kakodæmon rears back, preparing to pounce, and then suddenly its mantle collapses. A furry shape has attached to one of the kakodæmon’s arms and is chewing on it like Flynn chews a stick.
I try to dart away, but move slowly. The kakodæmon jerks its arm out of the Coyote’s mouth—Coyote? Can coyotes even swim? This one can, in a graceful effortless dog paddle. Legs held close to its body, using its plumed tail like a rudder, the Coyote circles around the kakodæmon, jaws snapping at its flailing limbs. The kakodæmon retreats a few feet; the Coyote sails toward me and rams me with its long nose. I fly backward and hit the Bilskinir Baths’ door. On my finger, the Key sizzles. I bang on the surface of the doors with my fists, and they fly open. I am sucked inside. I get a last glimpse of the kakodæmon bearing down upon the Coyote, and then doors slam shut behind me.
I am inside Georgianas Working. Inside the Loliga’s prison.
But I am no longer light and airy. I have landed on the floor of the lobby in a heap, and when I clamber to my feet, I find I am once again firm on the ground. The walls of the Working drip with Current, and Current puddles on the cracked marble floor, but the Current that fills the Working is so thin, it feels just like air. After being so buoyant, it is a real drag to suddenly feel so heavy again.
The doors rattle and jump on their hinges; the kakodæmon must have overpowered the Coyote and now its attention is back on me. The Baths echo with a high-pitched wailing. The walls vibrate, gusting plaster; chunks of marble plummet down from above; the tile beneath me heaves and buckles. I careen down the marble stairs. Ahead, where the Pacifica should be, is only darkness. Above, where the sky should shine through the glass ceiling, is only darkness.
A woman crouches in the bottom of the Salt Pool, now drained of Current. She clutches her immensely swollen belly, screaming.
I vault into the Pool and find that though the Current inside the Working is thin, it is strong enough to support my jump. I land lightly and run toward the woman. Even crouching, she’s very tall; my head barely comes up to the middle of her giant tummy. I grab her hands, just as she lets out another shriek. An enormous wave of pain rolls out of her and into me, the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, a huge horrible squeezing sheet of pain that seems to go on forever.
And then is suddenly gone.
The woman has let go of my hands and unsteadily risen to her feet, towering over me. Her red hair lies in slicks around her puffy face, and blood stands out on her lip where she has bitten it. The ragged remains of her blue silk gown are dripping with sweat. A gold collar encircles her neck; it is fastened to a long golden chain that is bolted to the floor. She looks exactly like the portrait of Georgiana Segunda, but I know she is not Georgiana Segunda.
"Haðraaða bitch!” the Loliga cries. I dodge the curse just in time; when it hits the wall behind me, it explodes into a choking black cloud. She staggers toward me and then is stopped short by the length of the chain. "Free me!”
"But I thought my death would free you!”
"Your death freed me from the form of that monster, but no more!” the Loliga shouts, and then she screams again. The ground heaves and rolls, and a fissure opens up almost under my feet. I jump back, struggling to keep my footing.
I have been calm so far; death and immersion in the Current had taken the edge off my lively anxieties. Now, at the sound of the Loliga’s screams, at the chaos around me, those anxieties come flooding back. It’s all I can do to keep from screaming frantically myself. Here, deep in Elsewhere, the Loliga’s screams are tearing at the Working; higher above, her struggles are rippling through the City’s Current like a tidal wave. And in the Waking World, they are tearing the City apart.
"Stop!” I shout.
The Loliga’s scream abruptly stops, and she stares at me with enormous blue eyes.
"Look, I will free you and get you out of here, but you have to stop screaming. You are destroying the City.”
"I don’t care about your stupid City. It deserves to be destroyed.” She gasps, clutching at her middle.
"If the City is destroyed, then I won’t have any reason to free you.”
The Loliga lunges at me, but I have been careful to stay out of her reach. I say, "If you hurt me, I won’t be able to help you.”
"You are not helping me now.” A shadow passes over the Loliga’s face, but she doesn’t scream again.
"Look, madama, I died to free you—how is that not helping?”
The Loliga says scornfully, "Am I not still
imprisoned?” Then she tosses her head back, neck straining, mouth opening silently. She pants and gasps, but she doesn’t scream.
I had expected to see the egregore still in squid form; I am shocked by the Loliga’s shape. She looks like an ordinary human woman. A human woman in labor. Does this mean she will give birth like a human woman? I know nothing about delivering babies, magickal or otherwise. I do not want to know anything about delivering babies, magickal or otherwise.
As soon as her spasm passes, I say, “I will unchain you, but you must promise not to hurt me. Then you can go, ayah?”
The Loliga bites her lip, nods. I stand on tippy-toe and she bends forward so that I can reach the collar around her neck. Her skin is as smooth as porcelain, tinted with lavender. I gently push her matted hair away from the collar, which I touch with my index finger, still encircled by the Key. The collar wavers, shimmers, and vanishes. As I am doing this, I notice a faint odor. It is not the Loliga; she smells of salt and fish. This smell is ripe and muddy, the kind of smell that makes your mouth taste bad. I sense movement above us. I look up, and there is the kakodæmon peering down through a hole in the glass ceiling. It sticks one long arm through, probing.
The Loliga sees the kakodæmon, too, and spits out, “A kakodæmon. Scum.”
The hole is too small for the kakodæmon to get through, but it’s picking at the glass, as though trying to make it big enough to slip through. I can’t wait and see if it succeeds. I had hoped that if I opened the doors for her, the Loliga could leave the Working on her own. But she can barely walk; clearly, she needs my help. The bottom of the empty pool is wet and slippery. I put my arm around the Loliga’s waist and together we stagger toward the stairs that lead to the pool deck. I can’t help but keep glancing up, and see that the kakodæmon has left off its picking and is following us, skittering from girder to girder.
Don’t look back, Nini Mo says, and so I try to forget about the kakodæmon, to concentrate on not buckling under the weight of the Loliga. Still, I know by the stench floating down that the kakodæmon is keeping pace with us. Fear prickles me; I try to ignore it.
Our progress is not rapid. The Loliga staggers a few feet, and then falters. I urge her on, she staggers another few feet, and falters again.
"It’s close—” She pants. "It hurts!”
"We are almost there.” I point up the stairs. "Look. There’s the door.”
"I cannot go that way!” the Loliga cries. She collapses into a heap. "I cannot go through that door!”
"But it’s the only way out!”
"Georgiana put me under a geas not to go through that door. I thought you knew another way”
The Loliga begins to scream and thrash, drumming her heels on the floor. The tile cracks under her blows; the air around her sparks. In the Waking World, the City is falling down. And I am powerless to do anything about it.
My Will begins to bubble with panic. Fike Georgiana! She had not mentioned the geas in her Diario. I have done the one thing I know how to do: die. I had thought that would be enough. I don’t know how to do anything else. I have no idea how to tear the Working down. I have no idea how to lift a geas...
But, thanks to Tiny Doom, I know how to get around one.
The Loliga’s eyes are rolling wildly, and when I lean over, she strikes out at me. I grab her hands, trying to ignore the pain that pulses through her grip.
“Shhhuushhh...” I hum soothingly, the same hum that Mamma would use on Poppy to calm him down, a tuneless little hum that she would do for me when the monster under the bed (not nearly as horrific as the kakodæmon) tried to get me. The hum vibrates in my chest, up through my hands, into the Loliga, and she begins to calm down.
I say firmly and calmly, “Listen. Georgiana put you under a geas not to go through that door. But a geas affects your Will only, not mine. Understand?”
The Loliga nods weakly.
“So, you can leave through that door under my Will, if I make you go with me. But you gotta get up!”
Somehow I manage to hoist the Loliga to her feet, and we climb the last few steps. The stench is growing. I look up to see the kakodæmon is still shadowing us. Only a few more feet and we shall reach the door. When I glance up again, the kakodæmon vanishes—gone ahead to wait for us. If we go out that door, we will walk directly into its grasp and be consumed.
We are trapped, just as I was trapped before—in the oubliette, by the ghoul. I had tried to spring myself from those traps and failed. I had been freed because of someone else’s efforts, not my own. I had abandoned my comrade to save myself. I will not abandon the Loliga.
"The baby’s coming!” the Loliga howls, and flings me off, falls against the door, falls down. Her back arches, her arms flail. Under the blue gown, her belly ripples. Her howls are shattering the ceiling; glass twinkles down like a sparkly sharp rain. I lean over her, trying to protect her from the rain, try to grab her hands, try to hold her, heave her to her feet. But she’s frantic now, past reason, gone far beyond me, and I cannot get a grip on her. Her elbow rams my chin, and even though I have no blood to taste, my mouth fills with an iron tang. I have to get the Loliga out of here. Maybe I can distract the kakodæmon long enough to allow her to escape. Then maybe I can escape myself. And if not, at least she will be free and the City saved.
I am trying one last time to heave her to her feet, when the kakodæmon’s stench almost overwhelms me. I look up to see it fall through the ceiling, land upon a piece of broken marble, scrabble toward us on skittering legs. It is now between us and the door. The kakodæmon rears up, inflating its mantle, exposing the moist gash of its mouth, those horrible square yellow teeth. I throw myself upon the Loliga; our heads knock together in a bright burst of pain.
Right behind that burst of pain comes my panic. I can’t fight the kakodæmon and protect the Loliga at the same time; I can’t protect the Loliga and help her, too. We have to get out of here now. Instantly. If there was ever a time for a Translocation Sigil, this was it.
But what would happen if the Sigil went wrong? Where would we end up? In the Abyss? The Loliga would be free, but I would never be able to return to the Waking World. What if I said the Word wrong? That would be a calamity in the Waking World. In the Current it could be catastrophic. We could be instantly destroyed, and because our destruction would occur within Georgiana’s Working and this Working is tied to the City’s Current, the City could be destroyed, as well.
Panic runs through me like rushing water, quick and cold, threatening to drown me, and bobbing along in the rush is one thought: If I don’t try we shall be destroyed for sure. The Loliga’s back is arching like a bow; her mouth is open, but no sound is coming out. The kakodæmon is poised above us, pincers reaching down to cram us into those snapping teeth.
Now, or don’t bother, says Nini Mo.
I lean over the Loliga and suck in all her pain, her fear, her anger; mix it with my pain, my fear, my anger. Those emotions run together, flood me with a huge pressure that grows stronger, stronger, stronger! No time to create a Direction Sigil; I don’t need a Direction Sigil. An image of the Cloakroom of the Abyss pops into my head and I fasten on that image—hold it within my Will.
The mantle begins to come down, enveloping us. Before it can touch us, I scream:
The pressure that has been building in me explodes. I am dwindling, dissolving, shrinking. My consciousness is swirling, twirling, as though I am spiraling down a giant drain. I am poured into darkness, where I float, diffused and formless. Images flash through me: the Loliga’s human form disintegrating into a huge ball of coldfire light, a color I have never seen before, rich and deep. With a flash, the light splits in two and vanishes, leaving shimmering streaks behind. The streaks fade, and the edges of the Void begin to whirl and spin, catching me in their dizzying movement. I blur, the Void blurs, and then—
Forty-Nine
The Cloakroom of the Abyss, Again. A Coyote. Hot Water.
GASPING, I SURGE UP out of blackness. My
vision swims around me, the world wavering, and then springs into focus. I splash to the edge of the pool and hang there, gasping, before hauling myself up out of the water into a familiar room: the Cloakroom of the Abyss. Familiar, but not the same as when I had last seen it. Hardhands’s catafalque has vanished; taking its place, the pool from which I have just crawled. In the dim wavery light, the water looks as flat and black as ink.
The Translocation Sigil —my Translocation Sigil—worked. We had escaped the kakodæmon. The Loliga and her child are gone. Free.
I am wrung out, exhausted, weak. I sit on the edge of the pool, dripping, shivering in the cool air. The crypt is absolutely silent. The alcoves are empty, biers bare. No sign of any Haðraaða corpses. There is only one dead Haðraaða here: me.
Surely by now Udo should have fished me out of the Cold Plunge, yanked me back to the Waking World. But instead here I am, where all dead Haðraaðas end up, apparently Maybe it is too late; I had been dead too long and now dead I would stay This fear is muted by exhaustion, so I just sit there at the edge of the pool, too tired to try to figure out what to do next.
The water begins to churn and froth. I remember the kakodæmon, and alarm overcomes my weakness. I scramble up and take drippy refuge in one of the alcoves. In the pool, something is poking up out of the whip-creamy froth: a black nose, a long snout, a flat head, two tufted ears. The Coyote paddles furiously; I run forward and grab its ruff. Paws catch at the pool’s edge; I pull, and we both fall over backward onto the icy marble floor.
Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) Page 32