Gathering all my strength (physical and mental), I pushed the resistant stone. It was ridiculously heavy. I clamped my teeth, braced my stance and heaved against it until I could hear it grinding and feel it scooting to one end. I fell aside, exhausted. The lid had moved just enough for me to look inside. Steadying my lantern, I peered over.
I expected to see the ruin of an ancient corpse. I expected to smell the dry stink of the long forgotten dead.
What I did find was the last thing I expected: a gust of cold air, overfilled with oxygen, and a sloping dirt tunnel, brightened by aquamarine light.
For the first time on that trip since leaving my house, I felt the excitement of discovery. A normal person would have rushed out of there and told someone what they found, or at least been wary of a light source this far underground.
Normal was not a choice word in describing me, but I will admit to being afraid. I was shaking all over as I slipped between the stones into the passage. If I was frightened by everything I’d experienced so far, I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw next.
Each of the three rough walls before me were etched everywhere with the word, “STOP!” The letters were uneven and chaotic. It was almost as if they’d been carved in a hurry. My heart almost followed their command, it was so unnerving. I had the distinct feeling I was being watched, and that didn’t help. Still, the little string in my mind led me onward.
The corridor curved, and the words changed.
DON’T GO! TURN AROUND! FOR YOUR SAFETY! DON’T GO! DON’T GO!
I looked down and pressed on, forcing myself not to read the phrases.
The corner of my eye caught the word “DIE” and I couldn’t help but read the next set.
YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! YOUR DEATH! YOUR DEATH!
If I had been with my friends, I might have laughed at seven hundred year old graffiti like this. But I was on my own, inside of a false coffin buried underground, inside of Rivermarch Mausoleum. The words made an impact on me.
The light had been growing brighter until finally the corridor ended. Ahead of me was a luminous aqua pool, only about six feet around. On the flattened wall above it, the last of the writing said, “DON’T LET THEM IN.”
I could almost hear the whispers of the dead in the caskets above me, imploring me to follow their advice.
Standing still as the stone around me, I looked between the writing and the water. My skin crawled.
“How is there light?” I wondered aloud and stooped to the pool’s edge.
The water was clear, but it showed nothing except its bottom, and somehow it was the source of both the light and the blissfully fresh air. A slight breeze touched the stray hairs that hung free from my braid.
I reached a cautious hand out to touch the water and stopped.
The writing on the wall said I was going to die. But it had warned me not to leave, and not to let them in. It didn’t say I shouldn’t touch the water.
I plunged my hand into the chill pool. It felt strange. When I pulled it back out, not only was it perfectly unharmed, but it was dry.
“This isn’t safe,” I said to myself, but my curiosity was on fire. “Oh Katelyn, you’re insane. You’re absolutely, truly, insane.”
So far, it was certainly the most completely, utterly stupid thing I’d ever done in my life. I have no idea what made me think my actions were a good idea at that time. If you asked me now whether I would do something like that again, knowing absolutely nothing about that which I meddled, I’d invariably tell you, no, no, no.
But that day, I wasn’t one for heeding warnings.
I stepped into the pool and sunk. It was odd. It didn’t feel like I was holding my breath, but I wasn’t breathing either. The sensation wasn’t uncomfortable, but I could not deny that it was cold. Feeling almost weightless, I looked slowly at the ground as my boot made contact. My hair floated around me. I pushed off and soared gracefully upward. Like the badger burrow, there was the pool opening I had come through, and then there was another. I angled toward the second, answering the final call of my directional sense, and surfaced.
Chapter 7: Rune
Just like my hand, I emerged from the glowing pool completely dry.
I was in a cave. The walls were black and flecked with veins of icy blue crystal that reflected the light of the aquamarine water. The new air I breathed was full of strange scents, like a mix of oxygen, mulch and fire.
For some reason I didn’t feel as confined in this cave as I had in the mausoleum. It was bigger, for one thing, but the air circulated steadily too, with little gusts and drafts. I still wanted to get outside under the open the sky, but I wasn’t sweating or hyperventilating anymore.
I felt much, much better… for the moment. Then I realized that something had changed. My sense wasn’t pulling me. That could only mean that I had found what I was looking for.
“The outside!” I gasped. A smile spread over my face.
To my infinite shock, a check on my pocket watch read two minutes past twelve. My crawl through the mausoleum had felt like an eternity. I had even packed for an all-night journey, and here I was, a measly hour and a half after leaving, on the outside of the world!
Cheerily, I began exploring the cave, keeping a mental note on the location of my pool, not that I’d ever lose it. Aside from my lucky ability, it was glowing.
I studied the crystal in the walls, and the cracks and stalagmites. I followed the soft sound of dripping water, humming all the way, until I came to a relatively far drop. I held out my lantern, barely able to see water shimmering below. It looked normal.
Sitting down carefully, I continued to hum to myself, studying the high ceiling of the massive cave.
There was a scraping sound down at the bottom of the cliff, somewhere near the edge of the still water.
I sucked in my breath and froze. Fear struck me and I cursed myself for being an idiot. What was I doing singing to myself and fluttering around this place like it was my own personal clubhouse? Anything could have been in there with me.
Heart racing, I scooted backward away from the drop.
“Wait,” a voice said. It was male.
I went still again, wondering how long it would take me to dash back to the glowing pool. It was my worst fear: something was talking to me through the blackness.
“Don’t go,” the disembodied voice begged. “It’s dark in here. I saw your light.”
I crouched there and covered my lantern with my body. Breath didn’t dare escape my lips. I didn’t move a muscle. After everything I’d gone through, would my story end here? Katelyn Kestrel, discoverer of the outside world, eaten alive by ghouls.
“Are you a ghost?” the voice asked. His accent was unlike anything I’d heard before. It pulled at his words in curious ways.
I could hear my own heart pounding in my chest. I wanted to get up, but if I did, whoever it was would be able to see me again until I got to the back of my passage.
“Are you a ghost up there?” he repeated. His voice was unusual in the relative quiet; it was not overly loud, but filled the cave, echoing faintly against the stone walls of its passages.
“No,” I answered cautiously, breaking his waiting silence. Funny, I had been wondering the exact same thing about him.
“Are you sure?” he pressed.
“Very,” I replied. “Are you?”
“No,” he said.
“Are you a… umm… monster?” I asked, fully aware that the question made me sound childish. “A blood-sucking… something?”
Yeah, it was a dumb thing to say, but I’d just crawled around a graveyard crypt and climbed into a dry, glowing pool. A little reassurance couldn’t hurt.
“Of course not,” he answered. He was quiet for a time. “I haven’t heard a voice in three days. I only saw you for a moment. I thought my fever returned.”
My ears soaked up the strange accent. Something about it made me want to hear it more, just to study it. The timber of h
is voice was enticing on its own.
“I’m not a fever,” I assured him. A cautious person would have kept her mouth shut, but I was blissfully naive. I was from Haven Valley, after all. “Why did you have one? A fever, I mean. And what are you doing in this cave?”
“I’m healing. I was wounded fighting Lurchers, forced to hide here until my companions return for me. I’m still waiting for them,” he answered freely.
My heart started at the word “fighting.” I hadn’t the slightest clue what a Lurcher was. The dark cave was feeling more frightening by the minute. I couldn’t continue this strange conversation without a little assurance that I wasn’t talking to a wraith. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“What are you doing here?” he called up to me.
“Exploring. Look, can I at least see you? So I know you’re not a seven hundred year old zombie?” I asked suddenly. A disembodied voice in the darkness was too eerie a companion for my reckless imagination. I watched the ground with morbid fear, expecting to see a body of bones held together by leathery sinew go shambling by.
I heard the shuffling noise again and leaned forward over the cliff to get a better view.
A young man, maybe a bit older than me, limped into view below. I could barely see the outline of his features in his flickering lantern light. He was lean in a muscular way, his skin was a warm brown and he had closely cropped black hair. His right arm was in a makeshift sling.
A little sigh of relief escaped my lips. There was nothing to fear after all. He was just an injured guy, and he was way down there. I sat up a little more and held up my lantern so he could see me.
I waved. He waved back.
Under the circumstances, I probably should have been afraid. I wasn’t. Maybe it was because he was injured, or because of the vertical distance between us, but there was also something about the tone of his voice and his posture that was disarming.
“Are you from Rivermarch?” I asked, seeking more verification that I had really found the outside world.
“Where?” he asked, confused. I didn’t elaborate. I could hardly think clearly anymore.
When silence was my only reply, he asked a different question. “Lurchers are thick in this region. Are you in any sort of trouble?”
I was just as confused with his question as he was with mine. I had no idea what to say.
“Are you wounded?” he asked, craning his neck to get a better look at me. It was clear that he was pretty battered. One hand gripped the shoulder of his bad arm. “Do you need help?”
The injured guy was asking me if I was hurt.
“No, no. I’m fine,” I assured him.
I don’t know what first gave me the idea, but I reached into my bag and felt around.
“If you’re stuck in here waiting for your friends, and it’s been three days, how are you on food and water?” I asked.
“Not so good,” he admitted. “Water, I have in plenty.”
I could hear a little “plink” as he tossed something into the pool below.
“Ah, yeah, I should have thought of that,” I said, scratching my head with mild embarrassment.
“No, you’re right, some water isn’t safe to drink. But this is okay,” he informed me.
Grabbing my wrapped sandwiches out of my bag, I flung them each as far as I could over the side. Two of them plopped to the ground, but one hit water.
“Food,” I said.
“Thank you,” he called up to me. “Don’t worry, I’ll fish that one out. I have a walking stick around here somewhere.”
Lit by his meager lantern in the gauzy darkness, I could see him sit carefully down with a sigh. He unraveled one of my wrapped sandwiches and began to eat.
“They’re not gourmet or anything,” I said, interrupting the quiet.
Only after finishing the first sandwich did he reply. “They’re excellent. I feel better already.”
For some reason that made me happy.
“Did you make them?” he asked.
“Well, no,” I said, wishing all at once that I could take credit for them. “My, well, my step-mom made them. I just kind of… took them from the kitchen.”
Just that quickly, I went from feeling happy to feeling stupid. I could have lied, but it hadn’t seemed worth it. I mean, why be embarrassed that I didn’t make some sandwiches for a stranger?
“And if you hadn’t, I would still be starving. Thank you for your generosity,” he said eloquently.
Completely quelled, my embarrassment crept away, replaced by shy self-satisfaction. “No problem,” I said, unprepared to be treated with such appreciation.
Exhaustion began to catch up with me. My limbs were feeling very heavy. I had to get back. My mind and my body had been through so much strain. It was a lot to digest.
“I have to leave now,” I told him, rising to retrace my steps.
“Wait,” he called me again. “What’s your name?”
“Katelyn,” I replied, beginning to understand just how shocked and dazed I was from the evening’s events.
“Katelyn, the ghost of the cave,” he muttered, sounding even more tired than I was. “I’m Rune.”
“Rest up Rune,” I said before turning to make my way back home. “I think you might still have a fever.”
Maybe I had one too. I’d made a groundbreaking discovery that could make history, trespassed over the dead, interacted with a magical pool that I didn’t have words to describe, and then ended the night having a very simple conversation with someone outside of the world I knew. It wasn’t electrifying or impossibly fantastical, it was real.
And it’d all happened on a school night.
Chapter 8: Facing Reality
Nothing short of the end of the world could have kept me awake through Advanced Literature class. My adventures the evening before had been more than a diversion from my problems with Calvin, they utterly consumed my thoughts and even my dreams.
What little sleep I had the previous night was plagued by visions of tombs and ghosts. I had two short dreams in which I’d never even gone to the graveyard or crawled into the mausoleum. In both of those, I was convinced that my discovery was a dream I’d had while reading The Settling of Rivermarch. When I actually did awaken, the only things to assure me that the events had occurred were the dirty clothes on my floor and Dad’s mild complaints about a muddy pony in the stable.
I should have gotten an award for how quickly I’d gotten ready for school and how hard I tried to stay awake through my classes. I guess my collapse was inevitable, but I wished it had been during lunch. After skipping breakfast, I was too hungry to sleep.
Dozing in Lit. class got me some extra homework and the taunts and teases of other students. On a normal day, I would have been embarrassed. I would have stewed with hurt feelings or tried too hard to counteract my shame. But that day was different. I wasn’t going to care what people said about me. They couldn’t reach me now. There were more important things going on. I hurried in step with Ruby on our way to the class I had been waiting all day for: Advanced Valley History.
“I didn’t see you at lunch,” I said to her, practically bursting on the inside with the untold story of my adventure. Ruby and I didn’t keep secrets, and this one was dying to get out. No pun intended. I hadn’t seen Kyle either, but it wasn’t unusual for him to eat in the Hobby Shop while he tinkered with something.
“I know, I was in the nurse’s office,” she winced, pushing her glasses up. “Where’d you get that bruise on your shin? It’s huge! You should have gone with me. I wanted to tell you before I went, but I didn’t see you this morning.”
“I was late,” I said simply. An explanation should have followed, but I paused. I didn’t know where to start. I wrung my hands, suddenly awash with nerves. How could she believe what I was about to tell her? It would sound ridiculous. Unreal.
My shin and elbow still throbbed with the bruises I got from thrashing away from the spider in the stone tunnel the night befo
re. What would she think if I told her I’d spent the night crawling through an empty tomb hole?
I didn’t need to explain. A pause was all she needed to rush into what was bothering her. Ruby Rush. Not a coincidence.
“Kat,” she put both of her hands on my shoulders and stopped me dead in my tracks. “Sterling hung out with us last night. Sterling Mason. I still can’t believe it. I keep replaying all the stupid things I said last night in my head. And when I think about it, I just feel… nauseous. I don’t know what to do when I see him. I’m afraid to see him.”
I sighed. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I did. I knew how much she liked Sterling and for how long, but it just seemed so trivial.
I knew something that could change Haven Valley.
With a tug on her arm, I forced her into motion so we wouldn’t be late for class.
“Relax Ru,” I heard myself say. “It’s what you wanted. Just be yourself.”
I felt as guilty as a liar. Sterling’s descent from the lofty throne of clouds Ruby imagined him on was the last thing on my mind. I said what a good friend should say, but I was so grandly preoccupied. My discovery was just too important.
“Ru, listen,” I said anxiously. “About last night…”
My second pause was yet another opportunity for her to jump in. “I know, I shouldn’t think too much of it. We hardly know each other. I mean, we did have those classes together in seventh grade, but we were totally different back then,” she blurted, opening the classroom door for me. “Why does he make me so nervous? I’m usually the collected one.”
The moment had passed, yet again. I couldn’t tell her. A cowardly part of me, the part that was most terrified in the mausoleum and screamed at me to run home, was relieved. If I told her what happened, I’d run the risk of her thinking me crazy, or worse, I’d really have to face the fact that she was right. There wasn’t time to explain everything to her now. We took our seats.
I was forced to suffer double disappointments in class that day. The first was that our material didn’t return to the subject of the outer world, and the second was the pop quiz on early settlements. I hoped I retained enough information from my study session before my trip to the graveyard to pass.
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