by Amy Green
That left only one other option. The way out is a reversed copy of the way in.
Here, the path seemed to be smaller, the rock formations more frequent. Like hardly anyone uses this place. Once, walking around the edge of a hole in the path, he thought he saw something move.
“Anise,” he said quietly.
She stopped, instantly alert. “What?”
But when Jesse looked around, he saw nothing. It must be my imagination. It has to be.
Then a blur of blue and brown as someone popped out from the boulder in front of him. “Welcome!”
Jesse jumped back in alarm, until he realized it was only Parvel, grinning like a fool. “Are you trying to terrify me?” Jesse snapped.
Another grin. “Not necessarily. Just glad to see you.” Parvel nodded at Anise. “I take it you had a change of heart.”
“Perhaps.”
“And what if she hadn’t?” Jesse continued. “You would have just given yourself away.”
“You were walking behind her with a sword,” Parvel pointed out. “There was a good chance she meant you no harm.”
“Oh.”
All of a sudden, Parvel’s grin faded. “Where’s Silas?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse answered honestly. “He ran farther into the tunnels.” He would tell Parvel the full story later. Then Jesse thought of something else. “Where’s Rae?”
Parvel nodded to the hole in the rock by his feet.
Alarm rushed through Jesse. “She fell?”
“Of course not,” Parvel said, laughing. “She blew out the torch and climbed down. An excellent hiding place, to be sure. I just did not have the courage to follow.”
Sure enough, when Jesse peered into the pit, he saw Rae’s pale arm grab onto a tiny handhold in the rock. She pulled her head up. “Nice of you to finally join us,” she grunted, taking another step up. Parvel reached down to help her to her feet.
At first, she looked startled to see Anise, but, glancing at Jesse and Parvel for reassurance, she asked no questions.
“Why did you stay here?” Jesse demanded. “I thought the plan was to meet you at the surface.”
Parvel shrugged his huge shoulders. “We ran into some difficulties following the map.”
“What he means is, we got lost,” Rae added. “Found ourselves at a dead end. We had no other choice but to hide while we came up with a plan.”
“And, thankfully, you found us before the Rebellion,” Parvel said. He turned to Anise, who stood there quietly, examining them in the torchlight. “Anise, isn’t it?” he asked. She nodded. “Pleased to meet you. I wish it could be under different circumstances.” He paused, listening for anyone approaching.
Anise was doing the same. “We must go,” she urged them.
“What about Silas?” Jesse asked.
Anise didn’t answer. Instead, she led the way deeper into the tunnels, and Jesse followed, although he still felt guilty leaving Silas. “He memorized the map,” Rae reassured him. “He’ll find his way out.”
That made Jesse feel a little better, but not much. After all, if Parvel could get lost, so could Silas.
“Where are we going?” Rae asked.
“The East Escape,” Anise replied. She didn’t turn around. “We must be careful. A sentry may already be posted at the Escape. I am not the only one who knows it is the only way out.”
They walked through another archway marked with a well, Jesse noticed, and into a smaller tunnel, one they had to stoop to get through. Still, Anise pressed on, moving faster now. Jesse found it hard to keep her pace.
Suddenly, Anise stopped. Jesse almost bumped into her. She stared into the dark, tense and rigid. “They’re coming this way,” she said without emotion.
Jesse could only hear the same distant shouts they had always heard. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Anise said firmly. She turned around, then jerked her head back to them, handing Parvel her torch. “I’ll lead them away. Keep going deeper to the East Escape.”
“How will we know how to get there?” Rae pointed out.
“One more archway,” Jesse guessed. “Marked with a heart, one on a stone near the bottom.”
The voices were louder now. Anise nodded and kept backing away. “It leads to the surface. Don’t trust the bridge.”
With that, Anise ran into the darkness.
Parvel and Rae began to hurry even more. “She wasn’t much help,” Rae muttered. “What did she mean, anyway, about a bridge? She didn’t even stay to explain.”
“She had to go,” Jesse said. “If the other Rebellion members found her helping us, who knows what could happen to her?”
The tunnel narrowed even farther at the end, with several archways on either side of the tunnel. “The heart,” Parvel said, pointing to a stone near the bottom of one of them.
When they stepped through, they found themselves in a cave with a slightly higher ceiling than the tunnels. Like the caverns in the headquarters entrance, two archways were set into the stone walls. This time, though, they were not next to each other. They were on opposite sides of the long cavern, perhaps twenty paces apart.
Parvel moved cautiously forward, holding his torch out toward the stone between the two archways. There, in the same bold lettering as the riddles at the front entrance were these words:
Face to face, upon me gaze,
Echo of what you see.
And only then escape this maze,
Reversed reality.
There was no sound in the cave for a moment as each read and re-read the rhyme. “It doesn’t make sense,” Rae said at last.
“Of course it doesn’t appear to,” Parvel said. “That’s why it’s called a riddle.” He studied the words, fingering the rough stubble on his chin. “Let’s take each part in turn, shall we? ‘Face to face, upon me gaze.’ All right, something we can see, I suppose.”
“And ‘escape this maze’ is fairly clear,” Rae added, “unless it has some hidden meaning.”
“‘Echo of what you see,’” Jesse muttered. “If an echo is repeated sound….”
He was beginning to get an idea, but Parvel beat him to it. “A mirror!” he pronounced, excitedly. “A reflection in a mirror is reality, only backward!” Jesse and Rae nodded. “So, how does that help us?”
“We look for the symbol of a mirror on one of the glowing stones that surround the archway,” Jesse said, limping to the one on the left to examine it.
He froze halfway there, staring at the stones. Then he came closer. Finally, he leaned up to the rocks, so near that he could see the glowing white flecks that gave them their light, but his first instinct had been correct. “They’re blank,” he said, stunned. “There is nothing carved on any of them!”
“It’s the same here,” Rae called, from the right archway.
They walked slowly back to the riddle at the center. “There must be more,” Jesse said, staring at the wall. But there was nothing but blank rock, flickering in the torchlight.
“Looks like the Nine got the better of us this time,” Parvel said at last. “Should we just choose one?”
“And risk another trap?” Rae protested. “I’d rather go back to the other exits that Anise mentioned and face the rebels.”
In the distance, Jesse thought he could hear the rebels shouting. Parvel glanced back, frowning, and said what Jesse already knew but didn’t want to admit. “We’re running out of time.”
Chapter 14
If only stones could talk, Jesse thought desperately. He stared at the riddle, thinking as hard as he could. Nothing came to him.
They had solved the riddle, but what good had it done? They were still trapped. There was nothing left to do.
Except….
All right, God. I’ve stopped fighting. Now what?
Trust me.
&n
bsp; So the riddle described a mirror, but there were no symbols on the rocks to indicate one. What would a mirror’s symbol be anyway? Jesse wondered, picturing one. Then he froze. That’s it.
“When you look into a mirror,” Jesse blurted, dimly aware he was interrupting Parvel, but not caring in the least, “what do you see?”
“Yourself,” Rae replied, staring at him in confusion. “Why…?”
“And is it any different than your face actually looks?”
“No,” Parvel said. “Just backward—like the riddle says, ‘reality reversed.’ They are the same.”
“Yes,” Jesse said, looking significantly first at one archway, then the other. “They are the same.”
Both stared at Jesse as they realized what he was saying. “You don’t mean,” Rae said slowly, “that these two archways lead to the same place?” Jesse nodded. “That can’t be right,” she said, shaking her head.
“But it has to be,” Jesse insisted. “Think about it—each of the archways is a mirror of the other. That’s why they have no symbols on them. Even this collection of caverns was a mirror. To get to the East Escape, we walked through archways with the same symbols as the ones at the entry—only in reverse. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“You may be right,” Parvel said. “But what if that isn’t the answer at all? You said that in the entrances at the front of the hideout, the wrong way was set with a terrible trap.”
“We have to do something,” Jesse said. “If we stay here, the rebels will catch us. This is the only way out.”
Rae, and even Parvel, didn’t look convinced. They both stared suspiciously at the two archways. “It’s like what Parvel said earlier,” Jesse added, “the hard way, choosing an archway, is the one that leads to life. The easy way, not making a choice, will kill us.”
“Hmm,” Parvel said, his fingers tracing the words carved into the stone. “Add to that the first letters of the riddle’s lines, and I think your point is well-made, Jesse.”
What? Jesse glanced back at the riddle, scanned the letters. They spelled, “FEAR.”
Yes. Fear. It was what imprisoned the Roarics underground, according to Noa. It was the reason Parvel said many did not choose to do right. And it was what Jesse had struggled with since they left Mir.
But not today.
“I’ll go first,” Jesse said, stepping toward the passage on the right. He held out his hand to Parvel, who handed him the torch. “Once I see if it’s safe, I’ll call for you to follow.”
Before the others could argue, Jesse limped forward, glad for once that his lame steps made his progress slow. Even with the torch, he could see nothing beyond the archway. Nothing but blackness. He stepped up to the archway, taking a deep breath.
I’m still afraid, Jesse knew, calming his shaking hand on the torch. But I’m not choosing fear. I’m not choosing the easy way.
With that he stepped through the archway.
After a few cautious steps, nothing happened. Jesse breathed a sigh of relief.
Then he looked up and gasped. There, to his right, was a huge wooden bridge. Unlike the bridge at his home in Mir, it was not held up by pillars, but by thick ropes attached to the ceiling above. The bridge stretched across a deep ravine, and on the other side, Jesse could see a small crack of sunlight.
“Jesse?” Rae’s voice called. “Do you see anything?”
Jesse was just about to reply when two figures stepped out from the darkness at Jesse’s side: Sonya holding a dagger to Silas’ throat.
She faced Jesse, that familiar, cruel smile on her face. “Tell your friends to come,” she whispered. “Or I kill him.”
Jesse had not the least bit of doubt that she would do it. But if I call Parvel and Rae, she’ll kill us all. “I’m looking around,” he called back, in response to Rae’s question.
Sonya frowned. “Tell them to come,” she hissed. Silas tried to shake his head, but she held him still with her free hand, her fingernails digging into his arm. “Get both of them in here.”
What do I do?
“Now, boy!”
Then a hand appeared from the darkness, wrenching the dagger out of Sonya’s hand. She gasped, then toppled to the ground from an invisible blow. “Run!” a voice commanded.
It was Parvel. What…? It suddenly became clear to Jesse what had happened. He trusted me enough to step through the archway on the left at the same time.
Slowly, Jesse realized he had dropped the torch, and Silas was on the ground beside him, rolling out of the way. Parvel was struggling with Sonya, both of them a blur of motion. She’s trying to get the dagger back.
“Jesse!” It was Rae, standing beside him. “Your sword!” He tightened his grip on it, not sure what to do. A heartbeat passed.
He handed the sword to Rae. “Take it,” he shouted. “You’d do better with it than I would.”
Immediately, Jesse wondered if that was a wise choice. Despite what Parvel had said about evil fighting evil, Jesse knew Rae wouldn’t hesitate to stab Sonya if she thought it would save Parvel’s life. But she can’t. She might strike Parvel.
Rae appeared to realize the same thing, because all she could do was dance around the two combatants, waiting for an opportunity.
The fierce struggle for control continued, and Jesse was never able to tell who had the upper hand until Sonya, hands tightly gripping the dagger, gave Parvel a vicious kick. His body scuffed across the ground toward the bridge. Laughing in triumph, she raised the dagger high.
Jesse cried out, tried to rush forward.
But instead of plunging the dagger into Parvel’s heart, she reached over to the bridge, sawing away at one of the thick ropes that held it up.
The rope snapped. Its support gone, the bridge collapsed. With a creaking groan, the boards fell into the ravine below.
Jesse stared in disbelief at the rope, still dangling loosely from the cave ceiling. That was our way to the surface, was all he could think.
“Do not move,” Rae commanded. She was standing over Sonya, sword drawn and ready. “Drop the dagger.”
Sonya did, and Parvel bent to pick it up. “It’s no use,” Sonya said, breathing heavily. “Even after you kill me, you can’t get across. There is no escape.”
So that’s why she cut the rope. She would give up her own life to ensure that we are trapped here.
“Should I run her through?” Rae asked, holding her sword above Sonya’s fallen form.
“No,” Parvel said firmly.
Rae blew a piece of hair from her face in frustration. “I should have done it before asking. She deserves death.”
“Does she?” Parvel pointed out. “Would you kill the men who are starving your family, Rae?”
Jesse knew from the instant look of hatred that she would.
“Then do not be so quick to judge Sonya for trying to take the lives of her enemies,” Parvel said.
Rae just grunted, but Jesse understood. Who knows what drove Sonya to join the Rebellion? And what about her friend, the Rebellion member Silas killed in Mir? Her bitterness is really no different than Rae’s or even Silas’. He actually began to feel sorry for her.
“Well, what do you want me to do with her?” Rae demanded. “We can’t just stand here all day!”
“I think I can help with that,” Silas said. He took the dagger from Parvel and walked over to the rope Sonya had cut, still dangling from the cave’s ceiling. Reaching up as high as he could, he cut off a length of a few feet and threw it at Parvel. “Tie her up.”
Parvel chose to use the piece to tie up Sonya’s legs, using his belt for her wrists. Then he bowed to Rae. “Would you care to do the honors?” he said grandly, offering her the loose ends of the rope around Sonya’s ankles.
She gave the knot a sharp pull. “There.”
For good measure, Parvel took Son
ya’s sash, the one that had held her scabbard, and wound it around her mouth. “They will find her soon, I imagine,” he said.
“As long as it’s not too soon,” Rae pointed out. “Like before we’re gone.”
They all stood, satisfied with their work. “So,” Parvel said, “there is still the problem of getting to the other side.”
Jesse glanced at the ravine. It was very wide. And without the bridge….
Wait. “Why did the entire structure collapse so easily?” Jesse wondered. “Sonya only cut one rope, and there were several supports. It doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right,” Parvel agreed, peering over the edge to look at the ruins of the bridge below. “You would think that as a last escape for the rebels, the bridge would have been more stable.”
“And Anise warned us not to trust the bridge,” Jesse reminded them. “What if that bridge was just a trap? All of the riddles at the entrance had one. Why should this riddle be any different?”
“Riddle?” Silas asked, looking confused.
“You mean you didn’t see the riddle carved into the stone by the archways?” Jesse asked in disbelief.
“No,” Silas said shortly. “Sonya attacked me from behind, making me drop my sword. Then she chased me here. I had no time to look for riddles.”
“You were fortunate that both archways were safe, then,” Jesse said.
“But the bridge,” Rae said. “Could it really have been a trap?”
Jesse nodded. “Why else would it fall apart so easily? It was probably designed that way, just like the pit you and Silas nearly fell into at the entrance.”
“Hmm,” Rae grunted, not sounding convinced. “Then where is the real way across? The riddle didn’t say anything about that. Unless you think we should step through a mirror.”
For a moment, Jesse looked blankly at Rae. “No,” he muttered, staring into the darkness past her. “It’s not possible.”
He picked up his walking stick—he had dropped it in the chaos—and limped to his left, to the other side of the cavern.
“I hate it when he gets like this,” he heard Silas mutter. Still, they followed him.