They each went about their business. Jules set the boxes on the ground and began organizing the motley assortment of items, pieces of equipment that hadn’t yet been perfected but were more helpful than they looked. Merlin, useless in that regard, sat in a corner and concentrated on locating the passageway. In vain. His thoughts were met with darkness, opaque with no spark of hope.
After ten long minutes, Jules had finished setting up the equipment. No one, except maybe a scientist, would have guessed that this quirky contraption had a purpose. And no one would have believed it could carry out its task.
He turned on all the necessary sensors. The light flickered as he read more energy than the classroom should normally have. Then he sat cross-legged in front of the screens, and placed an open spiral notebook on his knees. He filled the pages with numbers under columns without headings, standing up from time to time to turn a knob or wiggle a switch. Methodically, just like his son when he was studying an unusual subject like the clock with its random time.
An hour and half passed without any more communication between Jules and his equipment. He had almost forgotten about Merlin sitting behind him. They both, however, came to the same conclusion. They wouldn’t get any results unless the passageway opened up again. Jules turned around to share this important discovery with his apprentice when he spotted, standing in the doorway, the security guard who was obviously more conscientious than the two had anticipated.
CHAPTER 22 FROM ONE ROOM TO THE NEXT
They sped to the first door they saw as they heard the pleas to hurry coming from the small voice, still audible above the din of destruction at their heels.
Cascades of semi-transparent liquid started gushing down the walls of the next room. The ground, which had been dry when they had first walked in, was now wet and spongy and quickly flooding. During their few seconds of hesitation, the soft and sticky fluid had reached their ankles.
There was no longer a door. Only an arched opening that appeared ahead of them, just past a screen of virulent water gushing down from nowhere and carrying with it crudely chopped logs and blocks of ice with razor-sharp edges. Mounds of dirt splattered down on then. Albin thought he saw a mutilated body flow by but decided not to ask the others if they had also seen it. Cosmo and Aidan stood on either side of him.
“Do you think we can get past this?”
“It looks pretty dangerous, like you could get a head concussion.”
“Or drown. It’s rising.”
It was true. The water had reached their calves and was steadily rising. Sara and Arthur came over to them.
“We’ve got to keep moving. We’d better not wait, it’s getting worse.”
Sure enough, the breaks between debris barreling down had gotten shorter and shorter. The water had turned dark, almost solidifying.
Arthur approached the falling water. If he hoped to sneak past it, he would need coordination. A gift he’d never had. He took the chance, without even looking back. A wooden plank fell out of nowhere and got lodged between Arthur’s shoulders and head, causing him to collapse halfway to the other room.
After a moment of shock, they ran to help him. Then abruptly stopped at the edge of the barricade of water rushing around Arthur. Their pants were already soaked to the knees, but they still hesitated. Finlay, almost knocked out when Arthur had fallen on him, wriggled out from underneath his shirt and tenderly stroked his friend’s neck. He stared at them with his eyes with no eyebrows, visibly disappointed that they weren’t already helping him, yet not seeming like he resented them.
Cosmo, ever the practical one, studied the ceiling of the dripping room to see if they could block the flow. Aidan kept looking back to see if Scarface had arrived. Sara tried to spur them on.
“You’re all a bunch of cowards. At least he didn’t worry about risking his life to save Titiana. Do you plan on waiting long enough to see the blood empty out of his body?”
The water was about to drown him, making it pointless to discuss a hemorrhage, or how bad it was.
“I’m going in. You might as well wait here since it seems that’s all you know how to do.”
She stepped forward. And then tumbled to the ground next to Arthur after being assaulted in the back of the head by an unusually big chunk of ice.
The waterfall was determined not to let them cross over to the other room. Albin sensed that they would each get knocked down one after the other until they were all massacred. Cosmo studied the ceiling to no avail, seeing only a dripping layer where a steady stream of bulky missiles poured down to destroy them.
Albin looked around the room and rubbed his hands along the icy wall to find a moveable partition, but all he could feel was the same rough surface. His grazed fingertips, numbed by the cold, didn’t register the pain. On the other side of the wall of water, Finlay patiently waited for them, overly confident that they would make it.
Aidan absentmindedly nibbled on the walnut in his hand as if he were chewing gum to calm his nerves. He spoke with his mouth full, “We should wait until the water isn’t flowing so fast so we can calculate the distances and avoid falling objects. It would be great if would stop completely, but...”
His words became reality as soon as he spoke them. Aidan was speechless with surprise, and then the torrential flow returned.
“Do that again. Go ahead! The water is listening to you instead of flowing.”
“Surely that was a coincidence.”
“I’m not so sure.”
Cosmo was now watching him with the concentrated look of someone who has almost found the answer.
“Wish for it to stop. And be ready to make a run for it.”
“I’d like for... And what if nothing happens?”
“What do you have to lose? Hurry.”
“I’d like for the water to stop flowing. For us to be able to cross the room without anything breaking our backs. I’d like to get out of here. I’d like for Titiana to be well and that we find her soon. I want to go home...”
Right when he was enjoying making wishes, Cosmo told him to be quiet. They were able to get past the waterfall without a problem, and Albin was already studying Arthur and Sara’s wounds. After he had pulled their bodies to safety, the wall closed up behind them, solid and impenetrable.
Their injuries didn’t seem too serious. The skin on Arthur’s neck was scraped. But fortunately scratches were all he’d received when he’d been knocked out. Sara was trying to get up and noticed her head felt heavy. There were pieces of trash stuck to her hair that had softened the blow. Arthur copied her, still a little shaken from his heroics.
After Arthur and Sara listened to what had happened to them, they examined the room. It appeared to be completely sealed. Smooth from floor to ceiling, including the walls, even the one they’d previously passed through. If they hadn’t been soaked to their waists with drops of water at their feet, they would have thought they had imagined it all. Aidan was the first to ask the question that was on everyone’s mind.
“What just happened here?”
“I have a theory—”
“—I’d be shocked if you didn’t.”
Impatient as he was to hear his idea, Albin couldn’t stop himself from teasing Cosmo.
“No, listen. What’s unique about Lalea is the way time fluctuates. Even more so inside this castle. We’re not just moving from one room to the next, but also from one time period to the next. Maybe there were other castles before it, and ones that will come later. We’re moving through different building stages of each one.”
“That’s absurd!”
“You’ve got a better explanation? No, I didn’t think so. And there’s more.”
Albin looked up at the ceiling and gave an exaggerated sigh.
“As if we hadn’t heard enough.”
“Let him finish.”
“Thank you, Sara. The walnuts. They helped us. I can’t explain how, but they’ve come in handy so far. I’m positive that if I chewed one of these nuts,
I could make a door appear with a glowing arrow showing us the way.”
“That would certainly be handy.”
Cosmo ignored the sarcasm.
“Yes, but I think we should save them. We might be in greater need later on.”
“So meanwhile, what do we do? Sing a little song? That might bring Scarface even closer to us.”
Sara interrupted him.
“Maybe he can’t reach us. After all, we’ve already lost a lot of time, and he should’ve already caught up with us by now.”
“That would be too easy. But, I do believe we’ve been granted some sort of respite, so it’s up to us to use it wisely. I think we can find Titiana without the walnuts. We just need to figure a way.”
“Hey, you’re the genius. You just have to get us out of here.”
“I always appreciate your support, Albin.”
“Guys, stop it. Save your sarcasm for later. Our friend is in trouble, something I would call a priority.”
Albin barely refrained from pointing out the irony of what Aidan’s top priorities used to be. But he refrained because he was right. They needed to hurry.
“The door should be there. Even if we can’t see it. Maybe if we feel the walls.”
But the walls were all the same. Identical, thick obstacles. They could rub their hands over every inch and never find a rough spot. Arthur stood in the middle of the room and screamed at the top of his lungs.
“Titiana, where are you? Help us!”
Then, he disappeared, swallowed into the ground. Finlay scrambled after him before any of them could react. They in turn fell into the invisible hole. A long hallway with a steep incline, a dark slide with no end in sight, only a few sparks in the darkness.
After the descent with no stairs, they plummeted into a room where a cage, floating in the air, held Titiana. The floor was transparent, almost invisible. Unstable as if the world below had lost its mooring, warped and unable to stop moving. A sick vision of an unbridled world. And there they were, suspended above it without any fixed point to look at except for the grotesquely big, gilded cage.
The room seemed stuck in space, out of bounds, beyond any building structure. Without any distinct boundaries, it would only take one extra footstep to throw it off balance, to leave it.
Titiana didn’t see or hear them. It was as if the cage held more than just her body as prisoner. Seated cross-legged with her head bowed and her leonine mane of hair hiding her face. She was rocking imperceptibly. Only a tiny swaying giving it away and a light humming that sounded both lucid and tense.
She didn’t appear to be injured, but they were too far away to know for sure. They had to tilt their heads far back to see the cage and its prisoner who was unable to hear their calls.
The cage was suspended without any ropes. The prison had been deemed secure enough without the need of any guards.
Cosmo was weighing the walnut in his hand. An extra support.
He was about to swallow it when Arthur stopped him.
“Wait. We need to make a pyramid!”
“A what?”
“A human pyramid. Like in the circus. If we stack ourselves one on top of the other, we can reach the cage. And move on from there.”
Albin, listening in on their conversation, interrupted him.
“And moving on from there, we’ll definitely find out who has the strongest back. It’s also a great way to break one. And in the circus, which you mentioned, they train for weeks. They’re a little ahead of us, but whatever!”
Sara walked over to join the discussion.
“It’s not such a crazy idea. I think we could do it. We should at least give it a try.”
“Yes!”
Arthur was full of enthusiasm.
“And Finlay will be on top since he’s the lightest. And I think he’ll be able to slip between the bars.”
“That’s for sure. Two prisoners instead of one will be a lot more fun. And I was just saying it was getting too easy.”
“What do you say, Fin?”
“Schlirb!”
Despite the tense situation, they all burst out laughing.
“He seems pretty convinced! Let’s do it.”
After some deliberation, they finally settled on a formation. Aidan and Albin, the strongest and apparently the biggest, got down on all fours. They held back an urge to vomit at the thought of flying downwards, but there was nowhere else to look but down. Arthur copied them, balancing himself on each of them. Sara, holding Finlay in her arms, stood on Arthur’s back while Cosmo supported her ankles.
Finlay couldn’t touch the bottom of the cage, so he crouched into Sara’s palms and then sprang toward the edge of the platform. His leap was nothing short of spectacular, though Cosmo was the only one who had a total view of it.
Finlay balanced precariously on a narrow metal strip that surrounded the bars. He could have slipped through them, but instead he began to hum. At first he copied Titiana’s tune, then he raised the scale and hastened the tempo. A bluish light appeared in the cage, streaming out from what had been metal, gradually growing brighter.
Finlay’s fingers played with the light as he became more and more focused on singing. Titiana caught up with his tempo, increasing the intensity of her voice, yet following with a slight delay.
Soon, the luminosity was so strong that it invaded the room and almost spilled out to the exterior world. They had to turn away to protect their eyes, but it was now outside, though dimmer.
After several minutes had passed, the two singers’ voices met up with each, creating a harmonious melody.
Fascinated though they were, Albin and the others knelt down and plugged their ears with their hands. Their brains vibrated, ready to explode from the combined pressure of the vocal chords that had created the light.
A luminous explosion of incandescence, of bursting filaments. Electric blue. A union in song, yet eclectic. Music pushed to its limits, could it not warm up bodies as well as souls? It had melted the cage, allowing Titiana with Finlay on her shoulder to slip down below. The air had become dense enough to protect them from their fall.
They all hugged each other, so happy to be back together that they had forgotten they were still prisoners.
But someone was thinking for them.
CHAPTER 23 A MAN SO SURE OF HIS OPINIONS
Jules signaled to Merlin that were indeed not alone. Merlin held his head in his hands, the perfect pose of a befallen man. Jules’ face turned red, filled with the pugnacity that he injected in all his projects.
“I can explain everything.”
“I’m sure you can.”
The man, with a blasé reaction, folded his arms, flashlight balanced on the crook of his elbow, and leaned against the doorframe.
“Go ahead, I’m a curious person by nature.”
“It concerns a scientific experiment.”
The guard’s skeptical look convinced the professor that the truth was probably not the best explanation.
“I’m trying to find my son. He disappeared, you know, Cosmo, Cosmo Scientia. I’m a scientist, and I’m sure I can find evidence, some clues that the police didn’t notice. You understand, don’t you?”
“Jules! Why it’s you, Jules! Gosh, it’s been years. To think it would take something like this for us to run into each other, so sad. But I’m awfully happy to see, that’s for sure! You don’t mind if I hug you? Gosh, that’s just great! Oh yeah, hey pal, I’m really sorry about your kid.”
The guard didn’t wait for Jules’ permission to grab him in his arms, a hug strong enough to break several ribs. He wiped his forehead with a red scarf and continued to talk while Jules gave Merlin a dumbfounded look that went unnoticed by the guard.
“Of course you remember me, right?”
“I’m trying to remember...could you help me out?”
“René, René Petitbois. Come on, sure you do!”
The man was so insistent; the tenacity of those who believe no one has ever known an
yone but them.
“We sat right next to each other all through elementary school. Well, almost. Towards the end, they changed my seat, and oddly enough my grades changed, too. Those were the good times, weren’t they?”
Rene punched his shoulder like a pseudo boxer who never made it inside the ring.
“So, Jules. I think I heard you got married, and me, I take care of this noble institution. I also work at the market, the one in town, you probably don’t know that.”
Finished with wiping down his forehead, he blew his nose, almost emotional.
“Oh wow. Your poor son. What a sad story. But tell me...”
He led Jules to a corner of the room away from Merlin, turning his back as if plotting against him.
“Why is this child murderer here with you? I mean, he’s dangerous, like he could hurt you. And I don’t trust him at all. Look how sneaky he looks. Hey, but don’t turn around. He might think we’re talking about him.”
“ But, uh—”
“—René.”
“Right, René. Sorry. What I was saying...Oh, yes, Merlin was here when the children disappeared. He knows more than anyone what happened.”
René nodded his head vigorously.
“Oh yeah, that’s for sure. And he knows how to make evidence disappear, did you think about that one? My job is on the line, here. Nobody’s supposed to be inside here. I’m not talking about you. I trust you, for sure. A friendship like ours, you know. But that guy over there, I don’t like him being here.”
“I believe he’s innocent. I know he is.”
“Oh, my poor Jules. Look at what the pain and suffering has done to you. It’s so sad, this whole story. And you, the one who was so smart.”
He continued his pitying tone.
“It’s OK. I’ll protect you. I’m going to stay right here and watch him, and believe me, I won’t take my eyes off him for a second. The least little move and he’s going down. He’ll be on his best behavior then, that guy.”
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