“You’re welcome to have as much as you like, Lois,” Salem said. He was manually sweeping the floor behind the counter. “You may not want some now, but you will in a bit.”
Chatter came from the back room. Lois craned her head around to see the Muffler twins sitting at the card table. They were arguing about something—just like the good old days. Some habits, such as the ones Lois picked up from serving in the Silver Griffins for so long, were tough to break.
“When do you think Ignatius will be back? I really have to get back home,” Lois said.
Agnes and Salem shrugged almost simultaneously.
“You know Ignatius. He probably took a wrong turn, saw a town in need of saving, and decided it was his responsibility to save them. His granddaughter is much the same way; put them together, and no cat will ever get stuck in a tree again,” Salem said. “Besides, I see you noticed the Muffler twins are here now.”
“Unfortunately,” Lois murmured. “Sneaky bastards. Didn’t even hear them come in.”
“Well, it is card night. We’re playing 500 Rummy. I remember how good you used to be at that.”
“Still am,” Lois said. “Haven’t played in God knows how long.”
“Come play a couple hands,” Agnes offered. “It’ll be fun. Like the olden days.”
Lois exhaled. “Fine, just a couple hands. But if Ignatius isn’t back soon, we’ll have to go find him ourselves.”
It was supposed to be a joke.
Chapter Twelve
The mountain passage was no easy task, especially with a hurt grandfather. Maria and Frieda had to constantly steady him on the uneven terrain.
Sherlock would take off up the rocks and scout ahead, then come back and give Maria the lowdown. So far, so good.
Gramps kept mumbling about the various creatures they needed to keep their eyes peeled for, creatures Maria couldn’t pronounce nor had ever heard of before. Suffice it to say, Maria kept her free hand near the hilt of her sword.
As they got higher and higher into the mountains, the air grew colder and the music box grew heavier; so heavy, in fact, that it felt like Maria was wearing the mountain around her neck instead of her satchel.
They had stopped to catch their breath.
Frieda was shivering, so she conjured up a fire in a pile of dry grass surrounded by small stones. The fire burned much brighter than it should have.
Magic, remember, Maria?
Her legs ached. Her head pounded. It wasn’t until the ability to teleport via one of Gramps’s portals was lost that Maria missed it. So often it seemed the people of Earth took things for granted. Maria guessed it wasn’t much different on the other world, judging by the irksome looks on both Gramps’s and Frieda’s faces. Sherlock, on the other hand, was loving the journey; sniffing everything and peeing on most everything.
He left around the time the fire started, saying, I’m going to find us some food. He came back with a mouthful of dead bugs, depositing them on a flat rock. Voila!
“Gross. We can’t eat that,” Maria said.
Gramps looked on, his face turning a sickly shade of green that Maria hoped was because of the beetles and ant-like insects, rather than the damage he had sustained in the Widow’s attack.
Why the hell not? They’re quite tasty. I only swallowed a few. Saved the rest for you guys. I think a thank you is in order here, Maria.
“Is there anything you don’t eat?”
Veg—
“Vegetables, right. How could I forget? It’s the thought that counts, I guess. So thank you, Sherlock. You’re a good boy.”
Sherlock’s tail beat at the surrounding dirt, causing a thin cloud to rise in the air and drift down the way they’d come.
“Mountains are typically devoid of wildlife anyhow. If we were starving, we’d be out of luck, I’m afraid,” Freida said.
Maria noticed, not for the first time, that Frieda had Gramps’s hand in her own. She wondered if this was a friendly gesture, or if there was something there between the two of them. The thought of her grandfather dating was almost as foreign to her as magic. But, then again, stranger things had happened. That was a motto she had begun to live by lately.
“No worries,” Gramps assured them. We do not have much longer of a trek. Ashbourne is just through there.” He pointed to the mouth of a cave as big as a storefront.
“A shortcut?” Frieda asked.
“I’m afraid we have no other choice.”
Ooh! I have to grab some food to-go. BRB, Sherlock said.
“Did you just use a texting acronym instead of just saying ‘be right back?’” Maria asked, shaking her head.
I heard Claire say it. Sue me, he said, running.
“What has become of my dog?”
“Come on, we must go. Sherlock will catch up with us,” Gramps said, trying to rise. He got about halfway up and then stumbled. Freida and Maria both reached out and grabbed him before he could crack his head on the rock he had been sitting on.
“No, you need to rest,” Maria said. “I can go alone from here—well, Sherlock can come with me, so I won’t be totally alone. As for how much use he’ll be? Well, that’s debatable.”
Gramps smiled, stuck a hand out, and brushed Maria’s hair from her face. He looked haggard, his wrinkles deeper, his eyes ringed and sagging. It broke Maria’s heart to see him like that.
“Oh, Maria, so much like your mother. She would’ve done the same thing, and she did on more than one occasion, despite my and her husband’s warnings. She was hardheaded.”
Maria laughed and knocked her fist lightly against her scalp. “I know where we both got it from.”
“Exactly.” With great strain, Gramps pulled himself. “I’m as hardheaded as they come, and you are not going about this alone, Maria.”
Freida stood up, too, a smile on her face. She put a hand on Maria’s shoulder. Her palm blazed with heat. “No, neither of you are. We can do this. We can save that town, and we can get whatever it is you need to know.”
Maria had never felt such love and support, not when the stakes were this high. She nodded.
“Let’s go. I’ll carry you, if I have to.”
“It won’t come down to that, Maria,” Gramps answered. “I can already feel my strength coming back.”
Maria sensed that wasn’t exactly the whole truth, but she didn’t say so.
Sherlock came back as they breasted the rising landscape. Dead trees stared down at them, their branches as jagged as wicked lightning bolts. From those trees hung odd birds with large yellow eyes, watching the wanderers’ every move. Each time Maria looked up at them, noting their scaly skin and sparse feathers, she expected them to look away, but they never did. They seemed to stare into her very soul.
“Too bad you don’t have wings,” Maria said to Sherlock as they passed one hanging upside down from a white tree branch like a bat. “Otherwise you could chase them off.”
Oh, you don’t think I’m young and spry enough to jump up there and scare them? Sherlock retorted.
“Not what I said, but no. No, I don’t.”
We’ll see about that.
Sherlock took off toward the towering white tree. He jumped and clawed up the trunk, tearing away strips of bark with his claws, but ultimately only got about half a foot off the ground. The bird-creature remained on its branch, watching Sherlock with curiosity.
Ow, Sherlock said after he’d given up and waddled back toward Maria. You’re right; I’m too old for that. Chasing birds up trees is a puppy’s game. He stretched, putting his front paws out, dipping, and sticking his tail end up in the air. Think they have doggy chiropractors here? I don’t think they do on Earth.
“Could always go to the V-E-T,” Maria said.
How dare you spell that word in my presence, Maria?
“Sorry.”
This little exchange raised a chuckle out of Gramps, who was only a few feet ahead of them, steadied by Freida. That was a good sign, Maria presumed. If he was laughi
ng, he might be getting better. She knew she would need him for the rest of the journey, but that was nothing compared to the grand scheme of things—she would need her grandfather for the rest of her life, or at least as long as he walked the worlds. The thought of losing him… well, she couldn’t fathom that.
They reached the mouth of the cave no more than an hour later, though Maria thought it felt longer than that. Time had a funny way of moving on different planets, with different revolutions around their sun, and, in Oriceran’s case, their two moons.
“That’s not creepy at all.” Maria was observing the cave’s opening, which was completely devoid of light. It was so black inside the air seemed to shimmer.
“The Cave of Delusion,” Gramps said.
“Is that what they call it? Sounds like something out of The Princess Bride. You know, like the Dread Pirate Roberts or the Cliffs of Insanity?”
Gramps put his hands up as if to say I’m innocent. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t name such a thing. And whoever would name it that is obviously delusional.”
“Well, why do they call it that anyway?”
“Because you sometimes see things in all the blackness,” Freida answered. “But you mustn’t worry.” She snapped her fingers and a spark of flame shot out from her palm, hovering there, not burning her flesh. “We have light to guide us.”
Maria suddenly wished her magic was as easy as snapping her fingers. All in due time, my dear, her grandpa’s voice said in her mind.
Maria didn’t see anything inside of the Cave of Delusion, but she heard something.
They all did.
It was high laughter, like that of a person suffering from insanity.
Maria looked at her grandfather. Judging by the way his mouth turned into a thin line, she’d known for a fact he heard it.
“Ignore it. Keep moving on,” he said softly.
But it was hard. The laughter was as piercing as a blade to the eardrum. At one point, Frieda’s flame went out because she had to cup her palms to the sides of her head as she murmured, “I can’t take it! Make it stop! Make it stop!”
Maria had drawn her sword.
Sherlock whimpered and whined.
The whole time this went on, Gramps never wavered. He held his head high and stood as straight as his broken body would let him. To Maria, there was nothing more admirable about someone than their ability to go on in the face of the unknown. Her respect for him grew, as if it could grow any more.
Not long after, though it had felt like an eternity, they literally saw light at the end of the tunnel. Just a pinprick of white in the darkness.
Sherlock bolted toward the opening.
“No, Sherlock! Wait!”
Too late.
He escaped the light that was radiating from Frieda’s palm again, and plunged into the blackness. Maria couldn’t see so much as a hint of his tail or his floppy ears. She thought about chasing after him, but a quick glance at Gramps, who looked even more exhausted from the shadows dancing on his face, told her not to go.
“We will catch up to him, no worries,” Freida assured her. She closed her eyes and hummed, drawing on the power emanating from Oriceran’s core. The flame grew brighter, eating away the dark, but Sherlock was still nowhere to be seen. Stalactites hung above and around them, like blades hovering, ready to fall.
“I don’t see him,” Maria said, her voice shaky. She was getting worried. Now was the time for a last-ditch effort, the last resort. She opened her satchel, the music box gleaming in the firelight, and she pulled out the last few Milkbones she had stashed away on top of the refrigerator. She figured she would need them, and she was right.
“Keep going,” Gramps said. “We’ll catch up with him. He’s probably out on the other side of the mountain, chasing Flutterbees or the like.”
Flutterbees, Maria mentally shook her head, but the thought was quickly disintegrated by a distant shrieking.
“Sherlock!”
That was him; as plain as day, that was Sherlock whining. Did something hurt him or is he only scared? I will kill anyone who touches my dog, Maria swore, the anger boiling over her.
That same whimpering again, but this time, Sherlock cried out for Maria.
Maria, help me! Please!
She couldn’t take it anymore. Dimly, she was aware of Gramps reaching and trying to snag her arm. He wasn’t successful.
Maria tore off through the dark cave, not worried about stumbling or falling down a crack; all she was worried about was saving Sherlock.
Soon she became disoriented, but the darkness bled away, turning into a grayish film that seemed to settle over her eyes. Her hands brushed against the cool stone as she guided herself toward that distant pinprick of light that never grew closer no matter how fast she ran.
And the laughter came back, too—that high, maniacal laughter. It made Maria’s blood run cold.
Not the time to get scared, Maria, she thought. You’ve faced worse than this.
But had she?
At least when she fought Malakai, she’d been able to see him, thanks to the streetlights and the glow of magic—
That’s it! Magic, Maria! You keep forgetting you’re a witch.
She closed her eyes; or at least, she thought she did. Either way, the blackness was almost complete…until it wasn’t. Blue light rippled up her arms. It was nothing compared to Frieda’s palm-fire, but it was enough for her to see five or so feet ahead of her. She found it much easier to ‘light-up,’ as she called it, on Oriceran as opposed to Akron, where the magical energy was less prevalent. Though she hadn’t done it with the snap of her fingers, she realized she was already getting a better hang of it.
Sherlock, I’m coming for you.
The whimpering came about three minutes later, now from somewhere else—somewhere deeper. Maria took two rights and a left, and then the landscape sloped downward. She wasn’t sure now, because of her blue light, but she thought the darkness in the cave was quickly fading.
Maria!
An opening presented itself, seemingly out of thin air. Inside the opening, filtered gray light helped her see the rising land. In the middle of the land, which must’ve stood a hundred feet above from where she was, on a raised platform of rock, a man sat on a throne. He held a staff made of bone in one hand (of what bone, Maria was unsure), and he sat in a way that reminded Maria of George Demarco, her graduating class’s resident clown. His head leaned on the hand that held the staff, one leg hung over the opposite arm, and he had a big, goofy smile on his face. A very weird position indeed.
“Who are you?” Maria shouted up to him.
“Me? Why, Maria Apple, I am the ruler of the Cave of Delusion,” the man said.
Maria took a few steps forward, the blue light fading from her arms and the gray light taking over. As she got closer, she recognized this man as not being a man at all. He may have been a man at one point, but whatever he was now, she was sure of one thing—he was not alive…or he shouldn’t be. His skin was papery and stretched over his skull so tight that his cheekbones stood out like the points of blades. His eyes were sunk in far enough that Maria could not identify the color, if there was one other than black—even if she had been only inches away from his face. He was lanky, bony, withered and worn.
“Where is my dog?” Maria asked. Against her better judgment, she had not drawn her sword yet.
“Oh, do you mean Sherlock, the talking Bloodhound?” The man stood up and lifted his staff, a bloody grin spreading on his face. As he held the staff up, the air around it shimmered as if it had caught fire. Then Sherlock rose from the ground. He was out cold; his ears dangled back, and his tongue lolled from his mouth.
Maria gasped and stifled a sob.
“Oh, no, don’t worry, Maria. He is not dead. Yet,” the man said.
“But you will be,” she snarled. Already, she’d planned her route up the jagged platforms to save her canine companion and exact revenge. Her estimation was that she could make it up th
ere in less than thirty seconds, moving fast enough to escape whatever dark magic the man on the throne possessed.
Only got one shot, she thought. Now!
She took off up the first slope, as the ground shifted beneath her feet. Using her reserved power, and drawing more from Oriceran, she was able to move much faster than she would’ve been able to on Earth. The first rise cleared, she breasted the second, then the third; the magic flowing through her like her own blood. As she climbed up the last rise, the ground was well below her and the adrenaline was making her skin prickle; she realized she was not tired, but re-energized.
“You’re dead!” she shouted as she jumped the last three feet to the edge of the rock platform and sprang up.
But Sherlock was gone, the throne was gone, and so was the man.
She spun around, whirling the sword in an arc. Nothing was behind her; she was by herself on the highest rise of the great cavern.
The man’s laughter cut through the air. Wicked laughter that Maria had only ever heard in the movies. Her body shook with anger and a growing rage. She was ready to explode.
“Why are you doing this?” she shouted to the empty space. The laughter cut off, and her voice echoed back to her, drifting, drifting, drifting…
No answer.
“What is it you want?”
“Want?” the man laughed again—if, in fact, he was a man. Maria had not known men to be able to wield such magic. “I do not want anything, Maria. Nothing tangible, that is. You, like many before you, must pass the tests if you want go on.”
“Tests?” Maria’s hand slid down the hilt of her sword. Her palms were sweaty, but the air in the cavern was cool. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard a waterfall.
“Yes, tests. Trials, if you prefer. The Trials of Antenele.” He laughed again, that wicked laughter. “Many have undergone the Trials, but few have walked away from them with a victory in their pocket and their sanity safely nestled inside of their brains.”
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