The sound of crashing china and shattering glass on my right nearly deafens me. I whirl to face the noise. It came from the dining room.
Deep breaths and calming thoughts are no use to me now. I don’t know how I even move, the terror gripping my body, but somehow I walk from the end of the hall to the inside of the dining room.
In the center of the room, crowded between the wall and the table, stands a towering lion with thrashing wings. No, worse than a lion. The thing’s huge, golden wings beat against the chandelier and the dark window. Scaly talons with claws, shining and sharp as knives, rear up in front of its head. Its eyes gleam gold, feral as they catch the torches’ low light. The shadows surrounding the monster are a perfect setting for its wild, raging body. The creature flexes its wide jaw, displaying large, jagged teeth.
The animal notices me.
Its front legs, the taloned ones, fall down heavily on the ground. Suddenly it’s quiet and still, standing there, breathing, staring me down. Or sizing me up? I can’t move a muscle.
“Hello.” The whisper scrapes out of my throat, and I wonder what a griffin’s hearing is like. What am I doing here?
Furry pointed ears perk up from between the feathers lining his head. It’s the only acknowledgement I get. I hope that’s a good sign. It feels like a good sign.
“I…I’m Beila.”
It continues to stare at me, no recognition of my words. Is it supposed to know language? Am I supposed to communicate with it? Defeat it? I don’t even know the purpose of this confrontation. I should’ve asked Shadow for a plan. Any plan. It was stupid to come here with no plan.
No clue what else to do, I take a step forward. At least the dining table puts something between me and that animal.
The moment I move, the griffin leaps onto the table and rears up again, letting out a new sort of strangled moan. The tops of its wings bend down, cramped under the high, ornate ceiling. It falls forward, its front legs crashing down onto the table. It’s so close, I can feel the heat from its body, smell its musky sweat. An image of my body, torn and bleeding from those talons, hits me.
Shadow, Adele, the villagers flash into my mind—I have to do something, something Shadow thought I could do—but I can’t. I can’t hold myself together any longer. My veins feel like bursting from my frantic pulse, and the throb in my head drowns out any lucid thought.
I turn and flee, praying the creature does not follow.
I spent what was left of the night bringing my pulse and breathing back to normal. Fighting off images of Adele, Shadow, the villagers, and the griffin took quite a bit of energy. When Louna starts to fade from sight in the morning, I stumble out of bed and head toward Shadow’s room. Standing in front of his doors, every cell in my body carries the strain of two sleepless nights and last night’s terrifying events.
I knock. Shadow’s voice calls out, “Come in.”
Once I’m inside and sitting on the floor in front of his chair, he slides down to join me. Again his hood is down and his face is visible, but my emotions after last night are frayed and scattered. I avoid eye contact. I stare down at my lap, even when he takes my hands into his talons. A memory of the griffin’s claws flashes through me and I pull back. He complies and draws his arms back into his sleeves.
“I did it.”
He nods. “I know.” We sit in silence for a few minutes before he speaks again. “Promise me one thing.”
“Okay.” I still can’t bring myself to look at him, but he waits. I can tell he wants me to look up. Finally, I bring my head up and glance at his eyes before staring at the wall behind him.
“Promise me you will come back.”
I hadn’t thought of that…coming back or not coming back. I just want to go home, to see my family. I long to see my mother, too, but nobody can help that. I need to get away from this place.
But there are lives here depending on me. This place needs a savior, and somehow that savior is me. There are people here I’ve come to care about, people a part of me doesn’t want to leave.
I nod. “I promise.”
“Beila, this is important.” His talons return and his grip tightens. I flinch. It doesn’t hurt, just surprises me, but he immediately loosens my hands until he’s barely holding them anymore. “Beila, you have to come back. Soon. The magic here…you know what it is like. You have seen what’s happening. You are the only person who can save the village…The only person who can save me.”
My eyes dart back to his for a moment. The look there, the desperation radiating from his voice, presses on my heart and throat. I wish I could end the curse this instant. But I still don’t know how, and I don’t have the strength for another night or day here in me.
“I promise I’ll come back.”
He nods, but his eyebrows are still furrowed, his forehead creased. “You remember the necklace?”
“The one from the dream? With your painting?”
“Yes.” He lets go of one hand and shakes his sleeve so that it falls back, away from his talons. Then he curls his hand closed, slowly, and uncurls it to reveal the little brass frame on its delicate chain. “Take it. Wear it to bed tonight and you will wake in your home.”
I take the necklace and let go of his other hand to put it on.
His stare on me is fierce, desperate. I finally meet his eyes. “Remember, Beila. Remember your promise. Remember this place. And please, Beila, my lady…remember me.”
Something in me stirs at his reference to me, old and familiar. I nod. “Yes, I will. Of course I will.”
He nods and stands, offering his hand to help me up. I almost refuse it, but I don’t want to seem unkind. “You can return the same way you leave, with the necklace at night. Come back as soon as you can, Beila, but please take no longer than a week.”
It’s a shorter time than I expected. After all this time here, I’m not quite sure what my family knows of my fate or the past months without me. What will home be like when I return? If I can go home with the necklace now, surely there’s a way to go home once I’ve broken the curse, too. These people’s lives are depending on my return; a week it is. I nod.
When I leave Shadow’s room, I go straight back to my own. I have no idea where Louna is. Probably with Sophie. My room is empty when I get back, so I assume she’s being cared for elsewhere. Good. I’d rather not say goodbye or explain my leaving to anyone. Sharing a bed tonight when I leave is something I’d prefer to avoid as well.
According to the fireplace, it’s not even close to dark yet. I don’t care. My sleepless nights and the ordeals of the past two days have worn me down, and everything in me just wants to go home. After some debate, I decide to leave my backpack and its contents in the closet; once the villagers notice my absence, hopefully the backpack will assure them I’m coming back. Shadow said I’d wake at home, not in the forest, so I leave my sneakers as well. I’ve got plenty of shoes at home.
Only a few minutes after I lie down, I am enveloped by sweet, peaceful silence.
Twelve
The sunlight streaming through my window wakes me up. I slide my comforter down just enough to stretch my arms out. I yawn and brush my face out of my hair.
I sit up quickly, grabbing the sheets for balance when the sudden movement makes my head swim.
Sunlight. Windows. Home.
I smile. I have no idea how I’m going to explain my absence to my family. I made a new best friend who died. I ran away from her funeral in grief. I left behind an entire village of cursed people who were counting on me to save their lives. But for now, I’m smiling, because I’m home.
I slide out of bed and notice that I’m no longer in my jeans. I’m wearing my favorite pajamas, the gray cotton ones I was wearing that night I left, before I changed and headed out into the woods. Magic.
My backpack sits on the floor by my nightstand. I pull it open and find all my supplies inside—the flashlight, the sketchbook, everything. I stand and look
in the mirror. The necklace still hangs around my neck, large and out of place against my wrinkled top.
“Better take care of that,” I mumble to myself. Of course, my family seeing a strange new necklace will be the least of my worries, but it’s just one less thing to explain. I take it off and drop it in the top drawer of my nightstand. A quick glance back at my clock tells me it’s 10:43. I open my bedroom door and hurry downstairs to see if anyone’s home.
The smell of fresh coffee wafts upstairs. I hear the crinkle of paper. Dad and Damien are up, sharing coffee and newspapers. Must be a weekend. The sunlight shines bright, too bright, through the big kitchen windows. Its reflection glares off the white refrigerator and tile flooring. It burns my eyes. I can barely see anyone in all this light, after so long underground.
“Good morning. Want some breakfast? We figured we’d wait for you, but you know how Viv is.” Damien’s calm voice is just barely audible over the grumbling of the old, worn-out coffeemaker. I know what he means. If we waited on everyone for weekend breakfasts, we wouldn’t get to eat for three days. Viviann’s been known to set family records for sleeping in.
Dad looks up from his paper for only a moment. “Morning, love.”
I sit at the table without a word. They must assume my silence is me still waking up.
How long have I been gone? Weeks? Months? How can they act so calm? They must have noticed I was missing. This doesn’t make sense. But then…neither has anything else, ever since I went exploring the woods. Once again, I decide to shrug off my questions and chalk it up to magic, which seems to have followed me home. At least I don’t have to come up with an explanation for my extended absence.
I pour myself a glass of orange juice. Damien pulls a carton of eggs out of the fridge, taking charge of breakfast as usual.
“What day is it?”
Damien chuckles. “Saturday.”
Makes sense. “Hmm, yeah, I got that. I mean what’s the date?”
Dad turns a page in his paper. “The twenty-second.”
I nod and take a drink from my glass, trying to remember…The night I left, that was the night of October twenty-first. So the magic froze real life, or the tunnels were one stretched-out dream, or the magic rewound time…whatever the explanation, something unreal happened, and I never left my bed.
The entire kitchen is full of sunlight. It’s astounding. I sit and drink it in with my juice. Everything is glaringly bright. A few months underground definitely affects a person.
After I finish my eggs, I sit at the table for a while. It’s nice being with my family in a real house in the real world. A part of me wonders about the tunnels. Was it just a dream? A sign I should get my mental health checked? Or was it real? If it was…will it slip from my mind the way my family, my real life, did while I was in the tunnels?
These are the thoughts running around in my mind when Viviann finally stumbles down the stairs to join us. She immediately slumps into the chair to my left and lays her forehead on the table. Damien gets up from his seat on my right to warm up her eggs. Dad remains sitting across from me, attached to his paper.
“Good morning.”
Viviann groans in acknowledgement of my comment.
“Did you sleep well?” I’m really glad nobody asked me that question, because I’m honestly not sure. Was I even sleeping? But I’m feeling particularly sisterly at the moment, thankful to be home.
She pulls her head up, dark hair tangled and matted and falling in her eyes. “Why are you so bouncy?” She sounds like she’s running a garbage disposal in her throat.
“Bouncy? Really?” My sisterly affection wavers. She’s just as moody as I remember.
Her head returns to the table and I give up, instead getting up to help Damien by getting Viv a glass of juice. Surely Damien will be in a more conversational mood.
“So how’s school going?”
He takes the glass from my hand along with the freshly microwaved plate of eggs and sets them on the table for Viviann. While he walks, he talks about the old ladies at the nursing home where he recently practiced giving shingles shots. I start to tune out and only half listen. I’m itching to enjoy being aboveground again.
I need to get outside.
As soon as I can, I excuse myself from the kitchen and head straight out the door. We use the back door of the house regularly instead of the front door; the front door is on this weird front room on the side of the house that takes serious hill-climbing skills to reach. Ignoring the fact that I’m still wearing pajamas and slippers, or that it’s barely sixty degrees this time of year, I sit on one of two old rusty swings still left on our childhood swing set. Dad most definitely would have taken this thing down ages ago, as obsessed with safety as he is, if we hadn’t moved to the city. Now, after Mom, he’s been too scatterbrained to notice that sort of stuff. Not to mention she helped him put it up. I think changing much of anything about this house, the last place she was really happy, would be too much for him.
Everything right now is too much for me. I’m home. I should be happy, right? Ecstatic. Relieved. Something good and warm and fuzzy like that. Instead I feel fidgety, itching for movement, for action, for excitement, for something I can’t quite put a name to.
Why did the tunnel stuff happen to me? Why did I have to be the savior? Out of seven billion people on this planet, and probably ten times that number living in the last five hundred years the tunnel village has existed, why me? It’s crazy that one girl with no connection to that place would be the only person capable of saving everyone in it. It’s not fair, really.
I push my feet off the ground a little, scared to swing too far in case the rusted-out metal crumbles and drops me on the ground. Instead I simply sway back and forth, back and forth, listening to the squeak and whine of the moving metal pieces. It doesn’t take long before I start to shiver. I walk back inside and upstairs for a shower.
The hot water feels almost scalding against my shoulders and back. I let it glide over my skin anyway, washing off the feeling of grit and dirt the tunnels left on me. I don’t look any dirtier than if I’d just slept through a normal night in my normal life, but months of living without showers or bathing makes me feel grimy. I stand under the steaming showerhead until the water’s gone tepid and even the walls above the shower are fogged up.
Once I’m dry, I pull on a chunky knit sweater and elephant-print lounge pants. The feeling of pants—especially pants that aren’t jeans—is foreign after a wardrobe of endless dresses. The fabric of the sweater itches a little, but the loose, baggy fit is too comfortable to change into something else. I pull a few pencils and my sketchbook out of my backpack and flip it to the first empty page, where I draw the first lines of a familiar hooded silhouette.
My alarm blares, it’s annoying beep banging on the insides of my head. I roll over and swat the clock until the beeping stops. Another day begins.
It’s Wednesday, middle of the week. I try to shake the sleepiness out of my shoulders as I shuffle to the bathroom to brush my teeth. No dreams again last night.
Viviann went out with some new guy last night. None of us have met him yet, but I overheard her on the phone before he arrived; he doesn’t sound promising. I give it two weeks, tops.
Damien passed his latest exam. His workload in the nursing program is intense, but he’s managing it well so far. Dad has taken to discussing the economy in Japan, so we all got an earful of monetary jargon at dinner. He coughed a bit after dinner. I hope he’s not getting sick. Going into winter, if he gets sick the whole family’s going to cycle through the bug before we can rid the house of it.
I spent the evening flipping through some of Mom’s old books and pruning the rosebush on the second floor balcony. When we moved from the city I brought all my plants with me, and the balcony outside the master bedroom was the perfect place for them. Dad doesn’t seem to mind having me walking through his room all the time to get to them. Really, he’s hardly ever
in there except to sleep. I think the room reminds him too much of Mom.
French class is today. When the time came for me to choose a language for my high school credits, Damien tried to convince me to learn Spanish, and Dad voted for Chinese. I was never really interested in learning Chinese. I thought about Spanish, but the little French I’d picked up from foreign films and websites made more sense to me than Spanish. I picked it because it seemed easier. That, and my mom always loved the language and the culture. She favored French names for her kids and enjoyed learning about the plants native to different regions of France.
Now I’m sure I made the right decision. French is a breeze. It’s the one class I know well enough that I don’t have to study before tests. I’ve gotten even better since the last test, too, or the teacher has become more lenient. Either way, he never corrects my pronunciation. I even got the best grade in the class on my recent speech.
Today we’re reading from La petite fille de Monsieur Linh. Each student takes turns reading a paragraph, then summarizing what happened in that paragraph. The story follows a man who leaves his village during a war and takes an orphan baby girl with him. It seems pretty clear to me, but a lot of my classmates are struggling. I guess we all have our strengths and weaknesses.
By Monday, Viviann and this Mark guy have gone “official.” Damien still thinks they’ll last two weeks. After my latest eavesdropping session, though, I’m guessing at least three. Her last two relationships lasted a month and five weeks, so she’s getting a little better at the whole dating thing.
Dad said some Japanese electronic company’s stock went up overnight. His cough is getting worse. I noticed Damien giving him the side-eye, but I doubt he can convince Dad to go to a doctor. I just hope the rest of us don’t get whatever he has. Ever since that weird nightmare with all the dirt, I haven’t had any crazy dreams; at least I’m getting plenty of decent sleep.
Annie, my best friend from school when we first lived here, is in algebra and AP English with me. We’ve been hanging out a lot more lately. I think we might get close again. I remember our sleepovers in elementary school, and she came to Mom’s funeral. We just sort of lost contact when I moved to the city and grew up. Now that we’re friends again, maybe one day we’ll be best friends and go to college together, be in each other’s weddings. That would be pretty awesome. A classic friendship story.
World of Shadows Page 15