***
Trinka struggled to keep her feet on the surface as the house slippers Aunt Vashti insisted that she wear kept slipping and filling up with sand. The weight of the lantern her cousins had made her carry wasn’t helping either. She would have just slipped it into her genie purse, but she didn’t want to let her cousins know that she had it.
The wide, sweeping land that spread out before them appeared flat and colorless all over, but in the distance, it hit a row of red, rugged cliffs. On their other side, towers and hills of the same red rock jutted out of the water, where the sands of Apostrophe mingled with the seas of Brace, forming a giant bowl of muddy stew. Only the narrow gaps between the columns of rock provided windows to the sparkling blue water stretching out endlessly beyond.
Maybe I should just leave this place and go find my father now.
But as Trinka contemplated the idea, she could not resist staying just a little longer, trying to finish what she had started. She stopped fingering the vial, and turned her attention back to the inland cliffs.
“How will we know a jewel cave when we find one?” Trinka asked.
“Silly, Nefertari knows the way, don’t you, my pet?” she cooed at the misticat who was still perched on her shoulder. Nefertari merely stared ahead through half-closed eyes, so that only a small slit allowed the light to catch the glimmering surface of yellow underneath.
As they carefully made their way down the slope and rounded an edge of rock, Trinka drew in her breath sharply.
A wall of large, muscular guards with giant scimitars, curved blades that glinted menacingly, stood shoulder to shoulder in evenly spaced rows, blocking a deep opening in the cliff. Each soldier looked almost identical and wore the same brightly colored tunic and long, loose pants. Like their swords, their skin glistened, as the tiny beads of glittering sweat that coated their skin caught the light. Their tunics, edged in velvety red and trimmed with golden tassels, were sleeveless and open in the front, revealing their ample muscles. Trinka doubted that even Kolinkar would have looked life-size next to their massive frames, and she uneasily realized that they reminded her too much of the slave kidnapper in the marketplace.
Jamilah and Sabirah seemed completely unperturbed, so Trinka had to continue to walk with them. When they came close enough to have to pass the guards, the lantern rattled in Trinka’s shaking hands as she eased herself past. She felt the gaze of every guard follow her―she dared not look at them, but she could feel all those eyes staring holes into her back.
“Why aren’t we going in?” Sabirah whined, and instantly Jamilah kicked her sharply on the back of the leg.
“Those guards aren’t going to step aside and say ‘go on through’!” Jamilah retorted in a hushed shout as soon as they were out of earshot.
“Then how are we going to get inside?”
“There are other entrances,” Jamilah responded loftily. “Look.”
Sure enough, a wealth of burrows and doorways speckled the side of the cliff just beyond where the guards were standing.
“Then why aren’t they guarding those?” Trinka asked in perplexity.
“Yeah!” Sabirah exclaimed, before she realized that she was actually agreeing with Trinka.
“We’ll go up a little farther to make sure they don’t see us,” Jamilah decided.
“But I’m tired,” Sabirah complained. “I didn’t know we’d have to walk!”
“How did you think we were going to get there. Fly?”
Trinka was about to say that if she hadn’t had to bring her cousins along, she could have used the talaria and that’s exactly how she would have gotten there, when her heart suddenly seemed to jump into her throat.
“Grble!” Forgetting her cousins, she dashed forward, slippers flapping, as fast as if the talaria were carrying her. She reached the face of the cliff and stopped where a dusty green creature stood, hauling sacks full of jewels from the mouth of a hole in the sand-colored rock. She dropped to her knees and put her hands around his shoulders. His bobbling eyes looked at her blankly for a moment and then turned back to his work, tossing aside jewels almost the size of his head with as much interest as if they were plain old rocks.
“Grble,” she began desperately.
“Bngblutt,” he uttered without looking up, and before Trinka’s astonished eyes, another creature just like him poked his head out from the hole and climbed onto the sand, dragging another sack behind him. This one seemed oranger, and the one who emerged behind him was a dusty purple.
Of course, Trinka realized stupidly. This wasn’t Grble at all. You didn’t just go up to any human and assume it was the one you knew.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I thought you were a friend of mine.” She felt defeated, yet if this was a creature like Grble, then perhaps this really was where her companion would be.
“What are you doing?” her cousin’s sharp voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Ewww, you’re talking to a gorglum?” Sabirah echoed. “They’re icky. They’re the ones who pull the jewels out of the caves once the misticats find them.”
Bngblutt grunted in agreement, as the other two dropped their loads into the cart for him to sort and crawled back into the caves, dragging their empty sacks behind them.
“They’re not icky. I used to have one for a friend,” Trinka began, but her cousins had already lost interest. Jamilah examined a door-like hole that seemed large enough for them to walk through.
“Come on, we need the lantern,” she ordered.
“Do you know where a gorglum named Grble is?” Trinka hurriedly asked Bngblutt.
The creature did not respond as he emptied another sack of jewels into the cart.
“We’re waiting!” Sabirah sang impatiently.
“Okay, well, thank you,” Trinka whispered, then she hurried to catch up with her cousins. Bngblutt paused for a moment and looked after her quizzically as the three girls and the misticat disappeared into the caves.
As soon as she stepped through the opening in the bare sand-colored rock, Trinka felt as if she had stepped into another world. Tiny fragments of every color imaginable glittered in the pale lantern light, reflecting and refracting from every part of the walls, ceiling, and floor, so that it seemed she was walking on nothing but a path of colored light. The effect was far more glorious than the thousands and thousands of crystals she had seen in the City of Mirrors. It was the background of rock that made it really incredible. It was one thing to see jewels all polished and arranged, but these were raw, untouched, resplendent in their natural beauty.
“They call this a jewel cave?” Sabirah scoffed, her voice carrying far away and then echoing right back to her, as if the walls didn’t want to listen to her either.
“They must have already picked this section,” Jamilah decided. “The big ones will be further on.”
It had been her turn to hold Nefertari, ever since their pet had hissed mist into Sabirah’s eyes. The misticat practically disappeared into the blackness, her light purple body seeming to darken into the shadows. Only her eyes stood out in the dark, and they were glowing brighter with every step. They almost seemed to float suspended above Jamilah’s shoulder as they bobbed in time with the lantern in Trinka’s hand. Only the dim light from the white of the lantern lit their path, as the rough walls of the caves popped all the light bubbles Trinka tried to blow.
“Where do you think the gorglum are?” Trinka wondered aloud. They followed the cave wall as it turned, burrowing deeper into the cliffs.
“Who cares?” Sabirah snorted.
Trinka was about to lose her cool and say that she cared very much when her younger cousin stepped forward and immediately caught on fire.
At least it looked that way as flames suddenly shot up from the floor of the cave, and Sabirah’s screams pierced the air as she flew back in alarm, landing with her legs kicking helplessly in the air, her skirts flopped back in disarray, while the flames disappeared as suddenly as they had come. The other
girls stood watching in alarm until Jamilah began to giggle and Trinka felt inclined to join her.
“It’s not funny!” Sabirah shrieked indignantly as she struggled to her feet. “I almost caught on fire!”
“That’s why it’s fun―” Jamilah began when another burst of flames suddenly erupted at her feet, nearly catching her skirt in its burning breath. With a squeal, she ran from the flames, knocking over Trinka.
“Are you all right?” Trinka asked as she helped her cousin to her feet.
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “How do you expect me to be when I practically got burned up? I’m getting out of here right now!”
“I want to go home!” Sabirah whined. “Why did you make us come to this awful place?”
Trinka couldn’t respond as she picked up the lantern and prepared to follow her cousins out of the cave. Besides her desperation to find Grble, she had the strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
“Where’s Nefertari?” she asked suddenly.
Her cousins whirled and looked at each other. “I thought she was with you!” they accused simultaneously.
“She must have gone back in her bottle,” Jamilah decided, holding up the ornament around her neck.
But the top hung open, and the little bottle was empty.
Trinka and the Thousand Talismans Page 11