by Dawn Metcalf
The monsters leaped into the air and dived into the ground.
The earth churned and exploded as they resurfaced, arcing through the air, swimming through the mountain like an ocean. The land re-formed behind them, swallowing itself closed. The golem-serpents dived closer. The earth buckled. Joy screamed.
The ground below her feet erupted. Three massive underbellies spun upward, twining around her—beneath her, beside her, surrounding her as they coiled, circling closer, beady red eyes zipping past like highway lights, cutting off the sunlight, encasing her like a fist. She twisted in place—there was nowhere to run. The bodies slid together, a gritty friction, squeezing shut.
The cage closed. The lights died. The air cut off.
Joy was completely entombed in stone.
FIFTEEN
JOY SLAMMED HER hand against the wall. The muddy creatures had solidified around her, rock-hard and unyielding. The sound in her ears was cottony, the darkness, absolute. She could feel her breath echo back at her, animalistic and afraid. There was barely six inches between her and her egg-shaped tomb. She scraped the scalpel against the rock. Nothing happened. Not even a spark.
Graus Claude’s warnings whispered to her: Just because you cannot be killed does not mean that you cannot die.
“Stef!” she screamed, but her voice was thick, muffled in her own ears. She kicked at the wall and felt it in her toes. It was unyielding and immovable. There was no getting out.
“I’m under the Edict,” she gasped aloud, slapping the stone with her palm. Her tongue felt hot and dry. She blinked against the darkness. It made no difference; it was black on black. She turned in a tight circle. She felt dizzy, light-headed. “I’m one of the Twixt!” She beat her fist against the rock. “Let me out!” Her legs felt shaky. Her eyes stung. She needed more room. She needed more air. It was too small. Too tight. Her pack scraped the wall behind her. “Let me out!”
She blasted the wall with her Inq-glyphed push. Air whipped her hair back and smothered her face. There was no change to the rock, but she could breathe a little better. She blasted again, twice more, just to be sure that she could. Joy took deep lungfuls of air and tried to think clearly.
Okay. I’m not going to asphyxiate. I just have to get out.
Unzipping a pocket, Joy fumbled for her phone. Stef had his, and he was right outside. He’d seen what was coming. He’d tried to warn her. She was sure he’d be right there. She pulled her phone out with shaky fingers, fumbled and dropped it. Cursing, she sank to her knees only to find she couldn’t quite bend them all the way—her bones bumped against the baked clay stone. She tried stretching her arms past her hips, but her shoulders were crammed against the walls, her pack wedging under her back.
She swept her feet to kick the phone closer and blasted air from her palm into her face. Was it weaker this time? Panic scrabbled in the back of her throat.
She closed her eyes in order to concentrate and untied her hiking boots blind, kicking them off and rolling her socks into tiny, tight balls. She searched the ground barefoot, drawing her feet through the gravel and grass, scooping the flat phone against her arch and grabbing the corner between her toes. She tensed her midriff, curling, easing her leg upward like a stork, keeping her balance, arms low. She grabbed the phone in her right hand and swept it live.
No bars. The walls were too thick, but the light was a relief.
The image fuzzed. Her eyelids felt heavy, as if she were being tucked into bed standing up. Joy shook her head and blasted herself in the face again. It was little more than a breeze.
I’m fading.
Flipping the phone over, she squinted to see if Ink had placed a glyph there, pressing her thumbs all around the case just to be sure. Nothing. She wished that she had his signatura, or the carved ouroboros box in her room; without them, there was no way she could signal him, even if he’d recovered from the Bailiwick’s blow. Panic began to ebb into something sinister and sleepy.
She shook her head again, bouncing it against the stone wall. She was missing something obvious. She could feel it. Something important. But she couldn’t quite think of what it might be. Why couldn’t she think? She needed more air. More light. She needed to get out.
Air. Light. Fire!
Joy felt around for her pouch and slipped the ties loose. Snatching the matchbook, she lit one in the dark. The gritty scrape produced a tiny star that tattooed her eyes with winking lights. It died quickly. She dropped the dead match in the dirt.
Joy swiped her phone live again and dug inside the pouch then unrolled a tiny curl of vellum. Grabbing her Frisbee golf pencil, she wrote: Trapped in rock Lake James, NC. She scribbled the return sigil, blasted more air, lit a second match and watched the vellum’s corner burn...then go out. A third match barely lit. Joy sobbed, the note still in her fingers, the message unsent save for half the last words. She was using up oxygen. She was going to pass out. She stamped her bare feet against the ground. What could she do?
She used the screen to examine her cell, desperate to find any chink or crack. If there were any mouths or eyes, she couldn’t see them. The ground that she stood on was undisturbed, but digging a toe along the edge revealed that the wall sank underground. The cage closed overhead in a sloping peak and she could only guess that underground was the same—like a giant egg. She was encased in solid, seamless stone. She cupped her hand to her face and let trickles of fresh air wash over her nose and eyes. Her ears popped. There was only so much room in here, and she was building pressure with the added air.
She placed a hand against the cell wall as if she could push through to the outside. Was Stef out there? Did he know where she was? Could he find her, or did she look like any other boulder along the trail? Would he guess what had happened? Would Filly? Would Ink? Would anyone? Or would she...
No!
Joy swiped her phone again to keep the black at bay. Shadows crept over the crags of rock, tracing ripples in the stone. A shadow caught the edge of a paper-thin loop. Joy bent closer and saw the barest hint of a glyph. She traced its hairline curve with her fingertip.
A baleful eye rolled open, bathing her in firelight. She shrieked, dropping her phone, and the eye closed lazily, cloaking her once again in darkness.
Joy held her breath and shied away from the wall. Then, imagining more eyes/hands/mouths behind her, she stood rigid, touching nothing, mind screaming, tensed for an attack.
None came.
They didn’t need to attack her. They had only to wait for her to die.
Joy struggled again to grab her phone with her toes and swept the screen alight. The air tasted thinner. The tomb felt tighter. She felt like she was sinking. Joy squeezed the familiar weight of the scalpel in her hand. The lightness in her head gave her a floaty courage. She was getting used to being threatened by the Folk.
I can do this.
A cool calm washed over her. She was trapped. Okay. Graus Claude had called this an art, a subtle game the Folk played to while away their immortality. There was a trick to it, one that her enemies knew well, using rules that she was just learning—but they’d forgotten something, something very important:
Joy was the most dangerous human in the world.
Focusing on the glyph, Joy traced its shape with her scalpel, watching the sparks of undoing like a welding torch in reverse; little black-hole fireworks that sucked the surface clean. She ignored the red eyes that opened, glaring, the mouth tearing wide as if wailing in protest. Undeterred, she curved her blade up the last jagged swirl.
There was a hollow cry as the eyes winked out and died. The rock cracked and loosened as the entire side of the stone cell shifted, as a section disappeared into dust, crumbling under its own sudden weight. With one of the golems undone, the stone shattered along the fault.
The cell tilted and Joy with it, pitching sideways, vomiting gra
vel and loose earth before the wall itself tensed like a muscle, snapping shut around the wound. Joy swayed, now forced into a half crouch at an angle. There was an angry shudder, and the cell wrung itself tighter, slithering like coiled serpents, squeezing the barest space around Joy as if in retribution.
Joy gasped, blinking hard. There was barely any room for air, let alone movement. Fine threads of pain squeezed up her limbs, puckering, twisting, like she was being wrung dry. Her elbows scraped against her sides. Her center of balance hovered over one hip. She bit the inside of one cheek. Her toes curled in the dirt, feeling cool, almost blissful, half buried in the ground. She wondered if she could somehow curl up and keep curling. Like the vellum. Tucked into flame. Turn to ash. Blow away...
There was a great crash. She felt a shiver where her knees touched the stone, shaking her awake. It came again. She pressed an ear against the rough surface, trying to feel what was happening, straining to hear a muffled voice. Instead, she felt the reverb of another impact along her jaw. Joy closed her eyes and welcomed the slight buzzing; it kept away the malevolent quiet in her head. She squeezed her eyes against a rain of dust. Cold sweat spread over her skin. Her head was heavy. Her bowels were loose. It was becoming very hard to breathe.
She tapped her scalpel on the rock, making a grating, scraping sound—her last attempt to keep herself awake, to save herself. Someone was outside, trying to get at her. Someone was here to help. I wonder who? Her vision swam. Her fingers went all pins and needles. She bumped her head and barely felt it. She heard the tickle of another impact from far away, somewhere about a mile behind her head and six feet underground. She imagined being underground, buried in the earth and the rich, dark soil. It didn’t sound so bad, really. She was of Earth, after all.
My toes aren’t suffocating, she thought with odd logic.
A foggy part of her brain argued that that made no sense, but her body was instinctively pushing down and splaying her toes wide. The last of the air in her lungs had a taste, but it was different under her feet. It was like a sixth sense, a sort of out-of-body feeling. The ground had something like a smell, like a flavor—it tasted like cool metal and the sea and old, old ice.
She wiggled her toes.
They felt longer.
She drove them deeper, digging down down down into darkness and quiet and something quite familiar.
Some part of her touched it.
A hot knife of power sliced through her calluses and broken toes, up the arches of her feet, through her tendons and veins; a network of white wiry threads shot up her legs, into her hips, curling a tight twist in the pit of her stomach. It trembled there, gathering, building, breathing, then burst—erupting out her mouth in a scream. Joy tilted her head back, jaw open, and pressed her hands against the walls, unable to contain the overwhelming need to Get Out.
GET OUT! NOW!
Her eyes rolled back. She saw white light. She gasped without air. Her elbows bent, her spine stiffened, and she pushed.
The stone glowed before it shattered in all directions, shooting rubble into the sky and spraying the trees with fine hail. Sunlight slammed down like a hammer. Joy collapsed, breathing hard, tasting sweet forest pollen, old leaves and dirt-peppered salt. Outside the ragged circle of debris, Stef dropped the golden shimmer of his ward.
“Joy?” he said, rushing forward. “Joy!”
Stef grabbed her by her elbow. She pushed against the mountain, pulling her feet from the ground, half expecting to see a knotty tangle of roots, but they were only her toes, dark and dirty with chipped Mango polish. Although her two old, broken toes were straight, perfectly healed. Her head spun with oxygen and light.
“Hey,” she said hoarsely, coughing on fine rock dust. “Did you see that?”
“Which part?” he said, brushing off her legs. “The part where a horde of fire-eyed golems crawled out of the ground or the part where a Norse goddess blew you out of a rock?”
Joy was about to correct Stef, but the second part of the sentence caught her up to her head. She blinked into the light. “Filly? Where?” she said and winced. “Ow.”
“It is good to see you, too, Joy Malone!”
Filly wiped her hands over her vambraces in the middle of the trail; a breeze tugged at the blond hairs that had slipped from her nest of braids and rustled her short cape of bones. She flicked her horse head pendant into place and looked smug.
“Hey,” Joy said with a grateful grin. “How did you find me?”
The warrior woman raised her eyebrows, stretching the long lines of blue tattoos. “I received your bit of message and arrived to find a young wizard blasting at a menhir,” she said. “It wasn’t difficult.”
Joy hugged her brother to her chest, squeezing hard enough to make it real. He hugged her back. Joy could feel that his arms were shaking. Or maybe it was her.
“Thank you,” she said as Stef smoothed her hair. She blinked back at Filly. “And thank you, too.” She didn’t want either of them to guess what had really happened—that she had rescued herself, tapping into something deep within the earth. She was changing, even if she couldn’t see it. She could feel it. She could taste it under the rocky soil—it scared her and called to her.
“Your life is rarely dull,” Filly said with a smile. “And it is good to keep alert should the EverBattle come.” She plunked her fists on her hips and propped her foot on one of the larger chunks of rock. “Your brother is a fine ally, but very stubborn—a good trait in a lover, but very bad in a soldier. We would have had you out sooner if he had listened to me.” She chucked her chin at him. “You should learn to take orders like your sister without complaint.”
Joy stumbled. “I only complain when you throw me off a cliff.”
“True.” Filly grinned. “But you agreed to it first. In fact,” she said, “you should have thanked me for my help then, too! I was the one who guessed that there was a riddle to be solved—and the riddle was you!”
Stef’s mouth was a thin, hard line.
Joy hastily tried to fend off Filly saying more in front of her brother, who was looking shell-shocked and murderous. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Þat var ekki.” Filly waved her off, but smiled over the blue spot beneath her lip. “So, tell me, who is trying to kill you now?”
Stef’s hands tightened on Joy’s shoulders. She tried to sound reassuring. “No one should be,” Joy said, scanning the rubble for any glowing red eyes. “I won’t be formally presented until Sunday night. Maybe someone’s trying to keep that from happening?”
Filly picked up a chunk of stone, examined it and tossed it aside. “Your friends from the Tide?” she guessed.
“Sol Leander?” Joy said. “Believe it or not, I don’t think so.” Joy rubbed her arms, smoothing down goose bumps, and tried to ignore Stef’s radiating disapproval. “He’s the one who moved the date up, so that I could fall on my face and humiliate Graus Claude in public. I don’t think he’d want to miss out on the chance that I’d do myself in.” Considering what Avery had said, Joy didn’t believe Sol Leander wanted to kill her any longer—he wanted her to suffer humiliation and exile. Like Avery said, she couldn’t do that if she were dead.
Filly pushed another chunk of rock off the road with her foot. “Where’s Ink?”
The question hit her like a shock of cold water. Joy twisted her fingers in her shirt. Where was Ink? If he wasn’t here, he was probably still unconscious, but it had been far longer than a few hours. How long did Scribes snooze? “He’s...not available right now.”
“Wait. Isn’t Ink bound to protect you or something?” Stef asked.
Filly tossed her head and snorted. “She’s not his lehman anymore, boy.”
“Whoa!” Stef held his hands up in a T. “Time-out. Lehman?” He glared at Joy. “You were his...?” His face did a dance of disgust and outrage. “Joy!”
“No, no, no,” Joy said quickly. “It was a mistake. Sort of.” It didn’t matter anymore—everything was different now. Everything. “Anyway, I’m not anymore.”
Stef shook his head as if to clear it. “But that night—at the Carousel—you were going Under the Hill to formally accept his signatura so the Council couldn’t oust you, right? So you could keep yourself protected under the Edict,” Stef asked and glanced between her and Filly, putting two and two together. “That’s not what happened, is it?”
Joy didn’t want to try to explain. She pushed the scalpel into her pocket. “No.”
“But you have a mark,” Stef said slowly. “I saw it.”
“Yes,” Joy said quietly. “I have a signatura.”
She watched her brother as the information played across his face—from anger and confusion to disbelief and fear, the possibilities flickered over his features like a flip book, but none of them were right. None of them made sense yet. She had to say something. Joy glanced at Filly, who was witnessing it all—the young Valkyrie looked like she’d stumbled into Christmas morning, the moment when all the secrets came out. Joy took a deep breath. This was it.
“Stef—”
“No.” Stef cut her off. “No. Don’t say it. I don’t—” He looked panicked, a danger zone way beyond scared. He shook his head, angry or sad or disappointed—it was hard to be sure. He wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t want to know.”
It was like a punch to the gut, cutting her off, shutting her down.
“Stef, please—”
“No!” he barked and glanced a warning at Filly in case she’d opened her mouth. The blonde woman arched an eyebrow. “I want to talk with Dmitri,” he said. “I want to ask him—” He steadied himself and focused. “You’re okay, though? Nothing hurts?”