Midrealm

  I made it to school, wandering through the hallways on my way to my locker. I kept my head down and my left eye hidden behind my hair, as usual. It was easier for me not to look at the other kids in my school. If I didn’t look at them, it was easier not to wonder if they were staring at me.

  I knew I was too self-conscious, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. I wondered if people noticed I was wearing the same clothes I was wearing two days ago. I wondered if people stared at my backpack, a ratty old thing I’d gotten from goodwill. I wondered if people looked at my gaunt cheeks and knew how little I had to eat at home. It had only gotten worse since I’d gotten detention — the same day I first went to Midrealm.

  All through the first part of the day, my stomach lanced with pain, angry at me for choosing not to partake in breakfast with my brother and sister. I ignored it, doing my best to push the pain from my mind. I wouldn’t listen to it. I wouldn’t succumb — not again. Not after what happened last time. The last thing I needed was to get in more trouble. Then my family would find out what had happened, and that would just be another thing for my parents to worry about.

  Finally the lunch bell rang. I almost collapsed with relief. But rather than go straight to the cafeteria, I walked out of the classroom and went to the bathroom. I went in a stall and sat there for ten minutes, just waiting. The bathroom was deserted. It always was, right at lunch. Most people didn’t use it until after they’d already eaten, since they’d been starving all morning.

  After I thought enough time had passed, I left the bathroom and made my way to the cafeteria. The lunch line had died away almost completely. Only a few stray students were still making their way to the end of the line. Perfect.

  I went down the line, grabbing as much food as I dared. No one was around me. It was perfect. I glanced up, peering with one eye to make sure none of the others were watching me. I saw Calvin and Sarah, both of them engrossed in their meal. Miles was with his girlfriend, so he wasn’t paying attention. Blade and Raven were nowhere to be seen. I didn’t want anyone to see me, but I would have been especially upset for one of the others to find out.

  I got to the cashier at the end of the line, a skinny old guy with a thin mustache and a bald head. He didn’t even look up, just said, “Four dollars.”

  “My meal’s comped,” I said quietly. “Low income household.”

  The cashier glanced up, recognized me, nodded. He tapped a couple of buttons on the register and waved me on.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and wandered away, searching for a table. Always coming late made it really hard to find a place to sit. Even after going to Midrealm together, I was too embarrassed to ask to sit with Sarah or Miles. And Calvin talked too much. I just wanted to eat in peace.

  Finally I saw a table that only had one other person at it — a thin girl who I knew was a bit of a loner. We’d eaten together occasionally. It was nice because neither one of us seemed to want to talk.

  I was just twenty feet from her table when I got bumped hard from the side, and my tray went spilling across the floor.

  I stumbled, almost falling with a little cry. I managed to keep myself upright, looking in horror at my sandwich scattered across the linoleum. My milk carton had burst, spilling its contents everywhere.

  “Better watch where you’re going,” said a rude voice.

  I looked over. It was Chuck. Chuck was one of the meanest kids at school. Now he was sneering at me in delight, the joy on his face obvious to all. Two of his friends glowered at me from either side of him.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  Chuck looked down. His shoe had some milk on it. “My shoe got dirty,” he said. “Why don’t you wipe it off for me?”

  “What?” I asked, not understanding.

  “I said wipe it off,” he said, suddenly growing nasty. “Or I can make you lick it off, if you’d rather.”

  I stammered, unsure of what to say. But just then, Mister Schumacher, our social studies teacher, stepped up.

  “Is there a problem?” he said, eyeing Chuck suspiciously.

  Chuck dropped the sneer, looking up at Mister Schumacher innocently. “She spilled milk on me,” he said, thrusting a finger in my face.

  “Well, clean it up,” Schumacher said, no trace of sympathy in his voice. “It’s just milk. As for you,” he said, turning to me, “you’d better toss this and go get another tray. And watch where you’re going, please.”

  “Yeah, watch where you’re going,” said one of Chuck’s cronies, chuckling.

  Schumacher rounded on the three of them. “You three had better find your seats again,” he said sternly. “Otherwise I might decide that this was your fault and send you to detention.”

  Chuck rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He led his friends back to their table, sitting around it with a final nasty look in my direction.

  “Thanks,” I said quietly. Mister Schumacher nodded and walked off without a word.

  Feeling eyes on me, I knelt to clean the mess of my lunch off the floor. I might have tried to save it, to eat it anyway, but now there were too many people watching. I took the tray to the trash and dumped it, feeling my stomach cry out in pain as the food slid to the bottom of the wet, slimy trash bag.

  My heart was thundering. I had to eat. I couldn’t go another whole day without a meal. I was so stupid. I should have had breakfast. But of course, I hadn’t known I’d lose my lunch like this. It was so unfair.

  I made my way through the cafeteria line again, dreading what would happen when I reached the cashier. Hopefully he wouldn’t look up. Or he’d forget that he’d already given me a comped meal. Or he’d take pity on me. He had to have seen Chuck knock my tray down, right?

  I reached the end, and the cashier said, “Four dollars.”

  “Um, my meal is comped,” I said hopefully.

  The cashier looked up, and his eyes narrowed.

  Crud.

  “You already got one,” he said.

  “It got knocked out of my hands,” I said. “Onto the floor. By someone else.”

  The cashier shook his head. “Sorry, only one free meal per day. Those are the rules.”

  I stood there, trying to think up something to say, when suddenly a voice behind me said, “Here you go. I’ve got her.”

  A hand pushed past me, holding up eight dollars before the cashier’s bored face. He didn’t blink as he took the money and shoved it in the cash drawer, and waved me on.

  I looked behind me. Blade nudged me with his elbow, pushing me on past the cashier and toward the lunch tables.

  White-hot flames erupted along my neck and cheeks as I ducked my head, trying to hide behind my hair and keep my one showing eye from Blade’s view. I was so embarrassed. I’d never been this ashamed of myself before.

  Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be Blade?

  “Come on, let’s grab a table,” he said.

  Numbly, I followed. I searched desperately for words that would explain why I didn’t just pay for myself. But I had no idea what to say. Had Blade heard me ask for a free meal? Or did he just assume I didn’t have cash on me? Without knowing, I didn’t want to start with an explanation that he might know was a lie.

  Fortunately, Blade solved most of my problem for me as soon as we sat down. “I leave my wallet at home all the time, too,” he said. “But I always keep an extra few bucks in my pockets, just in case that happens. You might want to start doing that.”

  Relief washed over me as I nodded. “Thanks,” I said quietly. “That’s a good idea.”

  Blade nodded back and started on his tray. Lunch was chicken and veggies. He grabbed a drumstick and ripped off a huge hunk with his teeth, chewing slowly.

  His eyes were averted, so I peered up at him from behind my hair. His features were so smooth and angular. His eyes were a light hazel, making them seem to pop right out of his face, and his eyelashes were surprisingly long.

  It was embarrassingly often that I caught myself studyin
g his face. When we were eating in the Runehold. When we were holding council, and he was looking at Greystone with a smirk as the wizard talked. When we were riding through the streets of Morrowdust, and his horse would pull up alongside me, or he’d rescue me when my mount decided to run away.

  “So what do you think about going out beyond the barrier?” Blade asked.

  My heart skipped a beat. I looked around the cafeteria nervously.

  Blade waved a hand dismissively. “No one’s listening. Even if they were, they’re not going to give me any trouble. You, maybe, but not me.” His face split in a broad grin that made my heart skip again, but in a different way.

  It took me a second to realize his question was still hanging in the air. I shrugged. “I don’t know. If someone knows where the tombs are, I guess we’ve got to ask them. But it could be pretty dangerous. I just think we should trust Sarah if she says that’s what we need to do.”

  Blade nodded — not in agreement, but to acknowledge he heard. His eyes wandered across the cafeteria to where Sarah sat. She was facing away from us, the back of her blonde head bobbing up and down as she ate and chatted with two of the girls from her volleyball team.

  “So, what’s it like reading someone’s mind?” Blade asked suddenly, the corner of his mouth twisting.

  “Um, I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. “Greystone says I’m not ready for it yet.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said coolly. “You never break the rules? Once I showed up a couple of hours early, and talked Samuel into riding past the city walls while you were all still asleep. I wanted a little bit of ‘extracurricular practice’ you might say. Calvin kept talking about this wall of fire thing, so I tried making one.” A broad smile revealed his dazzling teeth, making me blink. “It was awesome. Five feet tall and thirty feet long. I could only hold it for a few seconds before I would lose my concentration, but I did it over and over again. So come on: you’ve never tried poking around in someone’s head?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t. Every once in a while, I’ve gotten a flash. Just an image, a sound or a word. I’m pretty sure they’re from other people. But trying to reach into someone’s mind is…scary.”

  Blade chuckled. “Boy, I’d kill to be able to do that, though. I could skip the rest of this whole school year and still come in and ace every test. As long as I was in the same room as Calvin.”

  I laughed, more suddenly and loudly than I meant to. Blade looked as surprised as he was pleased.

  He really had a beautiful smile.

  He leaned over the table toward me, speaking suddenly very low and very conspiratorial. “Hey, so listen. I’ve been wondering something ever since this whole thing started.”

  Caught up in my laugh, I still had a smile on my face. I leaned forward a little bit, feeling a tightness in my chest as our hands neared on the lunch table.

  “What is it?” I asked quietly.

  “You’re not exactly…my kind of people,” he said, peering at me intently. “You don’t run with the wrong crowd. Mostly you come to school, go to class, keep your head down and do well on your studies.”

  I was shocked that he’d been paying this much attention to me. But I didn’t know where he was going with this. I nodded uncertainly.

  “So,” he said slowly. “How’d a girl like you end up in detention in the first place? The day we first went to…you know…over there?”

  My face fell, along with my mood. I leaned away from him, pushing my tray away. Red crept into my face once again — this time from pure embarrassment.

  “I have to go,” I said quietly. I took my last bite of chicken and stood, leaving the cafeteria and Blade’s confused face behind.

  TESS

  I PUSHED OUT OF MY bed in Midrealm, my head still full of thoughts of my lunch with Blade. Everything had been going so well. It was the longest talk we’d ever had, despite all those times I’d been nearly desperate with the desire to go up and talk to him, to ask him about himself, to talk about our lives on both Midrealm and True Earth.

  But there were certain things I was still ashamed of. And now, I’m sure Blade was angry with me. I would have been, if I were in his position.

  I sighed and pulled my clothes on. Slowly, I ran my fingers over the fine, expertly-tailored cloth the way I always did when I put them on. Here, my clothes were always clean, always hung up for me by the Runehold’s servants. When I tore them or they were damaged in battle, they were always repaired for me.

  I wished that were the case back home. I wished my parents and my brother and sister didn’t ever have to worry about getting new clothes, about where their next meal would come from.

  But they would have that luxury, eventually. High school was almost over. I’d work hard. I’d give them what they needed.

  I found Nora in the hallway outside my room, and together we went to the great hall. Everyone but Blade was already there. His absence made my gut twist. What if he wasn’t coming because he was angry at me?

  That was ridiculous. He wouldn’t avoid going to sleep just to avoid seeing me.

  Would he?

  “Lady Tess,” Greystone said, nodding in acknowledgment as I found my seat at the table.

  “Hi,” I said, nodding back as a plate of food was set down before me.

  “I’ve been practicing since yesterday,” Calvin said to me, pulling my attention from Greystone. Calvin looked dead serious, staring at me solemnly. “Next time, you won’t find me so easy to fool.”

  I smiled shyly. “It wasn’t easy,” I told him. “It was really hard. If that makes you feel any better.”

  Calvin’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t tell if you’re patronizing me. But I’m going to assume you’re not, because yes, it does make me feel better.” He tapped his temple deliberately. “And like I said, next time I’m ready for you.”

  Greystone snorted and turned it into a cough.

  “What?” Calvin said angrily, looking down the table at him. “I’ve been preparing.”

  “I am certain that your preparations have been entirely earnest, and entirely inept at the same time,” Greystone said.

  The door to the great hall burst open, and Blade came through. Samuel filed in right behind him. Blade came to the table and took his seat, across and one down from mine. He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t seem to be avoiding my gaze, either. It was like there hadn’t been any awkwardness at all back at school.

  I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “All right, gramps,” Blade said to Greystone. “What’s the good word?”

  “Few words are good in times such as these,” Greystone grumbled. “Least of all the ones that spill from your mouth.”

  “I think he meant to ask what the plan was,” Calvin suggested helpfully. A sharp glare from Greystone silenced him.

  Sarah leaned forward and picked up the thread of conversation. “So we’re doing this. Tomorrow. Friday night.”

  “You don’t want to wait until Saturday?” asked Raven uneasily.

  Sarah shook her head. “I thought so too, at first. But from a practical perspective, I’d rather the second day of our journey was on a weekend, too. That way, if for some reason it takes longer than expected — which I don’t want it to — then we can still sleep longer without missing out on the rest of our lives. And the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I think this is important. More important, maybe, than anything we’ve done so far. If the tombs are really as important to Terrence’s plans as they appear to be, it’s vital that we reach them before he does.”

  “What do we do when we find them?” I asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “I guess we find the artifacts and keep them from him. Try to figure out what he wants them for.”

  “Does the reason really matter?” Miles asked. “It’s good enough for me that he wants them.”

  “The reasons always matter,” said Greystone sternly. “This is a war. In every war, one’s opponent has a strategy. Knowing t
hat strategy is vital. It is not enough simply to stop the opponent’s army. One must know what the opponent intended to accomplish with the army. Thus one may foil his opponent with minimal losses and maximum ease.”

  “That’s some straight up Art of War stuff,” Raven said. “Did you know Sun Tzu or something? Was he a Realm Keeper?”

  Calvin held up his hand. “First of all: totally awesome that you even know what The Art of War is,” he began. “Second: Sun Tzu was born twenty-five hundred years ago. Greystone’s only nine hundred years old.”

  Raven rolled her eyes. “Wow, thanks. I was really concerned about the accuracy of that question, which was not intended to be humorous at all.”

  Calvin nodded, oblivious. “Happy to help.” I hid a smile behind my hair.

  Blade coughed loudly. “So, this is awesome,” he said. “But I still want the answer to my question from yesterday. Where are we going?”

  Greystone sighed. “For that, I will ask you to follow me to the library.”

  Calvin clapped his hands. “Oh, sweet! Most of you haven’t even seen it yet. Prepare to be blown away.”

  “It’s difficult to describe how excited I’m not,” said Raven, bored.

  Greystone led us through one of the four side doors that branched off from the Great Hall. It was near the opposite corner of the room from the door that led to our practice rooms. Through the door was a stone hallway, to all appearances identical to the practice room hallway.

  It struck me suddenly that I hadn’t spent much time at all exploring the Runehold. We’d been kept so busy fighting or practicing the use of our powers that I hadn’t had much time to get around. In fact, in our brief visit, I’d walked through more of the royal palace than the castle that we called home in this world.

  The hallway ended in a single wooden door whose ancient iron latch was shut tight. Greystone waved his hand before it, and the latch swung upward. The door groaned as it swung wide.

  I felt a tugging in my head. It was like when you suddenly remember something that you left at your house before going on a long trip.