by Greg Dragon
Elsey is ecstatic when I finish. “He did come for you,” she says positively. Under her breath, she says, “No matter what that other guy says.”
It’s then that I realize we haven’t had time for introductions. “Elsey,” I say. “This is Tawni. My friend,” I add.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Elsey,” Tawni says. “Adele’s told us so many nice things about you.”
At that, Elsey beams.
“Cole,” I say, a bit louder to get his attention, “come meet Elsey.”
He saunters over, his dark skin glowing a strange orange color under the illumination of the flashlights. “Hi, Elsey,” he says. “I’m Cole.”
My sis sticks out her hand and shakes Cole’s big paw. “Tristan was looking for my sister,” she says definitively.
“Oh, great. Now it’s three against one,” Cole says, grinning. At least he doesn’t seem frustrated anymore.
“He wasn’t looking for me, El,” I say. And if he was, it means he likes causing me pain, almost like it’s his purpose in life. Although now that he saved us, that doesn’t make sense either.
“Good,” Cole says. “The sooner everyone gets that through their heads the better. We need to keep moving. I think we’ve probably done a good enough job of losing ourselves in here, but they’ll keep searching until they find us.”
We walk for hours. Time seems to stand still inside the caverns. Cole and Tawni give up on trying to remember which route we’ve taken. I think they realize we aren’t going to be going out the way we came in.
The caverns are ominous and scary, and yet beautiful at the same time. Around every bend is another stalactite or stalagmite, some impossibly big, some carved by nature into complex patterns, more intricate than a master carver could ever hope to emulate on a museum statue. We pass under giant stone archways, and cross natural rock bridges, some so thin that we have to crawl across on our stomachs, trying not to look down at the never-ending drops into darkness on either side. The color of the stones darken as the miles pass under our feet, changing from the reddish brown of subchapter 14 to the dark grey of whatever subchapter we’re moving toward.
Much of the time we are able to walk upright, the jagged ceiling rising well above us. But at other times we’re forced to stoop, or even crawl.
I’m beat, so I know Elsey must be tired, too. At first she keeps up a constant chatter, talking about anything and everything. She talks about her time in the orphanage, asks a million questions about the Pen, and tries to get us all to agree that we’re on a fantastic adventure. Eventually, she ceases talking completely, so I know she’s getting tired. We need to stop, but none of us seems to want to make the call. I think we all feel that every additional footstep gives us a greater chance of survival.
As we walk, I notice Elsey’s tunic sagging in the back. “El,” I say, “is there something in your back pocket?”
Not stopping, she reaches behind her and extracts a gleaming metal slingshot, fitted with a thick rubber band. She holds it behind her. “Ranna gave it to me,” she says by way of explanation.
I take it from her, examining the handle. Cut into the wide hilt is a slot, which I flip open with my thumb, holding my breath. Inside is a compartment full of round metal pellets—ammunition. Maybe she’s changed even more than I thought. She’s never been the type to shoot slingshots before. Play with dolls, yeah, but not weapons.
“Take care of this, El. It’s a really nice weapon,” I say, handing it back. She pockets it and we continue trudging along.
Cole, who is leading, finally stops and sits on a flat stone rock that looks like someone has put there as a bench. He says, “I think we’ve gone far enough. It must be the middle of the night. Even Rivet will have to stop for sleep.”
Tawni checks her watch. “It’s after three,” she says.
We’re all too tired to disagree. Or even to eat. Instead, we go straight to bed, four ducks in a row, pressed up close to each other for warmth. Cole and then Tawni and then Elsey and then me.
“He’s not dead, you know,” Elsey whispers.
“Who?” I say, although I know the answer.
“Tristan.”
“Oh.”
“If something’s pulling you together, then he couldn’t have died. He might be captured, tortured even, but somehow he’ll find you.” I can’t tell if her words are wise beyond her years, or simply the vivid imagination of an innocent child. Either way, they comfort me. I don’t remind her that whatever force is at play, it’s more likely pushing us apart.
“G’night, Elsey,” I say
“Love you, Adele.”
“Love you, too.”
Although I’m sure it’s hours later, it feels like I start dreaming the second my eyes close. My dream isn’t of Tristan, for which I’m strangely relieved. It’s like I know that if I dream of him I will only see death. His, not mine. Thankfully, my mind gives me a reprieve from all my questions about him. Of course, the alternative isn’t much better, full of a different pain.
I dream of war. The Star Dweller army is destroying all of the Moon Realm, running rampant across the subchapters. It’s like I’m on the outside of a looking glass, watching the horror unfold before my eyes. For some reason I’m not angry at them. I know they’re just tired of being the scum of the earth, treated like rats by the Sun Dwellers. Used, abused, stepped on.
The Sun Dweller army is coming, their legions of troops marching forward, their red armor polished and gleaming. I can see them, but the Star Dwellers can’t. I scream, try to warn them, but no one can hear me through the mirror. No one except Rivet, that is, who is leading the Sun Dweller army. His black eyes look right at me, challenging me to come down. I don’t want to, but I know I have to.
I swim through the mirror, pushing it to the side and behind me, like it’s made of a strange viscous liquid. Gravity grabs me and pulls me to the ground. Rivet smiles as he tightens his grip on his gun. He pulls the trigger and shoots me through the heart.
You know how they say you can’t die in your dreams? I do. The pain is so intense, so real, that I cry out in my sleep. But still I don’t wake up, clinging to life in my dream by reaching for a sky I have never seen, as life ebbs from my broken body.
I die tonight.
When I do wake, I’m surprised to find myself very much alive with three familiar faces hovering anxiously over me. “We’re here, Adele,” Tawni coos. “It was just a dream.”
“So real,” I murmur. “I died.”
Elsey’s face is clouded with concern. “You’ll never die,” she says.
“You got that right,” I say, trying to put on a strong face for my sister although I feel weak from the nightmare.
“We need to eat something and then keep moving,” Cole says. For all the emotion that Cole displayed when we were at Tawni’s house, he seems equally emotion-free now. Rigid, soldier-like. It doesn’t bother me.
We eat quickly, swallowing the tasteless canned beans in gulps, like it’s a race.
Because of Tawni’s watch, we know we’ve only slept three hours and that it’s still early in the morning. Cole suspects that Rivet and his men have slept even less, so we need to keep moving. When we start out, I’m already dreading the day’s hike. My ribs are sore and tender, but by gritting my teeth and breathing through them, I can control the pain.
Elsey seems to have slept better than me, bouncing along beside me and chattering away. “I’m so glad to be out of that orphanage,” she says. “Some of the kids were nice, and I’ll miss Ranna for all of eternity, but the rest of it was dreadful. We all slept in the same room and ate the same porridge every day. They only let us go outside once a day, and the rest of the time we had to do chores around the place. Once a month they let us take a bath. How was the Pen?”
“About the same,” I say. “Maybe a bit better, to be honest.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find Mum and Dad.”
“Really? You think they’re alive?”
“Tawni thinks that Dad is. And I bet if he is then Mom is, too.”
Elsey’s eyes light up. “We’ll rescue them, won’t we, Adele?”
“Of course,” I say, not sure at all.
It feels good knowing where my father is, even though getting him out will be the equivalent of a suicide mission. Between knowing about my dad and having Elsey around, I feel like I’m at least half a person again, a significant improvement over the empty shell I had become. But there is still a huge part of me missing, because I haven’t saved my dad yet and don’t even know where my mom is. I wonder where she is, what condition she’s in. Despite my assurances to Elsey, I know there’s a good chance she’s dead. I try not to think about it.
Chatting with Elsey makes the day go by so much faster. She’s like our little motivator, constantly saying positive things in her very proper-sounding way. Once she’s done grilling me about what I’ve been doing while we were apart, she focuses on Tawni and Cole, asking them even more questions. They tiptoe around some of the serious things we’ve already discussed, and focus on telling funny stories from their childhoods.
All in all, it isn’t a bad day, and before I know it, we’re stopping again for the evening. We haven’t eaten since the morning, so we’re all famished. We devour our canned food again, except this time I actually enjoy it. I don’t think it’s the taste of the food, though; I think it’s just that being free of the Pen and back with my sister makes the bland food taste better—it’s the taste of freedom, I guess.
When we finish eating, Cole brings up the topic we’ve all been ignoring. “How the hell are we going to get out of these caves?” he says.
“Are we lost?” I say, making a bad joke.
Tawni laughs anyway—snorts actually, because she’s taking a sip of water when I speak. That gets us all laughing, with Elsey’s infectious giggle keeping it going for a long time. Even Mr. Serious joins in, smirking at first, then chuckling, and finally full out laughing. We all need it.
“If we just keep going, we’ll come out somewhere eventually, right?” I say.
“How much do you know about the Lonely Caverns?” Cole asks.
“Not much. They connect three or four subchapters, don’t they?”
“Yeah,” Cole says. “For each grouping of subchapters there’s a cavern that acts as a hub to connect them all. The Lonely Caverns are the hub for subchapters fourteen to seventeen. They’re used by miners to travel from mine to mine. The miners stick to the main tunnels, which we left almost immediately. According to the maps I’ve seen, the caverns are a hundred square miles.”
Tawni adds, “And we’ve made so many turns that we don’t have the first clue as to which direction we’re headed. We may have been traveling in circles all day, or we may have cut a path straight across—impossible to say for sure.”
“Best guess?” I ask.
Cole says, “I think we’re going to end up somewhere in subchapter sixteen. We headed straight east when we first entered, and I’m pretty damn sure we haven’t cut back across any of the main tunnels, so that means we’re still headed east, unless we got completely turned around and are now headed south and west again, back the way we came. We should know soon enough, because we’d end up rejoining the main tunnel.”
“Okay,” I say. “So we just keep walking?”
Cole shrugs. “No other choice.”
Chapter Sixteen
Tristan
These days not many people believe in God anymore. I’m not sure I do sometimes. Those above, in the Sun Realm, are enjoying themselves too much to stop to think about whether they’re blessed. And those below, in the Moon and Star Realms, are too jaded. My mom did, though. She believed with all her heart that there’s a greater power out there, one that cares about us, watches over us. She said bad things still have to happen, because they help us learn and grow, but that in the end we’ll be saved.
I could use a little saving.
I wake up with a nasty bump on my head. I don’t even remember getting hit. It throbs like hell.
I try to sit up, but it’s difficult with my arms and legs tied.
It’s dark. Not like a cloudy night with the moon and stars blocked, like I’ve seen in books; dark like the sun, moon, and stars don’t exist, which they don’t in our world. Plus there are no overhead cavern lights, no streetlights, no houselights. I work out that we’re in a cave pretty quickly.
It all comes flashing back. The girl—no, Adele—running, being chased by my father’s demons. My intervention. Rivet’s gleaming eyes. Our salvation by the same men who surely now hold us captive.
You’ll make a pretty prize for the Star Dwellers indeed.
From the man’s words, it doesn’t sound like they’re Star Dwellers, unless he’s talking about them in the third person. I don’t think so.
A light flashes in the dark. It moves closer.
The man holds the torch in front of my face. It burns my eyes while they try to adjust. I shut my eyelids tight, and then slowly open them, squinting for at least a minute. The whole time the man waits patiently for me to get my eyes fully open.
When I do, I gasp. I know he’s the man who spoke to me earlier, the one who killed Rivet’s men. He isn’t wearing his hat this time, and I can see his face, which is what makes me gasp. Half his face is swollen red and bubbling with blisters. Whether a lifelong disease or a fresh scar, I do not know.
“My face got damn near blown off by the heavy artillery,” he growls. “Pretty sight, ain’t it?”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“From you?” he says. “Nothin’. All you gotta do is come with us. I hope I’m not makin’ it sound like you’ve got a choice. ’Cuz ya don’t. Yer comin’. As sure as the sun ain’t shinin’, yer comin’.”
“Who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just a guy. A guy fed up with bein’ crapped on by yer kind. For once the damn Star Dwellers got the right idear. Fight back.”
“But they’re killing your own people.”
“Eh. So they’ve got their target a bit mixed up. But it’s workin’, ain’t it? We’re goin’ to join ’em, and others will, too. So the plan worked, eh?”
My head is spinning, half because of what this guy is saying to me, and half because of the blow I took to the head, probably from the butt of this guy’s gun. “Look, man, I’m not the one you want. I’m not like them. I hate my father. I’ve left the Sun Realm and I’m not going back.” The words sound true off the tip of my tongue, but are they? Could I really give up everything? For what? What if Adele’s dead already? What if she’s not, but I never find her? Or what if I find her and she doesn’t have any answers and tells me to leave her the hell alone? It’s not out of the realm of possibility. Would I go back?
I blink away the answer to the last question because it makes me feel weak and pathetic. Spineless.
Yes.
I take a deep breath and continue. “Just let me go and I’ll stay out of the whole thing. Please.” I feel like I’m begging, my voice higher pitched than usual, all toughness stripped from it, leaving just a child’s voice.
“Okay,” the man says.
“Really?”
“Nah, just messing with you. Ha ha ha!” The guy’s laugh is as rough as the chipped stones around us. “Yer my prize, kid. We can use ya. Yer one hell of a bargainin’ chip.”
He leaves the torch nearby and moves off into the darkness. Using my elbows as levers, and by twisting and balancing on one shoulder, I manage to get into a seated position so I can take in my surroundings—or at least what I can see of them.
Roc is sleeping nearby, his forehead marked by a puffy, red welt. They haven’t bothered to give us blankets or pillows or anything, so my body is sore and cold from lying on the hard cavern floor all night.
There are several other men sleeping nearby. I’m sure there are more, at least a dozen, but the light from the torch only extends in a small sphere. I assume we’re somewhere in th
e Lonely Caverns, most likely not very far in, as the men won’t have wanted to carry our limp bodies for very long.
I have no idea how long we’ve been out, but I hope it wasn’t long, for with each passing minute Adele is traveling further and further away from me.
How twisted is fate? Pretty twisted, I’d say. Mangled and knobby; old and decrepit. Every time you’re granted a stroke of good fortune, it’s offset by a calamity. Like Adele escaping from prison right when the Star Dwellers attacked. Sometimes good luck is even caused by something bad. Like when Adele’s path crossed ours at that exact fateful moment. Had Rivet not been chasing her, perhaps she would have arrived later, and I wouldn’t have seen her. We might’ve missed each other by taking different routes, like two companies of miners passing in the night, unknown to each other.
My father doesn’t believe in fate. He says we make our own fate. So far, he’s been right about that. I sort of believed him until now. But after everything that’s happened, I know there are other forces at play. Forces that want Adele and me to meet, for some reason that I can’t yet grasp.
Roc stirs in his sleep and then opens one eye, clamping it shut again immediately when the light hits it. He raises a hand to his temple, gingerly feeling around the red bump, cringing each time he touches a raw nerve.
“You okay, man?” I whisper, trying not to wake the other guys.
“I think so. You?”
“About the same. Just a knock on the head. I think it was done gently enough to avoid any permanent damage. I think they want us alive to use as hostages.”
“Hostages for what?”
“They’re taking us to the Star Dwellers, who will then try to get to my father through me.”
“What’re we gonna do?”
“Not much we can do. Go along for the ride, I suppose.”
A familiar voice echoes through the cave. “That’s right! There’s nothin’ you can do!” Each of the men around us awakes with a start, some of them jumping up and grabbing weapons, looking for someone to fight.
“It’s just me, you idiots,” the voice says, as a figure steps into the light. It is the guy with the burnt face. “Time to move,” he says.