The little fox bowed to them. “I slipped in behind you as you entered the Golden Mountain,” he said to them. “I am sorry I did not make my presence known sooner. I wanted to see how you were progressing on your quest.”
“Do you know a way out of here?” Rebecca asked, putting the sword onto the ground.
Adom shook his head. “The only way out is the way you came in,” he said to them. “You need the word that was said to open the way. But it must be said from the other side. How did you enter the mountain?”
“Emilia let us in,” Carrie explained. “She knew the magic phrase to open the mountain.”
Adom’s eyes went wide. “Who did you say let you in?” he asked. His whiskers twitched in apprehension.
“Emilia,” Carrie said again. “We saved her from her father. He left her to die in the middle of a river.”
“What does this Emilia look like?” Adom asked. “Does she have red hair and violet eyes? Is she native to this land?”
“Yeah,” Lindsay said. “She’s a princess here. Why do you ask?”
“Princess Emilia is not who you think she is,” Adom told them.
“I knew it!” Carrie said. “Is she untrustworthy?” she asked. She felt she knew what the answer would be.
Adom hesitated before answering. “I understand why she did not inform you as to who her father is,” he said.
“Who is he?” Lindsay asked.
“Princess Emilia is the daughter of Asmodeus, king of the dybbuks,” Adom gravely informed them.
Carrie gasped in shock. “I knew something was wrong with her,” she said. “I knew it from the second I saw she didn’t have a shadow.”
“Your instincts were correct,” Adom said. “Dybbuks are known for not casting shadows.”
Rebecca groaned. “I should have known,” she chastised herself. “I should’ve remembered. The one thing that was important, and I couldn’t even remember it!”
Lindsay placed a reassuring hand on Rebecca’s arm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she told her. “You did the best you could. You remembered so much that was helpful. Don’t worry about forgetting one little fact. No one could ever remember every little detail about stories they’d heard years ago.”
Rebecca shrugged. “I guess,” she said quietly.
Adom crept over to her. “Your friend is correct,” he told her. “Now let us focus on escaping this mountain.”
“If we can only leave the way we came,” Carrie began, “how can we get out?”
“Come with me,” Adom told them. “Let us go somewhere more comfortable to talk over our options.” With that, Adom rose and began to walk back into the dark confines of the mountain’s inner path. Lindsay, Rebecca, and Carrie got up off the ground and followed suit.
On they walked through the many twists and turns and past the vast cavern of treasure. They soon heard what sounded like the soothing sound of running water and found themselves standing next to a running stream watering a small grove of carob trees. Adom went to the bank of the stream and bent his head to drink. Once he had drunk his fill, Adom turned to face the girls.
“I assure you, this is all safe to eat and drink,” he told them.
Carrie approached the water and removed the pack off her back, retrieving some empty water bottles from it. She stooped and began filling them from the stream. She then went and began filling her pack’s pockets with carobs from the trees around them. When she had finished, she joined her friends next to the stream, where Rebecca was sitting and preparing some of the healing leaves they had collected earlier in order to heal the cuts on Lindsay’s hands from where she’d beaten them against the wall, trying to escape the mountain.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
Adom regarded them all. “Can you think of any way to get out of this mountain?”
“You mean other than waiting for midnight tomorrow and hoping Emilia didn’t double-cross us and leave us in here on purpose?” Rebecca asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Precisely,” Adom said.
“What if she didn’t do it on purpose?” Lindsay asked. “Hear me out here, guys,” she said, seeing the look of disdain on Rebecca’s face. “Think about it, Becca. What does she stand to gain if her father destroys the world? She’ll die if he wins. What person in her right mind would ever want to be destroyed like that?”
“She’s not a person,” Rebecca snapped. “She’s a dybbuk. A dybbuk who lied to us. She’s no better than the dybbuks Carrie saw in the forest, or the one that possessed you. Remember? She said one of them wanted to keep you as a pet. The other didn’t care if he died when Asmodeus succeeded. Why would she? It’s her dad doing this. Maybe she agrees with him. Maybe she’s in on it.”
“But you said yourself at one point,” Lindsay said, trying to plead rationality to her friends, “that not all dybbuks are evil. Some help people, right? She got the dybbuk to leave me. She saved my life.”
“I guess,” Rebecca said hesitantly. “But she lied to us over and over. She lied to us about who she was. She lied to us about what the caves contained. You know she did. She said that the caves in the woods had nothing useful in it, but Carrie went into one and found a shamir. Right, Carrie?”
Carrie nodded, and her action attracted Adom’s attention. He sharply turned to Carrie, eyes narrowed.
“You have a shamir?” he asked incredulously.
Carrie met his eyes. Black searched blue-green as he studied her face intently. Finally she spoke.
“Yes,” she said. “I have a shamir. I traded my chamtzah for it.” She waited for him to reproach her for what she was now sure was a stupid and foolish trade.
“That was a clever move on your part,” Adom told her. His voice was full of approval. “It would have been extremely useful to use in order to break into Asmodeus’ castle.”
“Thank you,” Carrie said, relief evident in her voice. It made her feel infinitely better that Adom approved of her actions. “But why did you say it would have been? Isn’t it still useful?”
“Yes,” Adom said. “However, I feel that it would now be prudent to use it to escape this mountain. It is extremely difficult to recapture a shamir once it has been released from its captivity.”
Lindsay whooped with joy. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “We are so getting out of here!”
Carrie shook her head no. “Do we have to use it now?” she asked. She absentmindedly pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “I thought we were saving it for later.” She almost felt that using it to escape the mountain was an insult to the trade she had made. She felt a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. To lose the shamir now felt as though the sacrifice she had made had been for nothing.
“I believe,” Adom said, “that it would be a prudent and wise decision to use the shamir now. To wait for the next midnight would be a waste of time—time that we do not have.”
Rebecca looked from Carrie to Adom and back again. “I agree with Adom,” she said. “We need to get out of here as soon as possible. If that means using the shamir now rather than later, then we should do it. We’re no good to anyone trapped like this.”
“I agree,” Lindsay said. “Let’s get out of here now.”
Carrie mulled over her friends’ words. After what seemed like hours to Lindsay and Rebecca, she responded. “Fine,” she said to them. “Let’s use the shamir now.”
“A wise choice,” Adom told her. “Follow me.” With a flick of his tail, he led the way back to where they had first entered the Golden Mountain.
Walking through the now familiar tunnels, Carrie felt herself plagued with doubt. Should she really risk losing the shamir to escape their rocky prison? But despite her doubts, she knew she should not go against her friends’ choice. Above all things, the success of the quest lay upon the trust and friendship between Lindsay, Rebecca, and herself.
Facing the rocky wall once more, Carrie rolled her shoulders back and tried to show a calm and determined face. She turned to Adom as if
to ask for help and encouragement. He nodded to her, and she took her pack off once more. She rummaged through it and removed the lead box that contained the shamir. Her hands shook as she carefully showed it to Adom.
“What do I do?” she asked him. The very posture of her body showed her apprehension. She really did not want to have to do this.
“Take the box,” Adom told her gently. “Open it and command the shamir to create for us a way out of the mountain.”
“That’s it?” Carrie asked.
“What were you expecting?” Adom retorted. “Magic spells in foreign tongues? Some phrase in Latin perhaps? One only finds those in children’s stories.”
“Well, yes, actually, if you must know,” Carrie said, affronted. She faced the massive rock wall and then turned to her friends. “When it’s done, try and retrieve the shamir. Maybe we can still catch it and use it to get into Asmodeus’ castle.” She took a deep breath and took the lid off the box. The shamir was inside trembling. It glowed a faint green and was roughly the size of a grain of rice. She looked at it and instantly felt sorry for the creature. It seemed so scared. It felt wrong to her to keep a living creature so contained. “Shamir,” she said softly, “we need you to dig us a tunnel out of here. Could you please do that?” she asked.
The shamir vibrated within the box, and the green light grew stronger and stronger. It became so bright Carrie had to shield her eyes with her hand. It flew up and pressed itself against the rock. The instant the shamir hit rock, a hole began to appear and soon grew large enough to admit a person. Carrie, Rebecca, Lindsay, and Adom watched in amazement as the shamir created a pathway as easily as a hot knife through butter. They eagerly scrambled through this hole, gratefully gulping down lungful after lungful of fresh night air.
Out of the corner of her eye, Carrie saw a small flash of green dart away. “Stop him!” she cried out in desperation. “We need that shamir!”
She, Lindsay, and Rebecca all made a desperate leap after the rapidly escaping shamir, and Adom scampered after it as well. All failed miserably as the shamir scrambled off into the forest. Carrie groaned in frustration as she saw the shamir vanish into the distance.
A voice asked, “Was that really a shamir?” Emilia stood above them. “I was so worried you were all trapped inside the mountain,” she said to them. “I was not sure I would be able to get you all free until tomorrow.” Her eyes were filled with a mixture of concern and relief, which turned to awe as her eyes rested upon the sword Rebecca still clutched in her hands.
Carrie stood and looked Emilia straight in the eye. “Why are you so worried about us?” she asked disdainfully. “Especially since you left us in there in the first place.”
“Are you sure you should piss off the dybbuk?” Lindsay hissed in Carrie’s ear.
“Why would you possibly think I would ever do such a thing?” Emilia asked, hurt written all over her face. She turned, and her eyes came to rest on Adom. “You,” she said, outraged. “What venom have you been spilling into their ears?”
“Only the truth, Your Highness,” Adom said to her with a mocking bow. “That which you have neglected to tell them yourself.”
Rebecca stepped forward and looked Emilia over head to toe. “Tell me, Emilia,” she said evenly. “Who is your father?”
“I—I told you,” Emilia answered. She was all flustered. “He is the king of a neighbouring kingdom.”
“Which kingdom?” Lindsay pressed on. “And tell us the truth. We will know if you’re lying.”
“I presume you already know the answer,” Emilia said. “And since this is the case, why do you need me to confirm it?”
“I want to hear it from your mouth myself,” Carrie said, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed at the slender woman in front of her.
Emilia sighed. A deep, sorrowful sound. “Very well,” she said. “My father is King Asmodeus. He disowned me for a variety of reasons. The story I told you was true. My father disapproved of the man I loved and punished me as you saw.”
Adom nodded. “I have heard something of the sort,” he said. “News of your family’s feuds travels far. But what were the other reasons behind your falling out? You said there was a variety.”
Emilia took a breath and composed herself before she continued. “You must understand why I did not tell you who my father was. You would never have trusted me had you known the truth.”
“And why should we?” Carrie challenged.
“I do not think you did,” Emilia said. “You did not tell me you possessed a shamir. I know you had it before you entered the Golden Mountain. There is no legend saying that there ever was a shamir dwelling within the mountain’s confines.”
“But we were right not to trust you,” Lindsay said indignantly. “You lied first.”
Emilia smiled sadly. “I see,” she said.
“Tell us the rest,” Carrie said. “Why else was your father angry with you?” It seemed so weird to her to think of Asmodeus as a father of any sort.
“It was his stealing the violin’s strings that finally made me stand up to him,” Emilia said. “For me, he had finally gone too far. What good does it serve to destroy the world? The fact that he is willing to end all existence, including the lives of his children, is repugnant to me. Why would I, in good conscience, stand by while he chooses to end not only my life, but the lives of everyone else? I could not do that, so I stood up to him. I tried to stop him, and he punished me by leaving me marooned on the rock.” She paused in her speech and turned to Carrie and the others with tears in her eyes. “When you found me, I saw that I had a second chance to stop my father. Yes, I kept my true identity a secret. But would you have let me help you if you knew my father was the man you sought to stop?”
“No, we would not have trusted you at all,” Carrie admitted. “But how do we know we can trust you now?”
Adom sat watching this exchange with interest. His eyes went from Emilia to Carrie. The princess seemed sincere, her arguments made sense, but how could they ever know for sure?
“I suppose you cannot,” Emilia replied. “But if you think logically about it, have I truly done anything to warrant your mistrust?”
Carrie hesitated before admitting the truth. “You didn’t tell me that the shamir was in one of those caves we passed in the woods,” she said to Emilia. “I snuck off and entered the cave to find a witch who lived there guarding it. I traded my necklace for the shamir. The same shamir we used to escape the mountain.”
Emilia was aghast. “You gave up your necklace freely?” she asked. “You traded that protective charm away? That charm offered you much protection from the evils of this world. Why did you want a shamir so badly?”
Lindsay looked at Carrie, who was standing in a tight self-hug, looking chagrined. “We thought we could use it to approach Asmodeus’ castle from below. That way he would not be expecting us.”
Emilia pondered this a moment before answering. “This would have been a wise plan, but as we have lost the shamir we need a new one,” she said. “If you will let me, I would like to help you.”
In turn, Carrie, Lindsay, and Rebecca all looked to Adom for advice. He sat and gave Emilia a piercing look, as if by sheer will he could find out what she was thinking. Finally he spoke. “I think your aid would be most appreciated,” he said. He turned to Carrie with a scrutinizing gaze. “I would also like to accompany you on the rest of your quest if you would let me.”
“I would,” Carrie said. “But I thought that Asmodeus made it impossible for someone from your world to enter his castle. How can you come with us now?”
Adom turned to Emilia. “If you truly wish to help us, can you negate the charms your father placed to allow me entrance?”
Emilia looked as though she were deep in thought. “I think I might be able to do that,” she said slowly. She looked at Carrie. “I am truly sorry for my deception. Know I meant you no harm.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t trust you,” Carrie told her, “but you have
to understand where we were coming from. We were trapped in that mountain and had just found out that you’d lied to us about who you were. I know we lied too, and I’m sure we’re all sorry about that. I know I am. But please understand why we did. You were acting so strange. We’d still like your help. That is, if you’ll give it to us.”
Both Lindsay and Rebecca nodded and gave their apologies as well. They and Carrie stood silently waiting for Emilia’s answer. Finally, she gave a small smile.
“I am so sorry I lied. Please know my reasons were noble,” she said. “Yet, I know that is no excuse. Lying for whatever reason is not a good foundation for a friendship. I still do want to help you. We shall come up with a new plan on how to enter Asmodeus’ castle as we walk on our way. Adom and I will lead the way together to his mountain.”
Adom nodded and scampered ahead to take the lead on what he hoped was the last leg of their journey.
Chapter Twenty-One
Takhinit Chadash
Carrie had not realized how much she’d missed the little fox’s company until he had returned to their group. Though she had not known him long, she felt a kinship to him. She looked down to where he trotted alongside her and smiled. She resisted the urge to reach down and pet him like she did Finnigan whenever they would go walking together. Having an animal accompany them on this journey emphasized how she missed her home and family. So far, nothing on this quest was turning out as she had dreamed. It was true she had longed for adventure, had dreamed magic was real, and that she would somehow become involved in something like this. Yet, in her dreams there was never any real danger, no loss, no lies, none of this self-doubt she seemed to be dealing with every step she took. Having Adom back with her, knowing that he believed in her and in her ability to succeed, made her feel so much better about everything.
“You and your friends are being very silent,” Adom said, peering up at Carrie in the darkness. “When I first met you, I feared your incessant chatter would never cease.”
Carrie gave him a small smile. “A lot has happened since we arrived here,” she told him. “It hasn’t all been good. We’ve made a few mistakes and some very stupid moves.”
The Song of Hadariah: Dybbuk Scrolls Trilogy: Book 1 (Dybbuk Scrolls Trillogy) Page 13