There’s splashing underneath me, so I shine my torch down as a voice says, “Coe...is that you?”
I exhale when I see the figure, sopping wet and clutching the ladder only a rung beneath my feet. She still manages to look pretty and poised, even drenched and shivering. “Princess!”
If she’s glad to see me, I wouldn’t know it. “Help me out of here at once,” she sobs. “This is not the place for me!”
“I’m sorry, but we must be quiet. Finn is above and he’s not happy.”
“Finn? Who is that?” She narrows her eyes. “Another stupid commoner.”
I ignore her. “What happened to you, Princess?”
“I knew they were coming, so I vacated during the last high tide. I hid in the waves until they consumed the castle and then came back here.”
I stare at her, incredulous.
“Oh, do not look at me that way. I am not as helpless as everyone thinks,” she says.
“How? The scribblers...”
“I can easily outswim them. I’m a royal, remember?”
I raise my eyebrows. Nobody has every claimed to be able to outswim scribblers. And in all her tides in the tower, has she ever even touched the salt water, much less had the chance to learn to swim? “And the door? How did you get in, when I had your key?”
She nods. “I gave you my key. The king had a key, as well.”
“But you could have drowned,” I whisper.
She laughs. “Oh, that’s not possible for royalty. Now, you said Tiam was down here? I need to see him. It’s disgusting and cold down here, and I am catching a chill. This is no place for a princess.”
“Yes...” I say, a smile spreading on my face despite her coldness. My heart swells with happiness. Now Tiam won’t have to go looking for her. Now I can bring her to Tiam, and they can be... They can be what? Suddenly everything inside me deflates. How can I feel so overjoyed and disappointed all at once? “He’s this way.”
I show her how to climb up to the pipes, and she stares aghast at me, wrinkling her nose. “Whatever for?”
“There are scribblers in the water. Surely you’ve seen them?”
“No, I have not. I’m not accustomed to wriggling around like a lowly worm,” she snorts.
She’s spent all of her life in the tower, away from the oceans. She has no idea how cruel the scribblers can be. But then again, for someone with no familiarity with the ocean, she certainly did a good job swimming here once she was forced from the tower. It’s nothing short of a miracle that she’s here. Maybe as a gift from the gods, she has their protection.
She reaches her hand up. I suppose it is up to me to pull her the rest of the way. Though she’s wearing a soaked gown that itself must weigh more than Fern, she pushes her feet against the ladder and is up in no time. As I pull her up, I recognize the gown. It’s her wedding dress. It’s dirty and sopping and not exactly in the shape she’d hoped for.
I tell her to follow me, and we proceed the way I’d come with Fern. This time, though, the company is a little less...engaging. This time, I have to find something to tune out the mutters of annoyance and shrieks of disgust that keep emanating from behind me. I always, always go back to the kiss with Tiam. It works well to distract me, but then I realize I’m torturing myself. It was just practice for him, after all. Or maybe it was more... But does that matter? I tell myself to stop thinking about it. It’s over. It can never happen again.
“There’s a spider the size of my hand here,” she whimpers, followed by the sound of ripping fabric. “Oh! My dress!”
She has the folds of her dress lifted up to her waist and is looking down at it. “Why don’t you rip the rest of it off?” I suggest. “It will be easier to move.”
“It’s my wedding dress,” she says, and sighs. Then she reaches down and pulls the skirt from her waist, casting it aside. Underneath she is wearing a small white slip that clings to her thighs, but at least it is easier to maneuver around. “I look like a perfect wreck. Tiam will laugh at me. Looking like one of his own!”
“He won’t laugh,” I mumble, my voice tinged with bitterness. Tiam care about a torn dress? For one so convinced he is her soulmate, she doesn’t know him at all.
We climb on for ages until arriving at the section of the door that I’d kicked in earlier. I stop and shine the torch through, but I can’t see anything. “Tiam?” I whisper into the void.
There is no answer. Again, Tiam has disappeared. Probably out scouting for the exit. I don’t know what about his past actions made me think that he’d stay around and wait in the bunker with Fern for me to return with the princess and the map. I wonder how he’ll react when he sees that I’ve gotten only one of the two things I’ve set out to find. I wonder which of the two he values most.
The princess crawls beside me. “Is he in there?” she asks, wrinkling her nose and wiping her brow with a piece of fabric from her ripped dress. “Oh, dear. Another dark, damp place.”
She bunches up the cloth and begins to tuck it into her cleavage when I notice something very interesting about it. There’s a B on it. Is it really fabric from her dress after all? Her dress has a bluish tint, and this cloth is yellowed, old. “What is that?” I point at it.
“Oh, this?” She pulls it from between her breasts and waves it in front of me. “Nothing. A handkerchief.”
I grab it from her and open it up, trembling, unable to contain the glee. On the top it says B MT ENT. Underneath there is a map. A maze of boxes, and a thin, dotted red line running through them. The map! “Do you realize what this means? This is the map to the exit. The way out.”
She squints at me, then grabs the map. “Ridiculous. There is no such thing.”
“No,” I say. She has to be bluffing. “I know about the map. Tiam told me—”
“Tiam?” Her eyes blaze. “He told you?”
I bite my tongue. Suddenly the weight of all I’ve said hits me with force. Of course she knows about it. But it’s a royal secret. Only intended for a select few. I wasn’t to know. And now I’ve made things awkward for Tiam.
She sighs. “You weren’t supposed to be told about it until we were well on our way. It’s far too dangerous to let commoners know. I suppose this was to be expected, considering how close you two are. I will need to speak to him about this. Who else knows?”
“Well, um, Fern, the little girl...and...” I stop short. Finn. He knows. He’ll keep looking, because the alternative is death. It’s only a matter of time before he finds us. Not exactly a good thing. But he doesn’t have a map. Maybe he’ll get so hopelessly lost that finding us will be impossible. At least, one can hope. I mumble, “Just Fern.”
She sighs. “Well, we’d better hurry. Lead me to Tiam.”
I climb into the room and help her as she lowers herself down beside me. “Careful,” I say. “There are vicious creatures here.”
“Oh!” she moans when she sees the remains of them lying in the center of the path. She buries her face in my shoulder. “That’s atrocious! I will be glad to be out of here. Surely nothing in this new land can be worse than here.”
“So, it really does exist?” I ask.
“My father often spoke of it to me. He had never been there, before, though. I imagine it can’t be very beautiful.”
I swallow. “Why do you say that?”
She nods. “Well, it’s under the castle. Dark, dank, moldy.” She waves her arms around. “Like this. And the people there... Well...they’re different.”
“Different?” A sinking feeling blooms in the pit of my stomach. “Different how?”
“As in, not the same,” she snaps, clearly getting annoyed with my questions. “I don’t know. He never liked to talk about them.”
“Oh.” I have a thousand questions swirling in my head, so I wish she’d be more accommodating. Gently, I venture a
nother. “Did he say...how it came to be under your castle?”
“My father told me it was a city built in the antediluvian times. For protection against any disaster that might befall the human race. Thousands of people were sent there to live, but there were millions of people in the world at that time. Only the most important people were allowed.”
“A city underground!” I marvel. “How odd. How do people survive there?”
She shrugs absently.
“What? You’ve never even been curious?”
She looks around, shivering. “No.”
“And your father wasn’t? Not once?”
Star bites her lip and looks at the ground. She doesn’t speak for a long time. “No. Why should he have been?”
“Why?” I ask, wanting to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “Out of curiosity, if nothing else! There’s a whole world under your feet and all you Wallows want to do is hide in your tower.”
Her eyes narrow. “I hate dark, damp places.”
“But your kingdom is dead! Think of how many people might have been saved if they’d known there was an escape. My father, for one!”
She ignores me and continues walking forward. After all, who is my father to her, but another lowly commoner? “Tiam!” she suddenly shouts, then whirls around to me, accusation blazing in her eyes. “You said he was here. Why is he not answering?”
I give up on her and look around. It’s eerily quiet. Up ahead is the bunker and the entrance to the laundry chute, but Fern and Tiam are nowhere. “They’ve got to be here, somewhere,” I say. I call out, “Fern? Tiam?”
Nothing.
We take another few steps toward the chute when I notice something. Daylight, streaming down the opening, making a tiny square of white light on the floor. Was the chute open? Could I have been so silly as to not peel the grate back into place? I try to remember back to when I’d climbed up there, and realize I have no recollection of ever closing it. At the time, I’d thought I’d quickly be able to retrieve the princess and the map and return to the chute before the rest of the world left the formation.
My throat goes dry. Until now, I hadn’t felt the chill of my wet clothes against my skin. When the tide comes, the water will come through. And closed, nobody could see the opening. But with the grate on the chute peeled back, if someone were searching for us, it would be all too easy.
Stupid, stupid me.
“Tiam?” I whisper again, a little less surely this time.
We round a large pile of crates and the B MT ENT sign comes into view. A white gleam from Tiam’s portable light dances in the distance, bobbing up the passage toward us. I hear his voice, soft and soothing, saying something to Fern likely to calm her fears.
“Coe?” he calls out. “That you?”
I sigh, relieved. The sound of his voice is like clean, pure water after a long walk. I knew he’d never leave me alone. When he comes closer, his eyes on me, I find myself blushing. I hope the light isn’t strong enough for him or the princess to see. “Hi,” I say shyly. Then I curse myself. Could I possibly say anything that screams I kissed you and I can’t stop thinking about it any louder?
Fern rushes to me, burying her face in my tunic, and as I stroke her hair, I’m glad to have something other than Tiam’s lips to concentrate on. The princess doesn’t seem to notice my problem. She rushes to Tiam, exhaling dramatically, draping herself over his shoulder. “Oh, am I so glad to see you!” Tiam smiles at her, then his eyes trail to me, and he winces. I can’t tell if it’s because he regrets what we did or if it’s because she’s pressing into his injury. She pulls away from him and inspects him. “My goodness! And I thought I looked a wreck. What happened to you?”
“Long story,” he mumbles, sticking his chin out bravely. She didn’t seem as concerned the night she forced us from the steps of the tower as the tide approached. I start to roll my eyes but catch them halfway when Tiam suddenly turns to me. “Did you find the map?”
Star holds it up for him. “I didn’t know you were going to tell her,” she says, pouting.
“We have no choice, Princess,” he says softly.
“And why didn’t you come to rescue me?” she asks. “I thought my father put you in charge of me?”
I lift Fern onto my back and pretend not to be involved, but it’s not possible. I can almost see Star’s words tearing into him. Tiam swallows and looks away. I know how heavily this weighs upon him, how much he wanted to make good on his promise to the king. “I’m sorry” is all he can say. The way he says it, I can’t tell if he’s speaking to her...or to me.
“Let’s look at the map,” I say after a long silence, choking on Fern’s hair, which seems to be everywhere. Star unfolds it. “Where do we go?”
“How should I know?” Star says. “I’ve never studied it for any length of time, and it’s so dark here I can barely see a thing.”
“Let me get some more of those lights, just in case. You go on. I’ll be right back,” Tiam calls over his shoulder, already halfway up the corridor.
I drop Fern to her feet and yank the map from Star’s hands. It’s not exactly easy to decipher. There are no words, save for the B MT ENT at the top, and it’s difficult to see where we are in relation to where the red line begins. Where it ends is just the tip of an arrow. There’s nothing else. The beginning of the line is surrounded by what looks like a thick, wide corridor, which goes straight for some time. There the line becomes dotted. Then it becomes a thick red again, snaking through a maze of turns, and there it looks as if the corridors become smaller and smaller. “I think...I think we just go straight,” I say.
Star hesitates. “Perhaps we should wait for Tiam.”
I exhale loudly, annoyed. “We’ll just go on a little ways.”
She doesn’t move, just looks down at the ground. “It will do no good to follow that map,” she says. “We can’t all make it.”
Maybe it’s because I’m so busy trying to prod her into action that I’m only half listening, because the meaning of her words is lost on me. “What?”
“The passage. The map. It’s a very treacherous route,” she says. I’m about to tune her out, as I’m so tired of her snobbery, when she says, “Only royals may pass.”
“What? Is the passage guarded?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying what my father told me. All I know is that he told me that only certain people have the ability to make it through. I assume he meant royals, people of supreme worth.”
It’s so ridiculous to think that a passage could be open only to royals. After all, despite Star’s claims of her importance, I’ve known some commoners who were twice her worth. And yet it still plants a seed of doubt. Could she be right? “Well, let’s just see about that.”
Fern pulls on my hand. “We’re going straight?” her voice is mouselike. “Down there?”
I nod.
“But...” Fern’s voice quivers. “That way... We tried to go that way before.”
It hits me as I take another step. The map is leading us directly to the place where those horrible monsters cornered us. Where the corridor was flooded. Impassable.
Star begins to tremble, clutching her hands together in front of her. There is something else she hasn’t told me, and if it’s anything worse than what she’s already said, I am not sure I want to know.
Fern squeals, “We’re not going that way, are we?”
I massage her shoulder. “Yes, we are,” I say. “It’s better than where we’re coming from. I’m afraid things will be very bad for us if we stay.”
Fern shakes her head. “But the path...it’s...”
“We’ll find a way around it.” We take a few more steps, until we’re ankle-deep in the dank black water, and the path begins to descend sharply. I wade out until I’m waist-deep, until the iciness of the
water makes it impossible to feel my toes, and study all the corners, but there’s no trick door in the wall, and not even an inch of breathing room at the top of the passage. It’s most completely blocked. I don’t think any royal would be able to find anything different. “This can’t be the way,” I say, studying the map again.
Star wades out toward me, and the back of my neck prickles. At first I am not sure why, but then I realize there is something strange about her expression. After a moment I realize it’s because she’s not grimacing or shuddering or squealing about the freezing water. She’s just walking, arms out, ever so gracefully, her face completely serene. As she nears, I think that she’ll peer over my shoulder at the map, to help me figure out where we’re going. Instead, she pulls the map from my hand and whispers, “I most definitely think it is the way.” Then I feel her hands, cold and silken, on my shoulders, a sudden, enormous downward pressure there...and then I am plunged fully underwater, where the world swirls green-gray.
Twenty-Two
Sunlight on a Broken Column
Immediate panic. Immediate shock. It doesn’t fully register that Star, Princess Star, is holding me underwater; the thought is somewhere in the back of my muddled mind, but the first thing I feel is terror. The second is the impulse to free myself, and I begin to thrash my arms at her wildly. But it does no good. Star is stronger than I ever would have guessed. The water is so cold, like a million pinpricks on my cheeks. The brine burns my eyes, and it feels oilier and thicker than seawater. She caught me so off guard that after only a few seconds I’m dying for breath. My mouth opens in a scream and all the air is forced out of my lungs. I push against her stomach, her chest, with my own body, but still she won’t let go. Her hand is wound around my hair, her elbows digging into my collarbone, as if all of her own weight is atop me.
She must know about me and Tiam. Of all the ways I could have died, I never thought it would be like this. It occurs to me that for all I thought I knew about the princess, she has an infinite ability to surprise. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she is the better class of person.
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