And then she saw him. He sat alone against the far wall, staring at something he held cupped in his hands. She’d only seen him twice during her time at Seven Skies, but there was no mistaking him.
It was strange. When she’d first laid eyes upon the boy with the horns that spiraled from the sides of his head, she’d been repulsed by him. Now, though, after trees with eyeballs, cats with stings, and walking corpses, he seemed almost drab.
She felt the knowing quicken inside her. It was only a faint twinge—nothing like what she’d felt when it had taken her to Michael in the dungeon. Still, she felt compelled to respond to its call, and she took a step toward the boy.
Corbbmacc’s hand fell on her shoulder, and he brought her up short.
“What are you doing?”
Emily shrugged him off and crossed the distance to the boy, Corbbmacc following reluctantly behind.
The boy looked up as she knelt down beside him, and she was struck by how young he was. Beyond the horns, he seemed more or less like any other small boy and was surely no older than nine or ten. His eyes were a pale, watery blue, and his hair was so blonde it was nearly white. Torchlight reflected in his gaze, and she saw that the mischievous glint she’d seen there after getting off the boat was gone—replaced by a weary sort of resignation.
He smiled, though, when he saw her, and his eyes widened in surprise.
“I remember you,” he said, and his voice was full of the kind of wonder reserved for children who have just had a momentary glimpse of Santa Claus.
“I remember you too,” she told him.
“I’m sorry they got you,” the boy said, looking back down at whatever he had cupped in his hands. She couldn’t see what it was, but it glimmered faintly in the flickering light.
“Why are you here?”
The boy looked back up at her. He shrugged.
“Stole another loaf of bread,” he said. His seeming acceptance of that being a perfectly reasonable crime for a punishment in this corner of hell brought fresh anger rushing up inside her, and she forced it down again. There would be time for righteous fury later—maybe.
“They told me this would happen if I stole any more…but I was hungry.” He watched her for a moment, as if to gauge whether she was going to reproach him for being hungry. When she didn’t, he went on.
“I thought you got away,” he said. “That’s what people said, anyway.”
“People? What people?”
“Just people.” The boy rolled the object he was holding around in his palms, and Emily saw a flash of brilliance between his fingers.
“What do you have there?” she asked.
The boy opened his fingers and held out his hand to her. A small piece of crystal, no larger than a marble, sat cradled in his palm.
“Took it when we were mining,” he said proudly. He closed his fingers around it again and held it against his chest. “It’s magic, you know.”
Corbbmacc, apparently deciding they had nothing to fear from this boy, sank to the floor on his other side, watching them. He looked as exhausted as she felt.
“You two know each other, I guess?” he asked, leaning against the wall and tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. Emily threw him a look that he didn’t see, then turned back to the boy.
“Magic, huh?” she asked. “What does it do?”
“I dunno,” the boy said. “I don’t do magic.”
He relaxed, apparently satisfied she wasn’t going to steal his crystal.
“I’m Emily,” she told him, patting his knee gently.
“My name’s Daniel,” he said. “I never knew anyone named Emily before.”
Emily smiled in spite of herself.
Just a false alarm then, she guessed. It wasn’t the knowing. Just a momentary surge of gratitude that she’d seen someone—anyone—she recognized in this nightmare.
“I’m happy to meet you, Daniel.”
For a while, the three of them sat in silence as the boy stared at his fragment of broken crystal. Around them, the other prisoners were lying on the floor in small groups and falling asleep.
Without a word, the boy curled up between them, his head beside Emily’s knee, and closed his eyes, still clutching his precious treasure to his chest.
Emily and Corbbmacc stared at one another over the sleeping form on the floor.
“We should rest,” Corbbmacc said at last.
“Yes,” she said.
But it was a long time before either of them moved to lie down.
* * *
A small hand was shaking her. She didn’t want to wake up. Her head pounded, and her mouth tasted of ash. She just wanted to sleep.
“Go away,” she mumbled, and the sound made the throbbing in her brain worsen. The world seemed to be rolling gently beneath her. Was she back on the boat?
“Wake up, Emily.”
Groaning, she reluctantly opened her eyes and found Daniel kneeling over her, his face looking pale and gaunt between the horns that framed it. Behind him, Corbbmacc was sitting against the wall and scrubbing the blood from his chin with the palm of one hand.
“The guards will be here soon,” Daniel told her. “We have to start working if we want to eat tonight.”
Emily sat up, and a fresh bolt of pain shot through her skull. It felt like someone was trying to skewer her brain on a red hot poker.
She clutched the sides of her head as her vision doubled, and her stomach began a series of slow somersaults below her ribs. She blinked, and the twin Daniels before her swam back together.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Over his shoulder, she saw Corbbmacc getting to his feet.
“I’m okay,” she said, wondering if it were true. She felt terrible.
Corbbmacc came to stand beside her. He offered her his hand and helped her to her feet. The world spun around her, and the floor dipped and rocked. She staggered drunkenly, listing alarmingly to one side.
“You are not okay,” Corbbmacc observed, reaching out and clasping her shoulder to steady her.
“Hit my head last night,” she muttered. “I’ll be fine in a minute…I think.”
“I don’t think you have a minute,” he said grimly.
The iron gate rattled, and she turned to follow his gaze. A group of guards stood in the passage outside, their hands on the hilts of their swords.
“Rise and shine,” one of them singsonged. The others laughed. “Time to earn your keep.”
The prisoners around them began moving forward. Most were hobbling or limping along, finding it difficult to walk on bruised and blistered feet. Couples supported one another as best they could. Parents carried children.
A black girl in her teens dropped back into step beside them as they fell in behind the others. She looked in better health than most of the other prisoners, and Emily wondered if she’d been part of the group they’d seen being brought in yesterday. She didn’t remember having seen anyone with dark skin, though.
African-American, she thought. Back home, we’d say she was African-American…only there is no Africa anymore. No America either, for that matter.
“Who’re your new friends, Danny?” the girl asked, smirking and casting a wary look at Emily and Corbbmacc.
“She’s Emily,” Daniel said, nodding at her. “I saw her get off the boat. She was an apprentice.” He said it like it was something special.
Emily stumbled again, and Corbbmacc put an arm around her shoulders, steadying her as they joined the cluster of people outside. The world kept going out of focus. It was as though she was back in the funhouse at the House of Horrors; the faces around her kept shifting and changing, elongating like melted wax into the grotesquely twisted bodies of serpents, or compressing into the fearsome countenances of trolls.
“Apprentice, huh?” the girl was saying, eyeing Emily with more interest.
“Not anymore,” Emily murmured. She blinked rapidly, trying to make the images before her solidify. Gradually, they did, swirling liquidly bac
k into flesh and bone.
“No, I guess not, babe,” the girl said, a trace of biting sarcasm in her tone. She looked around them at the rough stone walls and the dirty, sickly prisoners. “Hell of a long way to fall.”
They walked on in silence.
The guards led them through the tunnels, and as they moved, Emily found her head starting to clear a little. The pain in her skull receded a bit, and she was steadier on her feet.
They arrived at an enormous, irregular chamber carved roughly from the rock. Torches burned along the walls, and in their light, Emily could see places in the walls and floor where the rock glimmered with an iridescent glow. Flashes of color winked in and out of existence from all sides, like sunlight on the surface of a pond.
They made their way across the chamber, stopping beside a large cart that reminded her of an oversized wheelbarrow. Beside it, on the floor, was a pile of small hand picks. They looked like toys.
Big enough to work with, but too small to be used as weapons, she thought.
“Get to work,” one of the guards barked perfunctorily, before he and his compatriots moved across the room to sit at a small wooden table.
Emily watched as the prisoners chose picks from the pile, then began chipping away at the crystal embedded in the rocks. She and Corbbmacc did the same, claiming a spot beside Daniel and his friend.
The clatter of iron on stone sent fresh stabs of agony lancing into her brain, but Emily gritted her teeth and worked with the others. She needed time to think. She needed time to plan.
As the crystal was chipped away, it was tossed into the cart. Most pieces were just dusty fragments, no larger than grains of sand. Now and then, someone would toss in a chunk that was the size of a marble, like the piece that Daniel had shown her last night.
Though they’d begun in silence, the prisoners fell to talking after a time, and she found that the low rumble of voices cushioned the blow of the sharp pinging of their labors inside her skull.
“How do they ever make any progress like this?” Corbbmacc asked, breaking off a tiny piece of crystal and examining it in the palm of his hand.
“The deaders work faster,” Daniel said, not looking up. “And there are more of them than there are of us.”
“And they give those bastards bigger tools,” the girl said. She was working slower than the others, almost seeming to take pride in her work. Her movements were slow, measured, and precise.
Corbbmacc looked at her, brushing hair out of his eyes.
“Got a name?” he asked, peering at her closely.
“Depends on who’s asking.”
Corbbmacc huffed.
“Her name’s Maddy,” Daniel said, using his pick to break away another fragment. He held it between his fingers, examining it in the dim light, then tossed it over his shoulder and into the cart.
Maddy glared at him, but he only shrugged.
“What?” he asked, cocking his head at her. “That’s your name.”
Maddy didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned back to the wall and scowled at the piece of crystal she was working free.
Emily went on, chipping away at the crystal. Her head still ached, and now she was starting to feel hot. Sweat was collecting at her temples, and there was a low whine building in her ears. God, she felt terrible.
Beside her, Corbbmacc worked on, lowering his voice and speaking to Daniel.
“Have you seen any ways out of the mines, besides that shaft with the lift?” he asked.
Daniel didn’t answer right away, and Emily glanced over. The boy seemed to be studying the wall in front of him, but his eyes were unfocused.
“There must be another way,” he said at last. “But I’ve never seen it. Only the prisoners are brought down that shaft. The guards must come and go some other way. Right?” He looked at Maddy for agreement.
The girl was carefully tapping away at a section of the rock and pointedly ignoring them all.
“No idea where it would be, though?” Corbbmacc pressed.
“Nah. They don’t let us go anywhere but that cell, the eating room, and mining rooms like this one. There are a few of those.”
Emily raised her pick, intending to chip out a small piece of crystal that jutted from the rock, but a wave of faintness swept over her. She swayed and fell to her knees. Gray impinged on her vision, and she felt bile rise in her throat. The pick she’d been holding fell from numb fingers with a clatter, and she clutched at the wall, willing herself not to pass out. There was a roaring, buzzing sound in her head. It was like the sound that accompanied the knowing, only far more intense. Her stomach heaved, and she gagged. She had a moment to be grateful that she’d not eaten anything in over twenty-four hours, and then Corbbmacc and Daniel were on either side of her, steadying her and helping her back to her feet.
“What’s wrong?” Corbbmacc asked. He pushed the hair that had fallen into her face aside. “You look awful.”
She swayed again, then sank to the ground, brought her knees to her chest, and rested her head on top of them. Around her, the work went on.
After a time, Daniel knelt beside her and tentatively touched her shoulder.
“Hey. You have to keep working, or they won’t give you anything to eat later.”
The thought of food made Emily’s stomach squirm again.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “Just give me…a minute.”
She raised her head to look at them both. “Keep working. If we all stop, they’re bound to notice.” She gestured weakly in the direction of the guards, who seemed to be engrossed in a game of cards and had, as yet, not realized that any of their charges had paused in their work.
Corbbmacc scowled, but nodded. He scooped up his own pick from the floor and set back to work, and after a moment, Daniel did the same.
Emily laid her head back down and closed her eyes. She needed to get control of herself. Were these symptoms of concussion? She remembered various coaches she’d had over the years warning them about all the different signs they should look out for in case they ever suffered one, but she couldn’t bring very many of them to mind now. She’d always felt invincible on the ice. Concussions were something that happened to other people, not to her. Stupid, childish thing to think.
You need to feel better, she told herself. You have to figure out a way to get the hell out of here and get back to Celine. Celine and Michael need you.
Remember your friends.
She sat for a few more minutes, thinking of nothing. Gradually, she started to feel a little better.
“Hey, get back to work,” one of the guards shouted from across the room, and Emily flinched. She raised her head, shook it experimentally, and was relieved to find that the faintness seemed to have abated for the time being. She still felt hot and ill, but she thought she could cope with that. She took up her pick again and got back to her feet.
Daniel looked at her sympathetically, and Corbbmacc raised a brow at her. She nodded to let them know she was okay and started chipping away once more.
She’d only been working a few minutes when there was a high-pitched pinging sound beside her, followed by a soft crunch.
She glanced over to see Maddy holding a chunk of crystal the size of a puck in the palm of her hand. One side of it had broken almost cleanly away, glittering smooth and clear.
“Wow,” Daniel breathed. “That’s your best yet, Mads.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, turning the hunk of crystal over in her hands.
“It might be my best, but it’s too damn big to smuggle outta here, so don’t you even think about it, Danny.”
Daniel’s face fell.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But can I touch it?”
Maddy handed it over, and Daniel stared at it wonderingly.
“Why do you bother getting pieces out like that?” Corbbmacc asked, looking at the crystal over Daniel’s shoulder. “An awful lot of work for a job no one cares about.”
Emily moved to st
and beside Corbbmacc. She looked down at the beautiful crystal cupped in the boy’s hands. “It’s magic,” he’d said. Maybe it was, in a way. It was certainly beautiful.
“Keeps me from going crazy,” Maddy said at last.
The knowing nudged something inside her again. Was it the knowing? Or was she just so desperate for help of any kind that she was imagining it had something to tell her?
“Can I see it for a second?” she asked Daniel.
Daniel looked at the crystal longingly for another moment, then tipped it out of his hands and into Emily’s outstretched palm.
“Are you sure I can’t try to keep it, Mads?” Daniel asked, but Emily barely heard him.
The crystal felt cold in her hands and strangely light. She turned it over, watching the light dance and break apart inside its facets. It was as though a piece of a rainbow had been broken off and tucked away inside the translucent rock.
As she watched, the ghostly colors faded away into a cloud of white mist, swirling and rippling in the crystalline depths.
Another wave of faintness crashed over her with unexpected suddenness, and with it came the knowing. It overwhelmed her, lifting her up and sweeping her away like a piece of driftwood on an ocean wave.
The mist filled her vision, seeming to swallow her up the way the fog in the mirror of the warehouse had. It was cool, almost cold, and it enfolded her in its embrace.
She felt herself falling…
…Falling…
Chapter Twenty-Eight
She falls through the mist, but it feels more like flying. The damp, cool air is like the spray at the base of a waterfall, and she licks the moisture from her lips as it dampens her face and hair. She feels amazing. The faintness is gone; her head no longer throbs. She is filled to the brim with a boundless sense of wellbeing. This is bliss.
This must be what it would be like to be inside a cloud, she thinks, and the thought fills her with a childlike wonder.
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