by Terah Edun
Rivan cleared his throat as if to make some small talk again but Mae couldn’t bear it.
“Just wait a moment,” she said in a harassed voice. “I need to check the others.”
She meant the pine boxes sitting alone in the center of the room like her stepmother’s. There had to be something special about them if they were here. The rest of the room could wait.
“Hurry,” Rivan hissed at her.
Mae was already throwing back the lid off the first coffin she came to with her heart beating fast. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed that it was empty.
Relief because that was one more possible future in which she saw her remaining parent alive.
Disappointment because it was another minute, another hour, another day of ‘what ifs’ instead of certainty which had its own heartache attached.
She moved on to the third coffin layered in the stacked pyramid shape. She had to actually tug it out from under the others to get the lip open. Luckily, they were all stacked with enough support under them that one moving didn’t displace the rest. And there was also the fact that this coffin was light.
Too light, she thought in misery.
But still dutifully she opened the lid to peer inside. She found nothing but a pine box filled with elderflowers just as before.
“We need to go,” Rivan said in a hard voice.
Something had him on edge. She couldn’t tell what and at the moment she wasn’t really sure she cared.
She just said, “Two more.”
She wasn’t going without checking. She owed them that.
Instead of arguing with her, Rivan rushed forward and climbed the pyramid to reach the topmost coffin while she reached for the last one on the base to look inside.
Exchanging brief glances, he tugged his lid off as she did hers.
“Empty,” they announced to a silent room together.
Rivan scrambled back down and knowing that he was in a rush, she hurried back around to the side of the only other member of her family present for a last goodbye. Mae leaned down and whispered into her dead stepmother’s hair with all the care and tenderness of a loved one, “May you rest in a thousand fields of flowers Mother.”
It was the traditional message given by family members at funerals.
This time she had added her own superlative. This woman had cared for her for as long as she could remember, she had tended to her aches and wounds, and treated Mae the same as she had her own trueborn children.
She was family in a way that just being blood couldn’t bring.
She belonged in Mae’s heart and Mae owed it to her to not only to recognize her love, but to safeguard her legacy.
To do that, she had to find her younger siblings.
If they’re not already in this room, Mae thought somberly. Alone, cold, with no one to give them a proper sendoff as well.
It was a possibility. She had only checked the coffins in the central pool of light. But there were dozens of others present, stacked to the rafters it seemed.
Determined she stood up from her bent knees to check every coffin and see exactly which of her family members were present. If possible, to give each a whispered and loving send-off as well. It would be a gruesome task but it was the least she could do.
“Mae!” Rivan whispered-shouted at her from behind.
Mae waved a dismissive hand in the air as she continued forward without breaking her stride.
“I’m not leaving without checking every single one,” she said firmly as she headed to the further wall. “If you’ve got to go then go but I’m staying. This is my family.”
All she heard behind her was muffled grunts.
She paused with her hand upraised to reach for a coffin as more shuffling sounded behind her. It sounded odd. Not like someone reaching a door and leaving but more like a struggle commencing. A shiver went down her spine as she slowly turned around hoping against hope that she was just imagining something.
“Nope, not imagining it,” Mae breathed out as she looked back in shock.
Rivan was five feet in the air and wrapped end-over-end by a thick black tentacle. It had reached over from the back wall, the same one she had blasted a hole through with a fireball, and somehow snuck up on him.
Them, Mae thought horrified as she felt her own feet yanked out from under her as she was turned upside down in a flash.
But Mae had experience in being tortured upside down so it didn’t faze her as it would most and she had forewarning which was key. In the seconds between her feet being yanked out from under her and suddenly seeing the room from new heights, Mae called in all the magic she had waiting.
She blasted out of both hands with fire, untamed and undirected.
It swept toward the ceiling being, she was currently the wrong way up and it hit the tentacle gripping her and roared up that same tentacle to tackle the branch that had gripped Rivan. For a moment Mae had intense regret as the tentacle gripping the young man was lit with fire and so was he. But just as before when her flames had barely bothered him, Rivan didn’t scream and he didn’t burn.
She couldn’t say the same for the thing that had gripped him.
Burning with the bright orange flames, the tentacle looked like a dead tree branch at last being swept from this world. It only took a minute for it to drop both of its victims and then retreat with what she would best classify as a yelp but she didn’t wait for the strange tentacle shape to regroup.
She followed its retreat with her flames blasting as it went, she finally got a good look at it. It was certainly unnatural. The color of black ink but running through it in ripples was the same shimmering cascade of colors that had lit up the sky from before.
At the moment it was bucking from its corner in the back of the room but every time her flames grew brighter it shrank, it would seem she had found something even the void feared.
She stared at it in satisfaction as she didn’t let up. Finally winning against an enemy felt darned good after all.
“I wouldn’t get too fascinated with it,” Rivan said with a snarl. “It just wants to yank you into the void like all the fissures before it.”
“So it’s the same?” Mae asked in a revulsion-filled tone.
“The very same,” he confirmed. “Now we need to get out of this room before it eats us too.”
Mae looked around at the pine boxes still remaining.
“But it’s not getting back over here and—” she said helplessly.
Rivan cut her off. “You can’t do any good here. If your people are present, they’re already dead.”
Mae flinched at his honesty.
“And they wouldn’t want you sucked into a void like they would be,” Rivan said firmly. “So can we go?”
Mae swallowed deeply. It went against everything she stood for but she had no choice. Mae turned up the heat and then backed slowly towards the door he’d been heading for in the first place. Cut off from the two of them by the wall of fire and flames between them, the void tentacle was busy gulping up boxes like they were candy and as long as it was distracted, they had a way out without more of a fight.
Mae kept her body turned towards the enemy still. She didn’t want to be surprised by the tentacle getting a sudden spurt of bravery after all and she had already seen that the thing was fast. Rivan focused on the door itself. With occasional glances over her shoulder, she watched him work. First, he unlocked a simple bolt from the right. Then he twisted another giant knob at the center of the door’s middle.
It turned and she breathed a sigh of relief. At least this time she wouldn’t have to blast through it. She wasn’t sure she could while also holding off the tentacles in their corner of the room.
As the door creaked open slowly, she half-turned to get a good look at the corridor beyond it. She expected a small way with the same stonework as before, maybe a few pennants and braziers along the base to light the way.
What she found instead was something out of her
worst nightmares.
Another fissure. This one covering the entire other side of the door.
Mae groaned in fear.
“We’re surrounded,” she shouted as she kept her flames high to keep the creature which had emerged from the fissures on the other side from taking advantage of a moment of weakness.
“We’re not surrounded,” Rivan said.
“What do you call that rainbow puddle in the doorway then?” Mae snapped.
“A way out,” Rivan said in a voice that brooked no argument. “That is—if we jump.”
Those words broke Mae out of her stupor like never before.
“We spent all this time avoiding the fissure and the tentacle monster they created,” she said incredulously. “Now you want to surrender to them.”
“It’s a different portal,” Rivan argued.
Mae cast a suspicious glance at the kaleidoscope of colors that made up the doorway in front of them.
“Looks the same to me,” she said flatly.
He sighed heavily as he rolled his eyes.
“Just trust me,” Rivan demanded.
Mae pinned her lips in a thin grimace. She was getting darned tired of people she didn’t know from a sheep asking her to trust them. Trust was earned!
Reluctantly Mae said, “Alright, but when we get through this, I want an explanation. A darned good one!”
“Deal,” Rivan quickly said.
Before she could change her mind, she felt his hand at the small of her back and then he shoved her into the colors while he followed close behind. She didn’t even have time to scream as she fell.
Too soon she was gone from the room and all she could see was the sky filled with a kaleidoscope of lights coming towards her from a distance. It was heavenly. It was the last thing she wanted to see. Helplessly Mae reached backwards towards the room filled with flowers and a single, lonely death, anything to keep her anchored to this place and this time. But she had no control over herself or her place in the realm it seemed.
So she fell.
The only thing left behind being her tears and the shrouded body of a stepmother she longed to hold in the distance. In her memory, the faces of her family haunting her even as she descended.
15
Automatically Mae had sucked in a breath as she was pushed head-first into the kaleidoscope of colors. She thought she wouldn’t be able to breathe but being inside what Rivan called a portal was different. It wasn’t like being sucked underwater so much as floating through air.
She knew the beautiful lights around her were fiber pieces so thin it was hard to discern where one individually began and the other ended. But more than that, it was like being surrounded by softness, and yes light, as she descended. She didn’t plummet, she fell with grace although where they were going, she had no idea.
Moving through the kaleidoscope felt terrifyingly long and instantaneous at the same time. So that by the time she’d gathered her thoughts together and her head was clear, she was already falling through to the other side. Wherever that may be.
When she emerged back inside the stone castle she did so as a spluttering, coughing mess.
Transitioning from traveling without air but still breathing back into an acrid-smoke filled existence. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said she was back inside the room they had just fled but as she looked up and around, she saw a difference. Instead of a room with a ceiling of medium height and rectangular shapes stacked everywhere she looked, she found that they were alone in a vast room with soaring heights above them.
The ceiling curved in with bowed rafters to a singular peak with stained glass windows interspersed evenly on the rim. Even if she hadn’t spent all of her important childhood holidays here, she would recognize the room for its windows alone.
The family chapel was just as she’d left it earlier this week.
Undisturbed by the madness of the invading mercenaries or the terrible tragedy of her siblings illness. Just warm, silent, and still. Mae was on her knees where she fell from being pushed through Rivan’s portal abruptly and as she took in her new domain she sat back and felt something akin to peace come over her. It could be nothing but the gods work that she had ended up being transported directly into the family’s chapel after being shown her stepmother’s body so shockingly.
“This is where I’m meant to be,” Mae said as clear relief flooded through her.
“What?” asked Rivan in a distracted tone as he kicked a low bench aside and made his way towards the exit.
“I said that this is where I should be,” Mae responded in an irritated tone. “Aside from that, this is my family’s chapel and you could show a little respect you know?”
Rivan looked back at her with something akin to ire on his face.
“It was a piece of wood,” he said wryly.
“I wasn’t just talking about the bench,” Mae said flatly.
“Okay, okay,” he said backing away while holding his arms up in mock surrender.
Mae rolled her eyes and didn’t pursue him. She just focused on re-centering herself in that bit of peace she’d felt.
“Right, well as holy as this is, we’ve got to go,” Rivan said while looking around disparagingly.
As if to mock his words, a flight of pigeons set off from the rafters above in a cacophony of feathers and bird calls. Mae saw some of their droppings end up on the floor feet from her but she didn’t flinch. What was pigeon droppings compared to a tentacle monster that had wanted to swallow her whole? Nothing that’s what.
“We’ve always got to go somewhere,” Mae said in a tired voice, not bothering to get up and certainly not moving. “Why don’t you keep your word and tell me what in the world just happened.”
He shifted impatiently but it was clear from the stubborn tilt of her head that she was going nowhere without that explanation. Rivan, who despite his misgivings seemed quite sure he needed her, sighed heavily and then dropped down to settle on the floor near her. She looked over at him impatiently. She didn’t think she was asking too much, just a simple explanation. She was tired of being dragged from room to room with no explanation and nary a word on why aside from run for her life now and all would be well later!
He rubbed a tired hand over his face, the first sign that he was perhaps as weary as she was.
When Rivan looked up his eyes looked bloodshot as he asked, “Where should I start?”
Leaning forward with her voice animated Mae said, “How about the beginning?”
He raised an eyebrow. “The very beginning? Well I was born under the hottest sun of the year and my mother was absolutely furious at my father—”
Mae grumbled and shook her head.
“Don’t be flippant please,” she pleaded in a voice that was just as through as he was. “Just…just start with the patio. We were there and suddenly we were racing to get inside through the third floor by jumping and now we’ve fallen into the chapel!”
“That was a bit much,” Rivan admitted.
“Yes,” Mae exclaimed. “Especially the part where we’ve appeared and reappeared in rooms that have no logistical nearness to each other. How?”
Her eyes must have been wild by the end of her rant because he leaned back with a bit of a wary look.
To his credit, he didn’t stall this time. He just began.
“Well, first of all spatial distance doesn’t really have any bearing on jumping between portals,” Rivan said with ease.
“You mean physically jumping or some magical woo-woo you’ve yet to explain and you just expect me to know?” Mae asked with narrowed eyes.
Rivan actually chuckled at her words.
“Both I guess,” he admitted.
She gave him a pointed look and he amended his explanation.
“The first jump wasn’t metaphysical, or magical woo-woo as you put it,” he admitted. “It was just sheer force from the winds that managed to convey us from the patio ground floor up to the ledge where we sought shelte
r.”
Mae nodded. That matched with what she had remembered.
“So the leap into the light from the room itself, was that not normal?” she guessed. “You said it was some kind of portal.”
“Precisely,” Rivan said leaning forward with excitement in his eyes as pigeons fluttered above their heads and Mae tried not to wince at the sound of droppings landing on her back.
She was finally getting some answers. She wasn’t going to turn around and inspect the leavings on her probably filthy tunic but if those birds didn’t find another roost soon, they’d likely be spit and roasted for a meal if she had anything to say about it.
“The portal is a gate that was conjured to transfer us between two physical spaces,” Rivan continued on monotonously though by the twinkle in his eye he had certainly noticed her dilemma. He was either too well-behaved or too wary to say anything about it, which suited her just fine for the moment. She wasn’t happy with either the pigeon or the young man in front of her.
Mae tried to put her negative feelings to the side as she asked, “Okay, so it’s like a bridge across a river to get from one side to the other.”
“Yes,” Rivan said nodding eagerly. “But instead of just using it to jump across the river, I tinkered with a bit.”
Mae stared at him. “Why in the world would you do that?”
“To escape our enemies of course,” Rivan said with a bit of outrage in his voice.
“Alright, so you tinkered with it…how?” Mae asked. “You told it to take us to a different place?”
“More like I asked it to stop mid-jump so we could get off and recuperate,” Rivan admitted slyly.
“That…doesn’t sound normal,” Mae accused.
Rivan waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing about magic is normal if you know how to manipulate it properly.”
“Where did we jump off then?” Mae asked wary.
“I’ll get to that in a moment,” Rivan said. “Now let’s get back to the actual formation of the portal itself.”