Chapter 15 #2
“I did those things in my dreams, my writing,” she reminded Kayce—and herself—a touch louder than needed for the small study. “I doubt I could find the guts in this world to leap off a ship thousands of feet in the air onto a flying horse’s back.”
“I didn’t dream it,” Kayce muttered under his breath, shoving another book back. They continued their search quietly, but nothing availed itself.
“Remember when we thought we raided the wrong ship?” Kayce reminisced a few minutes later. “One of Luddeck’s men had hidden the crystalline in a private hold beneath his quarters. We searched that room for almost an hour before your foot caught the rug and revealed the trap door.”
Lia dropped a notebook. “It was hidden in plain sight the whole time.” She went for the rug situated before the desk. “Kayce, that’s brilliant—”
Flipping it back, the wooden floor beneath was utterly bare.
“What did you expect? If a trap door was there, it would fall right into the sitting room,” Kayce said, turning to the bookshelves.
Flushing, Lia whipped the rug down. “You have a better idea?”
“No, a different perspective.” Kayce pulled the random books remaining out of the shelves, tilting them two at a time as he made his way from the bottom shelf upward.
“A book to a secret room? Isn’t that a bit on the nose?” she asked, walking to the shelf next to him. “Whoever was here clearly tried that.”
“Beats flipping over rugs.”
She refused to rise to his bait. They rifled through the bookcase, ultimately to no avail.
Lia paused, a small bust of Shakespeare catching her attention.
Once nudged, it didn’t open anything. She frowned, scanning the shelves and cupboards beneath.
Papa must have more on that story somewhere.
There had to be something they were missing. Some latch, a hole, a false door.
All that remained were old board games her papa always beat Lia and Marcus in. The cupboard closest to the desk held several boxes of family favorites. And there, propped on its side, was a bingo box.
“No way.” Lia tugged on it.
Only it didn’t come out, merely tilted forward. The motion unlocked a latch, the entire bookshelf popping before it swung open.
“That’s a lot bigger than a cabinet,” Kayce said, jaw slack.
Lia whistled low. “Way to go, bingo league.”
“What’s a bingo league?”
“Some incredibly weird people that came to Papa’s…” She let the last part die in her throat. Weird people, indeed. Could they be related to this strange story, somehow? Why else would the bingo box, of all things, open a secret room?
With Papa, nothing was accidental. This was likely no exception.
Kayce pulled the bookshelf back even more to reveal a shadowed space the size of a large walk-in closet. Lia grappled along the wall until she hit a light switch.
Inside was like the study, but all was in order.
Whoever broke in hadn’t found this room.
More bookshelves lined the walls, one of which was bare apart from a corkboard.
Illustrations, notes, and newspaper clippings were pinned to its surface.
More rabid animals escaped from testing sites, but these weren’t only stories from Washington.
They were all over the country. Lia’s fears about more gremlins running amok tripled.
She leaned in to read another clipping. It was a cryptid article on…
Bigfoot? Mothman? Papa was no conspiracy theorist, but even his notes scrawled on post-it notes made little to no sense.
Lia squinted to read her papa’s tight handwriting.
“Aurelia, come look,” Kayce said from the central table.
She turned, standing beside him to study the sketches illustrated in varying pencil shades. Her body stilled in shock. Each sketch was a region, a realm filled with stars and worlds, a name scribbled on the top corners.
Realm of Exterreri… Realm of Silvae… Realm of Litores...
But that naming convention was where the commonalities ended.
Within each realm, the illustrations shifted from utter darkness to towering forests to surging oceans.
Some held cities like ones from ancient history books, while others looked like ones set in a science-fiction film.
It was like a vast collection of snow globes, spheres with entire worlds and lives encased within.
Then Lia lifted them to reveal what dominated the table underneath.
At first, it seemed to be a hand-drawn astronomical map of the stars. But on further inspection, it was the realms mapped accordingly, smaller renderings of the sketches they had looked through. Far too elaborate for Lia to delude herself into thinking this was worldbuilding for some new novel.
Wherever this place was, it was massive with countless spheres, some more detailed than others.
The largest regions, the Realms of Somnium and Exterreri, were to the left, neighboring each other.
With spheres of varying lightness and effervescent clouds, the former realm only heightened the darkness brewing in Exterreri, several worlds encased in claws and teeth.
Along the center of the map were the Realms of Montes, Litores, and Inferis: spheres of verdant forests and mountains shifting down to worlds of ocean, finally darkening to the muted, spectral gray of Inferis.
Tempus, Moderni, and Futurum bordered the right, their spheres marked by cogs and gears, other elements of the modern world or a world not yet achieved.
And surrounding it all, illustrations of various creatures and dragons took shape in the stars.
Lia knew that like any map, creatures often meant the unknown: terrain to be explored, to be cautioned.
This place was limitless.
Kayce braced his hands on the table, amber eyes roving over the terrain before him like it was a ship he meant to rifle through.
“Wait a minute,” he started, brows creasing as he read the map and snatched a handful of sketches to flip through them.
He finally paused, pulling a page free that shivered in his hand.
Lia looked over his shoulder to the sphere filled with a familiar rise of towers that disappeared into a fog, bridges crossing a mighty ravine. The Skyward Seas. As Lia pressed into his side, Kayce cleared his throat. The unspoken agreement between them heavy with expectation and unvoiced longings.
“It’s…” Lia whispered.
“Home,” Kayce choked. With searching eyes, he consulted the map.
His finger traced until he found the circle that matched.
“This sphere right here”—Kayce tapped where the realms Litores and Montes bordered, a small sphere bearing the floating continent—“it’s Norenth.
And then you have these other spheres. It’s a map of worlds. Which means—”
“It’s all true,” Lia finished, looking at the different parchments. “This place where the imagination of all mankind is real.” With trembling fingers, she took the map from him.
The world of Norenth looked just like her drawing, minus the fish stickers and vastly more complex.
A far more detailed version, stuck in that snow globe-like sphere.
She could scarcely manage a full breath.
Some last hope for normalcy, for sanity, evaporated like mist. The only balm to such vulnerability was the sheer relief radiating from Kayce, who leaned heavily against the table.
He wasn’t just a figment of her imagination, after all.
Relief expanded in her chest like a breath of the cleanest air from the Washington mountains. She wasn’t losing her mind. But the longer she stared at the maps, the more she realized how familiar something was.
“It’s my papa’s handwriting.” Lia realized, picking up another map. The realm depicted spheres filled with clouds, each leading to a doorway under a pirouette of revolving stars. “Realm of Somnium” was written in the corner, framed by the peaceful forms of dreamers cushioned in the clouds.
“Do you think he traveled to these places?” Kayce hedged. “Like you did, with Norenth?”
“In his sleep?” She followed his gaze, looking to the others as emotion clogged her throat. Another sketch on the table held darkness, shadows of jagged mountains and pits sketched in gray shades, full of eyes and teeth. “The Realm of Inferis doesn’t seem like a holiday destination.”
“It certainly isn’t,” said a deep voice behind them.