Chapter Twenty-Six #2
I sit up in the bed and crawl closer to the face. I extend a shaking hand toward it, inserting a finger into the eyeholes, half expecting something to bite me or else snatch my soul into the afterlife.
But instead, I touch wood, and it gives way. A mechanism clicks, and a seam in the headboard cracks open. My breath is shaky as I push on the face, and it opens onto a dark tunnel.
The tunnel before me is black as night and so narrow that my torso would barely be able to fit through.
I look over my shoulder at Roze’s destroyed room, at Waffles lying flat on his back, soundly asleep before the hearth, and then turn back to stare into the tunnel, like the mouth of some waiting monster, faced with a choice I very much do not want to make.
I could just stay in the tower and wait for Roze to return.
My secret is out—the whole Kingdom knows I’m a meiga.
They believe I’m dangerous … and they’re right.
But then I think about the two thorns left on Roze’s arm. I think of the feel of leather sliding across my cheek and the hope in his voice—we’ll think of something. It’s enough to make me push myself into the space.
It’s terribly dark, like a blanket of shadows.
I’m forced to lift myself up on my elbows, my shoulder jutting painfully into the low ceiling.
I scramble forward on my forearms, my feet dragging behind me on dusty stone.
I feel my feet drag over the lip of the headboard, and I’m fully inside the tunnel.
I’m just starting to get my bearings when the headboard door slams shut behind me.
I gasp, inhaling dust into my mouth, and I cough.
No no no.
I try to crane my head around to see the door, but even if I did have enough room to peer over my shoulder, it’s too dark. I can’t see anything. My shadows slam against my mental walls that hold them back, curling around my fingertips as panic rises in my throat.
Calm.
Stay calm.
Shuffling backward, I try to kick at the headboard with my shoe. It doesn’t budge. I try again, this time kicking harder, but the headboard is sealed tight. There’s no room for me to turn around.
I take a deep breath and lay my head on the stony floor.
It’s fine.
No way out but forward.
I push myself on my elbows, crawling an inch at a time. The darkness is so thick that my eyes are blown wide. All I have are the feel of the stones under my fingers to claw my way forward.
Before long I’m breathing heavily. The air is stale. I wonder how long it’s been since this passage has been used.
Not much longer, and I’m cursing the brashness that led me to crawl into this hole. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to wait for Roze?
A lot of good it’ll do me now.
One arm in front of the other, legs dragging behind me, knees scraping on the stone. The tunnel begins to slope downward. I hope desperately that I’m going down into the castle.
There are forks in the passages, and I guess at random which will lead me to an exit, keeping track of my path in my head. Left. Left. Right. Left. Middle. Right. Left.
But after an hour of not finding a way out, I’m beginning to question this whole endeavor. I should crawl back … return to the tower, wait for Roze, and bang on the headboard until he hears me.
But when I begin scooting my way back through the passages, there are turns that I don’t remember. I was so careful to map my path, but none of it makes sense now.
I try to retrace my crawling, moving back down the passage and starting over, but I find myself in another unfamiliar passage. And yet … they all seem the same. Pitch black. Cold. Too small for my body.
It’s like the passages have rearranged themselves while I’ve been crawling. I should be able to sense which way is up—that will lead me to the tower. But each time I try to climb higher, I find myself crawling deeper down, like the world has been turned on its head.
I’m not sure how long I crawl, each tunnel no taller than I can lift my head, no broader than my shoulders. Or how far. The minutes melt into hours, and I know … I’m completely lost.
There is only the sound of my breathing as I see nothing and think of everything. I have nothing to do with my time except reflect on what has led me here and keep crawling.
At some point, the stone turns damp and freezing.
At some point, the skin of my elbows and legs goes numb.
At some point, my fingers turn bloody as they scrape on the stones, and I stop feeling the pain.
At some point, I begin talking to myself.
Sometimes I laugh.
Sometimes I cry.
Has it been hours or days?
I roll on my back to rest. I think I fall asleep. Maybe this happens several times—I forget.
My throat is so dry it hurts. I wonder if a far-future excavation will reveal the bones of a teenage girl in the stone walls of the castle of Aragoa. I can appreciate the irony. Earlier this week, I buried a man in the floor.
Still I crawl on. The passage begins to narrow, and the small amount of room that I’d had to lift myself is gone.
I pull myself forward. The tunnel is so small that I can’t bend my elbow.
I reach my arms out in front of me and scrape forward by the tips of my fingers, dragging my body against the stone until the ceiling presses against my back and the floor squashes my breasts …
until I struggle to breathe. The walls on either side press into my shoulders.
It’s no use. It’s time to give up. I know I can’t go on. I know it would be foolish to call attention to my presence in the wall—the whole Kingdom is searching for me. But my throat is raw, and my body has reached its breaking point. I’m lost and so tired, so tired.
I pound my fist against the side of the passage, but my body is weaker than I expected. My pounding barely makes a sound.
“Hello?” I shout, my voice coming out raw and weak. “Help me! Someone help!”
Is Roze already up in the tower, wondering where I’ve gone, furious scowl on his face? That’s if years haven’t passed since I entered the darkness of the tunnel. Time feels like a fuzzy, useless thing now.
Perhaps it’s easier to give up.
I stop pounding on the wall.
I just need a minute to rest.
I lay my head against the cool stone and close my eyes.
In a hazy state of half consciousness, I contemplate several things.
First, that in my relatively short life, there are few things I’m genuinely proud of. I have spent each and every moment since my brother died living in fear. I wish I’d been braver.
Second, that I don’t hate Roze. In fact, what I do feel for him is warm, wild, and desperate—something like a fever. I don’t hate it.
Third, that I don’t want to die.
There’s a soft scraping sound in the tunnel—too close. My eyes fly open, and I freeze. Something furry brushes against my leg.
I twitch and shriek, banging my leg painfully against the side of the tunnel.
I can still feel it there. Something is moving, curling around my leg, around the back of my knee with a featherlight touch.
I scream and thrash against it, shoving myself forward into the impossibly small space. I keep moving, but its small body curls around me, scraping and hissing softly with small, sharp feet. There’s nowhere left to go, and I can’t get away from it. I can’t get away.
“Help! Someone, help me!” I shout, jerking my legs violently trying to crush the thing, kicking over and over. But it climbs higher, scraping and scampering, curling up my thigh.
I thrash forward, turning my head to the side so that it will fit in the narrow space of the tunnel. I stretch forward into the blackness. I kick my feet mercilessly.
But it’s climbing high up my leg, under my skirt, against my inner thigh.
I scrape the stone ahead of me. My fingernails are now bloody shards. The walls press in so painfully that I’m surely about to dislocate a shoulder.
The creature hisses angrily. I feel its claws climb higher, reaching the tender skin between my legs. Something brushes against my underwear.
I scream—the sort of scream that haunts castles this old. I scream and scrape and flail. My shadows shoot from me—
The wall beside me trembles. I freeze, fear and hope vibrating side by side in my chest like a tuning fork.
And then light breaks through the wall, spraying my eyes with dust and rock.
I don’t care. I shove my hands through the opening, pulling myself forward and away from whatever is trying to gnaw into my skin.
I tumble out onto the floor, still thrashing madly, the feeling of little feet littering my skin everywhere as I swat my hands all over my body, trying to get it off.
Someone grabs hold of my wrists, and I look up. And Professor Borges’s perplexed face peers back at me.