Chapter 21 Raven
Raven
Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!
—Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
It’s midnight, and the darkness feels oppressive.
Even with Dorian and Atticus at my side, it’s like the night itself is conscious of our movement, observing as we cross the diamond quad and slip beneath the police tape, moving from shadow to shadow, as we keep our steps light and our breaths quiet.
The watchful eye of Sibylline glows bright in the Rosette’s window, lighting our path.
When Atticus told us what we were doing, I couldn’t contain my glee.
Books are my specialty, and he promised a whole room full of them.
Of course, that room is buried beneath the fallen tower.
Sweat blooms on my palms as we stumble upon the outermost ruins of the crumbled tower.
Seeing it up close now, even in the dark, I’m reminded of how majestic it once was and how untouchable it had seemed when it still stood.
Now it’s practically a tombstone, a crumbling memorial rising out of the broken ground.
I’m about to ask how much farther when Atticus brings us to a half-collapsed wall surrounded by police tape.
“In here,” he whispers.
All I see is wreckage. “In where?” I ask.
Atticus slips around the brick wall, sliding into a gap hardly big enough for him to squeeze through sideways. I hesitate. Tight spaces and I don’t get along, and I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.
“Is this the only way?” I ask, but he’s already nodding.
There is no other way.
The thought of going into a narrow tunnel without a map or a known way out strikes me as unnecessarily dangerous, and my breath catches in my throat. I picture myself climbing through tunnels with millions of tons of rocks over my head, and I can’t breathe.
Dorian pauses in the slender gap between the walls. “Are you okay?” he asks. “You don’t have to come with us. I know you’re claustrophobic.”
“You’re not leaving me behind again,” I tell him sharply.
“Course not,” he says. He’s dressed all in black, so his fair face and golden hair float in a sea of darkness, comforting me. “Come on.” His words are quiet as the night, his smile warm. He holds out his gloved palm and I take it. It helps ground me.
I take a deep breath, and Dorian turns, leading me down into the darkness.
Moving through the ruins, I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to convince myself that I’m not walking under a precarious half-fallen tower, and I nearly trip on a hunk of rock.
“Raven?” Dorian asks. “Are you okay? You weren’t—”
“Looking where I’m going? Yeah.”
“Trust me, you want to see where you’re headed,” he says, pointing to a place where the path ends in a sheer drop.
“This way.” He indicates a stone spiral staircase curving downward, and we descend in absolute darkness.
Atticus’s footsteps echo in all directions, as if they are coming from ahead of and from behind us, making it seem as if we might be lost. The air here is dusty, and I fight the urge to cough.
The scent of smoke fills the air, and the temperature grows colder with each step.
Dorian’s hand in mine is a steady guide, my only comfort, as he pulls me over rocks and debris. Unseen objects crunch under my boots.
Ahead, Atticus lights a lantern, and the glow casts flickering shadows on the stone walls as it kindles to life.
At the foot of the staircase, he pauses, the light held high above his head illuminating a massive wooden door with brass tracery laid across the surface.
His face is caked with dust, and motes hang suspended in the still air, but his eyes are bright, and he flashes a smile when we approach.
“First door of probably many,” he says. “Shall we?”
Then he turns the knob, and the mechanism inside clicks. It’s open.
He pushes it wide, exposing yet another corridor.
Before us, the tunnel gapes, the gentle slope leading downward.
Dorian’s hand gently squeezes mine once again, and he catches my eye, giving me a small, comforting smile as we follow Atticus deeper into the tunnel.
He leads the way, the lantern swinging on its hinge, the silence almost unbearable.
I tighten my grip on Dorian’s glove. “Is this the arm I burned?” I ask, just to break the quiet and make a little conversation.
“Yes,” he says.
“It doesn’t hurt?”
“No, not so much anymore.”
I know he isn’t hurt, but I still like to hear him say it. “You know I would never do anything to hurt you,” I say, worried just a little that I’m stating the obvious, but somehow I have the urge to say it anyway.
“I know,” he whispers softly.
Atticus pauses in the corridor, and we gather around the lantern. “I don’t think this is part of the original tunnel system,” he says. “I studied that map we used the first time, almost memorizing it, and I don’t recall any of these tunnels.”
“Maybe they were never connected to the rest of the school,” says Dorian.
“Or they were walled off and erased from the map?” I ask.
Atticus nods. “Professor White said that the school had originally intended for Arches to house the department of creation magic, but the plans changed for some reason. The building was never used, so maybe these passages were closed. I don’t know.”
No one has answers, so we continue onward, winding our way around one turn and the next, the air heavy with the scent of decay, a thick layer of dust covering everything.
We stumble upon a gate. Iron bars crisscross the width of the tunnel, and a single massive lock holds them in place, barring our path.
“What’s this?” Atticus asks, his tone playfully curious.
I drop Dorian’s hand and step forward, noticing the ironwork inlay on the lock, forming sigils and hieroglyphics illegible to me at first. And then it clicks.
“It’s cuneiform. These markings are just like the ones we found in the book Professor White gave you,” I say.
“Really?” Atticus asks. “But you said that book is all about binding spirits.”
“It is,” I say.
“Is it open?” Atticus asks.
“I don’t know…” I step back. “Are we sure we want to go in?”
Dorian takes off one of his gloves and places his hand on the bars, tracing it over the ironwork. His eyelids flutter closed, his face screwed up in concentration.
“I…” he says, opening his eyes. “I don’t think there’s anyone inside. This hasn’t been used in a long time.”
“Do you see anything else?”
Dorian doesn’t answer. He pulls on the lock, and the gate swings wide with a heavy groan. “The lock’s broken,” he says.
It’s true. With the door open, the bent latch is clearly visible.
Dorian looks worried, his eyes darting.
“It’s old. Maybe it was just rusted,” says Atticus. He raises the lantern and leads the way again, deeper into the tunnel, into the unknown.
Dorian watches me carefully as he tugs on his glove. “No one’s been here in a long time,” he says, his way of assuring me.
“It’s still creepy.”
“It’s just a door,” he says.
“If you say so…”
Behind me, I hear something, a soft hiss, and I whip around. Darkness stretches behind us, an inky-black void that seems to go on for infinity.
“What is it?” Dorian asks.
“Did you hear that?” I ask.
“No, nothing,” Dorian says. “What was it?”
I don’t know.
I certainly don’t believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of rats.
And what if Warden Stone appeared out of the darkness and caught us trespassing? I cock my head and listen as the seconds tick. It’s the hollow sounds of the wind wailing in the distance, and I wonder if my imagination is working overtime. Something about this whole place doesn’t sit right with me.
“Never mind,” I say, spinning around to follow after Atticus. He’s ten paces ahead, and I rush to catch up, Dorian right behind me.
“If we don’t find anything soon, maybe we should head back,” he says.
Atticus looks over his shoulder at us. “This will all be sealed off tomorrow. We won’t have another chance.”
“I know, but there is something about this place that worries me. What kind of school, even a magical one, would need a gate like that?” Dorian asks, stopping yet again. “And by the way, there aren’t any books down here. Not that we’ve seen.”
Looking at our surroundings, Atticus lifts the lantern high and illuminates the ceiling.
High above us, covering the stones like a cage, is a grid of iron bars and grates, layers of thick metal.
Moss hangs in strands from the straps, like fingers poking through the gaps.
The image reminds me of a novel I once read, The Count of Monte Cristo, and the Chateau d’If, the isolated prison at the heart of the story.
It’s then that I realize: “What if these bars weren’t meant to keep something out? What if they were designed to keep something in?”