Chapter 20 Romie
THE FACT THAT ROMIE COULD no longer feel the dark presence in the sleepscape was more unsettling to her than Emory’s complete ignorance of what she’d done on the ley line—the magic she’d leeched from Romie.
Romie had quickly recovered from that ordeal, plunging into such a deep sleep that night, she’d felt like a new person by morning.
Her unease of Emory, though, had not been so quick to disappear.
It was only Emory’s apparent unawareness that stayed Romie’s tongue, making her question if she’d imagined everything.
And Romie was not one to question herself.
Ever. But doubt wormed its way into her mind, encouraged by her refusal to believe Emory would have hurt her like that. At least not on purpose.
Maybe what she’d felt on the ley line wasn’t Emory’s doing at all, but the very demon she’d been fighting.
Its sudden exorcism from Bryony, Romie came to realize, coincided too closely with the absence of whatever had been looming in the dark between stars.
She was beginning to think they were one and the same—just like the sleepscape and the astral plane.
Which meant whatever had escaped could be following them now.
She could not have been more relieved to find the door when they did.
Even if Mrs. Amberyl hadn’t told them where to find it, Romie would have known they were here by feel alone.
They came upon a giant yew tree bigger than the one where the witches did their burials.
It was partially uprooted, its roots on one side twisted in a way that called to mind a cyclone.
A spiral of roots so old they were nearly worn smooth to the touch.
They opened onto a hollowed-out tree trunk, the interior so dark they couldn’t discern how deep it went.
Romie was the first to move toward it, throwing the other two a look over her shoulder. “You coming?”
An odd sense of déjà vu overcame her. She was suddenly on Dovermere Cove, putting on a brave face for the other Selenic Order initiates who would all perish in the Belly of the Beast. She shook the image away as the three of them stepped into the hollowed-out tree trunk.
But as the darkness around them thickened, Romie realized she wasn’t the only one having déjà vu.
Next to her, Emory’s breathing had become shallow, and Romie understood why.
The cold and the dark…
It was like they were back in Dovermere.
Light suddenly flared from a lantern Aspen held up.
Around them, the ghost of Dovermere instantly disappeared. This was no sea cave, with slick rock walls and mossy tide pools; this was packed earth and spindly roots and twisted vines, with cobwebs hanging every which way and clumps of odd-looking mushrooms growing along the walls.
They were in a cave below the yew tree that kept on going deeper and deeper, the ground beneath them sloping in a steep decline.
They ventured down in silence, the solitary lantern illuminating the way.
Romie gave a sidelong glance to Emory, who was watching the light in Aspen’s hand with something like longing.
As if she yearned to amplify it with her own magic.
But Emory abstained herself. No doubt realizing, like Romie, that they were at the very center of the ley line, where its power would be strongest.
Oddly enough, the air did not become colder or damper or thinner, as Romie would have imagined; instead, it grew warmer, to the point where rivulets of sweat began to form on her forehead.
Suddenly the ground evened out, and they found themselves in a larger cave with walls unlike any Romie had ever seen.
Great columns of rock, hexagonal in shape and charcoal in color, were all jointed together, growing in length the closer they were to the wall, giving the impression of giant steps leading upward.
Dotted all over the cavern were small, steaming pools set into the same odd rock formations, like primitive baths carved by time.
“These are basalt columns,” Aspen said, running a hand along the wall. “They’re formed from cooling lava.”
“Like from a volcano?” Romie asked, looking around dumbfounded.
“Yes. From long, long ago.”
Romie supposed that might explain the steaming waterholes and temperate air.
“Look.” Emory pointed to one of the shorter columns along the far wall, where a silver spiral was etched into the rock’s dark surface.
Exactly like the Hourglass.
Romie moved toward it, drawn to it like the water was to the moon, or bees to honey and leaves to sunlight and rain.
This was it, the door to the next world.
The way into the Wastes. It felt to her as if her pulse were beating to the rhythm of the song she swore she could hear now, and when she laid a hand on the rock, it beat louder in her ears.
Warmth emanated from the column, comforting, inviting, mesmerizing.
Aspen pressed in close beside her, setting down the lantern at her feet. She looked just as entranced. “It calls to me,” she whispered. “I can feel it in my bones, that this is where I’m meant to go.”
“I feel it too,” Romie said.
Their eyes locked. The song in Romie’s soul soared to new heights. It felt momentous to have someone else feel what she’d been feeling for so long, to share this sense of destiny with another. It felt like everything had been leading them to this moment, this place.
Romie removed her hand from the rock. “Try opening it.”
Aspen blinked at her. “How?”
“The door in our world opened at Emory’s touch,” Romie said, “with the magic contained in her blood. If this door is keyed to you—as it was to the witch in the story—then it must open with your magic.”
Frustratingly, Clover did not go into detail on how exactly the witch got the door to open in Song of the Drowned Gods, stating only that each world’s hero had the power to open their door.
Aspen pressed a hesitant hand against it. She stroked the grooves of the silver spiral, her frown deepening in thought. She began untucking her shirt from her skirt, her movements hurried, almost frantic.
“What are you doing?” Emory asked, voicing the question on Romie’s mind.
Aspen lifted the side of her shirt to reveal her rib cage. The spiral scar on her skin was identical in size and style to the one on the rock. She pressed her rib cage to the column, fitting the symbols together.
Blood and bones and heart and soul.
All three of them held their breath. This had to be what opened the door. A scar born of the rearranging of Aspen’s bones, a mark of her Sculptress’s favor.
A witch-born key for a witch-world door.
But as seconds, then minutes passed, nothing happened.
Aspen tried and tried again, slipping into scrying as she did so, using her magic however she could to try to unlock the door.
But the column remained a column, the rock did not bleed into darkness, and the key they thought they’d found seemed to be no key at all.
Aspen gave a frustrated sigh. “Why is it not working?”
“Didn’t your mother say there would be some sort of sacrifice required?
” Emory asked. “The Hourglass didn’t open for me alone.
I’m not the only one who bled on it—every other Selenic Order member did too.
What if their blood was also required to open the door?
The blood of every lunar house made in offering to our world’s door.
A sacrifice needed for me to unlock it. Blood is tied to our magic.
Bones are tied to yours. So if the same is needed here…
maybe it’s literal—your bones needed as sacrifice. ”
Aspen blanched.
“Are you suggesting we take an actual bone from her?” Romie asked. “How?”
And which one would she have to sacrifice?
But as Romie locked eyes with Emory, she knew exactly what she, too, was thinking.
The rib cage that wraps around the heart of the world…
The door required a rib bone.
Romie wanted to laugh at how outrageous the idea sounded. How on earth were they supposed to take a rib bone—or any bone—out of Aspen without hurting her? Romie was fairly certain Emory’s healing magic would not go so far as to regenerate a bone. But if this was what was needed to open the door…
They all stared at each other in petrified silence.
“There you are.”
The three of them spun at the haunting voice that rose behind them, the lantern shattering at their feet as one of them knocked it over—and stared at a face that was a nightmare itself.