21. Chapter 21 #3
Maxine opens her mouth to protest, but is thwarted by Lily clamping a hand over her lips. “We look forward to meeting Runu’s wife,” Lily says. “I’m sure she’s lovely. Don’t you agree, Maxine?”
Maxine murmurs something unintelligible against Lily’s hand as Runu continues on ahead, the four of us following him through a giant open archway.
We pass by throngs of people draped in garments woven from spider silk and stitched-together with petrified leaves.
Their headpieces look to be composed of seeds, frozen water droplets, and slivers of glass that glisten like morning dew sprinkling over a ravine.
Their hair and eyes all vary in different colors, from shades of blushing pinks, to striking silvers, to shimmering bronzes.
It’s no wonder Runu is spoken for. The women down here are to die for.
“Asagar factition,” Runu says, pointing toward a group of people clad in decorative fur cloaks and hemp-stitched robes, their necks all draped in animal-toothed necklaces that dangle like vines around their throats.
“You can tell which faction someone derives from based on the style of their clothing,” Bella translates.
“Those men over there, for instance, all belong to the Fall Faction.” She motions toward a group of men garbed in thick fur cloaks who have since stopped to stare.
A few women flutter around them, moving as graceful as trickling water, their attire fitted with flowing silk skirts and oversized flower petals.
“And those women hail from the Summer Faction,” Bella adds.
One of the women stops to give us a coquettish smile.
A blush erupts over my cheeks as I wave back.
Bella tugs me along. We pass by people from the Winter Faction, their hands all calloused and hardened, just like their silver-colored eyes and the general air about them, which is so cold, it damn near gives me frostbite.
“They’re all so beautiful,” I whisper, my heart squeezing in my throat.
I may not know much about this place, but one thing is for certain.
The Valenorians may reside in the forest, but the forest resides within them.
“The people of Valenoria used to live above the ground,” Bella relays as we come upon another intersection in the tunnel’s vein.
This time, it seems we’ve stopped in a place where the walls are flooded by an endless sea of doors, which I assume must empty into those buildings.
“That is, until a curse befell over their land. A curse that unleashed a monster so harrowing, the Valenorians were forced to burrow deep into the soil to be rid of it. Centuries later, the Valenorian people remain here, terrified of rising to the surface out of fear that the monster who hunts them might return.”
“What kind of monster?” I ask.
Bella looks to Runu, who shakes his head. They share a moment of silence as her face falls flat. Then she regards me seriously. “The Valenorians dare not speak the monster’s name.” Her voice takes on a dark and serious tone.
“If the Valenorians are so terrified of returning to the surface, then why did Runu rescue us from that dragon back there?” I ask.
Lily side-eyes Runu skeptically, looking as if she’s still convinced he might sprout wings and morph into a demon.
Runu’s answer is swift, and Bella relays his message just as quickly. “Runu was instructed by the Harvest Queens to rise to the surface today.”
“The Harvest Queens?” Maxine asks as we round the next corner. “Who are they?”
“The Harvest Queens are the Sister of Fall, the Sister of Winter, and the Sister of Spring,” Bella relays over her shoulder. “The Great Mother Sun is supposed to be their summer, but she’s been missing for over a century.”
We slip past a group of people who all look etched straight from the Fall Faction, some of them wielding sharp-pointed spears, and others toting baskets in the crooks of their arms.
“The Harvest Queens are vital to life down here,” Bella continues, adding, “they fuel the magic of the tree. Yet even they can’t defeat the monster that threatens their very existence. Which is why they need us, supposedly. For some kind of noble quest.”
“Us?” I sputter out. “What’s this got to do with us?”
We pass a woman draped in a tigerlily gown who’s tugging along three small children behind her, her eyes burning so beautifully, they remind me of deep ochre and marigolds in the summer.
Speaking of summer, I think of something urgent.
Something that feels familiar. It’s a gnawing sliver of information that spills through the seams of my subconscious and rolls off my tongue before I can catch it.
“You mentioned the Great Mother Sun,” I whisper to Bella underneath my breath. “Why does that name feel so familiar?”
“She was a great and formidable dragon,” Bella quickly replies as we weave past a couple dressed in flowy green robes. “They speak her language today in honor of her, with the hopes she will hear them and return.”
I tuck my hands into my armpits and sigh.
That doesn’t answer my question.