Chapter 2
It’s been three days since Evie agreed to help me. She blanched when I told her my plans, but didn’t change her mind. We told our parents we were foraging for berries and set out after our morning chores and a light meal of sliced head cheese on bread.
Sunlight warms my skin as it weaves between the tree boughs. It’s been a mild autumn so far, the trees still clinging to their brilliant colors.
“This is a bad idea,” Evie whines.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let any draugr eat you,” I reassure her. She huffs, so I grab her shoulders. “It’s not too late to go back home. But I promise you, as long as we’re quiet, the draugr won’t notice us. They’re slow and stupid, and there might not be any.”
Draugr are hideous revenants that necromancers have bound to their decaying mortal bodies.
They persist long after their makers are gone.
Centuries ago, when Avedorans were buried in barrows instead of graveyards, necromancers were employed to create draugr to guard the tombs.
Then the mother goddess, Elowyn, punished Avedor’s desecration with a decade-long plague. After that, necromancy was outlawed.
There hasn’t been a necromancer in Avedor in over a century.
Like most Gifts, it’s hereditary, and they’re executed upon discovery.
Part of me understands, considering that necromancers can turn the tide of battles by reanimating the fallen.
Yet I’ve never felt it’s fair. No one can control what Gift the gods bless us with.
Or curse us with, in the case of necromancers.
Evie’s nose scrunches in unease. “And how many times have you done this?”
“A few times a year since I was sixteen.”
“The year we almost starved to death,” she says sourly.
None of us likes remembering it. Especially our parents. There’s a reason that Evie and I have small dowries. We spent every coin on food, and even that wasn’t enough to keep us fed. I had to take matters into my own hands.
“I always wondered how you paid for that jerky,” Evie continues. “Mom feared you sold your body for it.”
I scoff, but even Mom’s assumption isn’t enough to ruin my excitement. “This barrow could pay for a lot more than jerky. I’ll be with you the whole time. I brought my sword, a lantern, rope—”
“What about the fae?” she blurts. She looks around at the trees, like she’s nervous a pooka may be hiding in the dappled shadows. “The village elders told us that tombs are gateways to the Hollowlands.”
My hands fall from her shoulders. I wasn’t expecting her to ask that. “The only fae I’ve seen have been in Mythos, not in the tombs. Besides, they’re not dangerous now that Avedor controls the Hollowlands. The stories the elders tell to scare us are centuries old.”
Evie releases a shaky breath. “Alright. I’ll do it. I told you I’d help earn the marks back.”
Smiling, I lead the way. The trees grow sparse until we’re before a grassy mound, a single towering beech atop it.
A stone slab is set into the hillside, partially obstructing the entrance.
My Gift helped me budge it during my initial visit, but I was rewarded with a ferocious headache and the discovery that I couldn’t raid this tomb alone.
It’s impossible to pass through the forecourt without Evie’s Gift.
My family calls mine ‘untethering’. I can untether any nonliving object from gravity and move it with my mind. My magic isn’t strong enough to move something heavy on its own, but I can supplement my physical strength.
Evie fidgets, bunching her skirt, pulling on her hair. “Maybe we should return home.”
“Hmm. . .” I think of an offer she can’t refuse. “I’ll drown the rats our cellar traps catch for a week.”
She stills, considering. Submerging the rats while they squeal and thrash is her least favorite chore. Tears always prickle her eyes, because even though they eat our grains, she still feels sorry for them. Our gazes connect. “You promise there won’t be many draugr?”
“I can’t. But I can promise I’ll take care of them. They won’t touch a hair on your head.”
“I’m scared, Cyn,” she whispers like the draugr can hear her. Maybe they can.
“You don’t need to be. We’ll be fine.” I squeeze her hand. She shudders as I lead her to the slab.
The air grows cold as I shimmy through the narrow gap, entering the forecourt. A musty stench smothers the resinous autumn air. As I riffle through my pack, Evie follows me inside. She watches me strike steel to flint to light my tinder. I light a small candle and place it inside my lantern.
“Couldn’t you have done that before we came in?” she asks. “What if there are draugr in here?”
“There’s none in this chamber.” The forecourt is plain, just a crumbled stone table in its center with rusted scissors strewn atop it. “This is where bodies were disemboweled and embalmed.”
“Gross.”
The ground slopes into a pool of murky water, its surface as still as glass.
I hand Evie a strip of cloth with mint leaves hand-sewn along the inside. “You’ll need this.” I wrap a matching one around my neck and pull it up to cover my mouth and nose. “There might not be air pockets down there. How long can you hold the water back for?”
Evie hesitates. “Twenty minutes? I haven’t done something like this since the sawmill flooded.”
I’m lucky that my mask hides my grimace. Twenty minutes is less than I hoped for. And if she fails. . . Our bodies won’t be discovered for months. Maybe never. “I’m ready,” I tell her. “You can do this.”
“Right.” Evie ties the cloth around her head, pulls it over her nose, then stills. “What’s this for, anyway?”
“Hope you don’t find out,” I answer with a teasing lilt.
She rolls her eyes, then breathes deeply. Strain pinches her face as the water ripples. Two waves erupt from the pool’s center, forcing the water to the sides of the chamber. Her hands tremble as a tunnel forms, revealing stone steps that descend deep into the barrow.
We hurry down. Evie forces the water ahead of us into the forecourt behind, the roar of rushing water surrounding us.
Neither of us speaks as we enter the main chamber, a large room that curves into a stone dome above us. A foul reek of rancid cheese hits us as Evie’s Gift exposes everything to the air. I retch and force myself to swallow back bile. The mint cloth helps, but not enough.
Evie bends over and gags. The water she’s holding back undulates as her focus wanes. I grab her arms. “Breathe with your mouth, not your nose! Focus, Evie!”
Her eyes water. But she nods. The ripples still.
Alcoves line the walls, many full of naked corpses coated in a grayish substance that shines like candle wax.
I expected bones or that the commoners’ bodies would’ve decayed into nothing.
Yet the strange wax coats them from head to toe, smoothing over their eye sockets and open mouths.
Their ghoulish faces are straight from nightmares.
Evie blanches. “Are those draugr?”
“No, these are something else.” I run my hand over the stomach of one of the corpses, then push down on it. The brittle wax cracks, revealing a hollow rib cavity. “The water must’ve preserved the bodies.”
I set to work, pulling rings and necklaces off the corpses.
The foul-smelling wax rubs off on the hem of my tunic.
I smash urns, then check the shards for ancient currency.
My pack grows heavier, but this isn’t even enough to feed us through the winter if our autumn crops fail.
An early frost is all it takes to leave cellar shelves empty.
We’ve come close to that too many times.
If I didn’t sneak money made from tomb raiding into our meager savings. . . I don’t want to think about it now.
“We need to go down there, where the aristocracy is buried.” I point at the steps leading into another chamber, my chest tightening with anticipation.
“And we’ll leave after that?” Evie begs.
“We’ll go after the next chamber,” I vow.
We descend further into the darkness until the stairs split into two paths. There could be draugr down either.
I choose the left tunnel, and we continue until a faint yellow glow ripples ahead of us. “What is it?” Evie asks.
A warm tingle spreads from my toes to my fingers. There’s a buzzing in my ears, probably from the pressure this far below ground. If I don’t concentrate too hard on it, it sounds like the melodic clink of hundreds of chimes in the wind. “I don’t know.”
The chamber widens, and suddenly we’re no longer surrounded by water. We turn in confusion, looking at the tunnel where Evie’s air pocket shrinks into a burst of bubbles. The tunnel floods with water, but it doesn’t rush at us, as if another force is holding it back.
“That’s not you, right?” I ask Evie, just to be certain.
She shakes her head and then takes in the scene before us with a gasp.
Surrounding us are twisting towers of rubble.
Blankets of luminescent flowers illuminate them, and there’s no end to the cavern in sight.
Old magic thrums through me, warming my chest and tickling down my skin.
“It’s beautiful,” she says reverently. “You didn’t tell me that barrows look like this.”
“They don’t.” I don’t tell her that I have no idea what this is.
The flowers are blood-red, their golden pistils glowing like bursts of sunlight.
We pass stone pillars engraved with runes, topped with chipped sculptures of a pointy-eared female.
I examine them only long enough to deduce it’s Danu, the goddess the fae used to worship.
My stomach drops. This is the Hollowlands. It’s said to be neither above nor below our realm, but within the pockets and folds, as if space and time are fabrics it can burrow into. We’ve stepped through one of their doorways.