Chapter Eight Alder
Chapter Eight
Alder
Darkness settled around Alder like a cloak.
He’d never been curious to visit his origins before. Osei had told him of the den, and that had been enough to satisfy his curiosity. What was exciting about a cave after all? Caperly was full of them.
And maybe he’d been a little scared to see the squalor he’d been living in. Embarrassed that he couldn’t even remember his own name, so Osei had taken it from the trees that surrounded his home.
‘I can’t see a thing,’ Lettle said behind him. Her voice was tight with concern, probably because she was yet to fall for the fourth time. But Alder could not be preoccupied with anyone’s fear but his own. His heart was fluttering like a caged bird in his chest, bursting to get free of his ribs.
‘I’ve been here before.’ Even in the dark he recognised it. ‘The vision I had yesterday…it’s the same place.’
It was the smell he remembered first, sweet and earthy, like moss and ice.
The warm glow of fraedia light filled the cave as Lettle removed the crystal from her pack. But Alder wasn’t yet ready to face the truth of his origins so he squeezed his eyes shut.
The air got hotter as Lettle approached him, holding the gemstone torch. She rested her hand on his shoulder. ‘You can open your eyes; it’s just a cave.’ It was always a surprise when she spoke so gently.
He let his lashes flutter open.
The cave was empty, the obeah having disappeared entirely.
The only shadows on the damp walls were their own.
Stalactites hung from the ceiling, dripping calcium-rich deposits onto the ground which in turn grew stalagmites.
The formations looked like teeth, jagged and scowling.
The maw of the cave narrowed ahead of them.
Alder drew his arms around himself despite it being warmer in here than out by the lake. There were still pockets of frost glistening on the wood sorrel leaves, but they grew by the entrance where the small slip of light could nourish them.
A bat flew out of the darkness and Lettle screamed, dropping the fraedia to the floor with a clink.
Alder bent down to retrieve the crystal. It had fallen in a shallow pool of water, sending shards of light through its multi-faceted reflection.
‘I fell down,’ he whispered. ‘I fell down here.’
The memory was still faint, but he could now begin to see the broad strokes, if not the colours or details.
He began to slow his breaths without Lettle prompting. Their months of work had led them to this moment.
The cave wavered around him, merging with his past. The tightness around his stomach returned, and when he looked down, he could see the rope knotted tightly around his waist. Obeah lurked in the shadows watching him with eyes devoid of life–but not dead, just empty and haunting.
‘It’s the same memory, only clearer. I’m scared, no, I’m terrified. I don’t know where I am. I’m holding a letter. No,’ he shook his head as the vision solidified. ‘It’s not a letter, it’s an open page of a book.’ He snapped his head to Lettle, refocusing on the present once more.
‘I’m holding Afa’s grimoire.’
Lettle recoiled in shock. ‘The grimoire? Are you sure?’
Alder swallowed and dashed away the tears on his cheeks. The fear within his memory was so palpable it was hard to linger on. ‘Yes.’
Lettle was shaking her head in denial, even as she withdrew the grimoire and showed it to him. ‘This book? This was in your memory?’
‘Yes.’
Lettle’s breath fogged out long and slow. ‘Rayan’s father said he found the grimoire in Afa’s tomb.’
Alder passed the fraedia light back to Lettle, his shaking hands causing the light to flicker around them, making him feel dizzy. ‘I must have been looking for it too.’
Lettle’s skin turned sallow. ‘Alder, the prince found the grimoire thirty years ago.’
‘Is it safe?’ The voice made them both jump and they turned to the newcomer.
Dart’s worried face peered through the narrow cave opening. ‘You were meant to scout ahead and let us know.’
‘Sorry, Dart,’ Alder said. ‘I started to remember something.’
‘That’s good!’ Mia said, pushing past Dart and into the cave. ‘Was it helpful?’
Lettle and Alder exchanged an uneasy glance. ‘Not really,’ Alder said.
‘So, this was your home?’ Mia said, whistling low as she turned around the small cave.
Home. It didn’t feel like it. He felt nothing of what it felt like to be in Caperly or with the Nomads.
‘Mortah definitely meant here, right?’ Mia asked.
‘Yes, I did,’ Mortah replied as she entered. She looked more haggard than she had by the lake, and he knew she’d likely had to cross the smog of her own memories to reach the cave’s entrance.
‘We found you sitting right here, in the middle of the cave, surrounded by obeah,’ she said.
‘Was he holding a book?’ Lettle asked. ‘One that looked like this?’
Mortah frowned. ‘No, nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’ Lettle said, pushing the grimoire into Mortah’s hands.
The Nomad ran her fingers along the spine and shuddered. ‘No, definitely not. I’d recognise a book bound in skin.’
Lettle’s mouth hung agape. ‘Skin?’
Alder took a closer look at the grimoire. He hadn’t realised, but now he scrutinised it, he noticed the tell-tale signs of stretched skin.
‘What type of skin?’ Lettle asked with horror.
‘Something larger than a sheep,’ Mortah said, a dryness to her tone. ‘Just look at the pores.’
Lettle placed the grimoire gingerly back into her bag. ‘I wish I didn’t know that.’
A droplet of water fell from the ceiling and rippled out across the shallow pool of water in the middle of the cave.
Was that the only way to quench my thirst? What did I eat?
Beyond the wood sorrel and moss, nothing could grow in such darkness.
The fraedia light did not reach the end of the cave. ‘The obeah must have gone somewhere. I’m going deeper,’ Alder said, more to encourage himself than anything else.
‘I’m coming too,’ Lettle said, matching his stride as he edged around the pool of water.
Twenty paces in and they had to walk single file. Another ten and the walls had closed so tightly around them they had to inch sideways.
‘The obeah’s horns would not have fit down here,’ Lettle said. She sounded on the verge of panic. Strangely, the rock pressing against his chest and back was soothing to Alder. He paused, resting his head on the damp stone.
It was getting easier to recall the memory–though it was still singular. The tightness around his waist always came first, and this time, he followed the pull of the rope.
‘No, it’s not this way, we need to go back.’ He let his senses lead him as they returned to the others.
He could feel Lettle watching him, waiting for some big reveal. But again, there came a point when the memory cut out as sharply as though it had been cleaved away.
‘I fall, the book falls next to me, then nothing.’ He shrugged, embarrassed by his failure.
Lettle lowered herself down to the ground. ‘You said you fell here?’ She pointed to the water.
‘Careful, it may look shallow, but caves around here hide pockets of water that could immerse you twice over,’ Mortah said.
But Lettle simply splayed her hand over the pool, proving its shallowness.
‘That’s odd,’ Mortah said, crouching down next to her.
Alder hadn’t considered the pool of water to be anything other than what it was. But then Lettle gasped.
‘What is it?’ he said, kneeling next to her. He looked into the water but all he could see was his own reflection.
Her expression turned pensive, like it did when she was reading the Fates.
‘Magic, so much magic,’ she leaned forward until both her hands were submerged. She let out a laugh of wonderment. ‘It’s just like the boundary in Mosima.’
‘Human magic?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Alder, touch the water.’
He ran his hands through the icy pool. They sank deeper than Lettle’s.
‘And just like the boundary, you can cross it.’
Alder sat back on his heels, withdrawing his hand as though he touched fire and not ice.
‘I can’t go down there.’
‘You have to, Alder.’
‘What if I drown?’
‘You can swim, right?’ Lettle’s eyes were bright with fevered excitement.
‘Yes, but still, I don’t know what could be beneath the water,’ he said breathlessly.
‘Neither do I, that’s why you have to go.’
He began to back away from the pool. ‘No, Lettle, I have a bad feeling about this.’
Lettle set her jaw and he recognised the look, but he couldn’t predict what she was going to do next.
‘If you don’t go, I will.’ Then she pressed her palms to the water and said, ‘Aiftarri.’
Alder’s heart stuttered and he saw Lettle move as though through the haze of his memories.
Her hands disappeared beneath her and she pitched forward into the pool. Her braids floated on the surface of the water for a few moments before being pulled by her body downwards. The fraedia light in her hand dimmed as she sank deeper and deeper, plunging them back into darkness.
Alder dropped to his knees and thrust his hand into the water as though to grab her.
‘Lettle!’
There was a hiss and a smell of burning oil on cotton as Mortah lit a torch.
Alder blinked into the sudden brightness, his gaze homing in on the pool. But all that was left of Lettle were a few bubbles.
‘What just happened?’ Mortah’s eyes were wide.
‘She said the human word for “open”. The magic will have parted to let her through,’ Alder said in disbelief.
She left me. The thought was so utterly selfish he felt his cheeks heat with shame. But his feeling of abandonment was second to his fear, which traversed the line between the past and present.
If he followed her, nothing would be the same ever again.
Mia was the first one to say it. ‘We have to go after her.’
‘You’re certainly not going to be the one to go,’ Dart said with a nervous laugh.
‘Don’t start, this is serious. It was obviously her fourth fall–she could be injured, drowning even.’
‘Exactly, we’ve no idea where the pool leads,’ Dart replied.
Alder hugged his shaking knees to his chest. This was all too much.
There was a sound at the cave entrance and they all turned to see an obeah run towards the water. In one leap, the obeah plunged into the pool after Lettle, but not before Alder noticed its broken horn.
Ajax.
‘That is the king’s obeah,’ he said with numb lips.
‘I have no idea what is happening here,’ Mortah said slowly. The oil she’d used for the torch must have been old, as it poured smoke as it burned. The haze it left only added to the hallucinatory nature of the moment.
Alder unwound his arms from around his legs and stood. He could not leave Lettle out of fear. No matter what was to come, he had to help her.
And so he ignored the warning in his gut and said, ‘If I’m not back in an hour, go home.’ Now he’d made the decision, his feet took him quickly to the pool’s edge.
‘Alder, wait!’
Alder didn’t hear Mia’s shout because his feet had already touched the water. There was no resistance into the pool’s depth. He slipped through like an eel through the shallows, barely disturbing the surface.
The water was so cold it burned his skin, and he gasped, releasing air from his lungs in a swirl of bubbles.
His body seemed to hold no buoyancy and he sank quickly.
Though he’d never been able to master magesight, he opened his eyes as he fell.
The pool was deeper than any of them could have imagined.
Light emanated from the fraedia somewhere below and it lit up the ground beneath him.
He found himself looking into yet another pool.
He knew it didn’t make sense, but the bottom shimmered like a body of water and through it he could see Lettle sprawled across the floor.
The mirage is like a bubble, separating me from Lettle, he realised. As he sank closer to its surface something akin to muscle memory triggered in his mind, and he felt himself call to the stone below.
Come to me, his mind whispered, and the earth responded.
A deep rumble permeated his chest, releasing the last of his breath, as stone steps grew out of the ground to meet him.
His feet landed nimbly onto the first step. The next would break the surface of the bubble.
There was no more hesitating. His body was beginning to panic from the lack of air and he had to fight his body from breathing in the water.
He had no choice–he stepped through the pool into the beyond.
This time, the transition was not gentle. As his body moved from water to air, it felt as though his mind tore in two.
The fabric of who he was began to unravel, remaking anew a tapestry he would no longer recognise.
And as his body struck the ground next to Lettle, Alder was no more.