Chapter 4 #2
“Pretty good there, my friend,” I said, feeling warmer already now that my clothes were leeched of the icy lake water.
Without anything else to say, I started up the small beach and climbed the rocks. They were the same as those by the main gate, angled and sharp, but they made for fairly easy climbing, despite the layer of slick moss on them. But no entrance that was obvious.
A few grunts and muttered curses behind me, but the rocks didn’t go far enough up for us to reach the top of the timber wall.
With all our Quirks, we had some doozies. My power boost, Marina with the water control, Gary talking to animals, Ellie with her healing . . . but none of those would help us climb this wall.
Fifteen feet straight up, no hand holds – the wall was unscalable.
This was one of those times I wished that our magic was more like the kind that humans thought of, where we could ride brooms or fly without wings.
“There’s no way over.” Fable ran her hands over the timber, shaking her head. “Are you sure they said gate?”
“Entrance, they said entrance.” Gary replied.
“Keep looking, there has to be something.”
“Okay,” she bobbed her head, as we continued searching.
“Nanala and Fred wouldn’t have dropped us off here without a way in,” Gary said. I chose not to point out that Fred was not exactly the name I would have pegged the giant male Nessie with.
“Maybe it’s not the wall? Could we be on the west side of the island?” Ellie offered. “Maybe the secret way that Liam mentioned?”
Ross snapped his fingers. “Like an underwater cave? Maybe we need to get back into the water?”
“Liam’s letter didn’t say anything about it being in the water,” Fable said. “And besides, the boat is gone. It’s way too cold for all that, unless we want to give ourselves hypothermia.”
Not to mention that we were stuck out here with the wind snapping around us with more than a hint of moisture hanging heavy in the air.
Which made it no surprise when the dark sky finally broke open, and rain tumbled down on us like someone had dumped a bucket over our heads.
I gasped and tried to duck deeper into my coat as everyone stared at me expectantly.
Even if Marina pulled the water out of our clothes, we’d be soaked again in minutes.
Shit. Think, Harlow, think! Liam said secret entrance. The Nessies dropped you here to help you.
There’s always a way, you just gotta find it.
That was probably one of my early bits of advice to myself when learning to thieve, but it applied here too. “Gary is right, Nanala wouldn’t have dropped us here if there wasn’t a way.”
I had the ‘finders keepers’ rune I’d made myself, but I wasn’t sure that it would work on a secret entrance. Then again, we were going to die of exposure if we didn’t get out of this weather.
I wove the rune slowly, thinking about each step as I put each piece of it together, and, on the last downward stroke of my finger, I whispered, “A way through the timber wall.”
The rune flashed a brilliant white and red, then flickered and dropped to the ground.
I stared at the sparks as they danced forward, leading me to the right side of the cove. “This way.”
“Are you sure?”
I didn’t look away to answer Fable. “Not really, but it’s what we’ve got.”
The fluttering sparks led me to a large rock that lay flat on a stack of other rocks. It was easily six feet across by another nine feet wide. Big enough to be a door?
My rune dissipated over the flat of the rock, lighting up the edges. I bent and put a hand on the rock. Only it wasn’t a rock. It was nothing.
An illusion.
I grinned and looked over my shoulder. “We found our way in.”
The opening led us into a cave that dropped down, went straight for a few feet, then led straight back up on a steep angle. “Everyone stay close.”
This had to be Liam’s secret entrance; the only question was, where would it come out? Somewhere safe? Or somewhere terrible where no one would ever want to end up? I couldn’t believe that Liam would send us anywhere unsafe.
Dim light leaked in from ahead, and I went straight for it, one hand on the wall, placing my feet carefully with every step. You know, just in case this was all some elaborate trap.
Which was why, when I reached the end of the tunnel, I was shocked to see it was hidden by a bunch of real heather, and another illusion, this one of a prickle bush of some sort with large, angry looking thorns.
“We’re in, stay low.” I crawled out past the fake prickle plant, found a real one, bit back a curse, then kept on moving until I was clear enough that I could get a good idea of the lay of the land.
We were on a small rise, barely a hill in my books, but it looked out over the interior of the island.
“Wow.” Fable crawled to my side, and the others spread out as we stared down into the distance at a school that could have sprung up out of a fairytale.
There was a main building that looked like an oversized version of the castle at a particular theme park in the Unlit world, down to the sparkling white stone that glowed in the light emanating from the windows.
Long walkways strung out from the main castle to a building on the left and one on the right. The walkways were also lit up, and the buildings to each side were shaped like smaller versions of the castle in the middle. Only they weren’t white.
The one on the far right was black stone, or at least very, very dark.
The one on the left closest to us was brighter and had a strong blue vibe to it. Looking around there were more walkways to other buildings. Three closer to us on our side and what looked like three in total on the side farthest from us.
“Dorms?” Fable whispered. “Yeah, those are the dorms for sure.”
“Great, but we need to find Liam’s place.”
I hoped that his place was as easy to find as his letter made it seem.
Because, so far, after nearly dying after the severing spell, facing off with Typhon, dealing with a pack of vampires, and two Nessies . . . our trip sounded like either a really bad joke, or a completely made-up story.
I sighed and motioned for them to follow me. It didn’t feel like a joke, but damn, what a story it would make.
Assuming, of course, that we survived all this to tell the tale. Because sure, this new school looked like a dream.
But dreams, in my world, rarely came without nightmares.