Chapter 19
When they came to the end of the path, it was not to find themselves on the mountain’s peak, or perhaps it was only that their definition of “peak” was incorrect, for they were at the top of the mountain, standing on a lip of stone no wider across than Soleil was tall, with the sheer fall back to the plains on one side, and a second, even more terrifying drop into a cauldron filled with bubbling lava on the other.
A strut of stone jutted from the center of the roiling volcano, and atop it stood the Palace.
Unlike everything else they had seen in this place, it was neither charred nor ashen.
It gleamed like a spire of rainbow crystal in the light that filtered through the clouds, at once transparent and every color the world had to offer.
It had been carved into the rough shape of something Avery could recognize as a castle, but it was still rough and jagged around the edges, looking more grown than made, like it had simply chosen to take on a form they could identify with a seat of power.
A narrow bridge led across the lava to the palace doors.
Avery and Niamh both eyed it with worry, for their own, if similar, reasons.
Jack, however, stepped onto it without hesitation, walking straight toward the doors with Zib still dangling in his arms. Soleil followed close behind him, stepping lightly, seemingly unbothered by the potential fall into the volcano.
The Page flitted back and forth between the two groups, still leaving sparks in her wake.
“The path you followed up the mountainside was narrower, and you didn’t fall,” she said, flipping upside down again as she addressed Avery. “Why do you fear falling here?”
“Because that’s lava,” said Avery. The Page looked politely puzzled. Avery frowned. “People from America die if we fall into lava.”
“Then you go to the Impossible City via the graveyard path,” said the Page. “Someone always does. Your drowned girl did, once.”
Avery glanced to Niamh, who nodded.
“I told you I had been to the City, before I became too possible to tolerate,” she said.
“The graveyard path is always open to the dead, when we make our first journey. It’s impossible for a dead person to make a trip on their own, until they find the graveyard path.
That makes it possible for them, and the contradiction will get them past the gates. Once. Only once.”
“That’s not fair,” protested Avery.
Niamh looked at him with tired, level eyes. “Child, when did anyone tell you that the Up-and-Under would be fair? Water doesn’t care for fair or unfair when it drowns you. It only desires to drown.…”
—From Under the Smokestrewn Sky, by A. Deborah Baker