Chapter 43 Snake and Slide
I HATE TO ADMIT IT, but I scream all the way down.
If my mother was here, I’m sure she would remind me that Athena girls never scream. But I’m pretty sure no Athena girl has ever found herself in this situation before, so I decide to cut myself some slack. If I’m going to die, I at least want to make some noise before that happens.
I also try to twist myself around. Sullivan may not mind landing on his head, but I’d prefer not to. Unfortunately, the passageway I’m falling down is narrow, and there’s no room to so much as roll over.
At least until I belly flop, hard, onto the very top of an open, circular slide.
What the actual heck?
I glance around, trying to figure out where I am, but it’s pitch dark around me except for this slide, which is lit up with electric green lights.
I have one second to try to shift around to sitting on my butt, but before I can do much more than get to my knees, the slide decides it’s time for me to go.
The top part of it, where I’m currently lying, lifts itself up until I’m at a seventy-five-degree angle. Which is more than enough to send me barreling down the slide, whether I want to go or not.
Which, by the way, I definitely don’t.
There are a lot of curves to slow me down, but just as many straightaways to help me build up speed, and as I slide around a particularly sharp turn, I’m going so fast it almost feels like I’m flying.
For someone who has spent so long trying, and recently failing, to control every little aspect of her life, it’s more than a little terrifying.
As I go around an extra tight curve, I slam my eyes shut. If flying off a slide midway down is the way I’m going to die, I really, really don’t want to know about it.
But the second my eyelids close, images start bombarding me from all sides.
A woman with a long, brown braid and the kindest silver eyes I’ve ever seen.
A golden man riding a horse with golden hair.
A dark-haired man laughing and laughing and laughing as a glass full of burgundy liquid sloshes in his hand.
Some of the images I begin to recognize—Medusa with her head full of snakes, Icarus with his wings melting around him—but most of them mean nothing to me. Not even the tall, beautiful woman with the knowing eyes and the peacock feather in her hair who seems impossible to forget.
They all look so perfect—so important—that I can’t help wondering if they’re all from myths.
But that doesn’t seem right, because I would recognize them from my birthday gift and the zillion other books I’ve read on the topic throughout my life.
There’s no way I wouldn’t know this many people from the myths.
Which means they’re something else. Maybe the echoes of myths that could have been? Or…
Memories.
The word comes to my mind as the slide moves into a quick straightaway followed immediately by another curve. And once it’s there, I can’t shake it. Are they memories? And if so, whose? Because they’re definitely not mine.
Suddenly the woman with the peacock feather is back, and she looks so interesting that I almost wish I did have some memory of her. She definitely looks like the kind of woman I admire—the kind who really can get things done.
This time, though, she actually holds a hand out to me, her fingers brushing against my hair. The moment she touches me, all the fear goes away, and for one long, perfect second it feels like everything is going to be okay.
But then I hit another curve followed by a long straightaway and she disappears—right before I go soaring out of the slide and across a small, dim, dusty room.
I throw my arms up to cover my head and do my best to roll into a ball so that I don’t hurt or break anything vital on landing. It’s a good thing, too, because I slam into a concrete-block wall before dropping onto the dusty floor.
I really have to start figuring out how to get places the normal way.
I lie there for several long seconds trying to get my breath and catalogue any injuries.
My arm hurts from where I scraped it against the wall and everything hurts a little from being slammed against something, but other than that I feel relatively okay.
I think my backpack took the worst of the hit.
Thank the gods.
I sit up then, making sure my head and neck are okay. They are, so I push to my feet just as I hear something half slither, half skitter across the floor behind me.
I whirl around, peering through the dim light as my heart threatens to explode out of my chest.
It’s too dark, though. I can’t see anything besides the wall near my face and a few strange, tiny red and white lights scattered around the room and through the air.
Please be a squirrel, please be a squirrel, please be a squirrel.
I repeat the words over and over again as I inch forward, arms extended out in front of me as I start trying to figure out the parameters of this place and, more importantly, find a door or a window. Some way—any way—out of here.
Another strange slither/skitter sound fills the air, and this time it’s so close to me that I jump to the side to get away from it. Only to feel something weird and rubbery squish beneath my foot when I land.
Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, oh gods.
I swallow a scream as shivers work their way down my spine. Where am I? And what exactly is in here with me?
“Hello?” I call out, even though I’m pretty sure whatever’s making that noise isn’t human.
Sure enough, there’s no answer.
So, even though I’m terrified of what I’m going to find in here with me, I’m even more terrified of trying to get out of here without knowing what I’m walking into. Yuck.
I’m also terrified of moving my foot in case whatever I’m currently standing on decides to take a bite out of my leg. So I very slowly, very carefully slip one arm out of my backpack and slide it in front of me so I can reach the front pocket—and my phone.
Once I’ve got it, I swipe the flashlight app on and then really, really wish I hadn’t. Because one look and I realize I’ve fallen into a giant—and I mean giant—snake den.
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the creatures all over the floor—curled up or lying over and around one another—and even more hanging from bars and cracks on the wall and ceiling. A couple of which are very, very, very close to my face.
A scream wells inside me, but I swallow it down.
Snakes can hear vibrations, and the last thing I need to do is cause even more of a disturbance than I have already.
Most of them are still wound together sleeping, but a few dozen of them at least are wide awake and staring straight at me with eyes that glow an eerie red or white.
Which explains the weird lights I was seeing earlier.
On the plus side, this place does have a door—huge double doors, actually, with large snakelike carvings on both of them. Seeing them sends another eerie chill down my spine, because that means this snake den isn’t a natural phenomenon. It was definitely created by someone.
Someone whose home/office/torture chamber I have just accidentally invaded.
The only problem—okay, not the only problem, but definitely a big one—is I have no idea how to get out of here.
I run my flashlight over the ceiling, looking for the crack or hole that I fell down to get here. Then really wish I hadn’t, because now I can see just how many snakes are dangling above me, and the answer is several hundred more.
And they are all awake, their strange glowy eyes staring straight at me, their sleek, winding bodies hanging partly on a pole and partly in the air as they sway toward me hypnotically.
“Okay, snakes,” I whisper to them, though I’m not sure who I’m trying to soothe—them or me. “I mean you absolutely no harm. I just want to find a way out of here and go home, so if you would please—”
I break off as a strange grinding noise fills the air. Seconds later, the room slowly, methodically begins to change around me.