Chapter 5 The Stalagmite Throne #2
“Yes, well.” The Prince toed the mush on the rug. To my astonishment, he admitted begrudgingly, “I can see how you might have felt that way. I’ll have her knock next time.”
“How about not kidnapping me next time!”
“You know you came here,” he snapped. “You were on our land.”
“I had no choice,” I said bitterly. “It’s the only place there’s any water.”
A brief silence. “You mean the dew,” he said. I didn’t bother to answer. I didn’t owe him anything.
He worked his jaw for a moment and then said, “That was a good idea, you know.”
“What was?”
“Collecting the dew for water. It’s right there, on top of our heads, and yet none of us ever would have thought to try that. You did, though. You’re smart.”
Heat collected in my chest. “Have you been watching me?”
He didn’t answer. He was watching my face.
I imagined his piercing blue eyes, hidden in some unobserved shadow. Watching me for hours, days, months. Me, prowling over his territory. Me, never knowing. Me, thinking I was safe. That day when I’d sensed a presence behind me — had I been right? And if so, why hadn’t he taken me then?
The heat in my chest expanded. “Fuck off,” I snapped. “Collecting water that way doesn’t net you more than half a cup.” Half a cup that was currently in my basket, instead of where it needed to be, which was back in my hut in Limer with my mother.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. “Look. You don’t want me, okay? I’m not pretty like the other girls you steal. I’m nothing special, and I’m definitely not a healer. I just clean houses and take care of my mom. Just let me go.”
The Prince looked at me flatly. “What do you think being pretty has to do with it?”
Thanks a lot, I almost bit out. “The girls you steal are always pretty. You do unspeakable things to them” — and for a split second my attention was dragged to the fact that I was trapped in a bedroom with this monstrous prince — “and then you crack them in half and suck out their bone marrow.”
“I beg your pardon? Who told you that?”
He sounded so genuinely shocked and appalled that I faltered for a second — and then I was angry. Was he trying to trick me? “You don’t have to be told. You just know. Everyone knows. You also eat their teeth.”
“Eat their teeth?” The Prince strode toward me, his nostrils flared. I tripped backward, raising my spear, my anger melting away as the fear rose inside me again. My throat closed. “Are you out of your mind?” he demanded.
“No! You’re out of your mind! Take me home!”
“We’re not eating your teeth, you little weirdo. You really want to know what we’re doing with you? Come on, then.”
“No!” I jabbed with the spear. It had no effect whatsoever. After all, I had never in my life brandished so much as a kitchen knife.
He caught it, tore it from my hands and tossed it into the corner.
I scrambled around him and over the bed, but he was lightning-fast. He grabbed me around the waist and flung me over his shoulder.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. “I can’t have you walking around thinking we’ll eat your teeth.
Besides, it’s time we got a move on. We don’t have too much time. ”
Too much time for what? Force-feeding me their awful berries? Eating me alive?
He marched into the hallway, me upside-down and beating his back with my fists.
Elke shrank against the wall as we passed.
He paused just long enough to rearrange his grip until he was carrying me like a bride on her wedding night: one hand under my shoulderblades, the other gripping my thighs, tucking me into his chest like I weighed no more than a cat.
“Don’t bite my neck again,” he warned. “If you do, I’ll drink your bone marrow. ”
Was he making a joke?
“I’ll drink your bone marrow,” I said. He laughed.
That strange heat flooded my stomach again.
No one had laughed at one of my jokes in a long time, not since my mother got sick.
He had an unjustly pleasant laugh, low and ringing and unexpectedly loud.
I wanted, to my surprise and discomfort, to make him laugh again.
Which had to be some kind of a tactic to make me drop my guard, so instead I bit the inside of my cheek and turned my attention to our surroundings.
I wriggled, twisting to see all around us. My only hope now was to observe enough to figure out which tunnels would lead me to the surface. Once I had that information, I could fight my way out of the Prince’s grip (as if…) and escape.
At least the bioluminescence was strong here, so I could see.
I catalogued as many details as I could.
Like the uncountable jewels, red and blue and green, flashing within the onyx walls.
I’d been too terrified before to really absorb the sight; now, it took my breath away.
Just one of those jewels would feed my mother for a year.
But everything was filthy. The walls, the occasional godlings lying on the floor — they were all grimed with dirt. It was worse even than in the village. In the village, half the population hadn’t been able to bathe in months, but at least we all rubbed our faces with a cloth.
We traveled down, down, down. We had to be miles underground.
Yet the occasional shaft of snow-white moonlight still filtered, shockingly, through pock-marks in the wall.
How could that be? Then I realized we had to be on the far side of the underworld, close to the cliff that faced the Mountain and the sea.
Small creatures skittered beneath the Prince’s feet. Cockroaches? Rats? Or strange, unfathomable creatures like Elke?
I found myself shying away from them, coiling tighter to the Prince’s chest. As soon as I realized what I was doing I rolled away from him and almost fell out of his arms.
“You,” he said, catching me, “had better cooperate.”
“I’m not known for that.”
“Oh, great.” Then the Prince’s grip tightened on my thighs. He whispered, “We’re here. Hold still.”
“We’re where?” I wanted to thrash around just to tick him off. But something about the tension in his fingers, the thrum of his pulse against my ear, made me stay still.
We entered an enormous cavern.
Even in my current state, I couldn’t help but gasp.
The walls and floor were paved with jewels.
Not only the rubies and sapphires and emeralds that seemed to stud all the underworld’s walls, but a rainbow of amethysts, fiery opals, brilliant tourmalines the color of the sea, even blinding white diamonds.
The ceiling of the cavern, heavily groined like cathedral ceilings I’d seen in books, soared up what seemed like a hundred feet. My heart shrank. How far down were we?
Something shone, too, with a ghostly white light. This was not the strange blue-white of the bioluminescent lichen; it was whiter, clearer. I looked around and realized that the whiteness was coming from another room, a small chamber off this great cavern.
In the middle of the cavern loomed an enormous onyx stalagmite.
Almost like a mountain. Behind the stalagmite, the far wall disappeared into a black cave mouth.
Black as the void. It was the first totally lightless place I had seen in the underworld, unlit by even the weakest bioluminescent fungus or a flame.
The top of the stalagmite was carved into an ornate seat.
A throne.
The throne was empty.
But someone was standing in front of it.
This had to be the King of the Underworld.