In her haste, Parthena misplaces a step and her shoe slips. I catch her hand with a foot.
“How much further?” I snap at Masheck.
“We’re almost there,” he assures me.
“What is so bloody important you drag us down here?”
He slows. “I found something.” He looks back with guilty eyes. “Before they left. I just didn’t want to say.”
“What. What did you find?”
“It was Smrt.” He walks on at double step speed. “He was planning something. Something big.”
“Like what?”
“I think he was trying to escape.”
“Escape what?”
“You tell me.” He springs around the final bend in the path, and rests his palms against a great set of carved wooden doors. They’re enormous. They extend up overhead into the shadows of the cave, outside of the light source, and stretch well down to the bottom of the cavern floor below us. Their massive wood door fronts are carved with an illustration: an airship scene of times gone by.
“What is this?” I say shakily. “Where are we?”
“Oh, my Lord.” Parthena claps her hands to her mouth. “An airship port.” Her fingers tremble against her lips. “I thought they’d shut all these down.”
“They had.” Masheck lifts a cheeky eyebrow. “That was my understandin’.” He pushes the doors, and I stare up at their arched wooden tops as they sway gently open.
We step through the massive archway doors onto the cool stone loading dock beyond them. The air in here is an octave colder, and a might bit purer, as well. Fans made of massive woven palm leaves circulate in the corners, propelled by single-crank motors, fuelled by the water rushing along the sidewalls of the cave.
Before us is an enormous airship. It’s four, maybe five times the size of a normal airplough bus. Clearly not one of the old retired fleet.
“Apparently, not.” Masheck says, and leans an elbow against the bow.
“But…but I thought,” Parthena stammers, looking up, “the former Ruler stopped all air transportation after—”
“The flash?” Masheck smirks and raises an eyebrow. “Yes, I know.”
Parthena gasps as she moves closer, her eyes never leaving the massive ship.
“Somethin’ id’n’t it?” Masheck slaps the hull. “This is no ordinary airship, trust me. This beast was built for a mission.” Masheck runs ahead, lighting some of the torches along the dock attached to the sidewall of the cave. The enormity of the ship emerges in the steaming light. Its towering cabin alone stands three, maybe four times the size of the main floor of the castle, with a hull the width of Piglingham Square.
“What mission would that be?” Parthena finally gathers her words. She strolls up, stroking its side, stopping to stare in through a port window, then turns back to me with wide eyes. “You could hold a concert in the bottom half alone.”
“And there are compartments up there, all through the upper side.” Masheck points. “Sleeping chambers. A particularly lavish set of them on the upper most deck. Just off the captain’s quarters on the deck.”
“Why on earth would people need to eat and sleep on an airship?” I stare up at a sign marked Grand Dining Hall at the ship’s centre.
“You tell me,” Masheck grins. “This ain’t no airship. This beast is an ark. Near as I can figure, Smrt was preparing for a disaster.”
Parthena presses her nose up against another of the cabin portholes. “He’s right about the ark part. This thing could hold half the population of Brethren.”
Her head snaps around.
For a silent moment, we three stare at each other.
Terrifyin’ thoughts crash about in me head.
“How do you know it was Smrt who created this?” Parthena’s brow crinkles. “And not some previous Ruler?”
“Because.” Masheck rounds the end of the ship, leaps up on a platform, and wipes a year’s worth of dust from the stern. “Of this.”
Parthena gasps and steps back, her hands floating to the name of the ship revealed under the dust. The S.S. Parthena. He did love me…,” she whispers.
I swing toward her. “Did you know anything about this?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. Not a clue.” She stalks around the back of the ship.
“Shall we?” Masheck says, pulling himself up onto the hull. He drops the main gangplank and motions with a hand for us to enter.
Parthena and I wait for the ropes to fully unfurl, then scuttle up the planks.
The hull is equipped with a state of the art decontamination chamber. “Right there we know, this wasn’t built by the former Ruler.” I toss a wiry glance Masheck’s way.
“Everything is so sophisticated.” Parthena runs her hands along a panel of the buttons. She depresses one and a warning siren goes off. She hits another and a warning light trips on. Indicating Vapours.
“I don’t get it.” Parthena swings around. “Why would he be afraid of encountering Vapours inside the Commonwealth?”
“Because he wasn’t planning on just sailing within the Commonwealth.” Masheck grits his teeth. He runs to the deck and brings back a wooden box. The ship’s official log box. In it there is a map. He pulls it out and unrolls it, stretching it across a tabletop. “The ship’s only journey map. I can’t find another. I’ve looked everywhere. There isn’t another.”
The map is unfinished, as if the cartographer hadn’t time to complete the entire thing—the right quarter of the map is empty.
“Why would anyone follow a map that wasn’t finished?” asks Parthena.
“I don’t know.” Masheck stretches his hands out over the map. “Somethin’s amiss.”
“Why would anyone plan a journey, not knowing where they’re going?” Parthena looks to me. “He was too smart for this. He must have been looking for something.”
Masheck digs around in the box where he’d found the map and pulls out a small, clear, glass cylinder. The serial numbers on its cap match those on the map, next to the cartographer’s signature. Masheck and Parthena and I stare at it.
Within the cylinder, a small storm rages.
Parthena reaches back into the box and pulls out the ships official journey log. She flips through some pages. “Look at this.” She holds up the ship’s boarding record. Her hands tremble. “It’s a list of the travellers. He’d already chosen them.”
Masheck and I crowd close to read the page. I run a toe down the names on the list.
“Your name is there.” Masheck’s head shoots up to stare at Parthena. “Yet you knew nothing of this?”
“No. I swear.”
“Your name and your sister’s name,” Masheck snatches the list from me and frantically searches it, from top to bottom again. “Yet not mine.” He looks up.
Parthena eye’s drop to the paper. She stares at her name, which has mysteriously been crossed off and then re-entered again, below the original, in another’s handwriting. She clutches her chest and falls back, unsteady and breathless, against a table. “Smrt.” She breathes. “He was planning to come back for me.”
“C.L.? Masheck?” a voice calls from outside the confines of the ship.
The three of us wrench around.
Martin appears in the throat of the dark cavern, at the bow of the ship—a flustered, wide-eyed mess. He races up to the airships’ gangway. “Something’s happened to Sadar!” he shouts. “You’ve got to come quick!”
Chapter Thirty-One
Urlick
WE RACE BACK INTO the blinding white forest, making sure to put good distance between us and the house of horror, before finally slowing our gait. I drop Eyelet’s hand and bend at the waist, walking off the excess adrenaline through the white, white grass. “What was that?” I turn to her.
“I don’t know.” She stops, breathless and trembling, gulping in air beside me. “Your version of hell, I guess. I fell into one too. My own form of hell in an all-white world. Then I fe
ll out of it into yours.”
“So, I should be expecting to fall again?”
“Who knows.” Eyelet looks around, warily. “I say we find my necklace and get out of here quick”—she smoothes her palms down the side of her pants, trying to restore her nerves—“before something even more bizzare happens.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” The winds suddenly pick up, rushing in at our backs. I clutch Eyelet’s hand and brace for another drop. But none comes.
The winds channel down and through the trees across the forest, causing Eyelet’s hair to flap in a fringe around her cheeks. “I think it might be too late for that.” The winds grow stronger, wrapping my coattails around my back.
Eyelet drops her head and gasps, struggling for air. The winds are so strong they’ve taken her breath. She coughs what she takes in immediately back out, then looks up at me, holding her chest.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I shout over the wind’s roar.
“Nothing,” she hollers back.
I read fear in her eyes. “You’re not feeling well again, are you?”
“I’m fine, really,” she gulps. “It was just the wind.”
I take her by the hands and pull her to me. “You would tell me if you’re not feeling well, right?”
“Of course.”
Her fingers are icy cold, as if the blood that courses through them has ceased to sustain life. Her eyes sparkle with consternation, and a urgent longing I’ve never before seen. “It’s going to be all right, I know it.”
“You can’t know that.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Neither of us can.”
“Look. You heard the Alchemist. All we need is your father’s antidote, and then everything goes back to normal.”
“And yet, I’ll still be plagued with episodes.”
“And we’ll overcome those, too.” I kiss her hands.
“I wish I could be as sure.”
My eyes meet hers. She looks away in sorrow, her bottom lip trembling. “Sometimes, I think it’s all been predetermined, long before we met. Like ultimately, nothing we do will stop anything from happening. What will be, will just simply be.”
“Then why are we on this crazy journey?” I lean back, smiling at her. “Why do any of this, if that’s what you believe? Which, by the way, I don’t believe.” I cock a brow.
“Haven’t you ever wondered if we’re really in charge of anything at all in this life? Or if it’s all just scheduled to happen to us. All part of some larger plan.” She drops her gaze.
Inside my head, panic crashes. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps we are just part of some pre-determined circumstance. Perhaps nothing we do is ever going to matter.
Perhaps this is the end.
I don’t know. But one thing is for sure, I can’t go on, and neither can she, thinking that it’s true.
“No,” I say matter-of-factly. I raise her chin ‘till her eyes meet my gaze again. “I believe this is all part of your journey—and that the very fact we are here tells me the universe believes there’s still a chance. A chance for us to find the serum. A chance for you to rid yourself of seizures. A chance for you and I to redeem Brethren. And if there’s a chance, I intend to take it.” I speak through stiff lips. “What about you?”
“Why, of course.” Offended breath escapes her chest.
I smile. “That’s more like the Eyelet I know.”
“It’s just—” She looks up at me, her gaze soggy.
“Promise me we will not speak of this again. I’m here for a reason, and you’re here for a reason—we are here, together, for a reason.” I squeeze her hands tight in my own. “Now let’s go find out what it is, shall we?”
Her eyes dart over mine.
I snap the tips of my waistcoat and march on past her.
She follows, taking my hand, threading her fingers through mine. For a long, while we walk in silence, and I worry that I’ve been too harsh, then, “Back there in the house,” she clarifies. “How did you know where to find me?” She cocks her head curiously.
I grimace. “I didn’t. You found me.”
“That’s not true. I distinctly heard you calling.”
“And I heard you. But then it wasn’t you…It was an imposter.” I shudder, remembering the bones.
Eyelet looks straight ahead and not at me.
“I heard you calling out, warning me not to listen,” I say. “And then you were there, at the bottom of the staircase, and I crashed into you and knocked you down.”
“But you didn’t...” She looks to me, perplexed. “I was on the ground because I’d already fallen. Out of the other white world. I landed by the stairs just as you came bounding down them.”
My brows furrow. “So who was it then, if it wasn’t you warning me to stop climbing?”
“I don’t know.” Eyelet shakes her head. “Things here are clearly not what they seem.”
I look around, as if expecting the answer to come—unsure of what I’d do if it did. Another great gust of wind kicks up and Eyelet falters. I squeeze her hand, keeping her grounded, even though I’m feeling rather ungrounded myself.Her skin looks unusually pale. “Eyelet, I’ve been wanting to ask you…what happened at the swearing-in? Why did you collapse?”
“Because,” she says, lowering her head. “I was coughing blood.”
“How long had that been happening?”
“Just since that morning, when we overtook Penelope.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What was I to say?” She’s shaking. “Besides, there wasn’t time. You needed to go to Iris, and I—”
I turn, pulling her hard to my chest. “Promise me you’ll never keep anything like that from me again.”
She looks up, guilt swimming in her eyes. “The Alchemist already told you my condition was grave.”
“Yes, but, he didn’t mention the presence of—”
“Blood?” Her eyes swim with dismay.
The very word sends a lightning-like shudder down my spine.
“It’s a sign of tumours.” Her mouth shakes. “I found the evidence in one of my father’s journals. I broke back into his office at the Academy, the day of your ceremony. That’s where I was. That’s why it took me so long to show up in the crowd.” She raises her chin. “I’m sorry, but I just had to find out. I thought finding the journal would be my saving grace—my salvation. Not my final sentence.”
“But it’s not. You heard the Alchemist. All we need is the antidote.”
She stares off aimlessly across the forest, as if in a dream-like state. “The journal explained everything that’s been happening to me—the coughing, the pain, the blood.” Her eyes are frightened and hollow. “It’s most likely I’m suffering from a tumour in my lungs, caused by exposure to the Ray.”
I feel myself begin to shake. “But it was only that one time.”
“Twice. He exposed me twice. Once when I was only three, and again when I was five. He told me I was going to ride a rocket ship and escape to another land…I guess in a way, I have.”
“Don’t jest.”
“I’m not.”
“This is serious, Eyelet.” I turn her chin until she looks at me. Tears brim in her eyes. “Did the journal say the antidote would work?”
Her mouth skews. “Only time will tell.”
For a long moment, we just stand there, staring at each other, the whole world perched on our shoulders. Then I reel her in and smooth her hair down, crushing her to my chest. “It’ll be all right.” I kiss her forehead. “Everything’ll be all right.”
She flinches and pulls back, her eyes narrowed and staring past my shoulder. “What is that?”
I turn, tracking her gaze.
Not more a league away from us, up the path and below a knotted tree, something blinks green in the white grass. A flashing halo of lime-coloured light. “The necklace,” Eyelet whispers. She breaks from my grasp. “My necklace. It has to be.” She bursts into a full run.
Up ahead on
the path, something pops out of the woods and hops onto the path. It’s a silver mechanical rabbit wearing a tiny, white, bolero hip-jacket and miniature white, top, hat. A sheer white, veil covers its eyes and face, not unlike the one Flossie used to wear.
Eyelet slows. “What on earth?”
The rabbit turns its head, plucks the glowing green object from the grass, and in a flash, it’s away, darting up the path ahead of us.
“Wait!” Eyelet cries, giving chase.
The mechanical rabbit bounds on up the path and disappears down a hole.
We skid to stop at the mouth of it. It’s enormous, not a normal rabbit hole. I teeter over the lip, leaning backward to keep myself from falling in.
“What do we do now?” I gasp for breath.
“Why, we go after it, of course.” Eyelet dives headlong into the hole.
Chapter Thirty-Two
C.L.
WE SCURRY AFTER MARTIN through the cavern tunnel to the Academy laboratories, where the trouble’s happened.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He was fine one minute, and gone the next.” Martin’s long legs reach the laboratory door ahead of us. He throws the door wide.
We enter to find Sadar standing, clutching the edge of a laboratory table. Beads of sweat etch his forehead. His face is gaunt, his muscles lax. His eyes shine the colour of blood-red orange slices. His claw-gripped hand clutches his chest. Pan trills and flaps around on the countertop next to him, while Iris fans him with her apron.
“It was wild,” Martin begins. “Like something out of a horror picture-flick. He was Sadar one moment, and someone else the next. I believe he’s been speaking in tongues.”
“Sadar?” I step toward him.
There’s a ghostly glaze to his wide distant eyes.
“Sadar? Can you hear me?”
His head jolts back and he lets out a small, rumbling gurgle from his throat. When his head snaps forward again, his voice is low and strained. His mouth moves too quickly for his words. He utters a string of gibberish.
I swing back to Martin. “What’s gone on ‘ere? What’s ‘appened to ‘im?”
Soleil Page 19
