Only once did the wyvern lessen her pace, when they neared the smooth black surface of a lake. Carved into the rock wall behind it were two giant figures sitting on stone thrones. The first was the image of a girl in a long flowing dress. She wore a serene expression on her face, and her hand held a small bow, the kind for shooting arrows.
Next to her, smaller, was the figure of a boy with a crown on his head.
“The last queen, Queen Estelle, and her brother, Prince Martin,” Nett said, his voice full of awe. “This must have been done a long time ago—after the war, the Gemmer Guild retreated up to their mountain top and have hardly ever traveled back down.”
“I didn’t realize the queen was so young,” Claire said. She felt a renewed sense of belonging when she looked at Estelle’s likeness. If Estelle could find her unicorn, Claire could find her sister.
Claire’s eyes flickered over to the other statue. The little brother. “What happened to Prince Martin?” she asked.
“He died late in the war,” Nett said. “It was his death that led Queen Estelle to reconsider the Guild War.
“At that time, the Gemmers were losing badly and many of them went on a unicorn hunt to gain immortality for the final battle. But from her loss, Estelle was able to gain the courage to stand up to the rest of her guild and try to save the last unicorn from them.”
With new eyes, Claire studied the queen’s face. Now that she knew the story, she thought that Estelle’s expression wasn’t serene, but sad. How could she not be?
The wyvern had carefully edged around the lake. As soon as they were on the other side, the stone beast resumed her gallop.
Soon, they were moving upward through a narrow passage, and the children had to lean forward, flattening themselves against the wyvern’s serpentine neck as her wings folded and brushed against them.
Finally, the wyvern slowed, then stopped. She rumbled, a sound like ocean waves retreating from rocks.
“This is as far as she goes,” Claire said, slipping off the wyvern’s neck. “This tunnel will take us to the surface.”
Sena wobbled off, and immediately braced herself against the wall. The green tinge of her skin contrasted vividly with her red hair.
Nett seemed to have fared better. He was staring down the tunnel, and it was clear he was ready to run all the way back to the sun. Claire hoped he wouldn’t, though. Her knees were shaky from holding on to the wyvern and there was no way she could manage more than a slow hobble.
“Thank you,” she said to the wyvern. She placed her palm flat against the creature’s neck. The wyvern cocked her head at Claire, her rumble growing louder.
This time, as the vibrations moved through Claire, she not only felt what the wyvern felt—she remembered the beast’s memories: warm sun and blue sky. She realized with a start that the wyvern hadn’t always been blind. She knew color. Dry pine needles pleasantly scratched her tail and tiny bird feet ran along her spine, as birds picked itchy bugs out from between her scales.
And curled next to the wyvern’s tail, in the hazy memory made of hums and pulses, was a smaller rock pile. Another stone heart that beat as one with the wyvern. A tiny creature that was taken away too soon.
A tear slipped down Claire’s cheek. She’d been in the wyvern’s heart, and for just a moment, she’d seen what was inside it: the wyvern’s baby, who had died long ago. The mother’s sadness lingered, and her loneliness tucked into Claire.
“Maybe she could come with us?” Claire asked.
Nett shook his head, though his eyes looked glum. “In an earlier time, wyverns used to live aboveground, but if she went out of the mines now, she’d only be hunted.”
Already the wyvern was turning around, her scales whispering against rock. She wouldn’t be able to see the world anyway. She’d lost her eyesight over centuries of darkness. Gifts not used withered and died.
And besides, the wyvern purred in her grumbly language, caves weren’t bad—they were warm, filled with salt licks and sapphires and diamonds that tasted of stars. There could be joy and warmth and coziness tucked into shadowed places.
Soon, the wyvern’s long tail slipped into the safety of darkness.
“Good-bye,” Claire called. “Thank you for showing us your home.”
And as she followed Sena and Nett up the passageway, Claire knew that if she ever again had to travel without light, she’d be okay.
After all, now she had learned there were things worse—much, much worse—than the dark.
CHAPTER
23
“Light!” Nett let out an excited whoop. He ran down the tunnel, hair and pack flapping behind him.
The girls looked at each other and Sena grinned. “Race you?” the Forger asked.
Claire was off before Sena reached the end of her question.
They had made it through the mines! She’d ridden a wyvern! She was getting close to Sophie!
Soon, she’d be able to tell Sophie all about her Experiences—though she didn’t know if she’d start with the narrowboats or the Forger school or that she’d saved them from a dragon-like beast or—
A terrified wail echoed down the tunnel.
“Nett!” Sena yelled. She overtook Claire within two strides, and disappeared out of the tunnel’s mouth. Claire pumped her legs harder, and soon burst out into a green world.
Trees the width of school buses towered above her and white butterflies fluttered in golden slants of sunlight.
And in front of her, near her knees, was the very angry head of Nettle Green.
Sena was bent over with laughter, startling a flock of swamp wrens into the air.
“It’s not funny!” Nett shouted, clearly enraged. From the shoulders up, Nett looked normal, but the rest of him had sunk into brown, soupy muck.
“Sena, stop laughing and help!” Claire yelled frantically. “He’s going to sink!”
“No, he’s not,” Sena said, catching her breath. “Nett’s a Tiller. He can get out of this, no problem. In fact, he should have been able to avoid the bog to begin with if he’d been paying attention.”
“There wasn’t supposed to be a bog,” Nett grumbled. “Thorn said the mines would take us to the Petrified Forest.”
“The wyvern must’ve taken us another way,” Sena said.
So they were lost. Trying to ignore the kernels of worry that had suddenly appeared in her stomach, Claire asked Nett, “Do you need help?”
“No.” Nett sighed and closed his eyes. “I got this.” He dropped a pellet on the bog, and it floated a moment, before sinking beneath the muck.
Looking around expectantly, Claire wondered if a nearby vine would suddenly start to grow. Instead, the bog began to bubble.
Claire blinked. “Are you getting taller?” she asked. The muck that had been up to Nett’s chest was now at his waist. And as she watched, it slipped to his hips.
“Nope,” Nett said as he pushed down on the earth. His hands, instead of sinking through muck, stayed on top. “I just convinced the roots beneath me that they’re thirsty. They’re sucking up all the water, so the ground will be firm enough to step on. It’ll go back to normal in an hour or so.” With a loud slurp, he pulled himself onto firm ground.
Sena wrinkled her nose. “You smell like rotten eggs.”
Nett flicked mud in Sena’s direction, and she burst into laughter again. Ignoring her snorts, Nett began to hit the mud caked onto his clothes. It broke off in great clumps, as though the mud had been on him for days rather than minutes.
“Nett got Mud Repellent last Namesday,” Sena explained as Nett tackled the dirt on his boots. “If you brush it onto your clothes, it makes the mud flake right off. Useful, when you’re a Tiller.”
Suddenly, Nett let out a sharp cry and crumpled to the ground. His body twitched and jerked, and to Claire’s horror, she saw a rash march over his body like a colony of red ants. He began to scream.
“Grab him!” Sena cried as she dumped the contents of Nett’s carefully organized trav
el pack. Leaves and packets and twigs and barks fell onto the soft ground. Claire ran to Nett, trying to stop him from rolling back into the mud as he writhed in obvious agony. What was happening?
Sena elbowed Claire to the side, and plunged a sharp needle into Nett’s arm. “Keep him still,” she said grimly. “I’ve injected him with luna syrup. It cures almost everything, including razor mud.”
“Razor mud?”
“Looks like regular mud, but it’s toxic—and potentially lethal. If he’s clear for a day, then he’ll be all right, but if he relapses before then …”
Nett suddenly shuddered, then stilled. The tightness around his lips loosened, and he let out a long sigh. Claire thought she saw his eyes open for a moment, but then his eyelashes fluttered and they closed again.
“Do you think it’s working?” Claire asked.
Sena rubbed angrily at her eyes. “What?”
“Is it working?”
Giving her red-rimmed eyes a last swipe, Sena leaned down and put her ear to Nett’s chest.
One Mississippi passed, then two. Claire closed her eyes, as though a thin layer of skin could protect her from a stark reality.
“Getting all moss-soft on me, Forger?”
Claire’s eyes snapped open.
The warm undertone of Nett’s skin was back, and his hair, though not at its fluffiest, looked less trampled.
“You’re alive!” Claire yelled, so happy that she flung herself over Nett and Sena, arms wrapping around them tightly.
“Yes—and in pain.” He prodded Claire with his index finger. “You’re suffocating me!”
“Geroff!” Sena mumbled.
Claire sprang back. Sena sat up, but not before she pinched Nett’s ear. “That’s for scaring me.”
“Ow.” Nett shook his head, then winced. “I’ve definitely felt better, but nothing some willow bark can’t fix.”
“Don’t complain,” Sena said, and handed him a piece. “People don’t always survive razor mud.”
It was only after Nett had sat up, eaten some seedcakes, and made fun of Sena two more times, that Claire finally felt herself relax enough to focus on what would be next.
“Where are we?” she asked. “How far are we from the Petrified Forest?”
How far from Sophie?
Sena pulled a crumpled map from her rucksack and smoothed it on top of a rock.
“Here’s Fyrton, at the base of Mount Rouge,” she said. She traced her finger east across the mountain and stopped at a small label: Petrified Forest. Then her finger drifted north. “I’m guessing we’re somewhere here, in the Foggy Bottom.”
Claire glanced around at the turtles that lounged on moss-covered boulders. The swamp was more soggy than foggy, but the name seemed to fit.
Sena sighed. “I’m just not sure exactly where ‘somewhere’ is.”
“We’re near New Road.” The girls looked up to see Nett licking the last crumb of seedcake from his fingers.
“How do you know?” Sena demanded.
“The wisdom of my Tiller-sense,” Nett said solemnly. “Also, there’s the sign.”
Claire followed Nett’s finger to a sign and, next, to a path. She hadn’t seen them behind feathered ferns.
“The Tillers of Dampwood laid the road a few years ago,” Nett said. “It was a huge undertaking. They had to pick the perfect plants that would firm up the land. Before that, there had been no way to cross the swamps at all. We would have been completely stranded here. The Tillers built lighthouses all along the way to keep travelers from straying off the road in a fog and sinking into the swamp.”
Nett studied the map. “The first lighthouse should be on our right,” he announced. They packed up, and Nett tied the marimo to his shoulder so that it could soak up sun as they walked.
They began to follow the road, Claire hurrying, determined to get to the forest. They’d already lost another day and by now, Anvil Malchain surely must have caught her sister. Besides, hurrying helped her forget the strange humming she’d experienced in the mines, and the even more curious looks that Nett and Sena had given her. And, of course, the enormous, unthinkable question of how she’d been able to understand the wyvern when the other two could not.
She knew Sena and Nett must still be wondering about it, too, but they said nothing. Their silence made her nervous. It had a weight to it, a deliberate quality that Claire had used herself when classmates whispered behind her back.
Finally, Claire spotted something high in the branches. It looked like a great gust of wind had blown a garden shed into the tops of a tree. A turret with an observation deck tilted from the roof, and a rope ladder hung down from the platform, as though it were anchoring sky to earth.
“The first lighthouse! We’re going in the right direction!” Nett said happily. He eyed the sun. “I think we can make it past six lighthouses before it gets dark, and, well, you know. Wraiths. But we’ll be able to spend the night safely inside a lighthouse.”
They followed the path, rambling over small streams, mossy rocks, and tangled roots. Lily pads the size of hula hoops dotted the swamp and stick-legged birds waded through grass and water with ease. But as they trudged on, Claire’s calves began to ache. They stripped off their leather Forger vests, damp with sweat, and left them dangling on a bush. By the time they reached the third lighthouse, the day had begun to feel endless, and despair squirmed through her.
How far were they from Sophie? How much time had passed back at home? Would there ever be answers or just more questions?
“Tell a story, Nett,” Sena said suddenly. Mud speckled her trousers and sweat plastered tendrils of red hair to her neck. “Distract us.”
Nett was quiet, then began to speak. “Time before memory and time before blood, the people of Arden were cold. They had offended the Sun, and he punished them by withdrawing his face. The world became a white and barren place.
“From Arden, there came a great and terrible wail. But the Moon heard their cries and wept for them. As the Moon’s tears fell to earth, they did not disappear. They continued to shine, becoming bright, and brighter, and brightest. Unicorns.”
Claire thought for a moment of meteor showers she’d seen at home. Sophie preferred to call them waterfalls of wishes, and maybe she wasn’t so far off.
“When humans looked upon the beauty of the Moon’s children,” Nett continued, “they could not help but laugh. The Sun, drawn by the unexpected sound, turned his face again toward Arden. Upon seeing his sister’s children galloping the earth, the Sun was filled was such joy that the world immediately warmed under his own laughter, and became warm and softly green again.”
“Beautiful,” Sena murmured, and Claire agreed.
By the time they reached the fifth lighthouse, Claire’s feet felt as heavy as bricks, and her hands grasped at her empty pockets, missing the pencil that had given her comfort since she left Windemere Manor, however long ago that really was.
To her great relief, they reached the sixth lighthouse quickly. If it had been any farther, she wasn’t sure they could have made it.
Climbing up a swinging rope ladder, they reached the treehouse. It was surprisingly spacious, and even had a turret complete with observation deck. Sena spread her cloak out like a picnic blanket and Nett handed them each two seedcakes.
“My mama is an amazing cook,” Sena sighed, looking at the dry cake in her hand. “She used to cook wild boar in sweet carrot sauce.”
“Sena,” Claire said after swallowing her first nibble. It didn’t taste bad, it was just hard to chew. “If you’re looking for your mom, why don’t you just make a Looking Glass to find her?”
“Because all Forger prisons plan for that,” Sena said, leaning against the rough treehouse walls. “Mama’s kept someplace that can’t be traced. She could be anywhere.”
Sena poured water from her canteen over her seedcake, and the water hit the floor with angry plops. Claire suddenly wasn’t hungry. Even though she knew where her mom was—fast asleep
in a world away—she felt her stomach turn with missing.
After dinner, Sena used her pack as a pillow and curled into a corner. In a few seconds, she was fast asleep.
Claire knew she should sleep, too, but she didn’t want to—not yet. She studied the moon through the cracks in the roof. The moon’s belly was round, and tomorrow night it would be completely full.
“I’m not too tired, are you?” Nett whispered across the lighthouse.
“I don’t want to sleep, if that’s what you mean.”
He made a face. “Me neither. After the razor mud I still feel a bit … off. Too hot.” Standing up, he gestured for her to follow him.
They climbed up the little turret and out onto a narrow observation deck. The swamp was velvet black, except for a few white lights that looked like shooting stars that had gotten tangled in branches. It was funny how distance and time could alter appearances, Claire thought. After all, she knew those lights weren’t stars at all, but the dim beacons she’d passed beneath only hours before.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” Nett said. He was backlit by the lighthouse’s beacon, his hair a ragged halo. “I think there is only one more lighthouse until we reach the Petrified Forest. And then, only a few hours’ walk until the Sorrowful Plains. We’ll be there tomorrow.”
Tomorrow.
Sophie always liked tomorrows and their unspoken promises, but Claire preferred yesterday’s knowings. That was yet another difference between them. Claire read the last word of a book before starting, while Sophie liked the surprise.
There was another thing Claire needed to know. “Nett?”
“Yeah?”
“In the wyvern’s cave …” She hesitated. Once she said the words, she couldn’t take them back. “I don’t think it was Sena who made the rock-cage.”
The Unicorn Quest Page 18