by Holly Hook
And then the yarn disappeared.
"What the heck?" Brie asked.
"I think it's going down some stairs," Ignacia said.
She was right. As I pushed forward past someone I noticed the yarn spiraling down and then vanishing from sight. I was nervous about stepping off, but my foot hit a step and then another. It was stairs, all right.
"I think I can turn the light back on," I said. "We're far enough in so that the dwarves out in the other tunnel won't notice us. I think."
I did the light spell and I had never been so glad to see light in my life. There was no cliff or drop off there, but the stairs were narrow. We would have to go down one at a time.
"I'll go first," I offered.
"What are you going to do if there's something down there?" Mica asked.
He wasn't trying to be a jerk. "I fought off Annie," I said. "I think I can handle whatever's down there." I tried to sound all cool about it, but it wasn't working.
"How much magic do you know, anyway? I hear it takes decades to master it."
"I'm not sure. My grandmother didn't tell me too much about the magic in our family." I stepped forward, leaving Mica behind me and following the yarn. I focused on it and held onto it lightly as I descended the stairs.
The stairs seemed to go down forever and there were cobwebs like the dwarves hadn't used these all that much. I wondered if this was some forgotten storeroom down here. Well, the yarn said there was food and we had to take it.
Only the spiral stairwell seemed to go down forever.
And ever.
"Is this ever going to end?" Candice asked after several minutes of spiraling down in silence.
The yarn continued to descend. I couldn't answer her because I had no idea. None of us did. We were heading down into the unknown.
But at last, the stairway opened up.
The yarn pointed ahead into darkness and the light of my spell fell over a huge room. The air was different down here, almost so warm that I knew it would get uncomfortable if I hung out here too long.
The room had a high, arching ceiling big enough to fit two houses stacked on top of each other. There were several large, wooden double doors on each side of the room and all of them were closed. The light around us got stronger as if to make sure we could see the entire room, but it was impossible. The place seemed to stretch away into infinity and it was all made of very dense, compressed stone that almost appeared black.
We were very far down by now.
"I don't like this," Mica said.
"I don't, either," I told him. "I think I should be the one to check these doors out. Which one does the yarn go to?"
The yarn still stretched ahead, straight through the room and right into the center. I couldn’t see what was at the end of it.
“This looks easy,” Brie said. “Maybe this is a big storage area or—“
A low rumble sounded.
It reminded me of a giant snoring or something. I’d never seen a giant but they did exist in Fable, usually in areas that were devoid of people. If there was one sleeping behind one of these doors, that was the sound I expected.
“You were saying?” Stilt asked.
“Never mind,” Brie said. “Ignacia, can you ask your yarn to find us a safer way to get food?”
She did, but the yarn remained pointed towards whatever was on the other side of the darkness.
“This is the safest way,” she said. “Unless we want to starve, this is our only choice.”
“Maybe there are weapons down here,” Mica said. “Dwarves are supposed to be good at making them. We can always borrow some. We’re going to need them.”
“Maybe,” I said, even though the wand was enough for me. I had never even handled a sword. Henrik used to have knights, but they had disappeared along with his wolves not too long ago. They had left their weapons, but Alric ordered me never to touch them. Don’t rely on anything but magic, he’d told me. Not, of course, that you even care about magic.
I shoved him out of my mind and held up the wand. “I’ll go first,” I said. “If I see anything, I’ll curse—I’ll throw it back so we can get away.”
“Curse?” Brie asked. “That’s dark magic. You couldn’t do that if you’re from the Star Kingdom.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I couldn’t. Like I said, my grandmother didn’t tell me much about my magic. I’m still learning.”
“You’re doing a good job,” Stilt told me. “You held off Alric’s sister.”
I wondered where she was and remembered how she had almost killed me.
And I plowed forward through the middle of the room just as another rumble came out from behind a door.
From my left.
I walked past the door as fast as I could while everyone else walked behind me, not taking my eyes off it. It never came open, but another, smaller door emerged from the darkness as we got to the end of the long room. It was opposite of the stairwell and smaller than the others.
The yarn stopped there.
“This is it,” Henry said, tugging on the door handle.
“It’s locked,” I said. “There’s a way to deal with that. Let me.”
Henry moved out of the way and I pressed my ear to the door. Nothing. This wasn’t the door with the beast behind it. I took the wand and the light wavered as I uttered the spell to unlock it. We had broken into the Fox Kingdom’s castle through the cellar this way and it was a pretty easy spell my other grandmother had used millions of times to break into shops.
The lock snapped and the door came open a little. The light went back to full strength as I put my focus back on that spell. My stomach rumbled worse than ever. Magic required energy and keeping this light going was no exception. If we didn’t want to run out, I needed to eat.
“Anything in there?” Candice asked. “As long as it’s not as scary as Prince Wesley, I’m fine with it.”
I got in front of her and peeked in.
“No Wesley,” I said.
Inside this room were shelves and shelves of leather sacks, flour bags, and even some wooden buckets filled with water. There was nourishment here, all right. I opened the door all the way so the light could shine in. Brie sighed in relief and everyone poured into the room, pushing past me.
“Food,” Henry said, reaching into one of the leather sacks. “More jerky, but that’s better than nothing.”
“And fruit,” Rae said, pulling an apple out of another bag.
It looked harmless enough. Rae took her own sack and filled it up with apples and jerky and even some things that might be pears. Henry splashed the water on his face and sighed in relief. The heat in here wasn’t much better and I resisted the urge to do the same. I watched and listened for any dwarves that might be coming down or worse—the creature behind the closed door.
But nothing ever came and the light flickered again. I was losing energy and I had to eat, so I joined the others in raiding the food and chowing down. As I ate, it got easier and easier to maintain the light and Rae had filled the sack to the brim with food. We were good for a while.
I sat down next to Candice after I had drank some of the water. “I feel so much better,” I said. “Nothing’s killed us, so maybe that yarn’s even better than I thought.”
But she was deep in thought. “I thought I heard crying,” she said.
The place had gone silent as we all sat there, absorbing our meals. There was another low rumble and then I heard it.
A girl sobbing. It seemed to be in the distance, but it was unmistakable.
“I hear that,” I said, clutching the wand. “It’s no one in here, is it?”
“I’m not the crying type,” Ignacia said. “When you care for six brothers since you were eleven, you don’t cry. There isn’t any room for it.”
“It’s not me,” Rae said.
The crying came again. The girl was getting more and more distraught. I stood up. “We have to check that out.”
“We don’t,” Stil
t said. “It might be another story that we shouldn’t interfere with.”
“But we can’t leave someone down here with whatever’s doing that rumbling,” I said. “Besides. There is no light or dark down here. If a story doesn’t end the way it normally would, it won’t change a thing.”
I left the storeroom and the others behind. The crying got louder.
Please, I thought. Don’t let it be coming from—
It floated out from same door with the rumbling. Awesome.
I stopped there in front of it. The temperature was even higher here, so much that I pulled my shirt away from my chest. The crying got softer, but it was definitely behind this door.
“Shorty, you’re not going to do it.”
Candice was right behind me. I faced her. The light had followed me, leaving the storeroom in darkness.
“You are not,” she repeated, grabbing my arm. “You don’t have to be a hero. You didn’t ask for the parents you have.”
I searched around to make sure no one else was in earshot. I had left them back in storage.
“Candice—“
“You don’t have to be, Shorty. You’re going to kill yourself trying to prove you’re not like Alric. You don’t have anything to prove.”
“To you, I don’t.”
“Stop caring what everyone else thinks.”
“Candice, if they find out where my magic came from, they’re going to freak, like you put it in the other world. Who would want to follow the son of the darkest wizard ever into Alric’s prison room? If you didn’t know me, would you?”
Candice hesitated. “Well, I would be a bit worried, but you’ve proven that you’re not on his side.”
“I've proven I'm not on Annie's side. For all they know, Annie and Alric hate each other."
“You’ve done nothing but help us. The girl behind this door might be part of another story and she needs to wait for someone to go in there and save her. And that someone is not you.”
“Girl?” someone asked. “Did you say girl? A princess, to be exact?”
I had never heard the young man’s voice before, but something about it made me want to punch the speaker. I whirled around right along with Candice and the light followed me.
There was a hole in the ceiling I hadn’t seen before. A rope hung from it now, along with a huge pail with a figure sitting inside of it.
It was a huntsman, one clothed in green with a quiver of arrows on his back. He was a young guy maybe a couple of years older than me, with dark hair, a short beard and a long, serious face.
“Who are you?” I asked, keeping the wand close.
“I’m Macon,” he said. “I heard there was a princess trapped down here and I’m here to save her. Can you move out of the way and let me do my job?”
Chapter Ten
“Excuse me?” Candice asked. “How did you get down here, and who are you?”
“I already told you that.” Even the guy’s voice was serious and he said that in a tone like Candice was stupid and needed patience. “I was traveling through the forest with two other huntsmen and a dwarf told us about a princess trapped down here. She apparently ate a cursed apple and sank down here a long time ago. I came down a well on this bucket. The other two huntsmen lowered me down. They told me to send the princess up first and then they would bring me up as well.”
Candice eyed me. “This must be a story.”
Brie and the others appeared out of the darkness. “Did you say cursed apple?” The look on her face was utter shock.
“Yes,” Macon said. “Apples so red that she couldn’t resist tasting one. She then sank a hundred leagues into the ground.”
Stilt and Brie gave each other a knowing stare. I almost joined them, but remembered my secret.
“Do you think—“ Brie started.
Stilt spoke for her. “Henrik’s daughter. The one who fell through the ground several years ago.”
“Henrik had a tree that grew cursed apples,” Brie said. She was very pale and backed away.
They were right. I thought about that scary tree that the ravens liked to hang around, the one with the apples that hung almost to the ground that nobody dared touch.
Stilt spoke for her, thankfully. “Brie was married to Henrik in her past lives,” he said. “In the one before this, they had a daughter. It’s her who’s down here, then.”
“We can’t leave her,” Brie said.
“She’s not really your daughter,” Stilt said. “She’s the daughter of who you were in your past life.”
“Still,” Brie said, full of emotion. “You told me about her when we were in the castle. We can’t leave her.”
Candice’s expression softened. “This is too strange for me,” she said, shaking her head.
I knew that stories in Fable took place over and over, with the characters reincarnating in some cycle that went on forever. Brie’s kid from her past life must be even older than she was now. It was strange and usually stories didn’t overlap like this. Brie held her hands up to her mouth, overcome. I felt bad for her.
Macon had to speak up. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’m obviously the huntsman who is going to get her out of here. Maybe that’s her story. She falls into the ground, is stuck down here for a while, and gets rescued. Girls always get rescued in these stories. It’s the way of Fable. I will get her out.”
He sounded so confident it was fake. “Hold on,” I said. “Are you sure you can just walk in there and get her?”
Another low rumble sounded from behind the door, one so intense that the door itself trembled and I backed away.
“Sure,” Macon said, shrugging.
“We’ve met this guy before,” Stilt explained to me. "You and Candice are the only people who haven't."
Ignacia stepped forward. “You’re not Annie, are you?”
Macon whirled around to face her. “Do I look like an Annie?”
I sighed. “Don’t tell me Annie took Macon’s shape at one point.”
“She did,” Mica said, about to draw his sword. “We can’t be sure that she hasn’t done it again. Turn out your pockets."
Macon held up his arms and backed away. Apparently Candice and I were left out here. We had never met this guy before. Henry glared at Macon with pure hatred and Rae did the same. There was some bad blood here I didn’t want to get into.
“Hold on,” I said. “Can’t we start at the beginning?”
“He shot me through the leg,” Henry said. "There's your beginning."
“It was an accident,” Macon said, recoiling and rubbing his face as if someone had just punched him. “You knew I was stationed at that exit and ready to shoot whoever came out.”
“So it’s never your fault,” Henry said. “It’s always someone else’s fault. I swear, you’re a curse that doesn't go away.”
Macon’s face flushed red. Candice and I backed into the door, which was a mistake as it was still pretty hot.
“Can you stop arguing?” Ignacia asked. “If this Macon was actually Annie, he wouldn’t remember shooting Henry on accident. That, and he wouldn’t have that fading bruise around his eye from where Mica punched him.”
Macon went to turn away, but not before I saw the yellow bruise around his eye. Mica had gotten him good. I could see Macon screwing his face up, trying to come up with some comeback, but Brie interrupted. “Macon, what happened to you after you disappeared into the woods? Annie said that she made you get lost out there and then she took your form and tricked all of us until Ignacia was almost burned at the stake. What’s happened to you?”
There wasn’t much sympathy in her voice. Macon cleared his throat and Mica backed off a bit.
“I wandered through the woods, surviving on my skills,” he said. “I hunted game and kept myself fed. What did you expect? I wandered for a long time and came across two huntsmen who have been searching for a King’s missing daughter for a long time. It turns out a king sent them out a long time ago, years ago, and they were
promised the kingdom in exchange for her return. They offered to share their reward with me if I was the one to come down this well. I’m to send the princess back up this bucket, and then the two of them will bring me up.”
I thought about it. “Sounds like they’re getting ready to screw you over,” I said. “Sorry. I just don’t believe the best in people.”
“Naw,” Macon said, dismissing that with the wave of his arm.
“Did you know the king who sent those two huntsmen out was Henrik?” I asked.
Behind me, the growling went silent as if whatever beast was in there had heard.
Macon’s eyes got big. “Henrik? But he’s been gone for months.”
“Think about it. When did those two huntsmen get sent out?” I asked. “Months ago. Before Henrik disappeared.”
“There’s no king left to take this princess to,” Brie said. “If those two huntsmen take her back to her home, Alric will destroy her and them both. He won’t want the real heir to the kingdom to return. You can’t send her up to them.”
Macon thought. We had backed him into a corner. “It wouldn’t be a good idea,” he said as if it were his thought. “They would take her through the dark region. That alone would be bad for her, even if that’s where she’s from. I think we should get her out and keep her with us. Am I right, or am I right?”
I was hating this guy more and more. Now he had to take credit for everyone else’s ideas. But the girl had started crying again on the other side of the door. She hadn’t heard us talking out here. We were keeping it quiet. I was just about to hold the door open for Macon when Brie held her hand up.
“We don’t know what’s in there,” she said. “Let me open the book.”
We waited in the heat as she paged through. It didn’t take her long to find whatever story she needed. “Okay.” She frowned as she traced her finger down the page. “There’s a five-headed dragon behind that door and a princess who’s stuck combing its hair.”
