The Girl from Shadow Springs

by Ellie Cypher

  That first dim room soon turned into a series of interconnected chambers, not unlike catacombs. Each lit by a different colored light. Some of the honeycombed spaces were empty, others were not. And all of them were vast different. As we entered a dim room whose ice walls were the color of smoked glass, a flash of white caught my eye. High up in the turreted corner. All the corners. Emerald-eyed storm petrels. Hundreds of them. Only they weren’t moving. They were frozen into the ice.

  “Do not touch anything,” Vela warned.

  “I hadn’t planned on it,” I said.

  Vela’s shoulders stiffened slightly, but she didn’t turn around, just kept striding onward. Over his shoulder, Cody shot me a strange look.

  We passed into the next connected space. This one was covered with green, with deep veins of silver snaking through bright emerald walls.

  “It is unusual, isn’t it? It was her sister’s, I think.” Cody’s voice echoed from where he and Vela walked through the middle of the vast space. “No, I do not think she would. I have never seen her without it.”

  Vela’s reply were lost to the dark between us.

  “What’s that? What about my sister?” I called, bristling.

  Cody slowed. “Vela was just asking about you two and where your—”

  Before he could reply, Vela came to an abrupt stop. Twisting, she turned to face me. Her expression careful neutral. Completely gone was the simpering little flake of girl.

  “What about my sister?” I repeated my question.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Vela asked, fingers tracing a slow circle where they’d held to Cody’s arm. It sudden hit me. What had been bothering me.

  “No.” I tugged a confused-looking Cody over to me.

  Vela gave him what I could only assume were a tolerating smile before walking on. “We must keep moving.” She didn’t wait for us to follow. She didn’t need to.

  “Why’s she asking you about Bren? If Vela wants to know about me or my sister, I’m the one she should be talking to.”

  “She’s been here a long time, Jorie. She isn’t good with people. And you scare her.” Cody gave me a troubled look that were a long time in leaving his face.

  I crossed my arms. “That’s a load of bull crap and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  I scowled at him. “Yes, you do. If anyone should be scared here, it is us, not her. She’s been living here and she’s still alive, ain’t she?” I let the implications hang.

  “That doesn’t mean anything.” Cody swept a long look over the girl walking ahead of us. “People live in all sorts of horrible places. Not usually because they want to. I’ve studied plenty of—”

  I yanked Cody a few paces farther away. One eye on Vela, who were humming to herself, ahead. “Well, this ain’t one of your books. She isn’t some damsel in distress. This is the real world.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?” I arched a brow.

  Cody crossed his arms.

  “Fine. Just don’t you go telling her stuff about me and Bren. It’s not her business to know.” I knew it were right the moment it were out of my lips. “What do we even know about this girl? Just cause she looks it, don’t make her a damsel needing rescuing.”

  “I haven’t said anything that really matters, not about—”

  “Look around you, Cody; this ain’t your pleasant University world. I thought you’d have learned that by now, we can’t trust no one but each other.”

  Cody tilted his head, sad. “Oh, Jorie.”

  Pity. He were looking at me with pity. As if I were the broken one.

  “Don’t oh, Jorie me. I ain’t the one begging to be friendly with strange girls I find in the ice. Besides, aren’t you the one who’s been going on about myths of Vydra? Trying to convince me they’re real? Well, you win, Cody. I finally believe. I believe all of it.” I fixed him with a meaningful stare.

  A troubled expression passed over his face. Then just as quick he were shaking his head. “You heard Vela; she’s a prisoner here just like us. For stars sake, Jorie, she was bound and gagged in a cage. I hardly call that magical.”

  “Depends on who did that binding. And why.”

  “Tell me what choices we have.” Abruptly he took my hand, his fingers warm in mine. When he looked up, his eyes were clear. “We cannot stay here, and we do not know the way home. If we do not at least try to trust her, we are leaving behind our only hope of finding your sister. Of making any of this worth our lives. And if I’ve learned anything from you, Jorie, it is that we don’t give up. Not when there is a chance. And right now, to find Brenna, Vela is that chance.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.” It felt like I were scrambling in a game where I didn’t know the rules, let alone where the players were. Didn’t know what to believe.

  “Why are you arguing with me on this?” he asked.

  “Why are you?” I shot back. “With all we’ve seen—”

  “Exactly, Jorie. With all we’ve seen, Vela has seen far worse. She’s been telling me all about it. She’s been living by herself here for years. Says she can’t remember it all, only bits and pieces. Only the warmth of before and the ice of after. Run out of her home, she wandered the Flats alone. Until she found this cave in the side of a mountain. And then she was just here.” Cody drew a clutching breath. “Sound familiar?”

  “And you believe her?” It were like he were seeing something I weren’t. Like I was missing something. Like there was something broken in me, like I couldn’t feel right. But try as I might, there was something not right about all of this. The rot in a wintered fruit. If this were a story, if this were a myth, there should be some great creature. Some monster. Only I didn’t see one. Which worried me all the more.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I opened my mouth, but jolted to a stop when Vela clapped her hands, the motion as cutting as a blade in the dark.

  “Be quiet,” Vela said.

  “Why? This ain’t none of—” Footsteps fast and growing faster filled the room.

  “We do not have much time. Come.” Vela, smug, took up Cody’s hand and turned. “If you want to see your sister ever again, I suggest you run.”

  I ran.

  CHAPTER 38 Cold Harvest

  I ran and ran.

  Sped through room after room. Catching glimpses of great golden archways, impossibly high keystones dripping thick with icicles the size of men. Rooms where gems bloomed like many-colored fruit from pale crystals of frost, caverns so thick with blackness they sucked the very color from your veins. And then, sudden as a squall, Cody and Vela stopped. I skidded to a halt behind them.

  A door, white as fresh fallen snow and marred with five long lines of rose gold, stood shut before us. I shot a glance over my shoulder. The footfalls.

  I ran to the door. But there were no handle. Nothing to grab, to swing, to—

  “Move,” Vela said. I stepped out of her way. She leaned a slender shoulder into the stone and pushed. Inch by inch the door began to open. Cody took my hand. His skin as light as the brush of sea silk across mine. Cold and warm all at once, I stepped into the warmth of the body beside me.

  “Cody, I—” But whatever I thought about Cody, the door, any of it were muted by the next words out of Vela’s lips.

  “Your sister’s in here.”

  I slid my hand from his and stepped away. Hurt flashed across his face. I shoved aside the answering flutter in my chest. Then I were not looking at Cody anymore, there was only the door and Vela.

  At the center of the high-vaulted room, one block of ice waited all alone. Only it was not empty. Bren, hair cascading over a near-colorless face, lay upon it.

  Her hands were clasped tight across her chest, resting over her heart. Like she were sleep. I darted over the slick floor. Behind me the door shuddered closed.

  “That should keep us for a while,” Vela murmured to Cody.

  “What was that?” Cody glanced over his shoulder. “Those footfa
lls?”

  “I said I was not alone.” Vela smiled at him. Picking at the edge of her gown. “And trust me when I tell you, Cody, there are things far worse than me in here.” Behind her the shadows shivered.

  “What does that mean?” Cody said, surprise mixing for the first time with doubt in his voice.

  I slid to a rest on my knees next to my sister. “Brenna, wake up, it’s me. It’s Jorie.” I smoothed the long strands of hair from her face, my fingers dislodging a flurry of tiny crystals, a dusting of frozen stars. Bren didn’t respond. Not a flutter or a twitch. My heart jumped painful in my chest.

  “Bren,” I said soft. As if, just by my whispering it, she would wake up. As if I only had to ask right. But my sister didn’t move. Closing my eyes, I picked up one of her hands, clasping it in mine. She were so very cold. But in the crook of her neck there were a slow, steady pulse. A flutter of life beating under her skin. She were alive, if only just. I lowered my cheek to hers. Soft wisps of air swept out of lips that did not move.

  Wary, I pushed open the veined blue of her eyelids. There they were, one blue eye, one brown. Only there were something else too. Right in the corner of her right eye. A red-gold speck. As if a tiny pin had gone in and lodged itself in the warmth of her eye. I made to wipe it away.

  In a heartbeat Vela were at my side. “Do not touch that,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. Vela frowned, but she weren’t looking at me.

  “Why?” It did not look very much of anything.

  “It is a Witch’s mark. You must leave it.”

  “Well, if it went in, then I will take it out.”

  “No!” This time her fingers curled around my wrist. I went dead still. Her skin burned with cold. It were the first time she had touched me. She snapped her arm back. “It is all that holds her here to this place. If you take it out now, she will in truth be dead.”

  “What do you know?” I asked, rubbing at the pain in my wrist.

  Vela’s mouth twisted. “Enough.”

  “And how do you know it?” Shaking, I pushed back from my knees.

  Vela did not speak. Instead, she turned to Cody. Who a moment later were at my side. His hand squeezing my shoulder. “I do not think she is lying, Jorie.” Like his grip, I bare registered his words. “What would she gain for it?”

  “I don’t know.” I wanted to shake him, to make him see that we were in more danger now than we’d ever been out in those storms. Cause in all those stories Cody told, not a one of them said nothing about this. What good were they, what good was their very realness, if they didn’t help? Cody had said they were supposed to help. I pushed tears from my eyes.

  Shaking, I turned to the only thing that mattered in this room. I placed my hand right over her heart. “Brenna, you have to wake up. I’m here. I’ve got you now.” I were crying in earnest now. When I looked up Vela were kneeling, silent as flotsam against the shore.

  She too was holding Bren’s hand, her skin near so pale it were glowing, her lips hiding a thin smile. Slow, she turned her gaze to mine and moved her hand over the soft curve of her neck, fingers lingering over her too smooth skin. Eyes wild. Starved. The expression were gone, replaced in the flick of a heartstring by softer. Lighter. Something tamer. She pulled away, eyes downcast.

  Vela flicked a corner of her hair away from the muted pink of her cheek. Eyes flashing to me and away again.

  “If we cannot take it out, what can we do?” Cody asked her.

  “I do not know what you would be able to do,” Vela said.

  I lifted my face, my fingers curled into a tight fist. A first fissure in the ice.

  Vela looked down at me.

  I set my spine. “There may be a lot of this I don’t right understand—near all of it, to be honest. But there is one thing I do know. And that is I ain’t come all this way to fail her. If it were done, it can be undone.”

  Vela pursed her lips, her expression pinched.

  I turned to face Cody. “Help me lift her. We are leaving.” I slipped a hand under Bren’s cold shoulders. Her muscles flexed beneath me. Nausea welled in my throat. A doll. She were like a frozen doll.

  “You won’t make it, you know,” Vela stressed, her tongue darting out to lick at her lips. “Even if you get her out, she will not wake. She will only get worse. She will slow you down. Leave her and there may still be time for you two to get out.”

  I ignored her.

  “What is her life even worth to you to now, what little there is left of it?” Vela demanded.

  “What is her life worth?” I spat back, incredulous. “You may as well ask what is the sun to the moon? Or the shore to the tide.” All the memories that made us who we were, that made a family what it was, every one of them had Bren in it. My hand clasped over the ice-stone of my necklace. My mother’s, and then Bren’s. Strength, warm and welcome, flooded me.

  The good, the bad, it was all there and would always be. But it was ours. Mine and hers and Ma’s and Pa’s. In a world of ice and hunger that ate away everything good in people, slow year by year, till there were nothing left but the bitter whites of their bones, Bren’s unwavering kindness were as near to true magic as I’d ever known.

  It takes courage to live your life with gentleness, when all around you is nothing but easy anger. Nothing but the worst of who you thought you were.

  An odd sort of pity floated up inside me for this strange girl. What kind of life is left to live when there ain’t the memory of anyone you care enough about to live it for? When you can’t even remember your dreams? Cause what are dreams, after all, but stories we can’t bring ourselves to tell?

  “Life ain’t something you can simply trade, Vela, one for the other. This for that. We ain’t just things.” I were near to shaking. “You ask what is one life worth? I say that ain’t no right kind of question.” I took Bren’s hand in mine, interlacing our fingers. “Because life is everything good and right in this forsaken world. And no matter how small or insignificant it may seem to you, that will always be worth fighting for.”

  Cody’s grip on Bren slacked the smallest of fractions as he shook his head. “Vela, please, if you know something, anything, help us.”

  Vela narrowed her eyes. “It is too late. She may be breathing, but she is as good as dead. There is no fight left for you to win.” Silence filled the room, heavy and alone.

  “The stars there ain’t.” I stared at the soft rise and fall of my sister’s pulse, the subtle twitching of her muscles, the movement of little veins of red pulsing under her skin.

  “If I know one thing, it is that as good as ain’t final. And Bren ain’t dead yet. And if she ain’t dead, there is still a chance.” I fixed Cody with a piercing stare. “And we, Cody Colburn, we ain’t gonna let my sister die. Not today, and certain not here.”

  His mouth went a little slack just for a moment, but his eyes, his eyes turned hard. “Of course we won’t, Jorie.” A dazed expression on his face. “We are leaving. And either you help us, Vela, or you get out of our way.”

  “ ’Bout time you found those brains of yours,” I said.

  Cody gave me a half smile, hefting Brenna’s arm up onto his shoulder.

  At her sides, Vela’s fingers twitched. A flash of disbelief flaring behind gold eyes. “I did not mean for you to die here with her, surely you see that.” She reached a hand out to Cody, but he pulled away, disoriented.

  “Then show us where it is we want to go.”

  Vela looked at me, mutinous. “It is not safe.”

  For you, maybe. But I only pulled Bren’s other arm up high and over my shoulder. “I know what I’m askin. Now, are you gonna help us get out of here like you promised, or are we all gonna have to die trying?” Cody took up Bren’s other side, her head tilting between us.

  Bren weighed less than I were expecting. It took a good few paces for Cody and me to sync up our steps instead of fighting each other, each trying to lead. We finally found some semblance of an awkward rhythm. />
  But as I glanced at Vela, who had opened the door and were darting restless around the tunnel ahead of us, I think I finally had a plan.

  Vela, whoever she were, prisoner or Witch’s creature, I didn’t right know. But what I did know was that one way or another she were going to betray us.

  In fact, I were counting on it.

  CHAPTER 39 Dwindling Dawns

  What is that noise?” I spun my head right round. Instead of cold tunnel air, warm air swirled about me. The floor beneath us grew… wet? I looked down. Ice. Melting ice. And then just like that we emerged into a vast rumbling chasm of a cave.

  At the center of which a massive waterfall crashed down into a waiting pool. The great watery mouth hiding away unseen in the dark high above. At the pool’s edge, thorny horned orange sculpins, graylings, and long-whiskered chars darted below the surface. Multicolored mollusks, gray and blue, silver and red, clung to the rocks. I blinked, unable to account for the world we had passed into.

  Here, in the middle of a world of ice, the perfection of the palace were eaten slowly away. Its stillness melted by promise of movement. Like grains of sand, small beads of water showered down from the breath of the falls, landing soft as velvet across my face. My hair, my eyes.

  My dry body drank in the liquid. Welcoming it. I brushed the water from Brenna’s face. Her breathing were still steady, but her eyes were still closed. She looked a little less blue. A little flush to her cheeks.

  “We can rest here,” Vela called, darting out of sight behind a massive chunk of polished ice on the far side of the pool.

  My neck and shoulder ached. When were the last time I had slept or ate in this place? Though I didn’t feel tired or hungry. Cody gave a groan and together we careful set Bren down. I made sure she were propped up against a smooth stone. She stayed sitting. I brushed the hair from her face.

  Cody plopped down next to her. “Merciful stars, even my bones hurt.”

  I let out a low rumble. “Careful now, Southerner. Keep on rambling out things like that and someone might mistake you for a boy from Shadow Springs.”