The Stone Key (The Novel Adventures of Nimrod Vale Book 2)

by Natasha Brown

  It took much longer for me to help Bardrick down to the water’s edge than it had the first time I went. He stood beside a stalagmite, holding it for support, as he stared at the vertical face Kyrah wanted to climb and the lake Pepper volunteered to dive into. He didn’t speak while he studied the pool of water. A frown wrinkled his forehead, and I noticed I wasn’t the only one concerned.

  Although the water was clear, it was dark and unlit near the piled stones. I wasn’t sure how deep it was, but it had to be at least ten feet. Pepper would have to dive down, but I didn’t know how she’d see in the shadows. I stole a glance her way and saw the determined look on her face. She would do this no matter what. There was nothing I could do to stop her, but maybe I could make it safer for her.

  I reached down to grab a fist-sized rock that had luminescent moss growing on it. My arm dropped back to launch it through the air toward the floodgate and deep water. Everyone stopped to watch it splash into the pool. The glowing round shape sank down until it hit the bottom.

  Pepper raised an eyebrow at me. I explained, “So, you can see.”

  Her guarded expression slipped away and a smile replaced it. She bent over to grab another glowing stone and tossed it into the pool. All of us set down our things and soon, more rocks joined the others at the base of the lake. A trail of bright spots scattered the bottom around the piled-up rocks, casting enough light to see by.

  I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned I found Pepper had peeled off her leather jacket and was in the process of unbuttoning her flannel shirt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, feeling myself blush in embarrassment.

  Before I could look away, she dropped her shirt to the ground, and I saw she was wearing a black spandex bathing suit underneath. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

  “Well,” she answered, “I figured I’d come prepared.”

  Her shoes were kicked off. Then, she tossed her pants onto the rest of her clothing. She waded into the water. A squeal escaped her lips as she slipped.

  “Careful!” I called.

  She regained her balance, avoiding a fall, then hunched forward while she continued into the lake. When she was far enough in, she pushed off and swam toward the far wall and the blockaded floodgate. My eyes didn’t move away from her. I’m not qualified to be a lifeguard—I actually look more like a drowning squirrel when I swim—but I was ready to go after her if she got into trouble.

  Once she reached the submerged piled-up rocks, she took a deep breath and disappeared under the water. For a good minute she was gone. The whole time I watched for movement, waiting for her to reappear. When she did her black hair was plastered to her forehead. Pepper called out breathily, “There are a few larger rocks that are resting against the gate. It’s barely open at the base—no more than a foot at an angle. I can feel water pushing through. It’s creating a strong current. I don’t think we can raise the gate with the rocks against it, but I can try moving them away with the lodestone.”

  Her head dropped below the surface again, and her body moved toward us like an arrow through the water. Before long she was standing and dripping with her hand held out to Bardrick.

  He looked at me first, then pulled out the leather-wrapped lodestone from his bag and handed it to Pepper. “There’s no guarantee those rocks have lead or magnetite in them. You may not be able to magnetize them. You will have to rub the lodestone in the same direction repeatedly to find out—you’ll have to try different directions to know for sure. Be smart—you want to move the rocks out of the way of the floodgate and not onto yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she answered and handed back the strip of leather. She clutched the black lodestone in her hand as she swam away from us.

  “I’d like to climb up and take a look around above the spillway door. We have to find a way to open it once Pepper’s cleared the rocks away,” Kyrah said, wiping the palms of her hands along her pants.

  She began to walk toward the rocky wall. Bardrick watched her go with a frightened expression. His eyes were wide, and I could tell he was questioning if he should say anything since it hadn’t gone well when he had earlier. I thought I’d help him out.

  “Do you need a rope or something,” I asked. “For safety?”

  Kyrah’s hands gripped at the rocks, and she said over her shoulder, “That’s not how it works. I have to get to the top before I can secure a rope, but I used my only one back at the first cave-in. Don’t worry, I do this kind of thing all the time. That’s why my parents are so unhappy with me. They say it isn’t ladylike and isn’t a skill that would help anyone. If only they could see me now.”

  Bardrick and I stood beside each other while she moved up the rock face. He muttered under his breath, “They’d be having an anxiety attack like I am.”

  A splash caught my attention. Just as I looked over, I saw Pepper’s toes lift above the surface then drop out of sight as she dove down. Bardrick could worry about Kyrah’s safety for now. I needed to make sure Pepper was all right.

  If I had a watch, I would have been able to time her below the surface. Instead, I counted the seconds going by in my head. The glowing rocks on the rocky floor of the pool allowed me to see her shadowy form moving around, although it wasn’t enough to see clearly. Just as I was beginning to think too much time had gone by, I noticed a large rock tumble over others and heard a deep, muffled noise that was barely noticeable.

  Pepper’s head burst above the water, and she squealed. “It worked! I moved one of the rocks out of the way, but there’s a few more that are still against the floodgate.”

  She breathed deeply, took in a lungful of air and dove below the surface again. Part of me was relieved. The other part wished she was done and standing beside me on the shore, safe and sound.

  Just as Pepper disappeared again, Kyrah called out. Her voice echoed through the vaulted chamber. “There’s a darkened room up here. Nim, I’m going to need your lantern.”

  The numbers I was rattling off in my head were forgotten. I glanced up at the elevated path to see Kyrah watching from the top of the cavern. She stood near a doorway in the rock, which was far above the floodgate and where Pepper was diving.

  “Not until Pepper’s out,” I called back, annoyed I’d been distracted from counting the seconds she’d spent holding her breath under water.

  I searched for her shadowy form in the lake and couldn’t find it. My neck craned closer while I scanned the pool. She had to be there, somewhere. The same distant rumble from rocks moving echoed through the chamber. I stumbled forward into the water, getting my shoes wet, but I didn’t care. She had to be there—but where was she?

  I imagined her body pinned beneath a rock, her mouth gasping for air, and I began to panic. It had been more than sixty seconds, easily. My breathing was stilted and my heartbeat, racing.

  Pepper was the most frustrating person ever. She always did what she wanted and never apologized for it. Nothing could stop her from being who she wanted to be. She could talk your ear off so you wished for quiet, but the thought of her voice being silenced forever was too much for me to handle.

  “Pepper!” I called. “Where are you?!”

  I stumbled farther into the lake, prepared to throw myself into the water to save her, just as she burst above the surface, gasping for air. All I could hear were her deep, heaving breaths echoing in my ears. I struggled to inhale, but my body wasn’t listening. I grew faint and braced my hands against my knees as I tried to gulp more oxygen.

  Lost in my own dizzy world, I was surprised to see Pepper only a few feet away, staring up at me with a startled look on her face. She got out and led me to the water’s edge. Her wet hands gripped my sweatshirt, soaking it through, but I didn’t care.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered, pulling away from her. “Why do you always have to do things that put your life in danger? It’s like you think no one cares about what happens to you, but you’re wrong.
You’re my best friend. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t around.”

  Besides her heavy breathing, she was silent. Her black hair hung like a heavy rope from her ponytail and drops of water fell from her face and eyelashes. She muttered, “But, I didn’t think you cared if I was here or not. You didn’t say anything about me moving away, so I figured—”

  “Always jumping to conclusions,” I answered with a shake of my head. “Just because I don’t tell you all the time that you’re my best friend, doesn’t mean you’re not.”

  She frowned and tilted her head. “You’ve never called me your best friend.”

  “Maybe not to your face, no,” I admitted. Maybe she had a point.

  We stood there awkwardly. I didn’t know what to say or do next. Giving her a hug would be out of character for me, and I didn’t want to become her towel either. So, I did the next best thing. I changed the subject. “So, how’d it go? Are all of the rocks out of the way?”

  Pepper stared at me and rolled her eyes. While she pulled the water from her hair, she answered, “Yeah, I got them to move away from the door. Not far, but a few inches. Enough so that nothing’s pressed against it anymore.”

  “Good, and you’re clearly all okay?” I swallowed. “Nothing happened to you?”

  “Yeah.” She picked up her shirt and pressed it to her face, covering her smile. “I’m okay. Got out of the way of the rocks just in time. My hand was almost pinched, and I almost dropped the lodestone.”

  Bardrick’s eyes widened, and he appeared to be holding his breath. Pepper lifted up the long black stone and said, “But I didn’t.”

  “Thank you.” He took it from her, clearly relieved.

  “Good job, Pepper!” Kyrah called down.

  Pepper looked up and waved. “What’d you find up there?”

  The duchess walked above us on the trail, until she was close to the point she’d climbed up. She waved toward the darkened doorway at the top of the path. “There’s a room up here, but it’s pretty dark. I think there’s a big gear in there with a handle, but I need Nim’s lantern and some help.”

  Bardrick limped forward with a wince. I walked up to him and held up my hand. “Hold on. I don’t think you should go climbing with your ankle.”

  “I could—” Pepper said between breaths.

  “No,” I said, cutting her off. “You just did your part, and you should rest after swimming. I’ll go.”

  I looked up the rock face to Kyrah, who was staring down at us. It had to be twice the distance than the last climb, and there weren’t any steps to help me up. I had no idea how I’d do it, but I would have to try.

  “You should probably take this with you,” Bardrick said with a grimace. He held out the journal to me. I accepted the book and slipped it into my backpack.

  Kyrah called down to me, “Ready? You can do this. Don’t move any faster than you’re comfortable with, and make sure you have a good handhold before you pull yourself up.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. This wasn’t my idea of a good time, but I’d had enough adventure for one day and wanted to get out of there. I figured it was best not to think about what I was doing, so I started climbing while I thought about my social studies homework. As my math teacher says, two negatives makes a positive, although I don’t think this is what he was referring to.

  My fingers clung to the edges of the jagged stone wall, and I did my best to grip the tip of my shoes to the ridges in the rock so that my feet wouldn’t flail wildly like they wanted to. Kyrah kept pointing out handholds, so I had the illusion of being in control, but it wasn’t quite enough to ignore the distance between me and the ground. My hands curled over the lip of the trail, and Kyrah reached down to help pull me up.

  Somehow, I made it to the top without having thought about the danger I was in. Distracted with other things, I had allowed myself to do what needed to be done. Kyrah grinned at me and said, “Good job. You made it look easy.”

  I doubted that, but I wouldn’t argue with the duchess. I didn’t want to look down at Bardrick or Pepper, who were undoubtedly watching us from the ground. It would confirm just how high up I was, and I still had to climb down.

  Kyrah walked ahead of me on the trail. The path moved along the outer rim of the cavern, rising above the lake below. It didn’t take long before we reached the darkened doorway Kyrah had found. I dared to peer below us at the deepest point of the lake where the pile of rocks sat at the mouth of the floodgate. From here I could see the old waterline that ringed the cave. It was far above the lake’s current level. At the opposite end of the basin, the opening in the rocks that I’d scouted earlier fed into the stream that had paralleled our passage through the caverns. The sound of trickling water danced off the walls.

  I dropped my backpack to the ground to pull out the lantern. The candle was getting low, and it was a challenge lighting its short wick. Once it was lit, I pointed the beam into the darkened space. A rectangular room the size of my bedroom had been cut into the rock. A large wooden wheel with a big crank handle was mounted against the far wall. Beside it a wooden bar stuck out from an opening in the rock.

  Kyrah and I stepped inside. She walked closer to the wheel and rested her fingers on the handle. “I thought I saw the shape of a wheel in here. Do you think we should give it a try?”

  It seemed like the logical thing to do, but since Bardrick gave me the journal, and it hadn’t led us off course yet (except for that horrible bat cave), I set the lantern on the floor to get the leather book out of my backpack. “Let’s look in here first.”

  I flipped through the pages until I spotted illustrations of the entrance to the cave, the passages through the caverns and the levitating panels through the darkened chamber. Near the back of the book I found a drawing of the wheel and stopped. A cutaway diagram showed how the wheel worked. A long shaft dropped down to the foot of the floodgate. It was attached to a panel that laid underneath the heavy stone door. I couldn’t understand how it functioned until I saw a note beside it.

  “That’s so cool,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What is?” Kyrah asked, looking over my shoulder at the drawing.

  I pointed to the base of the floodgate. “There’s a long panel of lodestone under the floodgate door that’s inset below. It looks like this wheel flips it. Because the door is also made of lodestone, it’s either repelled up in the open position, or when the magnet is flipped the other way, it closes.”

  She looked at the wheel and said, “So, it must have been flipped with the earthshake? But what about that lever?”

  At the top of the channel cut into the wall, a wooden handle stuck out only a foot away from the outside of the wheel. It clearly had a purpose, or it wouldn’t be there, so I glanced at the diagram again. My eyes read scribbled notations, searching for the answer until I found it.

  “That makes perfect sense. It’s the lock. When it’s pulled upright, the lodestone under the floodgate can get flipped, but when you pull the lever down, it locks it in place so it can’t move.” I closed the journal between my fingers. “You must be right. The earthquake could have moved the lever up, unlocking it. Then the lodestone flipped, and the gate shut. You know, Bardrick’s grandfather was brilliant. It’s too bad people thought he was crazy.”

  The expression on Kyrah’s face suggested she was angry. I wasn’t sure if I’d said the wrong thing, which was totally possible. I was known for putting my foot in my mouth.

  She frowned and put her hands on her hips. “I can’t believe my own grandfather cast Frederick Stone from the city he designed and built. Just because he sounded crazy when he was really a misunderstood, brilliant man. I will make this right. Bardrick should not be made to feel ashamed of his ancestor any longer.”

  Kyrah walked over to the wheel and gripped the crank handle, her face pinched tight and her arms braced. The wheel moved an inch, groaning as it rotated. I ran over to help. I stood on the other side of the handle and grabbed hold. We p
ushed and pulled in unison, trying to move it together. The noises that rattled away deep below us gave me hope that the gears were working and the lodestone would flip as it was designed to do.

  We’d only been able to rotate the wheel a quarter turn, so I pushed harder. My biceps strained with effort, and my blood pounded in my ears. It moved more until the handle was above our heads. A loud clunk reverberated under our feet, and we shared a wide-eyed look.

  “Do you think it flipped?” Kyrah panted.

  I held onto the handle tight. “Go look.”

  She let go and ran out of the control room. Without her holding onto the wheel, I could tell it wanted to keep rotating forward, so I did my best to brace myself against the movement.

  I heard a deep sound, a rumble. Then, Kyrah called out, “It worked! Water’s flowing into the cavern.”

  She hurried back in and stood beside me with her eyes bright and a smile on her face. I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but there was no way I could hold the wheel in place much longer, so I groaned. “Pull on the lever to lock it—keep it from moving!”

  Her eyebrows lifted and she exclaimed, “Sorry.”

  Kyrah rushed to the lever to grab hold of it. Her body tensed as she tried pulling downward. “I can’t move it!”

  “Try hanging on it,” I whispered, struggling against the force of the wheel.

  With her hands wrapped around the wooden bar, she lifted her feet and hung free. Slowly, it began to sink downward, inch-by-inch. It finally reached the base of the opening and rested there. Kyrah stood up cautiously. I felt the tension in the wheel release, so I uncurled my fingers from the handle and let go. Both the lever and wheel remained in place. Kyrah and I looked at each other before bursting into laughter.

  I muttered, “Lodestone seems to be the key to everything in here.”