by Melody Rose
My heart launched into my throat, and I stilled, like a forest animal blending into its surroundings. Without any additional prompting, I knew exactly what Freja had seen as she traveled down the hole. Somehow, the soldier had seen my homecoming after burying my parents. If she peered into my memories, some of my most harrowing and darkest memories, then what exactly did I see of Freja’s past?
I reviewed the image of the man in my mind and the sensations that wracked my body, like the flu. It was the moment when the man put a finger to his lips that stuck with me. Even remembering it then sent a shiver down my spine.
Freja and I caught each other’s gazes and held them for a solid minute, not saying a word. Something shifted during our descent. Somehow, we had gotten a hold of each other’s deepest secrets. We slipped into each other’s pasts as unwilling visitors. Another level of empathy was introduced between the pair of us, and I was sure that neither wanted this gift or curse we’d been given. It felt too intimate, too personal somehow. Like we’d experienced a brief version of Freaky Friday.
The soldier held my gaze for a second more, and she shook her head subtly. I took her warning to heart and returned it with a nod. Our unspoken promise hung in the air between us. We would not speak of this with anyone. We would not share what we saw down in that pit.
Suddenly, Freja got to her feet. With a quick swipe at each eye, the woman was ready for action with her straight back and stiff shoulders. I mimicked her movement, though I looked less militant as I got to my own feet. My shoulders fell into their usual slouch, and my hands rested in a comfortable position across my chest.
“Are you two alright?” Julei wondered with a skeptical tone.
“Yeah, we’re fine,” I supplied too quickly.
“Just fine,” Freja picked up on my same rapid pace.
Julei looked between the two of us suspiciously. “I do not think you are telling the truth.”
“Julei,” Hannan interrupted, “let it go. If they want to talk about it later, they will. Right now, we need to figure out where we are.”
“Well, where is our mole guide?” Julei said, taking Hannan’s advice and not acknowledging the weirdness between Freja and me.
The light still glowed off my arms and illuminated the space around us. The four of us looked around for our guide, but he was nowhere to be found at the moment. We found ourselves between two shelves packed with books. The wooden shelves stretched higher than some of the trees in the Cross Woods. The books themselves lined up in long, straight rows. Most of the tomes were dusty from not being pulled or opened in so long.
Curious, I stepped out to the end of the row and peeked my head around the corner. The tall bookshelves stretched out for what seemed like miles, all neatly spaced from the other like a path of dominoes. Well, it went as far as my light would carry.
I formed a portion of the light into a ball and threw it down the open hallway. The light skidded through the air, like a wobbly fastball, and then rolled across the floor. The shelves just seemed to keep going and going. A never-ending library.
The wealth of knowledge buried down here overwhelmed me. So many answers to pertinent and casual questions lay within this underground sanctuary. Despite the information, no one was down here. The whole library was eerily silent, completely devoid of sound. Now I knew that libraries were supposed to be places of quiet and study, but this level of silence unnerved me. Nothing rumbled. Nothing creaked. Nothing breathed.
I followed my first instinct and sent balls of light skittering in all possible directions. Julei, Freja, and Hannan joined me out in one of the main hallways, each of them looking down a different hallway.
“I do not like it here,” Julei finally said, voicing everyone’s thoughts.
“It is creepy,” Hannan agreed.
“It is not creepy!” a voice from behind us declared.
The four of us whirled around together like a choreographed dance troupe. Our mole guide Polonis walked up to us, now on two legs. In this position, the mole was nearly as large as me. If it had eyes, I could have looked at it in the eye. Being a rather tall individual, that large of a mole made my stomach drop.
He waddled up to us, his gait replicating that of a penguin. He tucked his paws into his chest, wrist bent and claws intertwined. All of his gestures made the creature seem oddly sophisticated, a stark contrast from the bumbling rodent we met earlier.
“Now, you said you were looking for a key?” Polonis prompted.
“You said there were other librarians,” Julei countered bravely. “Where is everyone?”
“Again, the Library is very large,” Polonis informed the girl rather impatiently like he was tired of having to repeat himself. “They could be in a variety of places.”
“But there is no one here,” Julei protested. Out of nowhere, Julei’s violet eyes turned to white orbs, a signal that she was about to have a vision.
The mole recoiled from the girl as if he saw her eyes change. “What is happening?”
“Hand on just a second,” I said as I held out a hand to Polonis to block him from Julei. I bent down in front of her to put myself level to her face. I watched intently, waiting to be there for when she broke out of the trance. I also wanted to make sure I heard every word of what she was about to say.
“No one has been here for quite some time,” Julei recited in a deeper, almost manly voice. Her sweet, melodic tone disappeared when her gift took hold. “They have all gone. Disappeared.”
I chanced a quick glance at Polonis over my shoulder. Without having visible eyes, I couldn’t discern the mole’s expression, but his mouth hung open in almost a perfect o.
“They will not return,” Julei predicted. “They are lost to the light. The darkness will no longer protect them, and all at once, the Library will be brought into the light, to never be read by anyone ever again.”
The young seer blinked once, and her eyes returned to their violet color, still abnormal but not as strange as the opal white they once were. She pressed the heel of her hands against her temples.
“What did I say?” Julei asked immediately, though her eyes squinted in pain.
“Julei,” I coaxed softly, trying to get her to go easy on herself.
“What did I say?” she demanded, more insistent this time.
“You talked about the Library being empty, and something about creatures being lost to the light and darkness no longer protecting them,” I repeated, trying to grasp at what appeared to be the most important points.
“My stomach hurts,” Julei moaned. “I do not feel well.”
“We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible, I promise.” I squeezed Julei’s shoulders tight. “We just need to find the key, and then we can leave.”
“We do not want to upset the little one anymore,” Polonis suggested. “Why don’t we start our search, yes?”
“Does anyone have any idea where to look?” Hannan asked the group. “If this place is as vast as Polonis claims, where do we even start?”
“I think the answer is in the riddle,” Freja said pointedly. She turned to the mole and spoke to him directly. “It should be in the dead center of the Library.”
“The center?” Polonis replied, surprised. “There are only books there, no keys that I know of.”
“Could you still take us there, please?” I begged of the mole. “I want to get Julei back to the surface as quickly as possible.”
“Of course, of course,” Polonis said with a little bow. “Follow me.”
The mole shuffled along the stone floor and headed to the left, down a row between two shelves. I waved Freja and Hannan along, while I took Julei’s hand. She let me and followed behind at a slow pace.
As we journeyed through the Library, Polonis led us through quite the maze of twists and turns. It would have been very easy to get lost among the identical bookcases, with all of the book starting to look the same. Every so often, I planted a ball of light along the way, my own version of leaving bread
crumbs. Even though I knew we couldn’t exit the way we came, I could at least make sure the mole wasn’t leading us in circles.
My energy depleted more the further we went along. It cost me to keep those markers alive and lit, while still illuminating the way for my friends. I could feel the light strain at being spread so thin and lasting for so long. I sent my gratitude to the light, thanking it for being so accommodating and reassuring it that we would be done soon.
The mole led us to a tower of books. This was the only bookcase to look different from the rest. It was a cylinder stretching into the air like a silo. Books wrapped around it like a barber pole, or a set of ascending stairs. Unlike the other wooden bookshelves, this one was made of stone and rose so high that I couldn’t see the top, even with the light I offered.
“This is the center of the Library,” Polonis announced. He even opened his claws demonstratively. “As I told you before, it is simply filled with books.”
“There’s got to be more to it than just that,” I muttered, more to myself as I stared up at the tower. “If this really is where Irena hid the key, then she would have done it in a clever way.”
“You think it is in one of the books?” Hannan asked, piecing the puzzle together for me.
“Yep,” I answered. “The question is, which one?”
“Gideonia said she ran an errand for Irena here,” Freja remembered, speaking her thoughts aloud. “Polonis, did the dragon from above bring you something when it came to the Library the first time?”
“She brought Queen Irena,” Polonis replied plainly. “She had a gift for the Library.”
“What was the gift?” Freja prodded.
“A book,” Polonis answered unhelpfully.
“Of course it was,” Freja mumbled in defeated.
“How do you even tell which book is which?” Hannan wondered as he, too, gazed up at the tower.
“By smell,” the mole said.
“So, could you remember what book she brought by the smell alone?” I asked hopefully.
“Alas, no,” Polonis said with a shake of his head. He sniffed again. “We had at least one thousand titles enter the Library each day.”
“That’s impossible,” I marveled.
“Not that many now, of course, but when the Library was first starting, that was the case,” Polonis defended.
“Okay.” I dropped Julei’s hand and rubbed my hands up and down my face, thinking. “Did Irena come down here herself, or did she give you the book to place down here?”
“She insisted on coming down and putting the book on the shelf,” Polonis recalled. “It was an odd request, one we do not normally allow, but she is the queen, after all. Or was, rather.”
“So she had to place it somewhere she could reach, so she could find it again if she needed to,” Hannan deduced, on the same page as me.
“Exactly.” I ran my fingers along the spines of the books and ticked across. “So it’s not going to be up in the heavens. She put it in the center of the Library, so she would remember it.”
“We should look around on these shelves,” Hannan suggested. He started walking around the pillar of books.
“But we do not even know what we are looking for,” Freja lamented. “There are at least a hundred books on these shelves alone.”
“We’re looking for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” I said suddenly, the idea clicking in my head.
“What is that?” Hannan wondered from the other side of the bookcase.
“And how do you know that?” Freja questioned.
“It’s something she said to me once,” I recalled, not looking at anyone as the memory ran through my mind. “It’s a bit like playing Alice. That’s got to be it. That or Through the Looking Glass.”
“Are you sure?” Hannan wanted a confirmation.
“It’s the best lead we’ve got,” I shot back, urgency pulsing through me. “Just see if it’s there.”
I pushed out some of my remaining energy and sent smaller balls of light around the circle of books. It hung overhead, like a couple of dozen lightbulbs hanging in mid-air.
Freja, Hannan, and I set to work. Julei sat on the floor, cradling her head while Polonis stayed out of our way. I wanted to ask the mole for help, but at the same time, I appreciated the fact that he just let us look. We each took a shelf, Freja on the bottom, me in the middle, and Hannan on top. Once we completed those, we moved up to the next three.
I almost missed the gray lettering on the spine of a faded purple book. My eyes glazed over from looking at all the fonts and words that I had to blink a couple of times to make sure I was looking at the right thing. But there it was, plain as day: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I released a cry of triumph and pulled the book off the shelf.
That’s when the world went black.
12
Kehn
The snowstorm hit in the middle of the second day. We noticed the ominous gray clouds rolling in that morning when we awoke after a pleasant evening on the forest floor. I was the first of the humans to rise and met Chyndron by the lake we decided to put up camp.
The white dragon, Myels, floated in the shallow lake. While he had been disappointed that he could not fully conceal himself in the water, the dragon seemed content with just being as wet as he could be. He appeared to still be sleeping, riding along the minimal waves on his back with his massive webbed feet hanging up in the air. His languid neck stretched out, his tongue dangling out of his mouth with the tip touching the surface.
I yawned and looked out at the strange sight. “Is he always like this?”
“Myels is happiest by the water,” the large red dragon explained. “His clan originally lived beneath the water.”
“I see,” I said with a nod. “He is built for it, you can tell.”
“Indeed,” Chyndron confirmed. “Each of our clans is specialized for a certain environment.”
“Lucien likes rocks and caves,” I deciphered. “Timone also enjoys those, but she likes being on the outside rather than the inside. She would stay all day in the sky if she could.”
“Correct,” Chyndron said, clearly impressed.
“I cannot tell if you are like Uri and enjoy the drier climates,” I mused. “Though something tells me you enjoy the heat, but like something forged in fire, rather than the baking heat of the desert.”
“You are rather perceptive, Kehn,” Chyndron complimented with an amused gaze down upon me.
I waved a nonchalant hand. “It comes with my training. I need to observe an enemy, so I can spot their weaknesses and exploit them accordingly.”
“Are we your enemy then?” Chyndron asked slyly.
“No,” I replied quickly. “It is merely a habit. It is difficult to stop doing it on everyone I meet.”
“There is no need to panic,” Chyndron assured me. “I was simply intrigued by your choice of words since you do seem to analyze everyone, friend or foe.”
“I learned to do it mostly to enemies,” I explained. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and widened my stance slightly. “But I found I was good at it so I could use it to read any creature I wished. Though animals are harder than humans.”
“Reading the body language of your native species is a valuable skill,” Chyndron said wisely. The dragon bobbed his head up and down like he was moving to a melody only he could hear. “What do you think of our queen Eva?”
“Eva?” My voice caught in my throat, and I was sure the dragon heard it because, for the first time since we started talking, he looked at me directly with those piercing yellow eyes. “What about her?”
“I want to know your opinion of her,” Chyndron answered simply.
“In what way?” I asked, getting the impression that I was digging myself into a deeper hole.
“Do you have more than one impression?” Chyndron questioned curiously.
I inhaled deeply and wondered how much the dragon actually knew. Monte was well informed on mine and Eva�
�s history, but I wasn’t sure about the rest of the clan. It was understandable that they talked to one another, not without their own secrets from their queen. After all, I had once asked them to withhold something from her.
Still, I decided to be honest with Chyndron. We were destined to travel together for at least the next few weeks, and I had no desire to begin that relationship with any sort of lies or deceit.
“She is incredible,” I replied with a sigh. “I did not believe so at first. It took me a while to see her for what she is.”
“And what is that?” Chyndron asked.
I paused and bit the inside of my lip, considering my words carefully. “She is a leader even though she does not believe she is one. Eva is kind and has a fierce sense of self. I love that she makes references to things that I will never understand, yet still does it. She is undeterred by others’ thoughts of her.”
“A trait that continues to serve her well,” Chyndron said as he crossed one leg over the other and proceeded to lay down on the edge of the lake.
“I think it is her greatest strength,” I said definitively. “You picked a good queen when you picked Eva.”
“I appreciate that. Though I do not need your approval, it is nice to have it,” Chyndron said with a closed-mouth grin. “You mean a lot to her.”
My mind drifted to her rejection of me the morning before we left. “I do not believe that to be true. Not anymore.”
“Eva trusted you enough to lead this second expedition, did she not?” Chyndron checked.
“That is because it was the smartest choice,” I countered. I followed Chyndron’s lead and sat on a nearby rock. “I am the second-in-command of the king’s guard.”
“Do not belittle yourself so,” Chyndron chastised. “You are too focused on being apart from her to realize that she has given you an opportunity to prove yourself. I would not abuse that chance if I were you.”
“Abuse what chance?” a sing-song voice asked from behind the pair of us.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Timone saunter up to us. She shimmered even in the dull morning sunlight, her long horns swirling up to the sky. Her lean frame took a spot on the other side of me, putting me in the middle of two dragons.
