by Melody Rose
“Which is?” I interrupted, making my tone more even than Freja’s.
“The loveliest scents in the world,” Polonis said wistfully. He raised his nose in the air. “It is different for each mole so that we do not share the location with others.”
“Well,” Hannan huffed, “that is mightily inconvenient.”
“Can you smell it from here?” I asked, getting an idea.
“Yes,” Polonis replied wearily.
“What direction do we need to go in?” I prodded the mole for more information. “You don’t need to tell us the exact location. Just point the way that we need to go.”
“You do not understand,” Polonis protested. “He has the other librarians. If I brought him the key, if I brought him you, he said he would return them.”
“And you believed him?” Freja shook her head in disbelief.
“What choice did I have?” the mole argued weakly.
“There is always a choice,” I snapped, finding my own anger rising to the surface. “Now, tell us how to get out of here.”
“You will never get out of here alive,” the mole threatened.
A fierce rumble interrupted our interrogation of Polonis. It shook the ground and broke my stance a little. The jolt distracted Hannan, breaking his concentration and consequently revealing him in full.
“What was that?” he asked with a panicked tone.
The earthquake came again, this time more violent and louder than before. Several books tumbled off the shelves, and Julei had to duck out of the way to avoid being hit by dive-bombing books.
“He is here,” Polonis said ominously.
“I thought you said he couldn’t come down here,” I checked.
“It is not Reon,” Polonis corrected, “but something just as terrible.”
As he spoke, the mole’s voice trembled, indicating that he was just as terrified of this haunting presence as we were.
“Polonis, he’s going to kill you just like he killed the other librarians,” I reasoned as I leaned down to the mole, my voice a rushed whisper.
“No!” Polonis snapped back at me as he shook his head. “He swore he would bring them back.”
“You can’t trust him, Polonis, you can’t,” I told the creature. “You need to help us get out of here. We can help you find them, if they are still alive. I swear we will do what they can, but you’ve got to help us find the exit.”
The librarian lowered his head and seemed to look into my soul, even though he didn’t have any eyes. His pink nose twitched, the whiskers wiggling in the glow of my hands. My heart thumped as I waited for his response.
Another earthquake shook the ground. Hannan lost his footing and fell from the violence of the shockwave. Freja’s sword wobbled in her hand, and she teetered in her grounded stance. Julei scrambled out from behind the bookshelf as another onslaught of books tumbled off the shelves.
“Polonis,” I begged, letting my voice raise to a plea. “How do we get out of here?”
Slowly, the mole raised a long claw. He pointed past Freja to his right. “Follow the apple honey smell.”
For the first time, we heard something other than the grim silence of the Library. There was a hulking being somewhere among the shelves. We could hear the sliding of skin along the wet stone, smooth and meaty.
“Run.”
My gaze snapped to Julei. Her eyes flashed white for the briefest of seconds, glowing in the light from my hands.
“Run!” she repeated, this time louder and more urgent.
The three of us adults didn’t need another warning. We turned on our heels and bolted for the nearest open row in the direction the librarian pointed.
Julei scrambled behind us and ushered us on. “We have got to get out of its way!”
“What’s way?” I asked as my long legs carried me ahead of the group.
“I do not know,” Julei said, shaking her head as she ran. “It is massive, and it eats the moles whole.”
“Wait,” I exclaimed as I skittered to a halt. “Polonis.”
“Leave him,” Freja said as she passed me, still running.
“We can’t just leave him!” I protested.
“Of course we can,” Freja reasoned. “He nearly stranded us down here and threatened to kill Julei.”
“But he offered to help us, he did help us,” I argued back. “I’m going back for him.”
“Eva!” Freja called from behind me, but I was already gone, dashing back down the row of bookshelves.
“Polonis!” I cried out, using my light ahead of me to find him. “Polonis, where are you?”
I reached the center of the Library, with the circular tower of books on my left, where we left Polonis. But the librarian was nowhere to be found. Stains of his blood littered the ground where he once laid after we rescued Julei, but there were no other signs of him.
My head darted left and right, my hands following my movement so I could see properly.
“Eva!” Julei said from beside me as she finally caught up. “You cannot just leave like that. You are our only source of light, and… where is Polonis?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
Freja and Hannan caught up with us, their breathing loud and labored from behind us.
“You noble heroine!” Freja scolded. “We do not need to go around, saving every damn creature. We need to save our own asses, okay?”
I didn’t answer her. Concern boiled in my chest for the mole. He had been rather injured, thanks to Freja and Hannan, but there was no way he scampered off on his own so quickly.
Just as I was contemplating Polonis’s disappearance, a reverberating crunch echoed through the Library. Immediately following that atrocious sound, something fell from the sky and slammed into the ground with a sickening rattle. Several spit-slicked bones tumbled out of the air and bounced along the floor until they came to a halt only a few feet in front of us.
As one, the four of us looked up toward the source of the flying bones with mixed expressions of horror. Looming above us was a giant snake. Half of its body lay languidly behind it on the floor while the other half rose straight in the air. The head was the size of a garbage truck, and its yellow eyes glowed like headlights in the glow from my hand. Two pearly fangs stuck out of the top of its mouth and dripped with a deep red color, too closely resembling blood for comfort. The slits of its nostrils flared, and the snake’s mouth opened menacingly.
This time, Julei didn’t need to give us a warning. The four of us turned and ran in the complete opposite direction. We wove in and out of bookcases as fast as our legs would carry us. No one dared to look back, but we could hear the clatter and tumble of bookshelves as the snake tore through the Library in pursuit of us. It slithered with a slick, wet sound, sludging along the floor like a stampede.
“What the hell is that thing?” I asked the group as we veered right into a narrower section.
We ran in a straight line to ensure we fit. The snake couldn’t penetrate our new hiding place, but it tried, slamming its head into the opening. A forked tongue pierced through the gap and nearly grabbed Julei’s ankle. She fell in her effort to scramble away from it. Hannan picked the girl up by her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. The group took a short reprieve as the snake’s tongue snuck about for a snack, just out of its reach in the narrow hall.
“It is the largest damn snake I have ever seen!” Freja cried, her eyes wide and her voice hoarse.
“I believe it is a basilisk,” Hannan concluded through winded breaths.
“I thought real basilisks had chicken heads or legs or something,” I wheezed.
“Some forms do,” Hannan informed us, “but there are some from lore that take the form of a large snake.”
“Then shouldn’t it have paralyzed us or killed us or something when we looked up into its eyes?” I asked, pulling facts from the depths of my memory and some fantasy books I remember reading.
“It should have,” Hannan pondered.
“Then maybe it is not a true basilisk,” Julei added.
“Either way, this is bad,” Freja concluded. She slapped her thighs and straightened up fully. “We have to keep moving.”
“I’ll lead the way,” I offered, holding my glowing hands aloft. “Ready? On three, we run through the other opening.”
I received three nods in return. “One, two, three!”
We burst through the other end of the shelves, me leading the way with Hannan, Julei, and then Freja bringing up the rear. The snake sensed its prey and clambered behind us, making quite the mess. Luckily, we could get ahead of the thing because of all the demolition it left in its wake. The snake was often too large to get through all of the shelves, so it took him some time to barrel through them and over the wood and paper.
“I don’t know where we’re going,” I called out to the group when I ran into an already demolished bookshelf, then veered left because that was the only opening. “I don’t think we’re headed for the exit.”
“We are just trying to get out of this thing’s way,” Hannan replied.
“I cannot…” Julei huffed from the back. “I do not know…”
“We have to find another place to hide,” I announced.
“Can we get back to the hole?” Hannan suggested. “The first one?”
“There might be more waiting for us there,” Freja warned. “We do not want to run into anything else.”
A thought occurred to me. “How the hell did it even get down here?”
“I brought it,” came a voice from several feet ahead of us.
We skidded to a stop as a voluptuous female with wild blond curls stood before us. The four of us collided into one another like a group of cartoon characters, with me at the front. The woman held a torch in her right hand, level with her face. The shadows crept along her features, making them distorted in the flickering orange light.
I forced my own light to glow brighter on my arms so we could get a better look at this new stranger.
“Find something good?” the woman asked, eyeing the book tucked under my arm.
Casually, I slipped the book behind my back. Even though I did this in plain sight where she could see me, the gesture still made me feel better, to have my body physically between her and the book.
“Indeed I did,” I replied with a pleasant tone, something akin to talking to a neighbor about the weather. “But unfortunately, I checked it out first so you can’t have it.”
“Not even if I ask nicely?” the blond said with a small pout.
“Not even then,” I said, mocking her pout. “Sorry.”
“That is a shame then,” she said as she shook her head, but her lips spread into a delightfully malicious grin. “I will just have to take it from you.”
The woman brought the torch to her lips and blew. The fire extinguished, leaving the glow coming from my arms the only nearby light.
“Turn it off, Eva, turn it off,” Freja said in hushed tones by my ear.
“But then we--”
“Just do it!” she hissed.
I retracted the light, and the world plunged back into darkness.
14
Someone took my hand in theirs. I recognized the firm grip almost instantly.
“This way,” Hannan whispered in my ear.
We shuffled together in the dark. I managed to keep one foot in front of the other, only thanks to Timone’s gift of grace. I followed Hannan blindly until he pressed us against a wall. We stayed as still as we could, the only sound the pounding in our hearts and the slithering of the snake as it maneuvered through the shelves.
“You cannot hide in the darkness,” the woman called out. Her voice was distorted and echoed like a surround sound speaker. “We can smell you.”
As she spoke, her voice sounded as though it had a lisp. Her works elongated with an extra “s” or two. It was as though she was the snake, speaking as ones from cartoons do. A bubble of laughter tightened my throat, as I aimed to keep still and quiet. The thought of the situation made me nervous, yes, but something about it was so comical as well. I couldn’t seem to take her seriously with that tone.
I clapped a hand over my mouth as if a physical barrier would stop my giggles. I tried a couple of deep breaths and tried to focus on something else.
“We cannot stay in the dark for long,” came a small voice from the other side of Hannan. Julei’s tone sounded shaky and tense.
I wanted to respond, but I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth at that moment.
“Hannan is shielding us visually,” Freja whispered. Her voice came from further down the shelf, farther than Julei’s. “But that will not last long.”
“This was as far as my plan went,” Hannan admitted hurriedly. “Does anyone have any other ideas?”
“I do not think we are getting out of here without defeating that snake,” Freja contemplated. “We will have to fight her and then find the exit unencumbered.”
“What do you know about snakes?” I asked the caretaker, finally able to suppress my amusement long enough to focus. “What can we use to our advantage?”
“They have an excellent sense of smell and taste,” Hannan said as if he were reciting out of a book. “They have terrible eyesight, like the moles.”
“So, how do they get around?” Freja wondered.
“With their tongues,” Hannan reported. “They have nostrils, but they use their tongues to taste the surrounding air.”
“Okay,” Freja said, her voice hard and determined. “Hannan, keep concealing Julei. Eva, you come with me, and when I tell you, shine your light. Understood?”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, not liking being in the dark on this supposed plan of hers.
“Trust me,” Freja snapped though she kept her voice low. “This will buy us some time.”
I swallowed and squared my shoulders. Even though we couldn’t see each other, something passed between us. We were ready without having to confirm it verbally.
Before Hannan released my hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed the back of it. Warm goosebumps appeared on my arm in reaction to the gesture. I was happy it was too dark to see me blush.
Freja and I stepped forward, side by side, and walked down one of the rows. My sense of direction was off from the black surroundings and having been dragged a ways by Hannan. However, Freja seemed to know exactly where she was going. I kept in time with her, listening to her careful footsteps as we went.
“Have you come to play, ladies?” the woman taunted. “We know you are near.”
The snake sounded only a few feet away. It lumbered forward, that slick screech reverberating against the stone. It took all of my courage to stay planted next to the soldier.
“Freja,” I whispered urgently in her ear.
We could hear the snake approaching. The ground moved under our feet as it came closer. Stray pebbles jumped into the air in time to the snake’s massive movements.
“Freja,” I whispered again, pushing her name through gritted teeth.
She seemed to be waiting for the snake, almost playing chicken with it. I gripped her upper arm with an iron clutch and shook it a little. I had to make sure she was still with me, still sane enough to go through with her plan, which was starting to seem rather insane to me.
“Freja,” I repeated her name a third time, not bothering to keep my voice down.
We could feel the breath of the snake as it came towards us. The room dropped twenty degrees, and the air grew thick with moisture. The rumble roared as the giant reptile protruded forward.
“Now!” the soldier yelled so suddenly, I almost forgot what she asked me to do.
The whole sequence proceeded in slow motion. Time ticked by at a snail’s pace, allowing me to see everything with a clarity I didn’t know existed.
I flared the light to life in my hands. White sliced through the black in an explosion. It illuminated the situation but brightened to such a sudden and drastic degree that it took my eyes
a moment to adjust. Milliseconds before that, however, in the initial flash, I saw the head of the snake rise above us, preparing to strike.
Then, Freja shoved me hard. She one-armed me off to the side and to the floor. I collided with the stone ground and scraped my elbows as I landed roughly. My head jerked backward, resulting in a weird sense of vertigo.
Once my view snapped back to the scene at hand, I witnessed the snake plummet downward right towards Freja. It had its mouth wide open with the fangs protruding like thorns off a rose.
Freja had her sword out in a flash. I must have blinked when she unsheathed it because one minute, the sword was on her belt, and the next, it was in her hand. It was incredible, the speed with which she moved. In one swift arch, she brought her sword up and around, just as the snake struck.
I cried out, an impulse at the apparent danger my friend was in. However, Freja had complete control of the situation. She calculated the timing with a mathematician's ease and side-stepped the snake at the perfect moment. Her sword came down and sliced through its thick tongue.
The sound nearly made me throw up right then and there. The severing of flesh, snake flesh or no, squished and squashed in ways that hurt my ears. It attacked my nerves and made my stomach convulse. The sight didn’t help either. A spray of dark blood sprayed everywhere, like a fire hose out of control. Freja managed to turn her back to most of it, but it still splattered against her, staining her clothing and hair. I curled into a ball to avoid the onslaught and still got caught, the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland book tucked against my chest.
It was hot, even through my clothing. The sticky blood oozed out between the spaces of the cobblestone ground. It spread outward, like a river freed from a dam.
Needless to say, the snake wasn’t happy about having its tongue cut out of its mouth. The reptile flayed and shook with a frightening amount of violence. It wailed, a guttural sound that burned my ears. The whole situation was so horrific, I barely could look away.
It was Freja that brought me back to my senses. Ever the soldier, with a clear head, she yanked me up by the arm and beckoned me forward.
