by Melody Rose
I came up empty.
Eventually, I sat in the center of the space, crossed-legged and hunched over. Freja crossed her arms and looked expectantly at me.
“Well?”
“I couldn’t find anything,” I confessed with a sour expression.
Freja settled back against the rock and closed her eyes. “I knew you would not.”
“I don’t understand,” I argued. “Julei said we would get out of here. She said she saw us with them and the dragons. We can’t be stuck down here. We just can’t.”
“I do not know what to tell you,” Freja said with a frown. “Unless you have some transportation gift I do not know about, then we very well might be trapped here for a long time.”
An uncomfortable silence swallowed us. We wallowed in our situation as my brain wracked for a possible solution. I went through my various gifts and eliminated each in turn. Timone’s grace was of no use here. We weren’t underwater, and the light was doing the most it could without blasting us out of here. But Freja was right. We didn’t want to make the situation worse by collapsing the structure more. That also left out Lucien’s armor. Unless…
“What if we could bust our way through?” I offered, the thoughts coming together as I said them.
“Without getting crushed?” Freja challenged. “How do you propose we do that?”
“Lucien’s gift,” I said, getting excited as I thought it through. “We would take on his armor, and then I could blast us through the rock with my light. The rock shouldn’t hurt us. His armor is nearly impenetrable.”
“Nearly?” Freja commented. “You do not sound too confident about the prospect.”
“Well, what plan do you have other than to give up and die?” I snapped back. “Because I don’t know about you, but we still have a kingdom to save, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit down here and suffocate without trying everything I can think of.” I held out my hand to her, balancing on three limbs. “Now, would you like to live or not?”
Freja rolled her eyes. “I would very much like to live,” she grimaced, almost like it cost her something to admit that I was right.
“Good, now take my hand,” I commanded, stretching it out further.
Freja slammed her hand into mine, almost like a too hard high five. I closed my eyes and reached out down a mental link. I envisioned Lucien’s gorgeous green crystal armor. As I did so, the effect was instant.
Green gems burst from our skin. The magic bubbled like a growing potion or a spreading disease as it transferred from my body to Freja’s. Her eyes widened in terror at first, and she let go of me.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “You won’t feel anything. It’s just like putting on armor before going into battle.”
“How would you know?” Freja challenged, full of doubt. “You have never been in a real battle.”
“Did you ask me to trust you before?” I rolled my eyes and extended my hand out a little farther. “I’m asking you to do the same thing now.”
I flicked my fingers at her and beckoned her to take my hand. Freja inhaled, her breath wavering. She put her hand into mine and closed her eyes. The green crystals continued their journey up my skin to hers. Soon, it overtook our whole bodies, and we were a pair of spikey emerald beings. It covered our skin in a nearly impenetrable protective layer.
I looked over at Freja and nodded once to confirm that she was ready. Together, we approached the edge of the rock wall, and I held out a fist in front of me. I asked the light to come forward with the biggest blast it could give me. With that simple request, the light built up underneath the green gems. It gave the light the most sickly glow, like something out of a Halloween movie.
Suddenly, the light expanded and shot from my fist like a blaster and burst through the rock. The remnants exploded around us, and both Freja and I inadvertently ducked. Sure enough, there was a hole in the wall, not yet wide enough, but it was there. I let loose another blast after collecting the rest of my energy to grow the ball of light. Once again, the beam radiated through the stone enclosure and rocketed out into the remainder of the Library.
I inhaled deeply, like gulping for air after being underwater for a while. A dull pounding began at the base of my skull, but I ignored it. The effort of utilizing Lucien’s gift while using the last of my light yanked at my energy. It buried me in fatigue, but all I could think about was being buried down here alive. We had to make Julei’s prediction come true. We had to get out of the Library and back up to our group.
With one final burst of light, the rock wall flew apart. There was a sizable hole now, one that both Freja and I could crawl through with our hands still connected.
We emerged out onto the stone floor of the Library. The ground was littered with debris. Papers floated down like snow while wood chips and splinters stuck out of the ground to make a field of spikes. The Library looked like it had been through a war, with toppled shelves and ruined pathways.
The worst part of the entire scene was the snake carcass. It stretched out for yards, the thick skin sagging off its bones. It looked like a spoiled sausage splattered across the floor. I put a hand over my nose and mouth like that would hold down my disgust.
“Our swords,” Freja said, thinking sensibly. She seemed unphased by the dead snake and ran up towards its head.
Once she broke our contact, I released the armor. Our bodies returned to normal, and I followed her, knowing that it would be unwise to leave the Library without our most prized weapons, especially mine, a gift from Chyndron. We approached the head of the snake. There, lying right beside the mouth of the beast, was his beautiful, blonde djer. She, too, stretched out on the ground, still and dead. Her eyes were open, staring into nothing.
Freja went for our swords while I went for the woman. I lowered my hand from my face and stared at her for a minute. We never knew her name or why she worked from Reon. We didn’t know her history or her story. Yet, there she was, dead at our feet, by our hand. I knew then that I would never forget that round face with the high cheekbones and the curly blonde ringlets. I regretted her death instantly, and the guilt sat like a pebble in my gut.
Her blue eyes pierced the sky with no life behind them. I reached over and rested my fingertips on her eyelids, and with one swift motion, I closed them so she could finally be laid to rest.
“What are you doing?” Freja asked.
I looked over my shoulder at her. She held both swords, their blades bloody, one in each hand.
“Closing her eyes,” I answered with one last glance at the woman.
“Why?” Freja wondered, her voice weary.
“It’s what you do when someone dies,” I said, not really knowing the answer myself. “It’s a sign of respect.”
“I do not know how you can respect her after what she has done,” Freja spat. “She tried to kill us, Eva, just because some false king told her so.”
“I know that,” I responded, unable to match her harsh tone, “but she is also a human and deserves some dignity in death.”
“Dignity in death,” Freja muttered. “What a strange thing to give your enemy.”
“We don’t know if she was the enemy,” I countered, as I turned to face Freja fully. I held out my hand for my sword. “She could have been manipulated into it.”
“Trust me,” Freja said, taking a step forward. “She got joy out of the torture. You could see it in her eyes. Anyone who enjoys harming others for fun, for sport, deserves no such dignity or respect.”
“I didn’t see what you saw, I guess.” I wrapped my hand around the hilt of my sword, but Freja didn’t let go.
“I guess you are not as familiar with it as I am,” Freja replied, her voice soft.
Her words pricked at the back of my neck. They touched the same nerves as my ongoing headache. The continuous supply of light wore on me. It drained me as if I was a cellphone with the flashlight app on all the time. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples with two fingers.
“Wh
at is it?” Freja asked, worried.
“We have to get out of here,” I declared for what felt like the thousandth time. “I haven’t stopped using the light since we got down here, and it’s draining me.”
“I see,” Freja murmured.
She paused for a moment and then broke into a run. She catapulted herself up onto a tilted bookcase. The soldier stood at the top of it and held a hand over her eyebrows, looking out into the darkness. Freja reminded me of a captain of a ship at the bow, gazing at the horizon.
“Do you have it in you for one last beam?” Freja wondered with a glance down at me.
“I think so,” I answered wearily. “Why do you ask?”
“The snake destroyed a large section of the Library,” Freja explained. “I think if we can shine a light upward, we might be able to see over the shelves. We might be able to see the exit.”
I shrugged and trekked up the slanted bookshelf. “It’s worth a try.”
Freja and I stood side by side. She wasn’t lying when she said it was high up. Even when I reached the top, a new ray of light extended out into the blackness. We had a nice vantage point of the destruction that lay in the wake of our fight with the snake.
“I think you should send it up there.” Freja pointed straight up, above our heads. “As high as you can.”
“How bright do you want it?” I asked, letting her call the shots since this was her idea.
“As bright as you can make it without passing out,” Freja determined with a hard look at me. “I am strong, but I do not wish to carry you across this vast Library.”
“Agreed,” I said.
I rubbed my hands together and tapped into the source of the light, calling to it with a gentle voice. It was tired, we both were, and I knew there wasn’t much to go around. However, I bargained with the light.
If you can send out the brightest beacon, then you can rest. I won’t call to you again until you have reached full capacity.
The light never talked back to me. It wasn’t that kind of relationship. The light lived within me, a gift from Monte, but it was its own entity. It was not mine. A balance was required to maintain the power. Right now, I could feel the imbalance weighing heavily on myself and on the light. Nevertheless, the light seemed to understand the urgency of this request.
I raised my arms over my head with flat palms stretched high. A line of light, about as thick as a firework beam, shot into the sky. Like a rocket, it zoomed upward until it collided with what was presumably the ceiling of the Library. Then, it split into a zillion pieces and curved down around the domed roof. The light spread like pixie dust into the shape of a willow tree, the trunk centered where Freja and I stood.
The soldier stared up, open-mouthed at the sight of the beautiful lights. “We should have just had you do that in the first place.”
“Probably,” I contemplated. “I’m out of juice, so it’s not like I can do it again. I didn’t know that I could do it in the first place, to be honest.”
“You just did that?” Freja gestured to the twinkling tree that illuminated the wrecked Library with a soft white glow. “For the first time?”
“Yeah,” I said, unnerved by her exclamation.
Freja huffed. “I knew you were powerful, but damn. You are something else altogether.”
“I don’t know if that was a compliment or an insult,” I commented.
“Just an observation,” Freja said as she scanned the landscape before us. Suddenly, her arm straightened out with a sharp point. “There. I think that is the exit.”
My gaze followed her arm in the direction she pointed. Out across the Library floor, there was a dark cylinder made of stone. It shot upwards through the dirt dome of a ceiling, seeming to continue up to the surface.
“It’s definitely a way out,” I concluded.
“Let’s get out of here,” Freja said exasperatedly.
I couldn’t have agreed more, so I started the journey down the bookcase and back to the ground floor. Freja wasn’t far behind. In fact, she kept right on my tail as we ventured towards the exit of the Library.
16
We made our way across the Library, stepping over fallen books and random shelves. We were different kinds of soldiers making our way through the maze. The willow tree lights twinkled above us and illuminated our path. The farther we traveled, the farther my thoughts delved into a spiral of worry.
“Do you think they made it out okay?” I said as I bit my thumbnail.
“Yes,” Freja said plainly.
“Really?” I challenged.
“What do you want me to say?” Freja rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “No? How will that help either of us?”
“You’re right, you’re right,” I repeated worriedly. My feet carried me through the rest of the space.
“You need to stop worrying about them,” Freja commanded with her soldier voice. “You cannot do anything about it from here.”
“We should have never come down here in the first place,” I muttered, the guilt tying my stomach into knots. “Not without the dragons, not without a clear way out.”
“Again,” Freja huffed, “we can do anything about it. We are down here now.”
“How can you be so calm?” I said, irritation rising.
“I am not calm,” Freja said, blinking furiously. “I am just as nervous and frustrated as you. Just because I am not spinning in circles with worry does not mean that none of this affects me.”
“I wish I had your resolve,” I said with equal parts admiration and jealousy.
Freja stopped in her tracks. She looked up at me with hard eyes and narrowed them in on me.
“While I do not agree with your excessive worry and continuous self-doubt, your emotions are not a weakness, Eva,” Freja said with sincere seriousness. “I admire you. That, after such a tragedy in your life, you are willing to experience any sort of emotion.”
Her words made me pause. I frowned a little as they went through my mind at an alarming rate, swirling like a carousel. I didn’t know what she meant at first. I hardly spoke of my past or of my previous life. I had only told the dragons, Kehn, and Hannan. I couldn’t remember ever talking to Freja about it.
Until I remembered the hole and our journey down into the Library. The mole said that one had to face their darkest fears and memories to get down to the Library. However, it wasn’t my memories that I experienced on the way down. It was Freja’s, and she witnessed mine. That is why I found her crying at the entrance.
“What did you see?” I asked suddenly, realizing that I never asked her directly. In my defense, there hadn’t been time. We had a treacherous mole, a giant snake, and a murderous blond to deal with. “When we fell down the hole together, what memories of mine did you see?”
“It was not so much of what I saw that terrified me,” Freja said with shadowed eyes. “It was more of the sensation. The feelings that overwhelmed me. I could not recall a time in my life where I experienced such loss.”
“You haven’t lost a family member?” I wondered, the idea seeming incomprehensible to me.
“I have,” Freja said, “but not so suddenly and not either of my parents. They still live in the court, and I visit them often. But yours were ripped from your life in such a heinous act. What were those things that killed them? I did not recognize the weapon.”
“They’re called guns,” I answered. I swallowed before I continued speaking. This topic never grew easier to talk about, even with time. “You don’t have them in this world. But they’re like if you could fire small metal arrows, hundreds at a time.”
“And the man?” Freja said with a curled lip and a snarl. “He did that… why?”
“We don’t know,” I replied. “There have been studies, books written on the subject. He is known all over the world for that terrible act, and still, there is no definitive reason as to why he did it.”
“It sounds like Reon.” Freja stepped forward and hung her head, looking at the ground as she walk
ed past.
“It’s very close, yes.” I nodded as I recalled a similar conversation I had with Kehn so many months ago. Then a thought occurred to me. “How did you know about the guns? I never actually saw them… get shot.”
“The officers had them,” Freja said over her shoulder, still moving away from me. I jogged to catch up to her, but she continued to answer my question. “The ones who came to your door. You were frightened of them. Not the men so much as the weapons they carried. I felt your fear at that dangerous tool.”
“Yeah.” I kicked a nearby pebble, and it skittered into a larger rock. “I’m still not the biggest fan of them.”
“I do not blame you,” Freja sympathized.
We fell into an awkward silence as we walked on. I wanted to ask Freja about what I saw in her memories. Curiosity prodded me with an urgent need. However, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know the story behind the ugly man and the disgust that consumed me. I wondered how Freja lived with that level of hatred and guilt. I wondered if she still lived with it today.
“You have experienced other kinds of tragedy,” I ventured gently, testing out the conversation.
“It comes with the job,” Freja brushed off the hint, letting it roll off her back with ease.
I crinkled my nose in frustration. “Freja, I just told you something that few people in this world know. It’s only been five years since they passed, and I don’t think I will ever be able to get over it. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here, but there will always be a part of me that is missing. There is a part of me that will always be left in that other world.”
Freja didn’t look at me as I said this. She blazed ahead, her face glued to the path before us. I kept my mouth shut, refusing to talk about my parents and my loss any more. While I might have just opened up to my friend, she apparently wasn’t ready to do the same.
That thought wounded me. I thought she might have a little more trust in our relationship, given what we had just gone through. But to Freja, it might just be another battle. It might be another day on the job.
