by Ken Brosky
“Ach, she’s not so bad,” said McCormack, smiling down at me. “Though it wouldn’t ‘a been such a bad idea to pack some supplies.”
“I didn’t have much time …”
“Harper, you’ll take back what you said—”
“Never. I don’t—”
“Both of you shut up!” I shouted. “Gawd, you’re like a pair of teenagers.”
McCormack laughed a hearty laugh. “They’re explorers, lass. This is how all explorers act. Keeps ‘em alive in places like this.”
“Up here,” said Cixi, stopping at the next bend. Harper stopped beside her, momentarily awestruck. Cixi snatched the light from him, shining it down the next passage. Wodehouse reached them next and stopped as well.
“Bloody amazing,” he whispered.
McCormack and I stepped carefully around him, peering inside. I gasped.
Crystals.
Crystals taller than me, jutting out of the slick limestone. Some looked like broken swords, white and sharp; others were mostly jagged near the top like trees broken in half by a giant. Some were as thin as my arm, but others—jutting out at violent angles—were as thick as my waist. The flashlight shined over them and the beam reflected onto others, making it seem as if they were glowing. As if they were alive.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered. Why oh why hadn’t I brought my phone? I could have taken a picture, for crying out loud.
“It’s not natural,” Cixi said, moving closer to the nearest one. It stood at a lazy angle, its top jagged like a king’s crown. She ran her finger along its body.
“What do you mean?” Wodehouse asked. “There it is. Perfectly natural.”
“Naw, she’s right,” McCormack said, edging around me and stepping inside the cavern. He knelt down, examining a clump of smaller crystals. They were clear, like little glass daggers. “These are selenite crystals. Gypsum. They couldn’t ‘a formed here, not at this temperature. They need heat to thrive.”
“Much heat,” Cixi said. “I have been to a cave in Mexico where these crystals form. It is so hot that you can only stay inside for a few minutes. I do not like this.”
“Old Jack went through here,” Harper said. “So we’re going through here.”
“How do ya know?” McCormack asked. His fingers had found the Buddha statue on one of his necklaces. His thumb rubbed the fat man’s tummy.
Harper pulled a piece of tattered, colorful clothing from the tip of one of the crystals. “Only Jack is stupid enough to wear a Hawaiian shirt while exploring. Come on. Our treasure awaits.”
“The looooooot,” McCormack said, reaching out with his hand. I grabbed it, helping him back onto his feet. “Thank ya kindly, lass.”
There came a groan from deeper inside the cave. We stood in silence for a moment, only the slow trickle of water echoing from somewhere deeper inside the cave. No doubt carving out another tunnel. Harper took a deep breath, then made his way around a cloudburst of crystals. Cixi followed close behind.
“I don’t like this one bit,” McCormack said, discarding his Buddha in favor of a little horseshoe necklace.
“Ah, listen,” I said, clearing my throat. I followed everyone around a massive clump of white crystals, keeping a hand on McCormack’s shirt so I wouldn’t trip. “When we get to the castle, you need to know …”
Wodehouse laughed. “Castle? My dear, we’re far more likely to run into a dragon down here.”
There was a passage ahead, just beyond another clump of crystals with impossibly smooth surfaces. It was as if laser beams had shot through the ceiling of the cavern, freezing when they touched the floor. Between them on the ceiling and floor were much smaller spikes, like the bare branches of a tree. I stepped carefully around them, following McCormack into the narrow passage.
“I should lead the way from here on out,” I said, my voice echoing ahead. “We need to be careful, Harper. This cave is dangerous.”
“Harper, who is this girl?” Wodehouse asked, glancing back at me through his thin spectacles. “How does she know so much? And what of Old Jack, anyway?”
“He’s down here.” Harper took a deep breath, pausing ahead. “He was a fool for going in alone. But what’s done is done. Jack’s down here. So’s the treasure.”
“Aye,” McCormack said, grinning at me. “The looooooot.”
“You’re a strange dude,” I told him. He just grinned wider and reached into his pocket, handing me another salty stick of beef jerky. “Thank you.”
“Gotta keep up our energy, lass. Watch yer step here.”
“Oh my.”
I looked ahead. Cixi had disappeared around another bend.
“Wait!” Harper called out. He disappeared next, taking the flashlight with him.
Darkness surrounded us, held at bay by three very dim headlamps. I felt my lungs constrict. My hand reached out, grabbing McCormack’s backpack for balance.
“Well isn’t this great,” Wodehouse said. I heard his feet shuffle on the ground. “Ah, yes. Do as I’m doing. Shuffle your feet … yes, it’s quite level here.”
“You all right, lass?” McCormack asked in a low whisper. His light went out. Mine flickered, dimming even more than usual.
“Oh I’m wonderful,” I said. “Except for the whole pitch-blackness thing.”
“Ah. Oof.” I heard the distinct sound of Wodehouse’s glasses being folded up. “Right. There’s a wall here. Do you feel it, McCormack?”
“Aye.”
“Turn left. I … oh dear me.”
McCormack and I made our way around the bend. We could see the beam of Harper’s light up ahead, where the cave opened up into a massive cavern. The beam was focused squarely on an old, twisted black tree with long, twisted limbs that seemed to reach out toward us, as if trying to keep us from entering the cavern.
Limbs full of leaves.
Silver leaves.
Chapter 10
We sat beside the tree with the flashlight between us, pointed upward. It cut through the darkness, illuminating the stalactites on the ceiling far above. McCormack turned the leaf of silver around again and again in his hand, marveling at it. Examining it.
“Certainly looks like the real stuff,” he murmured. “Though I’ve never heard ‘a silver growing from a tree. Don’t suppose you’ll tell us what’s going on now?”
“Yes, Harper. Please explain.” Wodehouse was the only one standing, staring at the dark forest ahead. He finished off his water bottle, then tossed it into the darkness. It bounced a few times, and the bounces seemed to echo for minutes. Our voices, too, were carrying. Even a whisper created an echo.
“It’s a forest,” Harper said, shrugging. He took a bite of beef jerky, finishing it off with a sip from his cup of water. McCormack’s metal cup of water. “What do you want me to say? This is the first I’ve seen it, too.”
“Never have I encountered a forest belowground,” Cixi said. She’d sworn off McCormack’s bag of food, opting instead to keep on looking all scary and intimidating.
“Ask the girl,” Harper said. He groaned, leaning back and stretching his legs beside the flashlight. “She’s one who dreamed of this place.”
They looked at me.
“Uh … well, there are these …”
“Out with it then,” Wodehouse said, packing his pipe. He raised an eyebrow to McCormack. “If you don’t mind?”
McCormack reached into his pocket, pulling out a metal lighter and tossing it to Wodehouse.
“Much obliged.” He lit his pipe and tossed the lighter back to McCormack, nearly overshooting him. McCormack reached out, just barely grabbing it.
“Careful, ya bleedin’ high-falootin’ ninny!”
Wodehouse puffed on his pipe, ignoring the big man and gazing out at the forest again. “Well, girl? What say you?”
“This forest … it was in a fairy tale,” I said. “Along with twelve dancing princesses and a lake and some other stuff. And it’s all real.”
“Oh come come now.” W
odehouse scoffed. “Harper, what’s the truth of it all?”
“She may be partially right.”
“Say what now?”
Harper stood, finishing his metal cup of water. He handed it back to McCormack with a nod. “I have a theory. See, the girl’s right. I dunno about her dreams and all that, but there’s a reason this cavern is exactly like the fairy tale: someone was here, long ago, and wrote a story about it.”
Close, Mr. Adventurer.
“So the fairy tale is based on this place?” Wodehouse asked, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe. “Hmmmm. What supports such a preposterous notion?”
“Fida’i Castle,” Harper said. His fingers tightened into fists. “One of the castles that belonged to the famous Assassins, otherwise known as the Hashshashins, otherwise known as the Nizaris. Their origins trace back to the first Crusade, when their master Hassan-i Sabbah took over a fortress in Alamut and began training an order of warriors who could assassinate his targets. No one was safe from them.”
“What do they have to do with this?” Wodehouse demanded.
Harper looked down at the flashlight, lost inside his memory. “Fida’i Castle had been lost after the Mongol invasion, but my team found it nearly intact, buried in the sand. Twenty years ago. We explored the castle and found a single bottle tucked away inside a large room that had once been a library. The books were all burned and charred and scattered across the room. But the bottle was intact and plugged with a glass stopper.”
A choking feeling crept up my throat.
“And so what, then?” Wodehouse asked testily. “Get on with it, man!”
“I unplugged the bottle,” Harper said. “From it sprung a … a demon. It was like a little tornado, gathering up the burned pages of books. And inside, you could see its eyes. It began killing our fellow explorers.”
“Aye, of course,” McCormack said, his eyes wide. “But you survived, didn’t ya? And how might that be?”
“What does it matter,” Harper snapped. “Old Jack and I escaped. The others died. But you see, I remembered that demon … that spirit. It was from an old fairy tale my ma used to tell when I was a child. Once there was a boy who tricked a spirit that was stuck inside a bottle. The spirit rewarded the boy for his trickery, and the boy lived happily ever after with his father.”
“A fine tale,” McCormack said.
Harper shook his head. “It wasn’t a tale. It was a real story. Just like the story of the twelve dancing princesses. This is the place the Brothers Grimm wrote about.”
Close but no cigar, Indiana Jones.
I kept my mouth shut. Correcting Harper’s weird theory wouldn’t change anything. In fact, I was starting to get the uneasy feeling that we were all keeping secrets from each other.
“Say we believe you,” Wodehouse said slowly, “what else does this story speak of?”
Harper smiled. “I’ll show you.”
We passed between the trees, following Harper’s beam of light and keeping close. I pulled the magic pen from my pocket, listening carefully for any sounds. Specifically, sounds of ghost princesses who were probably not going to be in the best of moods. I wanted to keep these people alive, no matter what. They could have their bags of treasure and Sam Grayle could have his. And if he didn’t like that, he could—
“Oof!” I said, bumping into the trunk of one of the trees. The rough bark scraped my face. I bent over, rubbing my cheek. “You’d think being a hero would make it easier to deal with pain,” I whispered harshly. Something caught my eye just beyond the tree. On the cave floor. I crawled closer and lowered my head to keep the dim light from my headlamp centered on it, sure my eyes were playing tricks on me.
No. It was an intricate carving in the rock. A small figure and a bunch of much larger figures. And behind the much larger figures: a shadowy mass, just like the rubbing in Old Jack’s satchel.
McCormack laughed, patting me on the shoulder and nearly scaring the bejeebers out of me. “Need glasses, do ya? I bet Wodehouse’ll let you borrow his if ya ask real nice-like.”
“I’m fine. I just got distracted.”
The big man grunted, pulling out another lucky charm from his necklace: a cross. The cross of St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. Chase’s mom had a similar necklace. “Don’t see how ya could get distracted in a place like this. I’m about scared witless right now. None o’ this feels right. Sooner we fill our bags with loot, the sooner McCormack’s gettin’ outta here.”
“What are you going to do with your treasure?” I asked.
“Oh, same thing I always do with it: gamble it all away. Buy some junk I don’t need. Maybe take a vacation somewheres. It’ll be gone before I know it.”
“At least you’re honest,” I said, following him around a thick tree. I ducked to avoid the lowest branches. The tip of my head brushed up against one, causing the silver leaves to clink together. “What if we never get out? Then the leaf is worthless.”
“Oh, we adventurers know the risks,” McCormack said. “Doesn’t stop us, though. It’s the thrill that gets us. You can swear off sugar all ya want, but when those chocolate chip cookies come fresh outta the oven, you’ll find yerself diggin’ in soon enough.”
“Up here,” Harper called out. We hurried to where he’d stopped, between two tall trees with thick, twisting limbs. He shined the beam of his light directly above him, to the leaves hanging from the lowest branch.
Wodehouse gasped. “Is that …”
“Only one way to be sure,” McCormack said, pulling one of the metal cups from his backpack. He threw it up in the air, hitting the lowest branch and shaking loose a leaf. Instead of floating gently to the cave floor, it crashed down, bouncing once on the hard rock. McCormack picked it up. Harper shined his light on it.
Gold.
“I’d say it’s impossible,” Wodehouse said, “only we’ve already passed trees with silver leaves.”
I turned to Cixi to see if she was as enraptured by the sight of gold as the guys, but she wasn’t. She was looking right at me. The hilts of her daggers poked out from inside her vest. She had another creepy look cued up on her face, too.
“McCormack,” Harper said.
“Right.” McCormack took off his bag and kneeled on the hard floor, groaning. He pulled out a black rock and rubbed the gold leaf on it, leaving a streak. Then he pulled out two small vials, one marked “1” and the other marked “2.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Applyin’ an acid test,” he answered, grabbing the first vial and pouring its contents on the black rock. “This stuff’s nitric acid.”
“The smudge didn’t disappear.”
“Right. That means it’s probably gold.”
Wodehouse whistled.
“But we can be more sure with this stuff. It’s how ya go from bein’ pretty sure to counting-your-chickens sure.” He poured it on the smudge. The gold residue bubbled and disappeared.
We were silent a moment, staring at the leaf.
“Well!” Wodehouse clasped his hands together, and the sound echoed above us. “Who’s for a little scavenging, eh? McCormack, I’m sure we could empty out that backpack of yours quite easily.”
“I ain’t yer pack mule, ya bloated boot licker!”
“Settle now,” Harper said. “McCormack, what would you price that leaf at?”
The big man picked it up and hefted it in his hand, humming a cheerful tune while he ran calculations in his head. “Oh, I’d say around twenty thousand or so.”
Harper nodded. “Come on.”
Wodehouse jumped comically, grabbing a branch and shaking loose more golden leaves. He covered his head as they came raining down, bouncing with a clang on the rock floor. He picked up two, stuffing them in his breast pocket. He handed one to Cixi, who looked at it strangely before handing it back. Then she looked at me. Same creepy look.
And her headlamp had gone out, too.
I held out my hand to McCormack. He took it and I pull
ed him up, feeling my back muscles tense. The cuts on my shoulder stung.
“Oh, yer a tough one, all right,” he said, slipping the leaf inside the pocket of his coat. “You just stay close to McCormack now. My bones tell me this place ain’t all roses and perfume. Something ain’t right.”
“In that case, you’d better stay close to me,” I told him. I stared down at the ground, searching for another carving in the cave floor. Nothing. The rock was smooth.
“Up here!” Harper called out. We weaved between the trees. Harper and Wodehouse were staring ahead, Wodehouse’s eyes agog.
“Dear me,” McCormack whispered. “What black magic is this?”
Diamonds. Diamonds of all shapes and sizes, sprouting from the branches of more trees like little budding leaves. The trees themselves were even more grotesque than their siblings, with gangly limbs that nearly reached down to the rocky floor and wide trunks whose black bark was split and peeling.
Wodehouse reached out, plucked a cherry-sized one from a branch and handed it McCormack. “Tell us what you think.”
“I think we should leave ‘em,” he said, not touching the diamond.
Wodehouse looked at Cixi, then Harper. “What are you talking about, man?”
“This place ain’t right,” McCormack said. “You know it and I know it.”
“This is why you’re here,” Wodehouse said. “The sooner you do your job, the sooner we can leave.” He tossed the gem. McCormack caught it, pinching it between two fingers. It wasn’t at all shaped like the diamonds you would find in a jewelry store. Its form was uncut and imperfect, its sparkle hidden.
Still, with the light shining on it ... it looked beautiful. And there was a thrill to it, too. The thrill of discovery. Of being down here even though I was terrified that Agnim’s prophecy was coming true and even though there were some seriously creepy princesses hanging out somewhere in the darkness. Even still, this was a real adventure.
“Well?” Wodehouse asked.
McCormack’s right eye studied it closely, moving it around between his fat fingers. “Aye,” he said finally. “This is a diamond, sure ‘nuff.”
