“Gilbert, answer me!” Madelina’s frantic voice bounced off the rocks. “Answer me right now or I’ll kill you!”
Despite the situation, both Katriane and I managed to laugh, although her laughter turned into a sob as I wrestled her shoe from her foot. I was thankful she was wearing dainty slippers instead of boots; if I’d tried to pry a boot off from her already-swelling foot, she’d probably have passed out. I asked her to move her ankle and she did, despite the tears streaming from her eyes.
“We’re fine!” I shouted up. “Katriane hurt her ankle, but I don’t think it’s broken!”
“Should I get ropes?” Michel called. The sound of his voice chilled me. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never heard him sound scared before.
Katriane grasped my arm. “Gil, look.”
Because of my worry for Katriane, I hadn’t even taken a moment to assess where we were. Or the fact that I could still see, despite being in a hole in the ground. We’d landed in a circular room of sorts, the ceiling high enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about hitting my head on it when I stood. The ground was smooth and damp and cold to the touch. Directly in front of us was a corridor, and from there came both sunlight and the sounds of the ocean. I sighed in relief. All we had to do was follow the corridor, and we’d end up on the beach.
“No, it’s fine,” I shouted up to Michel. “There’s a path to the beach.” I said a silent prayer of thanks that the tide wasn’t in. If the damp ground was any indication, this place must flood during high tide. Both Katriane and I knew how to swim, but I didn’t think we’d have made it to the end of the corridor before running out of air.
“We’ll meet you there,” Michel said.
“Gilbert.” Madelina’s voice was edged with warning. “Get out of there safely, both of you, or you will answer to me.”
“Gee, Lina, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were actually worried about us.” I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out for Katriane, who giggled as she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I’m not worried!” our older sister huffed. “You’ve ruined a perfectly good painting day, and I’m furious at both of you!”
“She loves us,” I said to Katriane, standing and brushing off my pants. My arm stung and was bleeding, but I couldn’t see how badly the scrape was in the weak light. Wiping the blood off on the front of my shirt, I knelt for Katriane, instructing her to get on my back.
“Wait. Gil.” Katriane pointed straight ahead, directly across from the corridor and away from the light. “What is that?”
I squinted and stared into the shadows, trying to see what she saw. “I don’t see anything, Kat. Come on, let’s go before Lina decides to slide down the chute after us.”
“No, look!” Trying to get up, she gasped when she put weight on her foot and I barely caught her in time. Giving her a stern look that I hoped she could see in the dark, I knelt in front of her once more. This time she climbed up on my back, wrapping her arms around my neck. I was careful not to touch her swollen ankle as I stood.
But when I turned to go, Katriane said, “No!” and pounded one hand on my shoulder.
“Kat—”
“Please, Gil! It’ll only take a second. And when will we ever come back here?”
“Never,” I said immediately. “Never, ever again will you and I plunge through a trap door in that ill-fated church and slide down a tunnel and get hurt—”
“All right, all right,” she interrupted. I imagined her rolling her eyes at my speech. “Just go look, will you?”
“Fine!” I had to admit, my interest was piqued. Taking a few shuffling steps closer as I tried to adapt to the extra weight on my back, I peered into the darkness. There was a recess of some type carved into the rock wall. I had no idea how Katriane had managed to see it; it was only when I was right next to it that I noticed it.
The recess was oval shaped; reaching forward I ran my hand along the sides and felt a groove, like someone had carved a sort of pattern into the stone. In the center was a small pedestal. At some point it must have displayed something, but now it was empty. Katriane sighed in disappointment when I told her that, but she made me search every nook until she was satisfied with my previous answer.
“What do you think they kept in here?” she asked, her voice low with awe. “It had to be something important, right? Like a buried treasure?”
I had to agree. Why else would they go through the trouble of hiding it in a hidden chamber that flooded during high tide if it wasn’t something of value? “Wait—high tide. Wouldn’t the treasure have washed away the moment this chamber flooded?”
“Oh.” Katriane slumped against me, and I fought to keep my balance. “You’re right. Nothing was here. I got all excited for nothing. Sorry, Gil.”
“No, I don’t think you were wrong. There’s something about this chamber that’s weird, don’t you think?”
Before she could answer, Michel’s shouts echoed from the end of the corridor. He must have flown down the side of the cliff to have reached us already! “I’m coming in, Gil!”
“All right,” I said as his footsteps neared. Only one pair; I guess he’d made Madelina remain in the church. Or, better yet, sent her home.
Like she’d actually listen to him and go home.
“Your sister’s waiting on the beach,” Michel said and I groaned. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t even know she followed me until I was halfway down the cliff.”
“Please don’t tell me you climbed down,” I said through gritted teeth.
Michel flashed us a smile. “It’s the fastest way down.”
“Lina is climbing down the cliff?” Katriane asked in disbelief.
“Climbed,” Michel corrected. “You should have seen her. I think your sister is part monkey; she reached the bottom before me!”
I shut my eyes, trying not to imagine Madelina making one wrong move and plummeting to her death. Between her and Katriane, I was going to age about ten years today. “Let’s go—”
“So what is this place?” Michel turned in a slow circle as he surveyed the chamber, his hands on his hips. “Did you find any treasure?”
“No, just this recess,” I said, shifting Katriane who seemed to be growing heavier by the minute.
“And it’s empty,” Katriane added.
“Well, that’s no fun.” Michel inspected the recess, obviously not believing us that it was empty. “Probably picked clean by the same people who raided the monastery.”
“This place floods,” I said, trying to convey with my tone of voice how urgent it was that we leave now. “Whatever they put in here would have washed away at high tide.”
“Not if the way I came in was blocked,” Michel replied.
“Blocked?” Suddenly the walls seemed closer, and I had trouble catching my breath.
“I had to crawl through a gap,” he confirmed. “It was a tight fit, too. I thought I would have to send Madelina in instead. That would have been a lovely view…”
If my hands weren’t full carrying my younger sister, I would have punched Michel in the jaw. That was probably why he said what he did, with a smirk on his face. He knew I couldn’t do anything about it.
“Anyway, that entrance probably wasn’t an entrance at all, back when they built this place,” he continued.
“So then how did they get out of here, genius?” I asked, still annoyed with him. “You can’t exactly climb back up.” The walls were smooth and devoid of any handholds.
Michel shrugged. “Maybe they had a rope? Does that really matter, Gil?”
“It matters to anyone who stumbled down here and couldn’t get out!” Again it felt like the walls had shifted closer, surrounding us ominously. Was the air getting thinner?
“Who cares?” Michel said. “You’ve got yourself an exit right at the end of the tunnel, no rope needed.” He circled slowly. “You know, I bet once upon a time, there was a treasure in here.”
Katriane tig
htened her hold, nearly choking me, as she sat up straighter, excited once again. “I wonder what it was?”
“Maybe a crown,” Michel said, turning toward the corridor.
“Or a scepter,” Katriane said as I followed him down the dank and narrow tunnel.
“Or a box of gold coins.”
Katriane practically leapt from my arms. “From a pirate ship!”
“It was probably that gold disc the saints are holding in the stained glass window upstairs,” I suggested.
I could feel both of them staring at me in exasperation. “Gilbert,” Michel said, “You have no sense of imagination.”
“Yeah, Gil,” Katriane chimed in. “No imagination.”
“He’s so boring.”
“The most boring older brother ever!”
Michel laughed. “I bet you wished you had someone like me as your older brother.”
When Katriane didn’t answer, I had to fight to keep my laughter in. She didn’t want to say no, because that would mean insulting Michel, but if she said yes… Well, who wanted to be related to the boy you had a massive crush on?
Taking pity on her, I asked, “How much farther?” The ceiling was lower here, and we were both forced to walk stooped over. My back was starting to scream, but I wouldn’t let Katriane go until I had her safely at home, tucked away in bed as we waited for our family physician to look at her ankle.
“Not much. Watch your head,” Michel said after I banged it on a stalactite.
Listening to me swear, Katriane warned, “I’m telling Mother you said that!”
“Go ahead,” I grumbled. “Next time, Michel, tell me before I hit my head, all right?”
“No need. We’re here.” He knelt, allowing me a view of the entrance. Just like he’d said, it was partially obstructed, but there was enough space for us to wiggle our bodies through. We just needed to crouch on the ground and crawl through. I worried about Katriane, but she inhaled deeply and said, “I can do it.”
Through the gap we could see Madelina, her eyes burning with worry. “Oh, finally! What were you doing in there? Having a picnic?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what we were doing,” I shot back, irritated. “We were killing time until high tide came so we could go for a swim!”
“Don’t talk about killing anything when you could have died, Gilbert!”
My vision went hazy with red. “Don’t you dare lecture me right now when you climbed down the side of cliff! What were you thinking, Madelina?”
“I was thinking I needed to get to my brother and sister as fast as possible, and that was the best way,” she said quietly, her face pale with rage.
“Oh.” The fight left me then.
“Yes, oh. Did you think about me, while you were down there exploring? Did you think about how worried I was? How scared I was when I watched the two of you fall through a hole in the ground?” Madelina had gone back to screaming, making me wince. “I thought you were dead! I thought you’d gone and left me… Left me to explain to Mother and Father about how stupid you both are!” Tears glistened in her eyes, and she turned away quickly, scrubbing at them with the back of her hand.
Katriane slid off my back, balancing herself on one foot by placing a hand on my shoulder. “You made her cry.”
“We both did,” I said.
She frowned at that, her lower lip trembling. Katriane was the type who cried if she saw others crying, but when she glanced at Michel, I knew she was struggling to keep those tears from forming. She wanted to appear brave in front of him.
Michel clapped his hands together, the sound echoing off the walls. “I wish I had siblings. Do you realize how lucky you are, Gilbert?”
I glanced first at Katriane, trying so hard to be strong, and then at Madelina, who was watching us through the opening, her eyes rimmed with red, and I said, “I do.”
Chapter Four
Michel crawled through first while I guided Katriane to the hole and fussed over her ankle until she pushed my hands away and told me to stop treating her like a baby. Then she paused, biting her lip, and said, “Thank you.”
But when I tried to help her crawl through the gap, she gave me such a glare that I backed off.
By the time I squeezed through the narrow hole, Michel was already carrying Katriane on his back. If my little sister was in any pain, I’d never know, not with the way she was smiling blissfully.
“Huh,” Madelina said, watching her. “Think I could convince Michel to carry me like that?”
“I’m sorry, but wasn’t I the one who fell down a hole?” I asked her. “Why are you the one acting like you just hit your head?”
She shoved me hard enough that I fell over. Sand got into the forgotten scrape on my arm, and I stifled a cry.
“Gilbert, come on,” Michel said, already halfway across the beach. “Why are you fooling around? Especially when you’re injured!”
“I’m not fooling around,” I muttered, brushing sand off my arm and wincing as I did so. Madelina held a hand out for me and I hesitated before allowing her to help me to my feet. After giving me a look that said she noticed my hesitation, she bounded off after Michel. “What about your art supplies?” I called after her.
“I’ll get them later!” she shouted over her shoulder.
Instead of climbing back up the cliff—which I had no intention of doing—we took the natural path that had been carved into the side, the one everyone in Ayres took when visiting the beach. On such a hot day, both the beach and the path were crowded with Ayrens, and we were forced to go slower than we wanted to. Keeping my arm tucked to my side, I asked Michel more than once if he wanted to pass Katriane to me, but his answer was always no. When Katriane gave me such a venomous look that I feared my face would start melting, I snapped my mouth shut and didn’t ask again.
It took a half hour to finally return home. As soon as the butler opened the door, Madelina barked at him to send for the physician. Unaccustomed to Madelina’s sharp tone of voice, the butler paused, unsure of his self, but once I shoved my bloodied and scratched arm in his face, he snapped to attention and raced out the front door himself, instead of sending one of the other servants.
“You shouldn’t be so cruel to your help,” Michel said, grinning.
“Isn’t it time for you to go home?” I snarled.
But no, Michel continued acting the hero, climbing the stairs with Katriane still on his back while Mother appeared, demanding to know what’d happened. I left Madelina to explain, following Michel to Katriane’s room. He deposited her gently on her bed, but before he could start fussing with the pillows, I was there, placing one gently under her injured ankle. Or, at least I thought I was being gentle, but Katriane yelped and kicked me with her uninjured foot, causing me to curse.
“Gilbert! What language! And in front of your sister, no less!” Mother stormed into the room, took one look at my bloodied arm, and ordered me out. “Go clean that up before you bleed all over the carpet!”
“We can’t have that.” Rolling my eyes, I escaped from the room, Michel following me. I gave him a look. “Done playing the hero, then?”
“What are you so upset about?” He smacked me on the back. “If it’s Katriane’s virtue, you have nothing to fear. She’s too young for me. Maybe in five years…”
“Finish that sentence, and I will kill you.”
His laughter echoed off the walls. With a scowl I marched into the bathroom and grabbed a fresh towel. After dipping it in a basin of clean water, I held it to the scrape, biting back another oath.
“Do you want me to—” Michel began.
“No.” Dunking the cloth in the water with more force than necessary, I watched the water turn from clear to a rusty red.
“Fine then.” Michel leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
“My sister was hurt! We shouldn’t have gone to the church. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have—”
&nb
sp; “Gilbert.”
“What?” I asked, annoyed at being interrupted.
“You can’t protect your sisters forever.”
Dropping the soiled cloth into the water with a sigh, I said, “I know. But I want to at least protect them now, while I can.”
“And you don’t want to be a Knight,” he said with a smirk.
“What?” I tried to feign innocence, but Michel saw right through me.
“You think I don’t know? That when we spar, your heart is no longer in it, like it once was?”
Dipping my head in shame, I kept my eyes on the cloudy water in the basin. I thought I’d been better at hiding my dissatisfaction. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, you idiot.” He slapped me on the shoulder, jolting me. He at least had the decency to hit my uninjured arm. “Just… Give it a chance. Give me a chance.”
“Michel…”
“You want to protect your sisters, right? Your family? Then why are you so opposed to being a Knight? What do you think a Knight does? What have we been training for all this while, you dope?”
I stood slowly, rummaging in our cabinet for bandages. I found nothing but another pristine cloth, which I pressed against my scratch with a wince. Mother was going to kill me for soiling not one, but two of her linens.
“I just don’t think an army of magicians is going to come to Ayres,” I told Michel as he took the cloth from me and tied it around my forearm tightly. It would have to do for now; I would have the physician treat me after he’d finished with Katriane. “We’re just a city overlooking the ocean, Michel. It’s been thousands of years since our last encounter with magic.”
“It happened once before,” he said quietly. “And it could happen again. Wouldn’t you rather be prepared than grossly out of your league? Don’t you want the chance to do something, rather than nothing?”
I sighed. His words made sense. If I wanted to protect the people I loved, then I needed to be prepared. For anything.
“Fine,” I said, watching as his face broke out into a smile. “But at least wait until my arm heals before sparring with me, all right?”
By the Morning Light_Smoke and Mirrors Page 13
