by Julie Wright
I studied the music for several moments, trying to get the tune in my head to correspond to the notes on the tablets. I’d become much better at sight reading, but wasn’t—by any stretch— perfect at it. And this wasn’t a piano—it was an organ. I’d taken organ lessons for all of two weeks before I went bawling to my mom about how hard it was. Farmor had suggested those lessons and was disappointed when my mom took my side and refused to make me go anymore. They finally agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to try the piano. After the organ, I’d loved the piano.
But now, staring at the layers of keys, I wondered if it would have been so hard to stick it out with those cursed organ lessons.
At least playing an instrument couldn’t drown me.
I considered the pipes. Air needed to go through them to make the noise, but that air had to go to the right pipe. I hoped the air in this cave was more familiar with this organ than me. I tried the first chord, pressing my fingers into the stone keys while at the same time imagining bowing to the air, bowing and moving forward. If it worked for water . . . it should work for air. I heard the sound in my head, knowing what those notes should have sounded like.
It actually surprised me when the sound I’d imagined actually burst forth from the pipes. I turned around to smile at Farmor.
“You mustn’t stop once you start,” she repeated, acting alarmed and glancing up at the ceiling of the cavern. I followed her gaze and gulped.
Stalactites hung directly over me, and I could have sworn I heard the cracking of stone. One of them wobbled just a little like a loose tooth working its way out of the gums. Playing an instrument might not drown me, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t kill me.
Chapter Nineteen
Note to self:
Buy my piano teacher flowers.
With a renewed sense of life preservation, I went back to the music. My fingers trembled as they pressed the next chord, only instead of the right notes blaring through the pipes, the sound was completely wrong.
A stalactite speared the floor in a crushing noise of stone pounding into stone. It landed right next to my seat, close enough that I felt the whoosh. I would have jumped with the shock of nearly being impaled by a stalactite, except I couldn’t. Seriously. Couldn’t. At all.
It was like someone had super-glued my butt to the ice cube seat. After a few more tries, I realized this was part of the game. I either play, and play right, or become a skewered dinner for human-eating trolls. Not that I had any idea if trolls ate humans or not, but the old fairy tales about them left enough room for that to be a huge possibility.
Yep. Playing this instrument was definitely going to kill me.
I tried another chord and felt relief when it came out of the pipes the way it was supposed to. The electricity flowing out of me flickered as I peeked up when a second crack threatened to loosen another stalactite on me. With my hesitation, that stalactite fell, whistling through the air before it shattered into the spot directly to my left. Splintered stalactite pieces pelted and sliced at my bare legs and feet.
“Stop that!” I screamed, wishing with all my heart that wishes actually worked and that I could somehow unglue my backside from the stone seat. The magical electricity winked out entirely with the shattering of the rocks. How was I supposed to concentrate if they were going to keep throwing rocks with sharp, pointy ends at me?
“Don’t break your focus. Keep playing!” Farmor cried, her voice filled with all the urgency that the situation demanded.
“I am!” Another crack of stone sounded from above, letting me know only a moment existed before another projectile dropped. I glanced up while placing my fingers on the keys. The stalactites were falling in order. There were five in a circle and then one directly over my head. Six total, and two had already plummeted.
The chord came out right. I moved my fingers to the next one, trying to stoke the electricity flowing through me so it wouldn’t extinguish again. The air pushed through the right pipes for the next three chords. But then I lost my groove for the fourth, resulting in another shock of stone shattering against the ground surrounding me. Blood dribbled from the several cuts on my legs caused by flying debris. This was a million times worse than any piano recital I’d ever been to, even the one where Tom Bobbins threw up on my shoes.
Why, oh why hadn’t I stayed in those stupid organ lessons?
Ignoring the blood and the worry that I might just pass out from complete terror, I pressed another chord. C sharp, E, and G sharp. If I didn’t get these all right, I’d be dealing with sharps all over the place. Perfect.
Another one.
Perfect.
Another one.
Crash!
“Really? The best way to test new witches is to spear them while they play stupid songs?” I shouted.
Another crash.
Apparently, whoever was in charge didn’t approve of me dissing their music selection. Farmor let out a cry that sounded somewhere between despair and exasperation.
There were only two chords left.
Two chords and one stalactite.
I was out of chances to mess up.
I barely saw my fingers, let alone the organ keys, through the sweat rolling down into my eyes, and the tears rolling out of them. I cringed and played the chord.
The right notes blasted out of the pipes.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I looked at the last set of notes, uncertain where to put my hands. But when the crack came from above, I knew there was no time for hesitation. I closed my eyes, begged harder than ever for the air to dance with me, and pressed my fingers hard onto the keys.
Silence. Nothing came from the pipes, but there hadn’t been a sharp spike through the top of my head either. I totally counted that as a good thing.
I hazarded a glance up. The stalactite hung without wobbling or threatening in any way.
What was going on?
I glanced to Farmor, who outright bawled. She shook her head as though she couldn’t speak. She seemed fainter than she had before, almost like she’d become a shadow while I played the song of my life—literally. She beckoned me to stand.
I did. Grateful to not be glued to the bench anymore. All too glad to get out from underneath that stalactite.
Then the room filled with the last chord—delayed for who only knew what purpose. And with that chord, several others joined in and music raged through the pipes.
Had I called the song stupid?
It was beautiful. It was like the air itself celebrated my triumph. It swirled around me, dancing and singing through the pipes of the organ. Each note filled with hope and jubilance. Tears leaked out my eyes at the sheer perfection of such sound.
“Thank you,” I whispered and physically bowed to the air for helping me.
“I wish I could hug you, älskling,” Farmor said when the wispy shadow of her form came to move me on with my trials. “But soon, I will. We need to keep moving. There will be time to rest when we’re done.”
I nodded and followed her, the tears still flowing down my cheeks, the music behind me swelling with joy. “After that, what worse could they do to me?”
The way her wrinkles folded in the center of her forehead told me it was a question better left unasked.
We walked through several more tunnels, my claustrophobia intensifying as the passages became so narrow we had to move single file, and, even then, rocks scraped against us as we walked.
Down another long, swirling flight of stairs carved into the stone that had grown hot under my feet—hot enough to blister and make me wish for my shoes. But while some shark was wearing my favorite jeans, some seal was likely chewing on my nearly brand new Toms.
I really wished those shoes were on my feet. Heat billowed up the stairwell in waves. “Let me guess,” I said to Farmor. “Fire?”
She made no response and refused to meet my eye as her form ghosted down the stairs in front of me. That meant I was right.
“It smells lik
e a gas station in here,” I said as we rounded a corner. I tried breathing through my cape, worrying the fumes would make me sick. At the same time I considered taking the cape off. The sweltering heat was enough to make a person pass out. How did they get heat in a cave? Sweden had no natural volcanoes or anything like that—at least not that I knew of.
We entered a small cavern. It wasn’t actually small, but the fact that nearly the whole cavern was filled with the hugest Dala horse statue I’d ever seen made it feel excruciatingly tiny. Red light glowed from the opening into the other room, making the red horse look like it was on fire.
Farmor pointed to the huge horse statue. “You must ride the Dala through the fires of Bensin. His name is Nils. I’ll be waiting on the opposite side where you will be able to see me the whole time. I won’t leave you here. Don’t worry.”
“Ride it?” I asked. “It isn’t real.” I knocked on the horse’s rump to prove my point and then realized the situation was worse than ridiculous. I hit it again.
I had expected it to be wood like the traditional Dala horses Farmor had sent my mom to decorate the kitchen. But the horse felt slimy, like wax.
“Are you kidding me? They want me to ride a wax horse through fire? How far is it across the room?” I shoved past the wisps of her ghost-like form and peeked around the corner into the next cavern. When I looked back at her, I could tell she agreed with me that this was likely the dumbest thing anyone could have come up with. It made me wonder who exactly this Troll King was.
The trial was definitely fire as I’d guessed earlier. I hated being right.
I shouted in exasperation, “That room is so wide, it’s like its own country! The horse’ll melt! It’s already melting just being in this hot cave. And it’s wax. Call him Nils, Call him Joe. I don’t care what you call him because wax doesn’t gallop. How do they expect me to—”
Farmor hummed a little tune, and with that tune, the horse stretched and shook its waxy, red mane as though it had been asleep.
“Ride it through the fires of Bensin,” she repeated. “And remember, fire is not like water, or air. Fire cannot be danced with when it’s in a feeding frenzy, not without getting burned. You must learn to control chaos.” She nodded to the horse. “Up you go. There isn’t much time.”
Having never been on a horse in my life, this didn’t exactly fill me with happiness. She’d worried so much about the piano lessons, but failed to mention horseback riding lessons? Not that I wasn’t grateful for those piano lessons. The air trial would have ended in disaster without them.
“Can I really not change my mind? I don’t really want to prove anything to anyone.” The heat and situation filled me with terror. If they gave me the death penalty, it might be a kinder death than the one currently facing me.
“No going back. Get up there.” Her little ghost form looked like it might stamp its foot impatiently at me, if it had the substance to do so.
I grabbed hold of the yellow harness and pulled myself into the bright blue saddle that, gratefully, felt like soft leather rather than wax. The harness, however, felt melty and slippery in my hands. “So if I can’t dance with the fire, how do I control it?”
She didn’t respond.
Instead her shadow floated off into the room before me.
I grunted. “We’d better hurry. You aren’t getting any more solid with us standing around. Giddiyap, Nils.” I nudged my heels into the waxy sides, and the horse snorted blowing a few chunks of wax out of his nostrils. Then he clopped forward, the waxy hooves making a sucking sound when they left the ground. We entered the room of fire.
I felt a little silly for complaining over the cold earlier.
A stone path went straight through the center of the long room. Off to each side of that path were torrents of flames. They swirled high to the ceiling. And the ceiling was high. All of the smoke fled out from the cavern through several holes in the ceiling that led to the sky outside.
“So hungry!” the fire cracked and spit. And in a way I could not explain, I understood that it looked at me and Nils-the-horse as though we were things to consume. The fact that the fire had spoken in my head freaked me out, but to find it wanted to make a snack out of me?
“Heeyah!” I yelled, and dug my heels harder into the horse to make him run or gallop or do whatever horses did, but he continued in the same steady pace as before.
The horse grew shorter as his hooves melted into the floor with every step. We’d never make it.
“Starving! So Hungry!” the fire hissed and popped. “Feed me!” And another flame licked against my toes, burning them so much that it shot pain through my whole leg. The fire quivered with relief to find something to consume. Another flame lashed out from the side at me.
I tried to focus my energy, the electricity that came from somewhere in the depths of my grey matter. I felt its flow and shot it out towards the flames that seemed to all be coming for me at once. I mentally shoved the fire backwards, and it worked—for a moment. Why couldn’t it be polite like the water or the air?
Air! I could blow it out with the air from the outside where all that smoke was going. I called to the air, pleading it to come to my rescue. And it did as I asked.
Wind funneled into the cavern, but instead of blowing the fire out, it whipped it into a frenzy of feeding.
“Yes!” The fire burned. “Feed me!” Flames shot across the pathway from both sides, blown together by the wind.
Nils-the-horse whinnied and shook his mane. Droplets of hot, red wax spotted over my legs, arms, and face, and scalded my skin everywhere they hit. I felt grateful not to be sitting directly on the wax of the creature’s back. But the horse didn’t stop his steady course forward. He walked us straight into the flames blown over our path.
“You can’t dance with the fire.” I repeated Farmor’s words, and shoved again—hard. I released the air, sending it back out through the holes in the ceiling. In the force of my pushing, the fire backed up a few feet on both sides—enough that I saw it was riding on top of what seemed to be water.
I refocused my energy, trying to seek out the water and call it to me for a dance. And there, underneath the surface of the fire and what must have been oil or something, the water bowed back to me, asking only that I free it to join me.
I pulled the water upward, breaking through the oily slick of its surface into a wave on both sides of the path. Keeping the waves held up as solid walls against the flames totally exhausted me. I trembled physically, my body feeling as though I held the ocean in my arms. At any moment that weight could crush me.
“So Hungry!” The fire raged from the other sides of the waves. “Starving! Feed Me!
The fire flared against the wave, trying to break through, trying to push the oil up the wall of water to get to me. I felt its heated fury building into a frenzy.
I was going to die.
Chapter Twenty
Note to self:
Fire has an eating disorder.
The horse continued his sluggish pace, the heat of the stone sucking away the wax with every step. The path needed to be cooled or we’d never make it, and the weight of the water made my whole body tremble under the burden. I allowed a bit of the water to trickle free from the liquid wall, enough to splash down on the stone.
Steam sizzled on the hot masonry. Wax rolled off the horse at the same rate as sweat rolled off of me. I let more water down from the walls to splash over the pavers and was grateful to find that the Dala Horse’s hooves slid along the slick that the water created rather than melted into the stone. The horse still shrank, but not nearly as fast as before.
If I could hold the water, we’d make it.
“Feed me!” the fire growled. The red flame glowed angrily through the water at me, pulsing, its flame-like fingers searching for breaches in the wall.
“Move faster, Nils-horsey. Please move faster,” I whispered in his waxy ear.
“Starving!” the fire screeched.
“I�
�m sorry,” I yelled back. “I’m sorry you’re hungry! But I can’t help you!” I was sobbing, and my entire body quavered against the weight of holding up the water walls. The electricity flowing from my mind flickered like the flames dancing back and forth behind the water.
We were almost there, almost to the end of the cavern where there would be another hallway, a place away from the flames.
“Hurry, älskling!” Farmor called, as if the horse had any other gear except slow. Nils’s legs were getting shorter. And with that, the length of his stride rapidly diminished. I considered getting off and running, but my bare feet would melt just like his hooves.
I was grateful Farmor stood by watching. And even if falling into her arms and crying like I wanted wasn’t an option, knowing she waited and urged me forward meant everything. Her presence kept me from a total mental breakdown.
The crushing weight of so much water snuffed out the electricity, cutting off my communication. The wall of water crashed down, flowing over the path, and fire rode the oil-slicked surface of wave towards me and the horse.
“Hungry!” the flame cried, only this time it wasn’t pleading with me but rather informing me that it planned on receiving satisfaction.
I lifted my feet to keep the flames from torching them. But the horse’s stubby legs were so short that the few inches it lifted me from the ground weren’t going to be enough.
I looked at Farmor’s eyes which were wide with panic. The way she clutched her hands together and hung her mouth open in a scream she didn’t release let me know that she couldn’t save me. She was going to have to watch me die, and she was helpless to step in. I couldn’t do that to her. And Jake. Jake needed me.
But we weren’t going to make it. The horse’s legs slipped slowly along the oil-slicked surface of the path.
“No!” I shouted, reigniting my inner fire and sending the electricity out in torrents from my hands, shoving the fire back away from me and the horse, away from the path, far to the other sides of the cavern. “No!” I yelled again, pulling at the water and splashing it down on the path, then pulling at the air so it pushed me and the stubby legged horse across the waterslide I’d created.
