Gregor immediately felt safer when they entered the tunnel. The air was still nasty, but at least they were out of the volcano's reach. He relaxed his grip on Boots a little and was just turning to check on Luxa and Hazard when the "queen" erupted.
Nothing else could account for the deafening explosion, which rattled his teeth, sent flares of color shooting before his eyes, and left him unable to hear anything but a shrill ringing in his ears.
A blast of hot air hit them and then there was no air, only a stinging cloud of ash and dust that blocked out everything else. He struggled to breathe, to see, thought he must pull Boots's T-shirt up over her face to protect her. He could feel himself losing consciousness and felt Luxa's grip on his shoulder loosening. "No," he wanted to cry out. "Hold on! Hold on! Boots!" That was the last thing he remembered... .
When he came to, Gregor was lying facedown on what felt like a large rock. His chin hung off a sharp ledge. He began coughing immediately. As he sat up he could feel the ash falling from his body, sending up a cloud, making it even harder to breathe. He staggered forward a few steps and fell off the rock hard, landing in at least four feet of ash. Struggling back to his feet, he began to wade through the stuff, waving his hands blindly in front of him. His head pounded so badly, he thought the pain might actually split it in two. Making it to a wall, he braced himself and vomited until nothing but bile came from his stomach. Trembling and disoriented, he leaned against the wall and tried to clear his thoughts.
"What happened?" he thought. He remembered the volcano ... flying ... a vision of the mice glowing in the red light... light... he needed light....
Gregor fumbled for the flashlight at his belt and found the switch. At first he thought it was broken. Then he realized the plastic face was obscured by ash. He knocked the flashlight against the wall and wiped it as best as he could on the inside of his shirt.
The light revealed a large tunnel blanketed in gray dust. It had drifted into deep banks like snow in places. In others, just a fine layer covered the floor. Gregor waded to a relatively clear spot to try to get his bearings. He must have passed out and slipped off Aurora's back at some point. But then where was Boots? She had been in his arms. Where were Luxa and Hazard? Where were the others?
"Where are the others?" Gregor remembered Cartesian's panicked cry. "Where are the others?"
Gregor plowed back to the rock, dragging his feet through the ash, trying to locate anyone else who might have fallen with him. By the time he had covered the area, he was choking on a cloud of dust but had discovered no one. He started down the tunnel in the direction his head had been pointing when he awoke, hoping that he might find the rest of the party ahead.
The smooth surface of the ash was unbroken by footprints. It muffled his footsteps, making them barely audible to his still ringing ears. He had never felt so alone in his life. Never had been, probably. There was no sign of life anywhere. It was a miracle he was even alive, that he had not suffocated in the eruption. Probably he would have if his chin hadn't been hanging off the rock. If he'd landed on the ground, most likely he'd have been buried alive and died under the ash.
"Where are the others? Where are the others?" Cartesian's voice screamed in Gregor's brain.
What if none of them had survived? What if they had all fallen unconscious to the tunnel floor? Maybe he was passing by them as he shuffled along, unaware of their bodies under ...
Gregor stopped and pressed his palms against his eyes. "Don't. Don't think like that. Just keep walking. You just keep walking."
It was impossible to gauge how much time was passing. The tunnel remained unchanged. His breath came in short ragged gasps. Every inch of him, inside and out, seemed coated in a layer of ash.
He remembered the water in his backpack and popped it open. The first mouthful he just swished around his mouth, rinsing the grit from his teeth, and spat on the floor. Then he took a long, deep drink, not bothering to ration it. Feeling slightly better, he trudged on.
At some point, he became aware of a faint breeze on his face. "Another current," he thought, and wondered if he should try to take cover behind a rock. But the breeze remained gentle and carried air that was definitely sweeter than what he'd been breathing. It eased the pain in his chest and the ache in his temples.
He thought the twinkle of light in the distance was only a reflection of his own light. But when he directed his beam to the ground, he could still see it there. He moved faster, causing more dust to rise. "Hey!" he tried to call. "Hey!" But he couldn't even hear his own voice.
Then he could make out a figure, as ghostly and gray as his surroundings. He caught glimpses of the light again, brighter now. Gregor broke into a run, more like a clumsy gallop really, because his knee had been damaged when he stepped off the rock.
"Hey!" he called again, and this time he heard himself and the figure turned.
Gregor stopped short. One look at Howard's face confirmed what Gregor had been dreading. Someone was dead.
"Who is it?" said Gregor, his heart slamming against his chest. "Not Boots?"
Howard stepped aside, squinting at the gray figures before him. Boots was all right. She was sitting on Temp's back, holding her scepter with its tiny light. At first glance, everyone looked all right. Ripred, Cartesian, Luxa, Hazard, the cluster of four bats. But he had miscounted. Only three bats huddled together. Lying on the floor, almost obscured by the dust, her head cradled in Hazard's lap, was Thalia.
***
CHAPTER 25
"Oh ... not Thalia," he said. Silly, laughing little bat. But brave, too. Going under the river water to retrieve Hazard. Trying so hard to keep up with the full-grown bats. Still trying after the flood and the scorpions and the nightmarish currents.
Gregor thought of the last joke he'd told her. "What did one wall say to the other wall?" And how her frightened sobs had turned to giggles at the punch line. "Meet you at the corner." She was barely more than a baby really.
He walked over and knelt by Thalia's side. She looked so tiny, with her wings folded against her. Without that bright bubbly thing that was Thalia radiating from inside her. He gently laid a hand on her chest, brushing away some of the ash, revealing a small patch of peach-colored fur.
Hazard wept inconsolably, his tears raining down on Thalia's face. "It was the mark. The mark of secret. It took my mother and now it took her."
Under the gray powder, Luxa's face was still and distant. "It was my fault," she said. "I should never have allowed any of them to come on the picnic."
"The picnic was not the danger, Cousin," said Howard. "I was the one who insisted on trying the Swag, and it was there our troubles began."
"No, I did not fly fast enough," said Ares. "I had her, but I did not fly fast enough."
"Stop it, all of you," said Ripred. "She died from poisonous fumes, not by any of your hands. She was flying, so she breathed deeper. She is small, so she succumbed more quickly. None of you are to blame."
The whole episode was beginning to worry Boots. She slid off Temp's back and came over to Thalia. "Wake up! Wake up, Thalia!"
"Don't, Boots," said Gregor, catching her hand.
"She needs to wake up," said Boots. "Hazard is crying. When does she wake up?" Gregor could not find it within him to give his standard reply. To pretend that in a short time Thalia would be back with them, laughing and happy. And somehow it seemed wrong to try. Boots was getting older. Very soon, she would begin to realize the truth on her own, anyway. "She's not going wake up," he told her. "She's dead."
"She doesn't wake up?" said Boots.
"No, not this time," said Gregor. "This time, she had to go away."
Boots looked around at all their faces, at Hazard crying. "Where did she go?" No one had an answer. "Where is Thalia when she doesn't wake up?"
The question hung in the air for an eternity. Finally, it was Howard who spoke up. "Why, she's in your heart, Boots."
"My heart?" said Boots, putting both hands on her chest.
"Yes. That's where she lives now," said Howard.
"She can fly away?" asked Boots, pressing her palms tightly against her heart as if to keep Thalia from escaping.
"Oh, no, she will stay there forever," said Howard. Boots looked up at Gregor for confirmation. He gave her a nod. She went back over and climbed onto Temp's shell thoughtfully.
"If you mean to do something with her, do it now. We cannot stay here long or this dust will finish us all," said Ripred.
"I will take her," said Ares.
"Hazard, you must say good-bye now," said Luxa.
"No!" cried Hazard. "No! You can't take her! I won't let you!"
And then an awful scene followed where they literally had to drag Hazard from Thalia so that Ares could take her body away. To where, Gregor did not know. There was no comforting the little boy. Howard finally got a dose of sedative down his throat between wails, and his sobs quieted.
Ripred sent Aurora and Nike ahead to scout for a less toxic area. While they were gone, Howard cradled Hazard in his arms and rocked him back and forth. "You know, I lost my bond, too," said Howard. Thalia and Hazard had not been officially bonds, but it seemed a minor detail now. "Pandora was her name."
"What happened to her?" asked Hazard.
"We were on the Waterway. She flew out over an island and was attacked by mites. They killed her," said Howard.
"Couldn't you help her?" asked Hazard.
"No. I wanted to. Even when she was lost I still wanted to try. But there was nothing I could do," said Howard. "Nothing but cry, just like you are crying now."
"What was she like?" asked Hazard.
"Funny. And curious. She always had to be the first one to see something new. And she loved to eat shellfish," said Howard with a smile. "Great big piles of them."
Gregor thought of the slimy shellfish Howard had kept insisting were a delicacy, and wondered if his passion for them had anything to do with how much he associated them with Pandora.
"You're not crying about her now," said Hazard.
"No," said Howard. "I have become used to carrying her in my heart."
"My heart is so crowded already," whispered Hazard. "But I'm sure the others will make room for Thalia. She is not a very big bat." And with that, he drifted off to sleep.
Gregor thought about all the others Hazard had lost... his mother, his father, Frill... and now Thalia had gone to join them....
They were all silent for a while. No one wanted to be responsible for waking Hazard up and bringing him back to this aching reality.
Finally Ripred spoke to Gregor. "Well, at least you showed up. Thought we'd lost you for good."
"I'm all right," said Gregor. "What happened?"
"Not exactly sure. You blacked out and fell. Fortunately you had the sense to push your sister onto the bat's head," said Ripred. "Ares tried to go back for you, but we had no idea where you were and the ash was so deep."
"I'm all right," Gregor repeated, although this was one of the worst days of his life.
Aurora and Nike flew up. They had discovered a tunnel that led upward to cleaner air. Everyone could squeeze on to the two bats, except Ripred, who said he would wait for Ares, anyway, and then follow their trail. It was only a short flight to the passage. The higher they traveled the sweeter and cleaner the air got. Eventually they broke free of the tunnel and came out on a rock formation with a flat top and vertical sides. Fresh breezes washed over them. A cold spring burbled out of a crack and fell hundreds of feet, where it disappeared into a dimly lit tangle of thick vines.
"We're back at the jungle," said Gregor.
"Yes, it borders the Firelands," said Howard.
They took turns gulping down the spring water and washing the ash from their skin. Boots said she was hungry, and Howard gave her the last piece of stale bread. She curled up next to Hazard on a blanket and went to sleep. Cartesian had fallen into some kind of stupor as well, although he often sat up and looked around, squeaking rapidly, before collapsing back on the ground.
No one else seemed able to sleep. Or talk. They just sat around, staring at the flashlight, or down at the jungle. Gregor watched Luxa watching the spring for a while. She seemed unnaturally calm.
About an hour later, Ares arrived with Ripred. "Where did you take her?" Howard asked.
"Back to the queen. So she might lie with the nibblers and not alone," said Ares. "The lava will claim them all soon. Half were already covered."
"Yes. The Bane does not only want to kill them. He wants them to disappear without a trace," said Ripred.
"So, it seems the Overlander was on to something about the song."
"You mean that it's a prophecy," said Gregor.
"If it is, we should name it," said Aurora.
"I have already done so in my head, but the name need not stick," said Nike. "I call it 'The Prophecy of Secrets.'"
"It is well named," said. Ares. "Since the marks of secret led us to it."
"And even its nature was a secret," said Howard. "No one suspected our childish song to be a prophecy."
"One we still need to break," said Ripred. "I think we understand the first two parts now. We know who the queen is. We know about the nibblers. How does the last part go?"
Luxa spoke the last verse. Without the playful melody, they were just words. And loaded words at that.
"now the guests are at our door
Greet them as we have before.
Some will slice and some will pour.
Father, mother, sister, brother,
Off they go, I do not know
If we will see another. "
"I suppose the first question is who the guests are?" said Howard.
"Well, if the door opens to Regalia, which I'm assuming since Sandwich called it 'our door,' then given the circumstances, the guests are probably someone Her Highness has recently declared war on," said Ripred.
"The gnawers," said Luxa. "And we will greet them as we have before."
Gregor remembered that this was the part in the dance where everybody pretended to pour tea and serve cake.
"Some will slice and some will pour."
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"Swords slice," said Luxa. "And when the city is under siege, we pour boiling oil over the walls and onto our enemies."
She said the words without any particular sense of fear or revulsion. But Gregor was filled with both.
"I wonder when the attack will be," said Howard.
"Someone must return at once to warn the Regalians," said Nike.
"No point in me coming, of course. Neither side would welcome me. No, I think I may hang around here for a while," said Ripred.
"And do what?" asked Gregor. Ripred always had a plan.
"Those nibblers we saw today ... they're only a fraction of the ones who've been driven here. The others might still be alive. I was thinking ... they'd make a likely army," said Ripred.
"For you?" said Luxa. "They would never follow you."
"That's where you come in, Your Highness," said Ripred. "If we go together, we might be able to mobilize them."
"I might alone. What do you add to the mix?" asked Luxa.
"Don't be impertinent. Is it yes or no?" said Ripred impatiently.
Luxa only took a second to consider the proposition. "Yes," she said. "Howard, will you come?"
"I will have to, Cousin, if you insist on doing this," said Howard doubtfully. "Cartesian will want to join us."
"He's too beat up," said Ripred. "But with you two on fliers and me on the ground, we might be able to break them out."
"I am sure they will follow me, if we can get in close enough for them to hear my voice," said Luxa.
"I'm counting on that," said Ripred. "Let's say four hours' rest, and we begin."
Gregor had begun feeling like he was invisible. No one was involving him in the plans at all. "I'll be ready," he said.
"No!" Ripred and Luxa spoke in the same breath and with the same intensit
y.
"What?" said Gregor in surprise.
"Not you, boy. You're taking the pups back to Regalia," said Ripred.
***
CHAPTER 26
"No, I'm not!" said Gregor. "I'm going with you!" "You cannot!" said Luxa. Her eyes darted around as if she was trying to find a reason. "What about Boots and Hazard?"
"I don't know, they can ... Howard, you could take them back," said Gregor.
Ripred, Howard, and Luxa exchanged glances. Gregor had an awful realization. They didn't want him to come. They were thinking about how he had choked in the fight with Twirltongue and they thought he would fall to pieces again.
"You don't think I can fight," he said bluntly. "Well, fine, okay. Maybe I did freak out when I lost my light, but it's not really dark here, with the volcanoes and all and I think there's been a few other times when I've shown that —"
"It's not that, Gregor. Everyone knows you can fight. Far better than I can," said Howard.
"Then what? You're still mad at me?" he asked Luxa.
"No, I am not," said Luxa.
"So?" said Gregor.
"Has he not been told anything?" asked Howard.
"About what?" said Gregor in frustration.
"Just this. You've got to get back to Regalia. Now that the war's begun, you're of no use to us without your sword," said Ripred.
Gregor's hand went to his hip in confusion. His fingers wrapped around the hilt of his weapon. "I've got a sword."
"Not any sword. Your sword," said Ripred. His eyes narrowed. "You didn't lose it in the tunnel, did you? When you fought Twirltongue?"
"What?" said Gregor, totally confused. "Yeah, I lost that sword. I threw it behind me at the rats. So, what? There's, like, thousands of them."
"No, Gregor. He means the sword Vikus gave you. Sandwich's sword," said Howard.
"Oh, that," said Gregor. It was true, Vikus had tried to give him an impressive, jewel-studded sword that had once belonged to Sandwich, but Gregor had refused to take it. He knew where it was, though. It was in the museum, which had always seemed an odd place to keep it, since the museum held items from the Overland. It was on a shelf wrapped in the same silken cloth that Vikus had originally presented it in. For the first time Gregor wondered if Sandwich's sword was there because everyone believed it belonged to him now, whether he had accepted it or not. "That's not really mine."
The Underland Chronicles: Books 1-5 Paperback Box Set Page 71
