The Midwest Wanderer

by Flint Maxwell

  But it was hard. The laughter was as piercing as a blade to the eardrum. At one point, Frieda’s flame went out because she had to cup her palms to the sides of her head as she murmured, “I can’t take it! Make it stop! Make it stop!”

  Maria had drawn her sword.

  Sherlock whimpered and whined.

  The whole time this went on, Gramps never wavered. He held his head high and stood as straight as his broken body would let him. To Maria, there was nothing more admirable about someone than their ability to go on in the face of the unknown. Her respect for him grew, as if it could grow any more.

  Not long after, though it had felt like an eternity, they literally saw light at the end of the tunnel. Just a pinprick of white in the darkness.

  Sherlock bolted toward the opening.

  “No, Sherlock! Wait!”

  Too late.

  He escaped the light that was radiating from Frieda’s palm again, and plunged into the blackness. Maria couldn’t see so much as a hint of his tail or his floppy ears. She thought about chasing after him, but a quick glance at Gramps, who looked even more exhausted from the shadows dancing on his face, told her not to go.

  “We will catch up to him, no worries,” Freida assured her. She closed her eyes and hummed, drawing on the power emanating from Oriceran’s core. The flame grew brighter, eating away the dark, but Sherlock was still nowhere to be seen. Stalactites hung above and around them, like blades hovering, ready to fall.

  “I don’t see him,” Maria said, her voice shaky. She was getting worried. Now was the time for a last-ditch effort, the last resort. She opened her satchel, the music box gleaming in the firelight, and she pulled out the last few Milkbones she had stashed away on top of the refrigerator. She figured she would need them, and she was right.

  “Keep going,” Gramps said. “We’ll catch up with him. He’s probably out on the other side of the mountain, chasing Flutterbees or the like.”

  Flutterbees, Maria mentally shook her head, but the thought was quickly disintegrated by a distant shrieking.

  “Sherlock!”

  That was him; as plain as day, that was Sherlock whining. Did something hurt him or is he only scared? I will kill anyone who touches my dog, Maria swore, the anger boiling over her.

  That same whimpering again, but this time, Sherlock cried out for Maria.

  Maria, help me! Please!

  She couldn’t take it anymore. Dimly, she was aware of Gramps reaching and trying to snag her arm. He wasn’t successful.

  Maria tore off through the dark cave, not worried about stumbling or falling down a crack; all she was worried about was saving Sherlock.

  ***

  Soon she became disoriented, but the darkness bled away, turning into a grayish film that seemed to settle over her eyes. Her hands brushed against the cool stone as she guided herself toward that distant pinprick of light that never grew closer no matter how fast she ran.

  And the laughter came back, too—that high, maniacal laughter. It made Maria’s blood run cold.

  Not the time to get scared, Maria, she thought. You’ve faced worse than this.

  But had she?

  At least when she fought Malakai, she’d been able to see him, thanks to the streetlights and the glow of magic—

  That’s it! Magic, Maria! You keep forgetting you’re a witch.

  She closed her eyes; or at least, she thought she did. Either way, the blackness was almost complete…until it wasn’t. Blue light rippled up her arms. It was nothing compared to Frieda’s palm-fire, but it was enough for her to see five or so feet ahead of her. She found it much easier to ‘light-up,’ as she called it, on Oriceran as opposed to Akron, where the magical energy was less prevalent. Though she hadn’t done it with the snap of her fingers, she realized she was already getting a better hang of it.

  Sherlock, I’m coming for you.

  The whimpering came about three minutes later, now from somewhere else—somewhere deeper. Maria took two rights and a left, and then the landscape sloped downward. She wasn’t sure now, because of her blue light, but she thought the darkness in the cave was quickly fading.

  Maria!

  An opening presented itself, seemingly out of thin air. Inside the opening, filtered gray light helped her see the rising land. In the middle of the land, which must’ve stood a hundred feet above from where she was, on a raised platform of rock, a man sat on a throne. He held a staff made of bone in one hand (of what bone, Maria was unsure), and he sat in a way that reminded Maria of George Demarco, her graduating class’s resident clown. His head leaned on the hand that held the staff, one leg hung over the opposite arm, and he had a big, goofy smile on his face. A very weird position indeed.

  “Who are you?” Maria shouted up to him.

  “Me? Why, Maria Apple, I am the ruler of the Cave of Delusion,” the man said.

  Maria took a few steps forward, the blue light fading from her arms and the gray light taking over. As she got closer, she recognized this man as not being a man at all. He may have been a man at one point, but whatever he was now, she was sure of one thing—he was not alive…or he shouldn’t be. His skin was papery and stretched over his skull so tight that his cheekbones stood out like the points of blades. His eyes were sunk in far enough that Maria could not identify the color, if there was one other than black—even if she had been only inches away from his face. He was lanky, bony, withered and worn.

  “Where is my dog?” Maria asked. Against her better judgment, she had not drawn her sword yet.

  “Oh, do you mean Sherlock, the talking Bloodhound?” The man stood up and lifted his staff, a bloody grin spreading on his face. As he held the staff up, the air around it shimmered as if it had caught fire. Then Sherlock rose from the ground. He was out cold; his ears dangled back, and his tongue lolled from his mouth.

  Maria gasped and stifled a sob.

  “Oh, no, don’t worry, Maria. He is not dead. Yet,” the man said.

  “But you will be,” she snarled. Already, she’d planned her route up the jagged platforms to save her canine companion and exact revenge. Her estimation was that she could make it up there in less than thirty seconds, moving fast enough to escape whatever dark magic the man on the throne possessed.

  Only got one shot, she thought. Now!

  She took off up the first slope, as the ground shifted beneath her feet. Using her reserved power, and drawing more from Oriceran, she was able to move much faster than she would’ve been able to on Earth. The first rise cleared, she breasted the second, then the third; the magic flowing through her like her own blood. As she climbed up the last rise, the ground was well below her and the adrenaline was making her skin prickle; she realized she was not tired, but re-energized.

  “You’re dead!” she shouted as she jumped the last three feet to the edge of the rock platform and sprang up.

  But Sherlock was gone, the throne was gone, and so was the man.

  She spun around, whirling the sword in an arc. Nothing was behind her; she was by herself on the highest rise of the great cavern.

  The man’s laughter cut through the air. Wicked laughter that Maria had only ever heard in the movies. Her body shook with anger and a growing rage. She was ready to explode.

  “Why are you doing this?” she shouted to the empty space. The laughter cut off, and her voice echoed back to her, drifting, drifting, drifting…

  No answer.

  “What is it you want?”

  “Want?” the man laughed again—if, in fact, he was a man. Maria had not known men to be able to wield such magic. “I do not want anything, Maria. Nothing tangible, that is. You, like many before you, must pass the tests if you want go on.”

  “Tests?” Maria’s hand slid down the hilt of her sword. Her palms were sweaty, but the air in the cavern was cool. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard a waterfall.

  “Yes, tests. Trials, if you prefer. The Trials of Antenele.” He laughed again, that wicked laughter. “Many h
ave undergone the Trials, but few have walked away from them with a victory in their pocket and their sanity safely nestled inside of their brains.”

  Good pep talk, Maria thought.

  She spun around. The voice seemed to be getting closer and closer, as if the man was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

  “If I take your trials, will you return Sherlock to me unharmed?”

  “Why, yes, Maria. I will return your mutt to you, and then you will be on your way, on to the other side, free of my mountain.”

  “And Ignatius and Freida?”

  “They will pass through here without a clue. I may watch from the shadows, but they will remain untouched.”

  “The rules?” Maria asked.

  The ground shifted behind her, from where she had climbed up. She whirled around and saw the cavern floor rising up to meet her. There was no more drop off. The land had smoothed into a plateau; there was not even a crack in the ground where the two ends met. Lights flickered, orange and red, eating away the gray gloom. Torches on the walls, burning with flame, sending acrid smoke high into the mountain.

  “There are no rules, Maria. But there are guidelines. The Trials are simple to understand: you will be given three tasks, each one increasing in difficulty.”

  “What tasks?”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” the man said, clucking his tongue. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  Maria didn’t answer him; she was deep in thought. The man had known her last name, had known Sherlock could talk to her. Somehow, he had access into her mind, her thoughts.

  “Yes,” the man answered. “I do.”

  The way he spoke made Maria shudder.

  “There is no need to be frightened. No going back now. As you can see, I have raised the land. There is no exit behind you. A good metaphor of life, I think. The only way to be successful is to keep going forward. And Maria, my dear friend, that is what you will have to do.” He broke out in laughter again.

  The walls began to narrow, closing around her. Maria held her ground. Down the rocky corridor, that pinprick of light reappeared in the blackness where the torchlight would not stretch, like a slit eye.

  “I feel your anxiety, Maria. I know you want to begin. But you will not be thinking this once you are faced with your first task; so patience, my dear witch. Since I’ve grown to admire your work—the inside of your head is quite amusing, I must say—I will give you a few hints. Each trial will test you in a different way. Skill, will, and thrill. In what order, you ask? That, you will have to find out on your own.” More laughter. “Now, let the Trials of Antenele begin!”

  The cave shifted again, more violently than before, yet Maria held her ground. Once it stopped, the silence engulfed her. She could hear her own ragged breathing, her own thudding heartbeat.

  The music box weighed her down. It was a burden, it seemed, too great to carry. Some voice deep inside of her mind was telling her to put it down, to leave it there in the bowels of this great mountain, where no one would ever find it, and where it would be safe from all creatures, from Arachnids to Orcs. Never to be found again.

  “No,” Maria said, sternly. If this was the first test, Maria thought it would be a breeze. She could resist a little whispering.

  With the sword in her right hand—the sword that should’ve been wielded with two hands—Maria took a step forward. The goal was simple: Besides survival, Maria knew she was supposed to move forward, like the man of the mountain had said. The pinprick of light on the other side of the dimly lit rock corridor was where she needed to go. Along the way, the tests would be taken. Yet she found herself slightly afraid to take that first step. She had read somewhere that the first step of any journey was always the hardest. It had been true on her birthday, when the magic had started to surface, and it had been true when she left the portal into Oriceran for the first time. But she had done it, hadn’t she? She had taken that first step, and then the second and third and fourth.

  C’mon, Maria. C’mon, she thought.

  She stepped, her breathing ragged.

  But when she stepped, the cave disappeared. Gone were the torch lights and the rock walls and the raised land behind her.

  Now she was in a gray field. Two moons shone high in the dark sky. She could see her breath on the air. The temperature was low enough to make her flesh break out in goosebumps. She no longer saw the pinprick of light that was her goal, but a great wrought-iron gate.

  She approached it, her sword still in hand. There was a word written in twisted steel at the top of the entrance, but Maria could not understand what it said. It was in a language outside of her English and two years of high school Spanish. The letters and symbols were enough to tell her that she was not looking at an Earthen language.

  Still, understanding the words or not, it did not take a genius to realize where she was.

  Beyond the gates were large slabs of stone sticking out of the ground—headstones.

  The hinges squeaked rustily as the gates opened. As they did, the pinprick of light bobbed beyond in the blackness.

  It’s back. I have no choice but to go forward.

  Taking the path, she strolled at a pace faster than she would normally walk. On the headstones were the same letters and symbols she did not understand on the gate, though if she could understand them, she still wouldn’t have stuck around to read them. Graveyards were inherently creepy, but graveyards at night were the worst.

  Sherlock, I’m coming, she thought. Sherlock, just hang on.

  It was all she could do to keep herself from freezing in fear. Sure, she was a witch with the potential to grow into a badass witch, but the dead sleeping just below her feet would be too much for the bravest of souls.

  A low rumble caused her to stop. Her head on a swivel, she scanned the surrounding area.

  “That didn’t sound good,” she whispered, gripping the sword tighter. Despite the chill in the air, her palms were still sweaty.

  The rumbling came again, this time worse than before; even worse than the rumbling when the land had risen to meet the cliff, inside the cave.

  Then all at once, the ground exploded. Clumps of dirt shot into the air, raining down on the path and on Maria’s shoulders. She held the sword up high, in her movie-defense pose, the one she’d picked up from The Princess Bride, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings.

  If Obi-Wan holds his lightsaber like this, then where could I go wrong?

  She caught the first glimpse of white emerging from the earth before the last bit of dirt fell. It was bones. Skeleton fingers.

  The first test.

  The skeletons pulled themselves out of the graves, wearing tattered and dirty robes, ripped leather jerkins, long dresses. Their jaws were propped open by packed mud, and worms and beetles and other insects Maria thought were from Earth fell off of them, landing on the path with meaty thumps.

  “All right, assholes,” Maria said, “let’s do this.”

  ***

  The skeletons did not move like the dead. They had more life in them than most people on Earth did.

  But that didn’t matter for Maria.

  She swung the sword in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, connecting with rib, severing spinal cords, detaching arms. This gave her enough room to back up the path, but all around her, the ground was exploding; dirt was raining down on her, and more skeletons were digging themselves out of their graves.

  The fear had left Maria after she’d taken down the first skeleton dressed in dark robes, still wearing its hood. Now she was running on pure adrenaline.

  As she swung down on a skeleton’s skull, cracking it down the middle and leaving a lightning bolt fissure in the bone, she felt hot fire ripple through her back, down to the back of her thigh. She let out a scream, spinning around. Two skeletons had clawed her with their sharp finger bones, deep enough to rip her leather jacket and her shirt beneath it. She thought she felt blood trickle down to her waistband, but she didn’t have time to check
.

  “No one gets to touch my ass without my permission,” she said, grimacing. With a shout, she severed skulls from vertebrae. The heads rolled down the gentle slope of the graveyard until they clattered against a gravestone, like bowling balls collecting in a Resurfacing Machine. More came up behind her, so she didn’t have time to admire what she had done; two birds with one stone, and all that.

  “You have to buy me a drink first!” she grunted, taking out three more skeletons.

  Maria chopped and hacked until her chest was heaving and the sweat trickled down the back of her neck, making her hair stick to her skin.

  She nearly collapsed out of exhaustion, but caught herself on one knee in the path, surrounded by piles of bones. Her head was tilted downward, absently watching a worm wiggle and squirm its way back into the lush grass when she heard the rattle of bones.

  “No fucking way,” she said, breathlessly.

  Looking up, she saw just one more skeleton coming toward her. It was missing most of its teeth, and she could’ve sworn there was some sort of life flickering in the blackness of its hollow eye sockets.

  She stood up on shaky legs and took the sword in both of her hands. She was too beat to lift the sword up with one anymore; all the magic she had called on from Oriceran was depleted.

  “I think it’s bedtime,” she wheezed as she swung the sword downward like a medieval executioner. The hit wasn’t a clean one, but it did the trick. The skeleton dropped into the large pile of bones; gone to rest for eternity—or until the next weary wanderer stumbled into the Trials of Antenele.

  From behind her, in the direction she was supposed to be going, the far gates squeaked open.

  She had passed the first test.

  Skill, she thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Maria wanted nothing more than to fall to her knees again and rest, but she couldn’t. The gates were open, and she didn’t know for how much longer. So she sheathed her sword, only because she could not bear to carry it anymore, and headed for the opening, toward that pinprick of light.