“Let’s move before someone finds us,” Sam said.
Seconds later, they crossed the landing and opened the door to the bridge. Inside, the surroundings looked much different, and Sam paused. “I don’t like this. It looks like we’re walking into the guts of a big green blob,” he said.
Ping stepped up beside him and peered inside. Fleshy yet fibrous tissue with a luminous green pallor shifted and oozed in the space ahead, leaving just enough room above the woody bridge for a person to navigate while holding dangling vines mounted along the gelatinous walls. The span itself appeared to be woven vines, wide and flat enough to walk upon.
“Amazing,” Ping said. “The cellulose here appears to be less refined, less processed than the wall of the interior of the building. It will be like walking through the body of a gigantic plant.”
Sam pointed to the wall on the right. “What was that? Something’s swimming around in there.”
From behind him, the other Sam said, “The tendrils of the bowraiths shift dynamically to adjust for the stresses and strains within the structure of the Arboretum. That’s what Phineas is thinking anyway. It’s not something to worry about.”
“Okay then, let’s get going,” Sam said.
Ping nodded and took the lead, stepping onto the woody bridge and grabbing the vine-like handholds. The bridge swayed in slow motion, as if encased in jelly.
After Sam followed, he said, “I think I’m going to be sick. Guts. It’s like walking in someone’s guts.”
The bridge immediately turned to the left, inclined for several feet, then turned into a series of winding steps that climbed sharply. While continuing to ascend, Sam glanced over his shoulder at Phineas. “How much higher do we have to go before this thing actually becomes a bridge?”
The guard’s glowing eyes looked upward as if considering the question. Responding in Sam’s voice, he said, “He doesn’t think it’s much farther. The bridge turns into more of a ramp that follows the curvature of the Arboretum’s roof.”
From up ahead, Ping said, “The tendrils appear to be more active in this portion of the walls.”
The stairs ended, and Sam caught up to Ping at a small landing that turned into an arched ramp ahead. Ping pointed to the sparsely leaved vines undulated on the other side of the membrane, constituting the walls around them. Dozens coiled and danced, like snakes waiting to strike.
Sam’s heartbeat quickened. “They aren’t just shoring up the structure of the building.”
Ping nodded. “I would have to—”
One of the vines jutted toward them and—instead of stopping at the barrier, like the others—pierced it, flying into the space between Ping’s shoulders and Sam’s face. The appendage whipped in the air with a whistle and wrapped itself around Sam’s neck, tightening like a noose and yanking him against the quivering wall. Another vine pierced the membrane and slithered across his chest, pulling him backward with even more force. Gagging, his face reddening, he reached out to Ping with his right hand while maintaining a grip on the hand-hold vine that paralleled the bridge. Other tendrils broke through the wall and spiraled around his arms. It again pulled him back with such force that he felt the wall would give way and feared he’d be swallowed by the muck that surrounded them.
After grabbing Sam’s arms, Ping turned to the other Sam—in Phineas’s body—and said, “Use that fire of yours to get him free!”
Phineas’s glowing green eyes narrowed in confusion for a moment, the widened with realization. He held out his hand, pointing a finger at the vine binding Sam’s neck. A jet of flame burst from his fingertip, slicing the tendril in half. A loud screech pierced the air as the bridge and the membranes around them shook and shifted.
“Get the others,” Ping said, pointing to the various restraints holding the boy.
As the other Sam cut his way through the remaining tendrils, more screams sliced through the air, and the gelatinous world around them quivered. Jagged tears ripped through the membranous walls, and goo oozed out, spilling over the bridge, threatening to flood the narrow space around it.
“Hurry,” Ping said, pointing at their feet.
The vines making up the bridge itself slowly shifted, the gaps between them widening, unravelling beneath them.
CHAPTER 31
Mara, Diana and the hundreds of acolytes staggered sideways as the floor shifted below their feet. Several people fell over the chairs, and a wave of screams ran through the crowd. Though Mara was determined to keep her gaze on the half-dozen or so acolytes palming fireballs a few feet away, a motion from above caught her attention. A ripple rolled across the ceiling, disappearing beyond the vine-covered wall to her left. Another tremor shook the floor.
“It’s an earthquake!” someone yelled from the crowd.
From behind them, Ginger burst from her hiding place beneath the seats with a squeal and dashed past them toward the fire-wielding acolytes.
“No, Ginger! Don’t!”
The chobodon vaulted into the air, crashing into a robed man at the center of the group of acolytes who threatened Mara and Diana. From the stage, the leader who had first conjured his fireball, lobbed it at them. Mara shoved her mother to the right, diving toward the floor as the flames whizzed past.
When the fire struck the floor with a loud explosion, another wave of quakes shook the building. As Mara rolled over, she noticed the Bowraith Spire and the ovoid Apex suspended above it, swaying.
Gordon is right. The building is alive. That’s why they have those strange containers in the back of the room. They contain the fire from the building.
Panic swept through the crowd, and people ran in several directions at once. While Mara tried to stand, a robed woman stepped on her hand and tumbled over her back. Mara had to shove several people out of the way to find her mother, who remained on her hands and knees a few feet away.
From the podium on the stage, the leader pointed at Mara and yelled, “Stop her!”
Someone lobbed another fireball at her head. Mara raised her hand and focused on the flaming mass as it came toward her. Her first thought was to pixelate it.
That didn’t work. The blazing little meteor kept coming.
Stop Time.
That didn’t work either.
Zap it with a lightning bolt.
No luck.
The ball of fire sizzled past her head, missing by a fraction of an inch, singing her hair. It struck a group of retreating acolytes, heading toward the exit, vaporizing them in a fiery burst of flame and smoke. Screams intensified among the crowd of acolytes, and the man on the stage screamed hysterically, “Extinguish! Extinguish!” The floor rocked so hard that Mara was sure it was about to rend itself in two, opening a large fissure that would swallow them all.
Two acolytes—a man and a woman—advancing on Mara stopped and dropped their extended arms. The flaming balls they brandished disappeared.
Mara sighed with relief. Yeah, extinguish. Listen to the man!
Despite the danger of getting trampled, she decided her mother had the right idea. Mara got down on her knees, used the crowd as cover and crawled toward the last location where she had seen Diana, taking occasional knees in her side but making sure her hands were not stomped. After several minutes of wandering aimlessly, Mara spotted Ginger’s teal-colored leash snaking among the passing feet, heading toward the stage.
“There you are,” Diana said, emerging from an ocean of white robes, reaching for the leash and grasping it. Somewhere in the distance, Ginger snorted loudly.
“Mom!” Mara said.
Diana turned and smiled. “Ah! Now I’ve found both of you. Come on. Ginger’s heading toward that spire thing in the middle of the Arboretum. I think she’s tracking my Mara.”
“She’s leading us directly to the stage. We need to guide her around it, or the guy up there will see us and turn the crowd on us again,” Mara said.
Diana looked up and assessed the clamor around them. “The crowd’s thinning out. We’ll
need to get off the open floor anyway.”
Two robed figures ahead of Diana separated, and Mara could now see the chobodon snorting at passing acolytes. They kept their distances and flowed around the animal. Ginger would be clearly visible from the stage, but no one up there called attention to her.
Mara stood and glanced toward the podium. The stage was now empty. She offered a hand to her mother. “Stand up. Let’s make a run for it.”
Diana stood and took up the slack on the leash. Feeling the tension, Ginger looked over her haunches and squealed loudly, about to bound toward her mistress, but Diana held up a hand. “No, don’t come to me. Find Mara. Find Mara.”
The chobodon snorted and dashed forward. Diana pulled the leash to the left, doing her best to encourage the animal past the corner of the covered risers that made up the stage. Reluctantly Ginger got the message. Mara followed close behind, occasionally glancing around the nearly cleared floor. No one paid attention to them.
Did they evacuate because of the quakes?
After they cleared the stage, they rounded to the right and toward the massive Bowraith Spire, looming high and large, like a narrow building in its own right. Mara scanned the rough-hewn facade but could not make out anything resembling a door among the bands and bulges of wood and bark wound together like malformed muscles.
She paused next to Diana and asked, “How do we get in? It looks like a nightmare version of the Keebler elves’ tree.”
“The what?” her mother asked.
“Don’t you people have cookies in this realm?”
Ginger grunted at the end of the leash and strained to move forward.
Diana looked mildly confused. “I’ve no idea what you are talking about, but our best bet is to follow Ginger. If there’s a way inside, she’ll sniff it out.”
Mara glanced around to see if anyone followed. The acolyte who had led the meeting was coming around the corner of the stage. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go.”
“Find Mara, sweetie,” Diana whispered to the chobodon. The creature leaped forward with a squeal, dashing directly toward the gnarled side of the spire. She did not slow as she approached and disappeared into the shadow between two coiled outcroppings that looked like massive roots plunging into the floor.
As they passed into the dark, Mara caught up with Diana. “Before we get ourselves too much deeper into whatever this situation is, you should know my abilities are no longer working.”
“What do you mean?” Diana asked.
“I tried to stop those acolytes from throwing fireballs at us a minute ago, and it didn’t work. I tried like three times, three different ways, and nothing worked. I’m powerless.”
“What could cause that? Have you been overdoing it again?”
Mara shook her head. “No, if that were the case, I’d be flickering in and out of view. It’s not that.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Keep going forward. We still need to get Mara out of here.”
“What happens if we run into Curate Tran?”
“You mean, what happens when we run into Curate Tran,” Mara corrected. “We talk her into giving us Mara, stall until Ping and Sam show up, look for some opportunity to gain an advantage …”
“That doesn’t sound like a solid plan.”
“Walking into the middle of an auditorium full of fire-wielding acolytes wasn’t exactly solid either,” Mara said.
“True.”
Ahead, Ginger squealed and nosed into a deep groove of bark, digging at the floor with her front hooves.
“Has she found something?” Mara asked.
“She thinks so. That doesn’t always mean she has, especially when she gets excited.”
A rectangular section of bark receded into the spire. It was the size of a door. Mara leaned forward and pushed it, causing it to swing farther inward. She looked at her mother with an expression that asked, Ready for this? without saying a word.
Diana nodded. “I just hope Sam and Ping show up if we get into trouble.”
“Considering they got the easy route, they better,” Mara said, stepping inside.
CHAPTER 32
“Run!” Sam yelled, pushing Ping’s back up the sloping bridge.
Staring past his pumping athletic shoes, Sam watched larger V-shaped gaps open in the span of the flooring which otherwise kept them from falling into the membrane-bound muck that surrounded them. The vines were unwinding from behind, as if affixed to a single point ahead, thus creating the delta-shaped openings. Over his shoulder, he yelled to his counterpart in the body of Phineas the acolyte guard, “Cut the bridge behind us!”
“What?” the other Sam asked.
“It’s unwinding from behind us! Cut the vines before they can pull the whole bridge apart—like you did with the ones that grabbed me. Hurry!”
The other Sam gripped the loose handrail with his left hand and swung back the way they’d come. Holding up his right hand, four fingers burst into a wide stream of flame, which he waved in a downward arc, using the fire to slice through the unwinding tendrils at the floor of the bridge.
A sharp wave, like the snap of a whip, shuddered beneath their feet, so powerful that Ping fell to one knee and teetered on the edge. Sam grabbed his collar with one hand and waved away the billowing smoke with the other.
Glancing over his shoulder, Ping said, “Thanks.” Coughing, he nodded, indicating something ahead. “I think that might be a door.” The quaking bridge, the smoke and the vibrating membrane around them made it difficult to see.
The other Sam caught up to them. “That bought us a minute or two, but we need to get off this thing. We’re standing on half a bridge that’s tethered from one side only. Given the slope of the arc and our concentrated weight, it’ll collapse any minute now.”
Sam pointed ahead. “We’re almost there.” He patted Ping’s shoulder. “Let’s get moving.”
Ping turned to continue, when the vines on which they stood swung wildly to the left, threatening to sling them into the gelatinous void. Sam reached out for balance, his hand momentarily finding purchase against the spongy wall, until it split open. He sunk against the membrane until his arm disappeared in what felt like a bowl of jelly. The remains of the bridge pulled away below his feet while the goo inside the wall pulled at his shoulder. Just as he was about to fall, Phineas’s beefy arm wrapped around his waist and yanked him back onto their perch, causing Sam’s arm to rip a larger gash in the membrane.
A flood of gelatinous cellulose poured from the wall and swamped the remains of the bridge, pushing it from beneath their feet, slinging the three of them against the opposite side of the passage. Sam cringed as they slammed face-first into the jiggling barrier and began to slide downward. It felt like one of those water-park slides. He was sure they were plunging into the slimy depths of the Arboretum walls and would soon drown.
Then they stopped, coming to rest at an odd bulge in the wall. With his face pressed against the membrane, Sam could see through it, somewhat.
“Ping? Where are you?” Sam asked without looking up.
“I am about six feet to your right. I caught a glimpse of Phineas falling behind you,” he said.
Sam’s counterpart’s voice came from some distance away. “I’m over here. Whatever you do, don’t make any sudden moves.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“We’re pressed against, stuck to, the interior wall of the ceiling at the top of the Arboretum. The only floor I can see is a few hundred feet below us. If we tear this membrane, nothing keeps us from falling,” he said.
Ping said, “I can’t see the floor. Something white is below me. I must be above the Apex.”
Sam craned his neck to the left and peered through the membrane. He could just make out some detail on the ground floor, perhaps seating—he wasn’t sure. However, to his right he could see the curvature of a white structure suspended several feet below.
“I’m over the edge of the Apex,” Sam said. “Phinea
s and I need to make our way to where you are, Ping. Maybe we can find a way out of the ceiling and into the Apex.”
“This wall feels more substantial than the tube through which the bridge was constructed. I would guess it supported both the passage and the bridge inside it, at least to some degree,” Ping said. “You should be able to move around without too much danger. Just don’t dig in with your fingernails.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Phineas, or Sam, or whatever you want to be called, slowly slide toward me without making any sudden moves.”
The ceiling beneath them undulated softly.
“Too much of this and I could see myself getting seasick,” Sam said.
A couple minutes later, he felt the barrier suspending him sink a bit, like someone lay down in a bed next to him.
“I made it,” Phineas said in Sam’s voice.
“Great. How’d you get here without punching a hole in the ceiling?” Sam asked.
“I sort of crab-crawled, pressing forward with my elbows and knees, trying not to poke the membrane with my fingers or shoes.” He demonstrated the maneuver at Sam’s side.
Pointing with his forehead, Sam said, “Ping’s over there. Go ahead, and I will be right behind you.”
Phineas crawled away. Sam followed, pressing his forearms and legs downward and pushing against the filmy barrier below him. It felt like he was slithering across the outside of a balloon, his skin gaining an odd sticky traction while his elbows and knees pressed downward. The upward slope and the awkward mode of locomotion made the short journey to Ping difficult and interminable, but the two Sams made it in less than five minutes.
As they crawled next to him, Sam noticed that Ping lay on his back, staring up.
Sam exhaled loudly and asked, “What are you looking at?”
“I believe it’s a door, probably the exit at the end of the bridge. If you look to the right, through the membrane, a pillar runs from the top of the Apex to the ceiling—probably a staircase or a ladder. Unfortunately we are sitting at the bottom of the tube that surrounded the bridge, more than twenty feet below it. The walls are too slick and fragile for us to climb up there.”
Broken Spells Page 20
