by B. J. Smash
I could have kicked myself. This had to be the cave that held Izaill’s, “magic bean.” I should have gone in here before I had continued on to Rock Mountain. I bet it would have saved a lot of time. And Ella would have never gotten her hands on the bottle that held Sabina.
Ladriant stood beside me, his dark eyes wide with concern. “I’ll go inside with you.”
I didn’t argue. I lifted a few of the vines, only to find complete darkness inside. I let my eyes adjust and when I could see shapes, we both stepped inside. Even with my elven vision it remained somewhat dark.
The cave smelled musty and old, and the air seemed to be filled with dust. Water occasionally dripped from the ceiling and landed on my face. The walls were smooth, cold, and damp. I used them to guide me.
Now and then a protruding rock would catch me on the forehead. Finally Ladriant decided that we better use a light source, but before he could work his magic…a voice could be heard. Humming.
I continued to tip-toe toward the mesmerizing hum, only to hear a…thud, thud, thud. Over and over and over. Ladriant followed close behind me.
“Stay here. I know what I have to do now.”
“I’ll just come with you,” he said.
“No. It’s okay. If you hear anything bad—like a blood curdling scream—then come for me.”
“If you say so,” he let out a long breath and leaned his back to the cave wall. He definitely wasn’t the type of person that liked to stay behind and miss out on all the action.
I took off the queen’s ring and told him to hold on to it. If I didn’t make it back out, he could return it to her.
Tip-toeing along the passageway, I came to a narrow entrance. I took a deep breath of the dust-filled air and gathered my courage. Somehow, the cavern before me lit up with a soft eerie glow. Whatever was inside…knew I was here.
Stepping into the narrow threshold, I witnessed something that I’d never thought possible. I couldn’t have even imagined it. A strange being lay on the damp ceiling, her feet crossed at the ankles. She threw some sort of ball to the ground and it would bounce back up to her hand every time. “Come in,” she said in a monotonous tone. Boredom must have gotten the best of her over the years. Reluctantly, I walked through the entrance and peered up at her. She was definitely Fae.
“I am guardian of the bottle. Are you here to try and take it?” She had a slight accent.
I swallowed over the super-large lump in my throat. “Yes.”
On the dirt floor lay four skulls and several scattered bones. My first thought was that she ate these humans. She might have read my mind because she snickered. “No. They didn’t pass the test and if you fail the test, you’ll end up just like them. Shall we get started?”
My pulse quickened but I knew this was the only way. “I am,” I said, but little did I know at the time. I was in for the test of my life.
Her elbows bent and contorted the wrong way and she pushed herself from the ceiling, and landed right before me. Her simple brown maxi-dress hit right above her ankles. I think by the caked on dirt that her dress had once been white, but the years of living in a cavern had stained the dress brown. It was drab and unlike the fanciness of Fae garb; but she smelled nice. Jasmine and a sweet smell such as honey suckle permeated the air. Her hair was dark but she probably hadn’t touched it in decades. It was in two pony tails and dreadlocks draped down over her shoulders. She had dark skin and freckles beneath her chocolate eyes.
“You must pass one test. But it will not be up to me whether you pass or not.” She picked some dirt out from underneath her nails.
“Who will it be up to?” I asked.
“You.” She eyeballed me and reached out and touched my hair. “Silky.”
“Uh…thanks,” I said.
“Are you ready?” she yawned.
“For my test? Uh…sure? Do you have any pointers?” I asked.
She paused and looked me over from head to toe. “No. But the more pure your heart is, the better chances you have at passing.”
I was thoughtful for a moment and then I said, “I’m a virgin if that helps.”
A smile spread over her dirty face, and she said, “It might.” She lifted her hand and said one last thing, “This is really going to hurt; but it won’t last long.”
I couldn’t imagine what she meant by that. I figured we’d be walking to the bottle and that maybe it was somewhere deeper in the caverns.
Wrong.
Before I could answer she lifted her arm in the air. Her hand and fingers took on the appearance of yellow lights, shaped like little cylinders. That is when I realized that something was not right. We weren’t walking anywhere.
She jerked back and then slammed her hand through my chest and went straight to my heart. Shock and horror overcame my senses. I lost all my breath and could not suck in any more air. My heart thudded faster and faster, and the pain was like nothing I had ever experienced before. My knees buckled and a sharp pain stabbed at my lungs.
“Shhhhh,” she said trying to sooth me. Her calm demeanor almost had me fooled…and then everything went to white.
Chapter Twenty Three
“Welcome to purgatory,” the Fae said. “Pick a door.”
As my eyes slowly focused, a white room came into view. The floor, the walls, the doors the ceiling; everything was white. It was so quiet that a humming filled my ears. This was too freaky for me; until I realized that I wasn’t breathing. That freaked me out more!
“No breath!” I said rubbing my upper chest.
“It’s alright. You’re here in spirit. You’ve got nine minutes to get back to your body. If not, you’ll die.”
“Thanks for giving me the heads up!” I squealed, but I didn’t want to waste time complaining. I only had nine minutes!
“The first thing you must do is pick a door.” She waved her hand around to display the doors and the many bracelets on her arm jangled together.
“Okay,” I said, horrified.
“If you pick the wrong door; you fail. It’s that simple. You must pick the right one, and you only get one chance,” she said. Her stern face caused me to shudder.
The pressure overcame me. “W-what’s behind the bad doors?” I was more scared than I had ever been in my entire life. All of the journeys and quests that I’d been on did not even come close to this, and how I was feeling right at this very moment. My legs tremored and shook.
“Calm down or you’re not going to make it. But if it helps any…so far, you’ve made it farther than any of the others that have come for the djinn bottle.”
Was this supposed to make me feel better? I recalled the image of the skeleton and various bones that I’d just seen in the cave moments before. Those poor souls never made it back to their bodies.
The Fae woman snapped her fingers to gain my attention. “Door one? Door two? Or will it be door three?”
“I – I don’t know yet,” I stammered. Looking around, I tried to focus. All the doors were the same. There was nothing different about any of them. I stared at each of them for several seconds; but I had less than nine minutes to make the right choice. What if I made the wrong choice? Would she toss me through one of the doorways?
After gazing at the doors, something strange happened. I realized that the third one had an ever-so-gentle glow around the bottom edge. The first two were different. They had a darkness about them.
“I pick door number three.” I clasped my hands and twiddled my thumbs round and round.
“Good choice,” she said and smirked. “Would you like to see what is behind the other doors? I won’t throw you in…we’ll just take a peak. Just so you know what you’ve missed out on.”
“NO!” I yelled. I didn’t want to see what was beyond those damn doors. But she didn’t listen to me and the first door creaked open. At first the darkness was overbearing but then images formed.
Beyond the doorframe, and above on a hill, sat a dark mansion. The rain pounded against the windows and t
he wind howled something fierce. The darkness was thick like oil and so freakishly sinister that I winced. On the lower level of the mansion, one room was lit by a lone candle. My eyes focused in on that one candle. Nothing happened for what seemed like forever, but suddenly out of nowhere something horrifying formed in the window. The monsters head was tinged red and out of it grew long horns that curled up above its skull. It had black holes for eyes; but that wasn’t even the scary part. His body was nothing but clusters of blackness, like cells, and beneath the clusters were shadowy legs.
“Good thing you didn’t pick this door. That is the demon of regret. He’s nasty. The clusters you see represent the compartments of a soul that harbors regret.” She snapped her fingers and the white door slammed shut, bringing with it a suffocating breeze that smelled of sulfur. Even if I wasn’t breathing at the moment, somehow the smell still reached my senses.
Behind the door, something terrifying and extremely angry, let out a loud, bellowing cry of anguish.
Frozen with fear, I almost fell over, but the Fae woman steadied me. “Are you ready to see what lies behind door number two?”
“No. Please don’t show me,” I pleaded.
But the Fae laughed and pointed a finger at the door. It whooshed open with a loud thud.
This time, I grabbed her arm. “What hell is this?” I managed to ask.
Before us lay a wide hallway. It had to be at least fifty feet across. A 747 jet could fit through there! The floor was carpeted with a deep burgundy color and the walls and ceiling were painted a cream color. It reminded me an old hallway at a movie theater back in Maine, but it was much wider and it wasn’t your everyday hallway. No. Not even close. It sloped down into a deep, black darkness. The darkness was so thick and heavy that no light could survive in there. I just knew it to be so.
“Dear God! Close it!” I screamed.
“Don’t you want to know what’s down there?” she asked.
“Why? Why do you show me this? Close it! Close the door!” I screamed.
“Trust me…you do not belong down there. But I show you this as I test the purity of your own soul,” she said. Snapping her fingers the door shut with a resounding, Bam!
“Holy Moses, lady! Just show me what’s behind door three and let’s get out of here.” Even without the use of lungs, I found myself panting somehow. “Please…oh pretty please!” I added for good measure. At this point, I was not above begging.
“Okay,” she chuckled. “If you can tell me what the meaning of life is…we can open door number three.
I was going to be dead before I got this one right. Then again, everyone’s answer was probably different. The meaning of life was different to everyone. Wasn’t it?
I gulped and thought for a moment. In my heart, I knew the answer to this. The answer wasn’t told to me by Izadora, nor father or anyone else. I just sort of…felt it.
“The meaning of life is: a series of tests to strengthen our souls…”
She tilted her head and leaned in a little closer. Her cocoa brown eyes seemed to glisten. “Continue.”
“And a chance or opportunity for us to do acts of kindness to those around us; even when we don’t feel like it. Because whether we know it or not; that’s what makes our souls tick.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Basically…treat others like you want to be treated. And we are tested throughout our lives till we get it right.”
“You don’t say?” So beautiful was her smile that I forgot where I was for a moment. I stepped back in awe, as her face began to shimmer with peach-colored light. And the next time she blinked…her eyes were a different color…a vivid blue. Her whole body shimmered before me like the morning sun shining on the sea. She began to fade in and out, and take on a new appearance.
“You’re not Fae at all!” I squealed.
Her dreadlocks smoothed out to silky black hair that draped down over her back, and to the top of her gold belt. Black raven feathers swooped up from the belt covering her breasts, and her olive toned skin radiated with a healthy glow. Her dried cracked lips were now the color of long stemmed cherries and her thick eyelashes grew even thicker! The next time she blinked, her eyes were green. Just like her sister, she didn’t have legs. Below the belt was nothing but white, wispy smoke trails.
She had the exact same facial features as her sister; except for the lip color. But something about Ameena made her appear…stronger. Perhaps, her jaw was more squared? Maybe it was the black feathers? And I think her wavy hair was a shade or two darker?
After she had fully changed her appearance, she said, “I am the second djinn. Well, actually the first. I was born first; so I’m older.” She winked, and now one eye was green and the other grey.
“Let’s step through door number three,” she said.
But I stumbled back when I saw that the area around me had fully changed as well. We were no longer in a white room with three white doors. We were in a jungle and things were still growing right before my eyes. Trees grew up from the ground at a fast and steady pace. Vines wound themselves up and around the trunks. And the sky! It was breathtaking blue.
A patch of red flowers grew up from the jungle floor and when they were fully grown, the heads tipped over and hung like bells.
“The door is this way.” She spun around and a doorway stood before her.
The wood was dark and covered with green vines and purple flowers. Thicker vines wrapped around the frame and the door wasn’t connected to any walls. It just sort of hung in mid-air. I could already see the thick jungle beyond the sides of the door.
The doorknob was a brilliant fuchsia colored flower and when its petals opened wide, Ameena reached forward and the flower clasped over her hand like a handshake. The door slowly opened and she floated through.
I followed closely behind her and when I stepped through…it was a paradise.
We now stood inside the ruins of an old abandoned stone building. The building itself had been huge at one point and reminded me of an ancient church. Most of the walls had fallen away and grasses, and vines had worked their way in and around the building. The place was overrun with plants, lilies, and jasmine flowers. The floor had once been tiled in white marble but plants grew up through the cracks now.
One wall remained at the head of the building and held the most beautiful stained glass window. It had a rainbow of colors, and the design itself looked like something out of a kaleidoscope.
“Wow!” I said.
“This used to be our favorite hangout. We loved it here. We were able to live a whole century in this place.”
“It is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.” I wasn’t lying. It reminded me of a place I’d seen in the Land of the Elven.
“We used to love the stream that runs through the building,” she said, and moved aside.
As soon as the words left her mouth, I could hear a stream. It started from a hole in the wall at the head of the building and gushed over a rocky waterfall. The stream continued to flow through the center of the building, around a giant tree and past our feet. I hadn’t seen this tree before, and I could only guess that things were still growing and taking their places.
It was my conclusion that we weren’t in the exact place that the djinn had lived. Nope. She was recreating it with her mind and showing me what it had been like all those years ago. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it all was.
“Pick up the bottle,” she said.
“What bottle?” I asked. But as soon as she spoke it—there it was—sitting in the arms of the giant tree. It was the same red color bottle as her sister’s; only this bottle seemed squarer at the bottom.
When my fingertips touched the bottle, a white mist formed in the room and for a moment I could see a vision of the past. Ameena stood at the bottom of a stairway, the moonlight in front of her. A man accompanied her. A man with dark hair and a nice smile. He leaned in for a kiss and the vision was gone.
“Oops. You weren’t su
pposed to see that part. It’s one of my favorite memories,” she said.
I didn’t say anything but I felt sorry for her. I think she had once loved someone and now he was lost to her. I stood by the tree and continued to hold the bottle tightly. It was like holding onto a frosty glass filled with ice.
“Our father, Abda, always knew we were destined to become djinn’s.”
I had a flashback to Ian’s book. I recalled reading about Abda. So, he was a real djinn and he was the twin’s father?
“He was a great djinn himself and even though we were cursed to follow in his footsteps, he managed to bless us. He made it so my sister and I were to remain together. We would be separated occasionally but only to come back together again. For hundreds of years it worked out this way. Mankind would make their three wishes and “boom,” we’d have peace for a time. Our bottles would find each other and we’d live on a tropical beach or deep in a jungle. We’d visit each other’s homes and drink our wonderful teas. You see…our bottles are our dear homes. They are a part of us and we have everything we want in there. Plus, all the fond memories of our lives.” She paused as if to strengthen her point.
“Then the day would come where someone would find one of us, but as soon as their three wishes were granted, we were magically brought back together again. We’d meet up and talk about the foolish things that people wished for. They were usually the same wishes over and over. Money, love…and more money. But let me tell you…money cannot buy you happiness. It never lasts; but love can last,” she cast her eyes to the sky and something in her eyes told me she spoke of the man I’d seen in the vision.
“It was rare that Sabina and I were discovered together and it never mattered anyway. Once the wishes were granted we’d find one another again. It was only this last time that both of us were discovered and things changed. Thanks to the Faeries.” She lowered her eyes and squinted at me. “If we had been discovered by the Seelie…things might have been different. But it was the Unseelie that found us wedged between the rocks of a cavern.” She floated above a few tiles of marble that were still intact. She swung her arms to the front and clasped her hands.
