Borderlands

by Skye Melki-Wegner

  So when I drop back and flatten myself against a wall, no one even notices I’m gone.

  I wait for several long seconds, until the sound of their footsteps has faded into the dark. I suddenly feel very alone. There’s nothing but black all around me – and the sound of gushing, far below. A small, selfish part of me wants to run after my friends. To charge up towards light, towards air. Towards life.

  But Lukas is down there in the Pit. And I will not abandon him. Not like I abandoned Radnor.

  So I turn. I take a panicked breath.

  And I plunge back down through the dark.

  Down, down, down. The tunnel crawls like a snake through the earth, and I slither down inside its belly. All is black. All is cold. I pass the cavern where we hid from the gold-clad guards, and stumble towards the tunnel from which they first emerged. If they were fleeing the Pit, this is the way I must go.

  Since this tunnel is wider than the others, I can’t keep my hands on both walls at once. I choose one side and stick to it, my right hand pressed against the stone. Dirt crumbles at my touch, and the sound of water rushes beneath me. The air smells damp now, although I don’t know whether that’s the coming flood, or just mildew in the dark. Either way, I stumble forward with a new burst of panic. I can’t be too late. I have to find the Pit before . . .

  And suddenly, there it is. The tunnel opens up into an enormous room, which is lit by a dozen swinging lanterns on its ceiling. It’s bordered by a platform with old metal safety rails. And in its centre, the floor falls away into darkness.

  I run forward and hurl myself against the rail, scouring the Pit for signs of life. It’s already filling with water; the liquid gushes through grates in its walls. And down there, among the rush and stream of the waterfalls . . .

  ‘Lukas!’

  He jerks his head up, startled by my cry. His lips slowly form my name, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. A massive bruise covers his left cheek, and he’s as thin as I’ve ever seen him. But he’s alive. Thank Taladia, he’s alive.

  ‘Can you get up?’

  Lukas shakes his head, and raises his wrists. I squint through the shadows, and see that his arms are bound by chains.

  ‘I’m coming!’

  The Pit’s walls are steep, polished stone. No hope of climbing without picks and a harness. I glance around, desperate for aid – there must be something around here that the guards use to access the Pit . . .

  A few metres to my left, I spot a tangle of chains. When I dart across and seize the end, they unfurl into my hands like rope. No, like a rope ladder. It’s a ladder of silver links, with one end bolted to the guardrail.

  I lean over the edge again. ‘Lukas, I’m coming!’

  With a grunt, I shove the pile of chains over the edge. Its end disappears into the water spilling through the metal grates. But I don’t hesitate. I can’t afford to. I twist my body sideways, slide between the rails, and slip down onto the rungs of the chain ladder.

  As I descend, the air fills with mist. Water churns up around me. I plunge through several waterfalls only to emerge, spitting and cursing, into an arch of empty air beneath them. By the time I hit the bottom of the Pit, the water is at my waist. I splash away from the base of the ladder and hurl myself straight at Lukas.

  His voice is hoarse. ‘Danika, I –’

  ‘Shhh.’ I wrap my arms around him and press my face into his neck. I breathe. He smells faintly of dried blood. My breath shakes a little, and I let the softness of his neck press against my cheek.

  All this time we have doubted him. Our entire crew has questioned his motives. We have discussed whether he is a coward, a traitor, a liar. A Morrigan. But Lukas came here to destroy the dam. He came to stop a war, and to save us all.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he whispers.

  I try to pull away, but Lukas clutches me against him. His biceps are trembling against my back. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘We have to,’ I say, although every inch of me wants to stay holding him. I want to just stand here and cling to him and close my eyes, and let the water fall around us like rain. It wouldn’t be so bad, really. Just the two of us, and the gush of water, and the slow unfolding of the dark.

  But I’m not a quitter. I’m not ready to die. And no matter what the more sentimental corners of my brain might say, practical instincts are always going to outdo them in a shouting match.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘I have to let go now, Lukas.’

  He releases his grip a little – just enough for me to slip away. The water is almost up to my chest now. It froths around us, cold fingers on my skin.

  I turn my attention to the chains at Lukas’s wrists. Their ends trail off to an unknown spot beneath the water – probably some kind of tethering loop on the Pit’s floor. Unless I can sever the padlock, he’s not going anywhere. We’re deep beneath the Valley’s surface, beyond the reach of the magnetic seams. Deep enough to use alchemy. Perhaps . . .

  ‘Where’s your unlocking charm?’

  Lukas shakes his head. ‘They took everything.’

  ‘All right.’ I try to sound calm, although my stomach is twisting. ‘Is there anything sharp down here? Something we can use to pick the lock?’

  He shakes his head again.

  ‘There has to be something –’

  ‘I’ve been here for days, Danika. I haven’t found anything.’

  I know the water is rising, but part of me feels like if I don’t look at it – don’t acknowledge it – perhaps it won’t be real.

  ‘Have you got anything?’ Lukas says.

  I search my pockets, but I know that my little knife would be no match for the lock. That just leaves a box of waterlogged matches, and my mother’s bracelet . . .

  My mother’s bracelet!

  I wrench my hand out of the water and roll up my sleeve to the elbow. The bracelet shines silver in the shadows far beneath the ceiling’s lantern light. Two little charms dangle from its end: the foxary rose, and the silver star.

  Lukas exhales. ‘You found my note.’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  I prod at the star charm, unsure what to do. Silver did something to it just before she died – poured a little of her proclivity power into this charm. But what does it do? How can I bond with a charm if I don’t even know what I’m bonding to?

  ‘That one’s not a charm,’ Lukas says. ‘It’s just sentimental.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I met . . .’ I hesitate. This isn’t the time to mention Silver. To explain that his grandmother was still alive, but now he’s lost her all over again. ‘I met an old lady who knew how to make alchemy charms. She enchanted this one somehow, just before she died . . . but I don’t know what she did to it.’

  ‘You can’t try to bond with that – it could be dangerous! It could kill you.’

  ‘As opposed to all this water?’

  Lukas shakes his head. ‘Don’t do it, all right? It’s not worth the risk. You’re not the one locked down here. There’s still time for you to –’

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  He wrenches up his wrist to show the chains. ‘Look at me, Danika! I’m not going anywhere. In another few minutes that water will be over our heads, and I’m not letting you die for –’

  The earth rumbles. The walls shake. Far above, the lanterns sway and flicker. We trip forward and grab each other, and for a terrible moment I think the entire catacomb network must be collapsing. Clods of earth shake down from the ceiling; the water around us comes alive with sploshes as fragments hit the surface. I let out a cry and wrench Lukas aside.

  And with one last tremor, the lights go out.

  We stand, silent. There’s just the gush of the waterfalls, and the swirl of darkness around our chests.

  ‘What was that?’ Lukas says.

  ‘Might’ve b
een some tunnels collapsing,’ I whisper. I don’t even know why I’m whispering – it’s like my throat has forgotten how to form proper words. ‘All this pressure being released . . .’

  In the blackness, Lukas grabs my hand and presses it against his cheek. There’s a moment of quiet as my fingertips trace his skin. ‘Danika,’ he whispers. ‘You have to go.’

  ‘I’m going to open this padlock.’

  ‘You can’t even see it!’

  ‘I . . . I don’t care, I’ll just . . .’ I don’t know what to say. Lukas is right. I’ve got no key, no charm, no magic. All I’ve got is darkness, and a tiny metal star. Silver’s phrase comes back to me: ‘You can’t have stars without the night.’

  And suddenly, I know what this charm can do.

  I press it between my fingers and concentrate. I imagine light. Starlight. The light that comes only at night, that’s imprinted upon my spine in my proclivity tattoo. Just like the proclivity that Silver died with, that she poured into the metal of this charm . . .

  And beneath my fingers, the star begins to shine. I sense it through my eyelids: a faint red glow. I open my eyes. The light builds. It casts up between my fingers and into the dark. Across Lukas’s startled face.

  But the charm isn’t just glowing – it’s hot. I drop it with a yelp; it falls and dangles from my mother’s bracelet. My fingers sting where they touched it, but the charm continues to grow brighter and brighter. Hotter and hotter. The light is almost too bright to look at, now – it burns my eyes to stare directly at its surface. Squinting, I catch a glimpse of hot red metal through the dark. Star-shine.

  ‘Hold up your wrists,’ I say. The water is above our shoulders now, and I have to raise my hands high to keep the charm above the liquid.

  Lukas raises his wrists. In the light of the star charm, I catch a glimpse of the padlock. I press the charm against the lock. It sizzles. Sparks fly from the metal. A quiet hiss escapes it – an exhalation of heated breath. More sizzles. Smoke. I know the metal is melting; a couple of droplets hit the water.

  I breathe in smoke and fight to hold my hand steady. But the water is still rising, and now my feet can’t touch the floor. I kick upwards, forced to tread water. My arm wants to collapse – to fall below the surface and help with the paddling – but I can’t stop now. Not until Lukas is free.

  ‘Danika,’ he gasps.

  His lips are barely above the water now; he tilts back his head, struggling to keep his nostrils high. He kicks upwards, momentarily thrusting his shoulders higher while the water swallows his chained wrists. I cry out in dismay as liquid closes over Silver’s charm – but to my surprise, the star doesn’t flicker out. It keeps on glowing: a tiny spark of light beneath the water. The padlock shines hot and red beneath the churn, as twists of molten metal peel away.

  But even now, Lukas’s chains pull him down towards the floor of the Pit. Every breath is half a snort as water closes over his lips. It rolls up towards his nostrils.

  ‘Almost there,’ I manage. ‘Lukas, I’m almost –’

  The padlock snaps. Its broken halves sink through the water, and I fumble to help Lukas pull his hands free from their chains. As soon as he’s free, he kicks up and gulps a desperate mouthful of air. We’re both treading water now, lost in a haze of mist and black. Our only light source is the star charm; I thrust it high above my head, and struggle towards the chain ladder. ‘Come on!’

  I haul myself up. It’s hard to keep the star charm away from the ladder – the last thing I want to do is melt through the chains. But if I extinguish the charm we’ll have to clamber through darkness, an idea that makes my stomach flip. So I thrust my right wrist out to the side, into open air, and use my left hand alone to support my body.

  ‘All right?’ I call when I’m about halfway up.

  There’s some spluttering from below, so I guess that Lukas is passing through a patch of waterfall spillage. He re-emerges with a gasp. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Keep going.’

  We reach the top and slip through the rails onto the safety platform. I hear a bellow from the earth now. Water rushes through passages deep beneath our feet and my own heartbeat feels as hollow as the Pit. How long do we have?

  I grab Lukas’s arm. ‘Come on!’

  We hurtle up the tunnel as our light-source swings wildly from my wrist. The world is a tide of shadow, sucking in and out around us. Dark, light, dark, light. The roar of water and the quake of falling stone. Fragments of dirt scatter across my head and I almost forget how to breathe.

  ‘Which way?’ Lukas gasps, as we burst into a multi-tunnel chamber. It takes me a moment to recognise the place: the chamber where I hid from the goldie soldiers who’d abandoned Lukas in the Pit. It looks different now. Huge chunks of stone have fallen from the walls and ceiling. The floor is scattered with broken shards, and dust puffs around me with every footstep.

  I pick out the tunnel where I fled with my friends. ‘This way! So long as we’re going uphill . . .’

  ‘That’s the main thing,’ Lukas agrees.

  We hurry up the pathway. We round a couple of bends that I vaguely remember – the place where I pretended to trip and drop behind Clementine, or the place where I grazed my shoulder against the wall.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Lukas says. ‘Are they here?’

  I nod. ‘They went on ahead. Hopefully they’re back above ground now.’

  Unexpectedly, Lukas grabs my hand. He opens his mouth, like he wants to speak – maybe to tell me off for coming back for him or something. But then he closes it again. He just squeezes my hand. I return the pressure. His palm is warm and strong.

  ‘This is the way they went,’ I say. ‘If we keep heading upwards, towards the surface . . .’

  We round another corner, hands clutched together. I never want to let go. I just want to keep running, keep breathing, keep my grip on his skin and know he’s alive and with me.

  But when I see what’s around the corner, shock makes me release him. The star charm casts a faint glow over the rocks. And about twenty metres ahead, a pile of rubble blocks the tunnel.

  It’s a dead end.

  I stare at the wreckage, feeling oddly empty. There’s nothing to say. In a strange way, I want to laugh. It’s all over.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lukas says, his voice barely a whisper. I can only make out his words by staring at his lips, and the lines of creased horror on his face. ‘I’m sorry, Danika. You shouldn’t have come back for me.’

  ‘Can we shift the rocks?’

  ‘No,’ Lukas says. ‘We’ll bring the whole tunnel down.’

  I press my hand against the nearest rock. It’s solid. Small stones crumble at my touch, but I don’t dare push any harder. There’s no gap, no hope of squeezing to the other side. Rubble stretches from floor to ceiling, completely blocking the tunnel.

  ‘The tremors,’ I whisper. ‘Those strong ones – when we were down in the Pit, and the lights went out . . .’

  Lukas nods. He runs a hand over his jaw, sucks against his teeth, then nods again. ‘All right. We’ll just go back and choose another tunnel, that’s all.’ He takes a shaky breath. ‘We’re going to be all right.’

  We turn back into the dark, and we run. Neither of us mentions the obvious: we don’t have time for this. We don’t know whether the other tunnels are blocked as well. And running downhill – back down towards the rising water – makes my insides clench to the point of nausea.

  By the time we reach the chamber again, it’s filling with water. The fallen rocks are invisible now, drowned beneath the gush. We plunge into the water and find that it’s too deep to stand; we have to swim for it, paddling across the chamber like it’s a richie’s swimming pool. Except that it’s dark, and my chest heaves, and the water presses us closer to the ceiling with every stroke.

  I keep my chin up and gasp for breath, searching for a way out. By the tim
e we’re halfway across the chamber, I can’t see the tunnel entrances any more – they’re completely submerged.

  ‘This way!’ Judging by the slope of the roof, I think I can pick out the direction the goldies ran before. If anyone knows the fastest way out of here, it would be the guards . . .

  We reach the wall just as water presses against the ceiling. I manage one last breath – lips almost kissing the stone – and then dive into the dark. The water is cold. Sharp. It wraps around me like a liquid layer of skin, until every little pore of my body feels consumed by it. It rushes up my nose, into my ears, and stings my eyes.

  I catch a glimpse of Lukas. His hair rolls back in ethereal waves, and his green eyes stare wide and desperate in the light of the star charm. A trail of bubbles escapes from his lips.

  In the faint light, I can make out the tunnel entrance. We plunge through it. To my relief, I guessed correctly – this tunnel leads uphill, not down. We swim a few metres until there’s space to thrust our heads up, gasping, and then stagger from water onto dark rock.

  I grab Lukas’s hand again and he returns my grip with a squeeze. But it’s a short-lived victory. In another few minutes this patch of tunnel will be underwater – just like the patch behind it. We have to move.

  ‘If this one’s a dead end . . .’ I whisper.

  Lukas shakes his head. ‘Don’t think it, Danika. It won’t be.’ He swallows. ‘It can’t be.’

  He leaves the rest unsaid. If this tunnel’s end is dead, then so are we. This time, there’s no turning back.

  We stagger forward, up and up into the dark. The star charm swings. Our feet stumble. Our fingers intertwine. Every footstep slaps wet echoes around the tunnel and my clothes dribble cold water down my body.

  And even as we run, the water runs behind us. Perhaps the lower levels of the tunnels sprawl more, have more nooks and crannies to fill. Now that we’re higher, it seems there’s less surface area for the water to fill – it gushes upwards at a stomach-churning rate. A few times it reaches our ankles, until we whip our legs into a faster gait. Every muscle in me burns. But if we let it catch us . . .