13 Curses

by Michelle Harrison

  “What about protection?” Tanya asked. “If the fairies think we’re getting too close, they could attack.”

  “Red thinks they want us to find the charms,” said Fabian, and went on to relate their earlier conversation.

  “We should still be prepared,” said Red. “Just in case.”

  The evening crawled, interrupted only by Florence’s call for dinner—none of which could be successfully smuggled up to Red. It was ten o’clock before they managed to bring her a meager plate of cold leftovers, and by which time Fabian, who had been going over and over the information they had from Elizabeth’s diaries, had pinpointed another possible location.

  “The church!” he said, banging his fist on the bed and making Tanya and Red jump.

  Tanya glared at him. “Quiet, idiot!”

  “Sorry,” said Fabian, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “But it stands to reason that one might be there. It’s where the Elvesdens were married.”

  “It’s worth a try if we can get in,” said Tanya.

  “And if we’ve enough time—we’ve no idea how long it’ll take to search the tunnel and the grave,” Red added, stuffing a whole potato into her mouth.

  It was past eleven o’clock when Florence creaked up the stairs for the final time that evening. They heard her take Amos his bedtime drink, then come back down to her own room. Waiting a further twenty minutes to allow her to drop off to sleep, they slipped downstairs one by one and, after collecting Oberon from the kitchen upon Tanya’s insistence, went into the library.

  Red’s fingers found the indents in the circular wooden panel at the edge of the bookshelf. She turned her wrist clockwise once, twice, and the mechanism clicked into place. She sensed Fabian trembling with anticipation behind her. It was the first time he had ever been into the secret opening in the library. As the partition swung open, revealing the small, black gap, she felt Oberon push past her legs, eager to explore. The musty air that met them sent him recoiling, and he hid behind Tanya’s legs.

  “Coward,” Fabian muttered, but he didn’t sound much braver.

  Red stepped into the passageway, flicking on a flashlight.

  “Careful,” she whispered, as she stepped down onto the stone staircase. “These steps are steep. If one of us loses our footing we’ll all go down.”

  Fabian was the next into the tunnel, holding a slim silver flashlight in his teeth. His hands were pinned on the damp walls to steady himself.

  “Come on, Oberon,” Tanya hissed, as she followed them into the tight space.

  Red looked back, past Fabian, to see Oberon’s long brown nose peering around the edge of the bookshelf. He looked petrified, shifting from one large paw to another.

  “Make your mind up!” Tanya said crossly. “We haven’t got all night!”

  “Just leave him!” Red said in a fierce whisper. “We haven’t got time for this!”

  A low scraping noise alerted them that the partition was closing, and Red remembered that this entrance only stayed open for a short time before the mechanism sprung back. With seconds to spare, Oberon squeezed through the gap and joined them, the thought of being left behind evidently worse than the gloomy tunnel.

  With a final click the doorway was sealed. There was nowhere to go except down. They followed the staircase, their footsteps tentative. The flickering of the flashlights was disorienting, and the dank smell of mildew invaded their lungs.

  “Keep your eyes open for a charm,” said Red, flashing her light in every direction.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get this taste out of my mouth,” said Fabian disgustedly, shining his flashlight at the dripping green walls as they came to the bottom of the steps. His voice echoed off stone. They had arrived in a small cavern, with four tunnels ahead of them.

  Red searched the ground with her light. Soon she picked out a large pebble, wound and knotted with string leading off into one of the tunnels.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  No one spoke as they went into the tunnel. They sensed as well as saw the space become tighter above their heads. The air grew thicker and icier, like a freezing, rotting soup. Oberon whined, his tail tucked firmly between his legs.

  When the air turned even cooler—but cleaner—Red knew the cavern was ahead. Only Fabian paused to look at the old-fashioned bed, table, and chair that stood abandoned there. They moved quickly on past to where the underground room closed off into a tunnel once more, following the limp string on the ground.

  “It’s not far to the grave now,” said Red. “If we don’t find any charm in the tunnel we can search on the way back too.”

  Following Tanya’s example, Red now carried the bracelet in a drawstring pouch of salt in her pocket. Though none of the charms had shown signs of enchantment after being reattached to the bracelet, she was taking no chances. Several times she drew breath in a false alarm as her flashlight caught some damp glimmer in the darkness, but always it turned out to be a water droplet or a shard of glass broken long ago.

  It was Fabian who spotted it.

  “There it is!”

  It was not tucked in some underground crevice, or wedged behind some loose rock. It was on the ground perhaps three meters away, directly in their path, brazenly waiting to be discovered. They stopped, their flashlights aimed at it, bouncing off the smooth silver.

  “Which one is it?” Tanya asked, through chattering teeth. Oberon pressed himself into her legs.

  “I think… it’s the Light,” said Red, stepping uncertainly toward it. As she did, her flashlight flickered. She shook it until it righted itself, then shone it farther along. “The exit is just up ahead. About twenty meters away.”

  Tanya’s flashlight wavered and then went out, leaving their light reduced by a third. In the darkness of the tunnel it made a lot of difference.

  “Did you put fresh batteries in these, Fabian?” she said, shaking the offending flashlight and flicking the switch a few times.

  “Brand new, all of them,” Fabian said in a small voice. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a candle and some matches. Lighting one, he passed it to Tanya.

  Red took another step toward the charm. Her flashlight dimmed for a moment, then came back to full strength. Her breathing quickened.

  “This isn’t a coincidence,” she whispered.

  “You mean the way the lights keep flickering?” Tanya asked. Her hand shook, and she winced as hot candle wax dripped onto her skin.

  Red nodded.

  “Keep hold of the flashlight,” she said. “I want you to carry on through the tunnel and get out through the grave. Once you’re out, try the flashlight again. If it works you’ll have to use it to guide us out.”

  “What do you want me to do?” said Fabian, no longer attempting to mask his fear.

  “Stay where you are, and shine your flashlight ahead to guide Tanya.”

  Tanya moved past them, giving the charm a wide berth. As she and Oberon drew level with it her candle dimmed, then finally died, leaving the tunnel ahead pitch dark.

  “Keep going,” Red told her, and as Fabian lifted his flashlight, she willed it to reach the farthest recesses of the tunnel. Instead, the shadows seemed to stretch even farther and Tanya was swallowed by the darkness.

  Finally they heard her call out.

  “I’m here, but I can’t lift the slab!”

  Red cursed under her breath. She had forgotten about the heavy stone. It was difficult to shift, but not impossible. However, Red was bigger and stronger than Tanya—and lifting it from below was twice as hard as doing it from above.

  “Go and help her,” she told Fabian.

  “What about you?”

  “You can come back once the slab’s shifted if I need you,” she said. “Go.”

  She lifted her own flashlight as Fabian ran headlong into the darkness, for as she had expected, his flashlight went out as he passed the cursed charm. She heard his voice and Tanya’s, but not their words, and then the scrape and shifting of sto
ne on stone. Seconds later, gusts of cold, fresh air blew into the tunnel, and she sucked them in gratefully. Up ahead, she heard a shout of encouragement, and then light shone in from above. Tanya and Fabian had made it out, away from the darkness. She was alone.

  Gathering her courage, she took another step toward the charm. It looked so innocent, lying there. It could be a dropped trinket, nothing more. But it was more than her imagination that sent shadows scudding across the walls of the tunnel. The shadows were lengthening, thickening. Another step, and Red’s flashlight was rendered useless. With a feeble sputter, the light went out for good. Trying to keep her nerve and a cool head, she stuck the flashlight in her pocket and continued. The charm was now only five paces away, and all she had was the thin light that came from Tanya’s and Fabian’s flashlights, twenty meters farther on, that barely stretched to her.

  “Have you got it?” Fabian called.

  “Not yet,” she shouted back, her voice echoing off the walls. She took another step. At first she thought the lights ahead had dimmed, but as a wisp of black swirled in front of her face, she knew that the shadows were growing. They were stretching along the walls of the tunnel as far as she could see, both going away from her and coming toward her. Time and again she thought she saw shapes within the shadows… a face, or perhaps a hand. But trying to distinguish anything real was like trying to make sense of the shapes in a cloud formation. She was afraid now, unsure of what was happening. Slowly, slowly, she knelt down to the bone-chilling ground and began to crawl toward the candelabrum.

  And that was when everything went black.

  Tanya and Fabian were gulping in the fresh autumn air with relief after being stuck in the clammy tunnel. The moon hung overhead, highlighting the gravestones all around; it was an improvement to the tunnel, but a small one. Only Oberon appeared completely at ease with his surroundings.

  Tanya leaned through the opening in the grave, stretching as far as she was able, and held her flashlight up for Red’s benefit. She too had seen the darkness thicken as Red had got nearer to the charm.

  “It’s getting darker down there,” she murmured. “Our flashlights aren’t doing anything.”

  “I’m going back down,” said Fabian. “Here, hold my flashlight.”

  He began to scramble into the tunnel, squeezing himself through the narrow square onto the steps. In front of him, they watched as Red lowered herself onto her hands and knees and started crawling toward the charm. The light picked out her movements, and the tiny silver object in front of her. Suddenly she froze, and reached her hands out blindly in front of herself.

  “I can’t see!” she shouted. “Are you still there?”

  “We’re here!” Fabian yelled. “I’m coming back to you!”

  “No! Stay where you are—something’s happening! It’s all gone dark! Are the flashlights on?”

  “The flashlights are shining right on you!” Tanya called in alarm. “Do you mean you can’t see them?”

  “I can’t see anything!” Red had stood up and turned now, facing back into the tunnel, back the way they had come. Her voice was high-pitched, nothing like the calm, cool Red Tanya knew.

  “She’s panicking,” Fabian said. “We’ve got to get her out!”

  “It’s the charm,” said Tanya. “Its power is working against her—it’s taking all the light and leaving her completely in darkness.”

  As they watched, shadowy figure formations swirled all around Red. They were blurred and fragmented, but as one reached out with its shadow hands, holding them over Red’s eyes, both Tanya and Fabian saw it. The sight of it sent Fabian recoiling but he managed to stand his ground.

  “Get out of there, Fabian,” Tanya said in a low voice. “If either of us go down there, the shadows will get us too, and then we’ll be no good to her. We need her to keep her head so we can direct her out.”

  Fabian didn’t need telling twice.

  Red held her hand in front of her face and couldn’t see it. There was nothing but darkness, as though an inkwell had been upset and the contents had gone into her eyes. She found the wall of the tunnel and clung to it for support, her thoughts of the charm pushed from her mind.

  Eternal darkness… was this to be her curse? Never to see light, never to see anything again? Something forced its way up her throat, a sob mingled with a scream. It erupted as a strangled sound that seemed alien to her.

  “Red!” Tanya called. “Try not to panic! We can do this—once you get the charm it’ll be all right. Trust me! We’re going to get you out.”

  “How?” she cried. “I can’t even see an inch in front of my face!”

  “Just stay calm,” Fabian shouted. “The darkness has confused you—you’re facing the wrong way. Turn back around, listen to our voices to guide you.”

  Red turned, still keeping one hand on the wall to steady herself, and started back the other way.

  “Good,” said Fabian. “Now you need to come out into the center of the tunnel. Take three small steps to your right.” He paused while she did as instructed. “Now get back down on your hands and knees and start moving slowly in this direction. The charm is directly in front of you.”

  Red crawled forward, grit digging painfully into her knees and the heels of her hands. The darkness was all-consuming, and Fabian’s voice was her only beacon. She tried to block out everything else and just concentrate on what he told her to do.

  “Now stop,” he instructed. “The charm is right in front of you! Reach out slowly until you find it.”

  Red patted the ground in front of her, careful not to brush the charm away. Her hand found it, cold and hard. She curled her fingers around it and felt in her pocket with her other hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m getting the bracelet out. If I can get the charm back on it—”

  “No!” Tanya shouted. “You could drop it. Just get the charm and get out of there.”

  Reluctantly, Red pushed the bracelet deep into her pocket, though every instinct was fighting to do whatever it took to try and see again. Attaching the charm to the bracelet was the only thing that would stop the curse….

  She stood up uncertainly and began to move on. No sooner had she stepped past the point where the charm had lain than the air changed again, growing heavier, swirling around her in fierce gusts. And suddenly she realized it was not just air… it was the shadows, fighting angrily against letting her go….

  “Red, keep moving!” Tanya yelled. “The shadows are all around you—just keep coming toward us, you’re nearly there!” Her arm was aching with the pressure of keeping the flashlight trained on Red. Fabian had taken his flashlight back and also had it pointed at the girl staggering blindly toward them, her arms outstretched. All around her the shadows loomed, engulfing her, growing more turbulent by the second.

  “The steps are in front of you!” Fabian called.

  Red stumbled, landing heavily on the cold stone. She cried out as her wrist took the brunt of her fall, but somehow managed to keep her fist clamped around the charm. Close to tears, she crawled up the steps, feeling the welcome air of the outside on her cheeks. Then hands were on her, hauling her out of the cavity and onto her back, where she lay on the spongy wet grass in the blackest night she had ever seen.

  Tanya grabbed Red’s clenched fist, prying it open to reveal the charm in her palm and taking care not to touch it. She looked into the girl’s eyes, and saw them dark and blank and unseeing. It was a terrifying sight, and she prayed that whatever curse the charm had put on her would be dispelled once it was back on the bracelet.

  Fabian had drawn the drawstring pouch from Red’s pocket, and was now carefully lifting the bracelet from the mound of salt inside. He brushed it over the candelabrum. The moment the charm reattached, Red gasped and her eyes cleared.

  Simultaneously, a vast, hissing wall of shadow burst forth from the tunnel entrance like lava from a volcano, whooshing past them and sending Tanya’s hair flying skyward. It curled up i
nto the sky and then filtered back down, settling into the darkened cracks and crevices of the churchyard. The shadows were now as they should be.

  Red lay on her back, half laughing, half crying, with Oberon licking her face enthusiastically and Tanya and Fabian looking on in relief. The navy-colored sky was full of cloud, allowing only the brightest stars to shine through where it parted.

  It was hardly perfect, but to Red it was beautiful. She allowed herself a minute to take it in. Then she got up, pushing any thoughts of defeat or vulnerability from her mind, and faced Tanya and Fabian.

  “Are you ready to look for the next charm?”

  Beneath the fake gravestone, the entrance to the tunnel was surrounded by a low stone frame that held the slab a little way from the ground. There were three sections to the slab, the centerpiece being the one that concealed the tunnel. Had the three sections been one, it would have been impossible to lift. Under the end sections there was just earth. There was a dip in the frame where they sifted through dirt, dead leaves, dead insects, and mice, with bated breath, for the next charm.

  “Remind me of the ones we still have to find,” said Fabian, poking a twig into another crevice. “We might be able to try and prepare… you know, what to expect.”

  “In the way of curses, you mean?” Red asked.

  Fabian nodded.

  “There’s the Staff for strength; the Dagger, which drips blood that can heal any wound; Glamour, the mask of disguise; the Key, which will open any door—even to other worlds—and the Book of Knowledge.”

  Tanya sifted through a handful of soil.

  “I don’t fancy finding any of those in a graveyard.”

  “Well, one thing’s certain,” Red said grimly. “There’s nothing here.” She shook dirt from her lap and stood, looking over to the edge of the graveyard.

  “Shall we shift the slab back in place?” Tanya asked.

  Red shook her head. “Leave it open in case we have to make a quick escape.” She started walking, away from the center of the graveyard and over to where the real grave was. She sensed Tanya and Fabian dragging behind reluctantly, and pointed them over to the caretaker’s keep, where two heavy shovels sat.