by Hanna Peach
Alyx opened her mouth. Then shut it, a small knot forming at the base of her tongue. She cleared her throat. “Okay. But be careful.”
He gave her a half-smile that made her stomach flip. “I’ll be back here with the globe before you know it.”
She watched from the open doorway, her nerves pulling tighter and tighter, as Israel began to make his way across the room, sidestepping along sections of remaining floor and climbing across jutting branches. Every time he jumped, her heart did too.
Finally he stood on a branch that reached out past the left side of the teacher’s table. This was the only way he could get the globe. He grabbed a branch above him and reached out with his other arm. His fingers missed the globe by inches.
“Just a little farther,” she called.
“I’m trying.” Israel reached out again, closer, but he still missed.
“You just need to stretch out a little more. Stretch.”
He readjusted his grip on the branch above and leaned out across the table, his fingers reaching…
The front leg of the table slipped across the edge of the flooring. “Israel, watch out!”
His fingers brushed the globe just as the table toppled over. The globe slid out of his reach. Israel let out a cry as his foot slipped out from under him. The table and the globe crashed down into the depths of the forest floor, cracking and ricocheting off branches as they fell. Israel hung by one hand from the branch, swinging.
“Oh my God, Israel!” Her stomach twisted into tight, painful knots. What could she do? There was nothing she could do from here. But she could see the path to get to him, to help pull him up to safety. If he could just hang on…
“I’m coming. You better not fall, damn you!” She scrambled to make her way over to him. He couldn’t fall. He couldn’t. She couldn’t lose him. She needed him to make her smile, to take charge when she wasn’t sure what to do, to squeeze her hand to remind her that he was by her side. She didn’t think she could escape this place without him.
“Alyx,” Israel’s voice sounded strained, and the panic in her stomach grew wings and began to flutter violently about, “I don’t know if I can hang on much longer.”
“Don’t you dare let go. I need you.”
“What?”
“I said I need you, dammit,” she cried, her voice cracking. Tears blurred her eyes as she reached for another branch.
Israel began to laugh.
Laugh? He was laughing at a time like this?
She turned her head to look at him, still hanging by his fingers. Maybe he’d gone mad from fear? “Why are you laughing?”
“Alyx, I’m okay. See?” With extraordinary strength, he swung his feet out onto a stable branch.
“You…”
He grinned at her. “I just wanted to hear you admit that you need me.”
Alyx spluttered. She gritted her teeth and continued to make her way towards him. “Stay right there. I’m coming to push you off the branch.”
“You can’t do that. You need me, remember?”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
He stared down into the void. “We’ve lost the globe.”
“We? You mean you.”
“I mean ‘we’. We’re a team, Alyx.”
“Okay, so what are we going to do about it?”
“I’ll climb down after it. I’ll grab it from the ground floor and I’ll meet you at the entrance.” He began to climb down the tree.
“I’m coming too.” She thought she could see a way down from here.
“No, you’re not.”
She snorted as she reached out for a handhold and lowered herself down the tree. “You just said that we are a team. Well, this team is retrieving the globe together.”
“I don’t think you realize how far down it is.”
“I don’t think you realize how good I am at climbing down trees.”
“God, you’re stubborn, aren’t you?” She heard amidst the rustling of leaves. But she could swear she heard pride in his voice.
Alyx clambered off the branches and onto the second floor. The tree she had been climbing down turned into a smooth trunk so she would have to find another way down from here.
The second floor classroom was as thickly overgrown as the third floor had been, only sections of this old classroom looking reasonably intact. If she remembered right, this was the old Spanish classroom. She picked her way around the second floor classroom. She couldn’t see or hear Israel climbing down anymore so he must have reached the ground floor already.
There was a rustle from above. She froze, her heart slamming into her throat and her hand going to her hip. Two figures fell, God knows from where, into the bushy section in front of her. She unsheathed her sword. This would be a very good time for her to remember how to use the damn thing.
Leaves rustled. “Get off me,” a curt female voice called out from within.
There was a male groan. “I landed on something.”
“Yeah, me!”
“I think I broke something.”
“I’ll break more of you if you don’t get. Off. Me. Now.”
There was a snort and more rustling. “Relax, I’m getting off. Geez, who put a snapper demon in your underwear?”
“It’s just your pleasant company, my dear Balthazar. It’s enough to make any day hellish.”
What was going on?
The two of them stood up, brushing off leaves and sticks from their clothes. She was a tall, lean yet muscular woman with piercing sapphire eyes set into a pale pixie face and a shock of blonde hair so light it looked almost silver. She was wearing a black leather jacket and black pants like Alyx was.
The male was chocolate-skinned with a prominent nose and thick dark hair, wearing jeans and a brown bomber jacket. She couldn’t help the sense that she…knew them somehow.
“Who are you?” Alyx demanded, her sword pointed between these two strangers.
The woman grinned. “God, I’ve missed you, Alyx.” She gave Alyx a once-over. “Look at you. Still the same kickass, sword-wielding—”
“Er,” the male frowned at Alyx. He turned to his companion. “Does she know she’s holding her sword wrong?”
“Shush.” She glared at him. “She’ll soon figure it out.”
Alyx took a hard swallow. She was holding it wrong? She shifted her grip on her sword but she kept it pointed at the strangers, trying to appear as confident as she could. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
The two gave each other a look that Alyx couldn’t decipher. “The Elder sent us,” she said. “We’re here to help. I’m Vix. And this is Balthazar.”
“The Elder?” The image of the stone dragon came to her mind. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.”
“Just a bit crumbly,” said Balthazar.
Vix rolled her eyes. “Ignore him.”
“You’re here to help us get through the city?” Alyx’s heart lifted with hope. With more help, her chance of escaping increased.
Vix gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry. We can’t actually stay long.”
“Yeah, it’s costing Jordan lots of energy to even get us in here,” said Balthazar.
“Who’s Jordan?” Alyx asked.
“Really? I would have thought maybe you’d have remembered at least a little bit of Jordan considering that you and he used to—”
“Stop getting off topic.” Vix let out an exasperated sound. “You’re just confusing her.”
“I’m not confusing her.”
“You are. And you’re wasting time. We don’t have long at all in here.”
Alyx stared at the both of them. “Then…how can you help?”
“We have a present!” said Balthazar, looking very pleased with himself.
“It’s not a present,” said Vix.
“It is.”
“It is not. We can’t just give it to her, she has to earn it. I don’t know what kind of presents you hellions give, but on Earth we give ours with n
o strings attached. So it’s not a present.”
Hellions? Earth? Alyx’s head spun. Who were these two?
Balthazar sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, someone’s not getting a birthday present if she’s going to be such a brat.”
Vix ignored him. “Alyx, if you can solve this riddle, you’ll get a gift that will help you on your journey.”
“See, you just said ‘gift’!” interjected Balthazar. “It is a present.”
“What’s the riddle?” Alyx said quickly before the two could launch into another round of bickering.
Vix cleared her throat. “There’s a city called Urielos on the edge of the cliffs. In the harbor of Urielos, there is a large boat. Coming off of the boat is a ladder reaching down so that the bottom rung is just above the surface of the water. As the tide comes in, the water rises one foot every thirty minutes and continues like this for three hours. If the rungs are each one foot apart, how many rungs are underwater when the tide stops rising?”
Alyx frowned in concentration. It was just a simple math problem. One foot per thirty minutes for three hours is six feet. The rungs were one foot apart, which meant it would have risen six rungs. She opened her mouth… But something made her pause.
It felt too easy.
It felt…like a trick.
Coming off of the boat is a ladder…
That’s because it was.
“That’s a trick question,” she said. “When the tide stops rising no rungs are underwater. The ladder is attached to a boat that rises with the tide, therefore, the bottom rung will stay just above the surface of the water.”
Balthazar elbowed Vix. “I told you she’d get it. Oh ye of little faith.”
Vix glared at him. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who said to the Elder that we should give her a simple math calculation for her to ‘earn’ her magic.”
Balthazar had the sense to look indignant. “I did not. I merely said that a math calculation might be easier for you to remember. A riddle would be so easy for you to mess up.”
“But I didn’t, did I, oh ye of little faith?”
“Guys?” Alyx said.
Vix pulled a small glass orb from her pocket. “Don’t move.” She threw the orb near Alyx’s feet and it smashed against the flooring. A thick bronze smoke floated and shimmered towards her from the crash site like a snake.
“What the hell is that?” Alyx yelped as she flinched away from it. The smoke continued to waft towards her as she tried to evade it.
“It’s Alchemist magic. Hold still or you’ll waste it,” Vix said.
Alyx gave the two another wary look. Should she trust them? They were friends with the Elder…
She forced herself to remain still as the smoke curled around her upper arm. It gleamed brightly before it sank in through her jacket. She felt a flash of pain on her skin like someone had branded her and she gasped. “What was that?”
“Look for yourself,” Vix said.
Alyx sheathed her sword and shrugged off one arm of her jacket. There on her upper arm was a bronze mark in the outline of a circle with several x’s patterned across it. “A tattoo?”
“A bloodink tattoo, actually,” Vix said. “It’ll allow you to use magic without having intrinsic magic. This one is an Alchemist bloodink tattoo.”
“Usually mortals wouldn’t be allowed to use bloodink but seeing as you used to be—” Balthazar stopped suddenly as Vix elbowed him in the ribs. His eyes widened. “I, um…”
“You were about to say something.” Alyx took a step closer. Seeing as you used to be…
“Was I? I can’t remember. Mustn’t have been important, then.”
“Balthazar, what did I used to be?”
Vix gasped, staring at her translucent hands. “We’re already starting to fade.” She looked up. “I’m sorry, Alyx, but we don’t have time for that question.”
“But—”
“Alchemist allows you to change simple molecule substances into others. Iron into gold. Water into wine, that sort of thing.”
“How?” The panic rose in her as the two of them started to look opaque. She could see the bushes and leaves behind them. She heard Israel calling her name from below. She would have to ignore him for now.
“Grab the leg of that chair there.” Vix pointed beside Alyx.
Alyx grabbed the cold steel. “And?”
“Draw the magic inside yourself and think about what you want to change the steel into.”
“You should be able to remember how to use it,” Balthazar said.
Remember? She couldn’t even remember how to hold a sword properly, let alone use magic to change steel into gold. “I can’t.”
“You can do it, Alyx,” urged Vix.
Vix looked so confident, even in her ghostly state. Alyx took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She felt her body lighten, like the very air she was breathing was filling up her insides with a warm substance that was lighter than air. A warmth drew through her and she could taste metal on her tongue. Behind her eyes the black dissipated into a brilliant flare of gold.
She opened her eyes to see in her hand a glimmering chair leg. She had turned steel into gold.
“Balthazar. Vix. I did it.” She whipped her head towards them. But they had already disappeared.
Alyx climbed down a tree to the ground floor, her feet landing softly in a cluster of ferns at the bottom.
Israel was already waiting for her, pacing, his hair a mess like he’d been running his hands through it. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling for you!”
“Two friends of the Elder’s just appeared in front of me on the way down. Vix and Balthazar.”
“Balthazar!”
“You know him?”
Israel nodded. “He was one of the two guys who pushed me into your coma. What did they want?”
“To help. Look.” Alyx explained what happened and showed him her tattoo.
“So you can change steel into gold?”
“Or into silver or glass or any of those simple substances.”
“With magic?” He frowned. “That’s just…unbelievable.”
“I can show you.” She grabbed something shiny off the ground. It was an old metal protractor, probably a student’s. She inhaled and let the magic swirl inside her again, all while commanding it to reform as glass. She felt the warmth rushing through her veins again. Israel made a noise and she knew she’d done it. She opened her eyes and the protractor in her hand was now made of a thin glass.
She grinned, a bubbly feeling in her belly, and tapped Israel’s chin to close his mouth.
He shook himself and took the glass protractor from her, turning it over in his hands. “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know. I just…did. It felt as natural as breathing.”
He nodded. “That’s how I feel about fighting. If you can remember how to use magic then you can remember how to fight.”
She hoped so. “We should grab the globe and get out of here.”
“Yeah, about that…” His eyebrows furrowed. “I have bad news about the globe.”
“What bad news?”
“It’s not the right one.”
Chapter 8
“Are you sure it’s not the right one?” Alyx asked as she and Israel made their way through the forest within the ground floor classroom. She was too aware of Israel’s presence behind her. She could hear where he stepped, where he slid past leaves, she could almost hear him breathing; it caused the hairs on her neck to stand on end.
“The globe was just an ordinary wooden one, laying there all smashed up. There was nothing special about it.”
Up ahead was a classroom door looking odd just sitting there among bushes, the wall surrounding it covered in moss and a thick, twisted vine.
They tumbled out the door into the empty hallway. Israel shut it behind them, ferns pressing against the opaque glass window set at face height. “You went to a weird school.”
“It wasn’t like this when I went here.” Alyx shook her head. “Now that I think about it, this place is wrong. The riddle talks about the stiff spines and arms fold’d. We thought that meant the students but there’re no students here now.”
“Stiff spines and arms fold’d…you know, they sound like they could be statues or something.”
Statues. Of course. “Israel, you’re a genius.”
He grinned. “Why, thank you.” He pursed his lips. “Why exactly am I a genius?”
“I think you’re right. They are statues. Old statues, like statues in a museum.”
His eyes lit up. “In a place of memories old, of distant lands and lessons told… It fits a museum.”
“And the Saint Joseph Museum just got a new addition to their Ancient Greek collection…a statue of Atlas holding—”
“A globe!”
She nodded, excitement bubbling up through her. “It’s only just been unveiled. Let’s go.” She hurried down the corridor.
“That’s the museum you work at?” Israel asked, keeping pace with her.
“Yes. I’m the assistant curator of the Ancient European History collection.”
“Sounds like a pretty cool gig.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m basically a glorified personal assistant. My boss is an ass. When I did my studies I dreamed I would be managing my own collection.”
“Why don’t you apply for a better job, then?”
“…I did.”
“And?”
“I got the job.”
“But?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“The museum isn’t far from here,” she said, the front door appearing up ahead when they turned the corner.
“Alyx,” Israel said. “What about the job?”
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope.”
She sighed. “I can’t take the job.”
“Why not?”
What would he say if she told him the truth? What would he think of her? “It’s out of town. I’d have to move,” she finished lamely.
“I see,” he said, nodding.
“You see what?” Did he? Was she really that transparent?
