by Holly Hook
"Someone tampered with the wall behind my house," I tell him.
Everyone goes silent and stares at me. I'm in the spotlight now. My pulse hammers in my throat. Ned turns and stares at me. He's scowling. This is no better than the look Garrett gave me out there after I stabbed him. When he changed his mind about taking me home. When he told me I was worthless.
I don't back down. Weslie lifts her head but doesn't open her eyes. I wish she were awake so she could help defend me. She did last night when I told everyone about the Megapede.
"Behind your house, eh?" Ned asks. He steps closer. "How did you find that?"
"She followed the Harehound over there," Antoine says. "There's a hole, all right. She even killed a few of the Dwellers. I don't think she's the one who made it."
Ned snatches the torch from him. The flame grows a little higher as if it's responding to his anger. He vanishes behind my cabin and returns, snapping his fingers. "Baxter. Antoine. The two of you are going to fill that hole before you even think of getting any sleep tonight. We can't be letting any Dwellers get in. That's going to be a major repair tomorrow morning. Someone will need to go out and cut down trees. That's an all day trip." He looks right at me again. "We're lucky we found your axe out there yesterday. But we're not lucky that you also brought us those Dwellers! And by the way, no one could have caused that damage without an axe.”
I shrink away, towards the heat of the fire. I almost trip on Weslie. “I haven't seen my axe since I dropped it out by those hills. Anyone could have grabbed it. And I didn't bring the Dwellers. I hate them just as much as anyone else here."
Ned advances, but stops two feet away from me. His face is very square. His jaw, strong and merciless. "We have never had a full Dweller charge on our gates before," he says. "Never, not in the past twenty years. Let me go check the storage cave.” He walks away.
Jaden moves closer to me like he's about to protect me from whatever Ned's going to discover. "Do you need to leave?" he asks.
"And go where?" I ask. I try to keep my voice level, but I can't. Ned might kill me right here. Or banish me out into the dark. "He knows I don't like the Dwellers. They were chasing me. I even stabbed the leader of the Flamestone Society. It wouldn't make any sense if I was with them!"
Jaden shifts. "No. It wouldn't. Not at all.” Then he looks at me like he didn't quite comprehend the first thing I said. "You stabbed the leader of the Flamestone Society?"
"Well, Weslie told me he was the leader."
He raises his hand. He wants to give me a five. I accept and give him one.
"Ned should have moved you right into the best cabin," he says. "I don't get why he's being so tough on you like this. I mean, he's tough on everyone, but--"
"The axe is in its place," Ned says, returning. His voice is lower now. Maybe I won't die tonight after all. “But that doesn't mean someone didn't grab it, use it, and put it back there.”
Weslie sits up. She blinks. “Elaine was in her house when this started,” she manages. So she's been listening. “She couldn't have been the one who did this.”
"But who could have cut that hole in the fence?" I ask. Ned's still glaring at me.
A sickening thought hits me.
Garrett or someone in the Flamestone Society could have done it, especially if it was from the outside. Or he could have made one of the slaves do it. But there aren't supposed to be any mine entrances for miles and miles and the nearest caves don't seem to be Dweller nests. None of this makes sense.
"I do not know," says Ned. He puts his hand on his chin. "I will be watching you very closely. While I'm thinking about it, you can help the men block that hole for the night, since you claim you're the one who discovered it."
Pit gets in front of me as Weslie groans again. She's still kind of out of it. I'm glad she's awake and okay.
"How do we do that?" I ask.
But Ned is already walking away and back to his cabin. He pauses outside of it like he's listening, then closes the door for the night. Its a crude door that scrapes against dirt.
"Well, there goes Mr. Privilege," Jaden says.
"At least he doesn't sicken you when he looks at you," Antoine says.
“Are you sure?” Jaden asks.
I can't get the way he glared at me out of my head. "He hates my guts," I say. “I don't think he wants me here." Where else do I go? I hate to leave. “Are there any other settlements in this world?"
"I don't know." Jaden rubs his hand through his hair. "This is the only one I've ever seen. It might be the only one. But I don't get why the Dwellers are just now giving us a hard time. The Flamestone Society never considered us a threat out here, you know? It's much easier to snatch foster kids from Earth than it is to break into a walled town."
"Makes sense," I say. I follow Antoine and a burly guy over to the hole in the fence while Jaden helps Weslie up. We have to figure out a way to keep out the things of the night. "Now, how do we do this?"
Chapter Four
Experiments
"Look. Watch what happens to this Flamestone that isn't exposed to the air when I light it."
Antoine leans closer to the crevice in the cave. The waterfall roars down at the entrance, hiding us from view of anyone standing outside and fishing. My arms still ache from helping him and Baxter haul that huge rock from the night before. From helping them put it in front of the hole in the wall. It's working for now, but Ned's still yelling at Jaden and someone else to go cut down trees to fix the wall with. I don't blame him there. I haven't seen Jaden all day and Weslie got stuck milking the cows again.
This is my first time behind the waterfall. I hadn't even realized there was another cave back here. This one's lit with another torch wedged into the uneven wall and it goes even deeper than this, but the passage curves out of view.
Antoine's in his element. There are two crevices in the wall which he must have carved out. There's a chisel on the floor along with a hammer—an actual metal hammer that he might have taken out of the mines some time ago when he escaped. Tools are precious here. The ones made on Earth, anyway. It's either that or those crude ones that we have to use if we're not lucky.
There are two batches of Flamestone sitting in the square spaces, side by side. One of the openings has a piece of leather hanging above it, fastened with nails. It's ready to be pulled down over the opening. The other has nothing. Antoine picks up the chisel and hammers the Flamestone sitting in the space with the cover. It smokes and a small flame erupts. Then he yanks the cover down over it and holds it tight.
"What are you doing?" I ask. I know I should be out there helping Weslie milk the cows again, but she insisted that she's almost done and that I come in here and watch this. Maybe it's because I'm new, but I'm still nervous about making Ned any madder at me. "I know that Flamestone catches on fire." But still, I can't help but be curious.
"Oh, watch," he says. The smell of smoke gets stronger and more of it wafts out from the sides of the cover. "You've used Flamestone before, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"Then you know that it bursts into flame when struck hard enough." He's almost rambling now. This guy would have been a cool nerd back on Earth. "But you must also know that it goes out quickly, so you need something really flammable right there to catch the flames and start burning.”
He's right. "It doesn't like to keep burning on its own."
"No. It doesn't. At least, not in the open air," he says. "Flamestone isn't like coal. It doesn't need oxygen to keep spouting out heat. Flamestone's the opposite. What it needs is the lack of oxygen to keep its own fire going.”
"That doesn't make any sense," I say. The wafts of smoke from under the cover get stronger and leak out. I cough. It's like Antoine's holding the cover down on an oven. Maybe he's the one who figured out how to cook here. "How bad is that getting in there?"
He smiles. "Bad. Now that all the oxygen's out of this chamber, all the Flamestone is catching.” He waits as more smoke tries to escap
e. "Now look at this."
He lifts the cover.
A large fire spits and seethes. I jump back. It spits and crackles, then dies as the fresh air meets it and the smoke escapes. Antoine steps back and waves it away. The Flamestone inside has turned black. It's used up. Expended.
“Have you ever seen Flamestone do that before?”
“No,” I say.
"I've been experimenting with the stuff ever since I got here," Antoine says. "It's been five years now. I love the stuff. Not like the Flamestone Society, of course," he says. He grabs the dead Flamestone out of the first crevice. It's still smoking, but it's charred and black now. Shiny, almost. "Look."
He hands the pieces to me. I take them. They're warm, but not hot, which shocks me. “It doesn't even look like Flamestone anymore. It's more like some kind of metal.” I remember the black knife I saw the woman using on the meat. This looks the same.
"I call it 'Deadstone,'" he finishes. “It's good for shaping and cutting, but Dwellers ignore the stuff. I've gone out before Ned put his restriction on everyone. Observed them. They want nothing to do with it.”
I get where he's going. "So you think that setting all the Flamestone in the world on fire would be a way to stop the Dwellers and free all the slaves?" I ask.
"It just might be.” Antoine smiles. “Ned lets me tinker around back here in exchange for inventing some things.”
“What does Ned think about that?” I ask.
“I don't care what he thinks about anything. He should care. His brother could still be down there in the mines for all I know.”
“But it's been almost twenty years,” I say. "And how would you set all the Flamestone in the world on fire? I mean, the stuff is everywhere. It's in cliffs and it's all over underground and there are splatters of it everywhere. That would be a lot of fire. I don't think that could possibly work." Still, hope rises inside of me. The more I learn about this stuff, the better.
"Oh, there's another set of experiments I've been doing," he says, waving me further into the cave. "Come on. I'll show you.”
I follow him. This cave is much deeper than the one I spent the night in with Pit. Where is Pit, anyway? Jaden keeps taking him out with him. I don't blame the guy. Pit's great at keeping Dwellers away most of the time, especially in dim areas like the giant forest. And he needs to eat. He's already eaten the dead Dwellers from last night.
Antoine has more tools back here, and a lot more torches hanging on the walls. We go through a narrow part of the cave and emerge into a large chamber that spreads far over our heads. The place is magical, almost. Stalactites hang down, dripping with moisture. There are more piles of Flamestone rocks lying around on top of boulders and even a small pool of clear water in the middle of the floor, as if water has been dripping and gathering here for a while. The roar of the waterfall dims to the point where I can barely hear it.
"This is...cool," I say.
"This is my man cave," Antoine says. "Literally."
I look at the walls and laugh. He's written on the walls with the burnberry ink, too. Flamestone Experiment #1. Flamestone Experiment #2. Slimestone Experiment Alpha. I wonder if he spends all of his days in here, working on ways to figure out how to crush the Dwellers and get everyone out from underground. He's the best hope I have so far of rescuing Shawn and Talia and Travis.
"You've been working in here quite a bit," I say.
"Well, I'm an introvert. I like most people here, but away from me. I was always the quiet guy in high school who sat in the back.” There's sadness in his voice. “My father would always try to get me into sports. No thanks. Not interested.”
There's sadness in his voice. "What happened to your father?" I know I shouldn't be asking.
Antoine grabs for a piece of Flamestone that's sitting on a boulder. "He died. My mother liked to drink after that. It's the reason I landed in foster 'care.'" He moves his fingers to make quotes. "It was awesome."
This guy reminds me so much of a skinner version of Travis that I wonder if the two of them are related. Travis. His jokes. I miss them, even the ones he made back in Talia's old house as I was begging him and Shawn to get us out of there.
Travis might be still alive. Garrett said he'd put Shawn and Travis in one of the Dwellers' higher, safer mines. They might still be there.
That is, if Garrett didn't change his mind after I stabbed him.
I stabbed him.
I haven't thought about the fact in a few days, but it rears back up and tightens my stomach.
Antoine moves towards the very back of the cave. "Look at what I've found," he says.
There's another crevice carved into the wall. Antoine has put a piece of Flamestone inside like some big puzzle piece. It fills all the air inside. "This piece of Flamestone has been sitting in here for three months,” he says. “Take it out.”
I do. "What's supposed to happen?" It looks like an ordinary piece of Flamestone. Well, as ordinary as a piece of sparkling orange rock can look.
"Look inside the crevice."
I do. Antoine grabs another torch off the wall and brings it closer.
There's some residue on the bottom of the opening. But then I see it. Streaks, in fact, spreading through the brownish rock like tiny orange tentacles.
"Flamestone spreads, almost like a living thing," Antoine says. "If you leave it inside rock for a while—months, actually—it starts to grow little tendrils to other places, almost like a fungus. It doesn't spread fast enough for us to farm it or anything. It's a very, very slow process. But what I'm saying is, sometime in this world's history, there might not have been any Flamestone at all. It must have started in one place and then spread through the entire world, or at least this part of the world. It would have been millions of years ago. Or more. And then the Dwellers evolved to eat it.”
I face him. "Have you had a chance to look at more Flamestone than this?" I'm beginning to see where this is going and I forget all about milking cows with blue stripes.
"Oh, I've looked," he says. "I've been down in the mines and I've seen lots of Flamestone veins. It gets thicker the lower you go, Elaine. The Dwellers had me in one of the deeper mines. I studied it while I was down there. And I noticed that the veins go down into the really deep caves, the ones that the Dwellers won't even go in. My guess is that there's some heart of Flamestone very far underground. The place where it all started. Far away from open air," he says, holding up a finger. "What I think Steven Wompitt was trying to do was go and find out where that heart was. Even if he wasn't, we might be onto something here."
I have to believe him. “So let's say, someone were to find this heart.”
"And if we were to light the heart on fire, that might just spread through all the Flamestone in the world. It would get through all the underground stuff, at least. We can destroy the Dwellers and the Society and then the slaves will all be free to go. Flamestone's the reason that they're down there."
"I thought the Society was," I say. "They have something to do with it, too." Hope rises inside of me. It's crazy. It's insane. This might not even be anything at all, but this guy is the first person I've met here who's even trying to come up with something to help those trapped underground. Everyone else is too afraid. Weslie's terrified. Maybe even Ned's afraid, as much as I'm sure he won't admit it.
" But if you take away their reason for existing, they have to stop existing, right?" Antoine walks towards the entrance and puts the still-burning torch in another crevice. "Come on. It's almost time for dinner. And don't tell Ned about this conversation we had. He thinks I'm just some nerd coming up with cool ideas to serve Wompitt so he leaves me alone in here, and I don't want that to change."
"Agreed."
We walk back towards the waterfall. This guy might be onto something—if his theory about there being a central heart of Flamestone somewhere on Selwyn is true. What if it's not?
But it's the best thing we have to go on.
Antoine must have people he knows
down there, too.
People he might even love. Unless he was sold alone.
And I'm not giving up.
Antoine walks around the waterfall and I follow him back in the direction of town. I don't even know where the heart of Flamestone is if it even exists or how we'd light the thing on fire. The heart might be in open air and it may not even work.
But if we could, and that flame could spread through the underground and up through every Flamestone vein...
"Antoine," I say. "Do you think--"
He falls right ahead of me.
Into the ground.
He flails and curses as the grass and the dirt opens up and swallows him. Dirt flies. The grass bends downward where he fell.
"Antoine!"
I rush over. There's a hole and it's just swallowed him. It's narrow and deep. Tiny roots poke out of the edges and it smells of fresh dirt. This wasn't here before. I would have seen it because I walked this way.
I lean down, fearing another cave-in, but the ground holds. Antoine shouts something at me. Then again, louder. "I think I twisted my ankle."
He's alive. Conscious. My heart's still pounding. “You hear me?”
“Yes.”
There's nothing but darkness down there. The hole's like an opening to some well that a little kid might fall into by mistake. I crane my neck but I can't see in more than a foot or so. It would help if the sun was right overhead. "Are you hurt otherwise?"
"No," he says. "I can barely see any light. I must have fallen about ten or twenty feet. I don't think I can climb out of this. I'm in an open spot and I can breathe, but you'll have to go get some help."
He sounds so calm. Maybe he's doing it just to keep me calm. It's not working. "Is anything skittering around down there?"
"No," he says after a pause. "Nothing. But I think I'm standing in a tunnel. I don't like this, man. We don't dig tunnels here. Unless someone's doing it in secret."
"I'll be right back." I turn and run towards the gates. The sun's getting low in the sky and even Weslie has vanished from the field, done milking the cows. I can't care what Ned will think of me now. I have to get him. He'll know how to get someone out of a hole like that. And maybe we can send Pit down there to keep any Dwellers away. And a torch. There won't be any of those giant centipedes this high in the ground, will there? I would have heard it screaming. Maybe all the really bad monsters are farther down below.
