Drowned (21 page)

“Coe, there have always been rumors. Far-fetched tales that there is an escape tunnel to a land of paradise under the castle. That those stories of ghosts and evil under the castle were meant to keep people from poking around too much. I always figured it was just the crazed ravings of people like Xilia, who can no longer tell real life from fantasy.” He stares at me and sucks in a breath. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? That they’re not just rumors?”

I just stare at him, afraid of what he’ll do.

“Your father was the highest ranking guard of the Wallows, once. Before you were born. Did you know that? He had a coveted spot in formation.”

“I— What?” This news comes as complete shock to me. “He was just a fisherman.”

“Many tides ago, after Star was presented as a sign from the gods, the rumor of the escape route being under a castle somehow festered, and the people were clamoring for Wallow to look into it. Wallow agreed to send someone on a search. He let the people choose their best, most fearless and trustworthy man to investigate.”

“My father?”

He nods. “But no escape was found. The mission was a failure. The ghosts and demons changed him somehow, so much so that he was unable to speak about what happened there. Your father was cast out to the outer edge of the formation. The king was deeply disappointed in him. I can only assume that was the betrayal your father spoke of. Didn’t he tell you?”

“I—I don’t know anything about this,” I say, but suddenly I remember the scratched letters on the plaque in the laundry room. They had been his, after all.

He studies me. “People don’t believe you. They think that he gave you information, and that you know more than you’re letting on.”

“If I did know a way out, I would let everyone know,” I whisper.

He smiles slightly, and then looks up at the sky and shakes his head. “They don’t believe you. Not anymore. You need to convince them. Take us where you’ve been for the past few tides.”

I exhale. Of course I knew he’d say that. “They listen to you. It’s not so much that they don’t believe me.
You
don’t believe me. Admit it.”

He nods. “All right. You’re not being truthful, Coe.”

“Neither are you,” I counter. “Fine. I’ll take you down there. Tell me where the princess is first.”

“Persistent, aren’t you?” he groans, spitting the piece of seaweed onto the ground. “We have not seen her. We thought she was with you, but since you don’t know, we can only assume she’s dead.”

It’s not as if I’d expected anything better, but I wonder at that moment if I could have saved her. If I am capable of saving
anyone.
My insides tighten so much I think I’m in danger of passing out. I never wanted to hurt anyone. But Star, Fern, Tiam... I have a feeling I may have just brought doom upon us all.

Twenty

The Descent

I
walk slowly across the wet sand toward the entrance to the castle, all the while squinting in the sun and trying to avoid the prick of Finn’s spear. The rest of the townspeople have gathered around us, and they separate for us as we walk. I wish I had a plan. I wish I could be like Clever Gretel and come up with something that would get me out of this mess. But my mind swirls with thoughts of Fern, little Fern, and how she deserves so much better. Of Tiam, and the feel of his mouth on mine, his breath in my ear. Of how our first kisses were probably our last.

I think of how completely pathetic I’d acted when they’d almost thrown me into the water. I thought I was stronger than that. I thought I was prepared for death. Instead I’d squealed and fussed like a child. After everything I’ve been through, after all the times I almost met death! Thank God Tiam wasn’t there to see that, after he’d gone on and on about how fearless I was. Maybe he’s the reason why I acted so pathetically in the first place. Because only a short time before, I’d finally found something that made life worthwhile.

“You’re stalling,” Finn grumbles. I lurch forward and start moving faster this time, to the doors. One of his guards holds them open, and we pass through.

Not having any other bright ideas, I lead him and two guards to the door to the basement. I fumble for the key in my bag and finally produce it and unlock the door. “It’s down there,” I explain.

“I’m following,” he says, nudging me along.

I step down until I arrive at the map at the bottom of the stairs. I study Cass’s drawing, as if it really does tell me exactly where the exit is. “We go this way,” I say, turning toward the honey room. I clutch the key in my sweaty palm as the guards light a torch to blaze the way.

Then it suddenly occurs to me. I have Star’s key. But the only other person with a key is Burbur. If I can somehow separate from them, lock myself in the honey room... I can make it down to the subbasement before they can follow me. But...how? There are three of them and only one of me. Six hands versus one. The two guards tower over me, broad-shouldered and burly, and Finn is no lightweight, either.

The light from the torch dips and sways as the guard holding it moves. It appears he is having a hard time balancing both his spear and the torch because his armor keeps getting in the way. He grunts and groans and then curses as a few sparks land on his hand. All of this begins the wheels turning in my head. Soon, I have a plan.

We walk on past the honey room. I’ve never been this far before, so it’s not much of a stretch when I look to Cass’s drawing for help. We pass the canned vegetables room, and the roots room, whatever that is. Then I find one that seems fitting. CANNED MEATS. I use my key to open the door. “It’s in here,” I explain, not looking at them.

Finn scratches the scars on the side of his face, then points to the plaque beside the door. “What does this here say?”

“This is where they store the canned foods,” I answer.

“You can understand those markings?” Finn asks. The guards mumble to one another, probably suspicious. They follow me inside. It’s just more crates, most of which appear empty. Finn looks around, tossing things over carelessly with the end of the spear, letting the soft packing material scatter across the stone floor. He moves ahead into the room while I hold back. The guards flank me, but I’m focusing on the guard with the torch to the right of me. I swallow, take a deep breath and tell myself it’s time.

In a blinding flash I reach out and grab the torch, throwing it to the ground. Finn whirls and lunges for me, but instantly the dry paper packing material is ignited, throwing a huge wall of fire between him and the rest of us. The guard who lost his spear is on fire, spinning in tight circles, squealing and screeching much the way I did on the beach. The hair of his beard is engulfed and he’s swatting helplessly at it as if trying to kill a fly; it’s just making the flames curl down his chest. The other guard jabs his spear at me, but I squeeze to the side just in time to avoid it. Then he throws himself at me, hands clawing at my neck. I fall to the ground, kicking, screaming, thrashing all three of my good limbs until he lurches back in pain. I reach for the torch, then climb halfway to my feet, stumbling to the door. As I do, I catch sight of Finn struggling to unfurl the cheerful pink robe from his neck, the bottom of which is now on fire. I grasp the handle, pulling with all my might, until it’s about to click shut. But four black, burned fingers snake their way out.

“Don’t you dare, Coe!” a voice screams in my ear, shaking the walls.

I pull frantically, as hard as I can, until it shuts out Finn’s voice. I try to turn the key so that it locks, but my hand is slick with sweat, making it useless. Finally I grab on to it with my teeth and twist it around, tasting the metallic sting on my tongue. I move back to the other wall and just stare at the door as they pound and claw. I wonder if it will hold long enough for me to stay and catch my breath.

I don’t wait around to find out. I rush to the honey room and as my shaking fingers are trying to fit the key into its opening, the pounding stops, and I hear something else coming from the faraway door. Something much more controlled.

Metal against metal. The turn of a key in a lock.

And I know that Finn has Burbur’s precious key.

Twenty-One

The Last of Meeting Places

M
y hand feels numb on the metal, and it’s as if the keyhole isn’t there. I can’t seem to press it through. Down the hallway, in the darkness, something creaks. The door. They’ve opened it. I finally lean against the wall and take a deep breath to steady myself, then push the key through on the first try. I turn it, throw myself into the room and slam the door shut just as Finn’s shouts echo through the corridor.

He has a key. And yet another reason to hate me.

I hear the key scraping around the metal door outside. It occurs to me that while they may have a key, they don’t have the torch. But they do have flint, and there was enough fire in that room to start a light. I rush to the metal disc in the floor and suddenly I realize...I can’t lift it on my own. It was Fern who lifted it before. This whole plan had failure on it from the start.

But as the disc comes into view, I notice that it looks like two. One shiny metal, one black and endless. As I come closer, I realize it’s not two... Someone has already opened it. It’s open!

I squeeze the torch between my chin and chest and climb down as quickly as I can, then struggle to pull the cover over me. When it closes tightly, I breathe deeply with relief. They might not even know I’m down here. And if they do, they’re big men with much pudgier fingers than I have. I’d like to see them open it.

I remember the scribblers and am just about to see if I can climb over the pipes when I’m startled by a sound. Not hissing, as I expect. A voice. A human cry.

I whirl around, still clutching the top rung of the ladder. But I think the sound came from below me. “Who’s there?” I ask.

There’s splashing underneath me, so I shine my torch down as a voice says, “Coe...is that you?”

I exhale when I see the figure, sopping wet and clutching the ladder only a rung beneath my feet. She still manages to look pretty and poised, even drenched and shivering. “Princess!”

If she’s glad to see me, I wouldn’t know it. “Help me out of here at once,” she sobs. “This is not the place for me!”

“I’m sorry, but we must be quiet. Finn is above and he’s not happy.”

“Finn? Who is that?” She narrows her eyes. “Another stupid commoner.”

I ignore her. “What happened to you, Princess?”

“I knew they were coming, so I vacated during the last high tide. I hid in the waves until they consumed the castle and then came back here.”

I stare at her, incredulous.

“Oh, do not look at me that way. I am not as helpless as everyone thinks,” she says.

“How? The scribblers...”

“I can easily outswim them. I’m a royal, remember?”

I raise my eyebrows. Nobody has every claimed to be able to outswim scribblers. And in all her tides in the tower, has she ever even
touched
the salt water, much less had the chance to learn to swim? “And the door? How did you get in, when I had your key?”

She nods. “I gave you
my
key. The king had a key, as well.”

“But you could have drowned,” I whisper.

She laughs. “Oh, that’s not possible for royalty. Now, you said Tiam was down here? I need to see him. It’s disgusting and cold down here, and I am catching a chill. This is no place for a princess.”

“Yes...” I say, a smile spreading on my face despite her coldness. My heart swells with happiness. Now Tiam won’t have to go looking for her. Now I can bring her to Tiam, and they can be... They can be what? Suddenly everything inside me deflates. How can I feel so overjoyed and disappointed all at once? “He’s this way.”

I show her how to climb up to the pipes, and she stares aghast at me, wrinkling her nose. “Whatever for?”

“There are scribblers in the water. Surely you’ve seen them?”

“No, I have not. I’m not accustomed to wriggling around like a lowly worm,” she snorts.

She’s spent all of her life in the tower, away from the oceans. She has no idea how cruel the scribblers can be. But then again, for someone with no familiarity with the ocean, she certainly did a good job swimming here once she was forced from the tower. It’s nothing short of a miracle that she’s here. Maybe as a gift from the gods, she has their protection.

She reaches her hand up. I suppose it is up to me to pull her the rest of the way. Though she’s wearing a soaked gown that itself must weigh more than Fern, she pushes her feet against the ladder and is up in no time. As I pull her up, I recognize the gown. It’s her wedding dress. It’s dirty and sopping and not exactly in the shape she’d hoped for.

I tell her to follow me, and we proceed the way I’d come with Fern. This time, though, the company is a little less...engaging. This time, I have to find something to tune out the mutters of annoyance and shrieks of disgust that keep emanating from behind me. I always, always go back to the kiss with Tiam. It works well to distract me, but then I realize I’m torturing myself. It was just practice for him, after all. Or maybe it was more... But does that matter? I tell myself to stop thinking about it. It’s over. It can never happen again.

“There’s a spider the size of my hand here,” she whimpers, followed by the sound of ripping fabric. “Oh! My dress!”

She has the folds of her dress lifted up to her waist and is looking down at it. “Why don’t you rip the rest of it off?” I suggest. “It will be easier to move.”

“It’s my wedding dress,” she says, and sighs. Then she reaches down and pulls the skirt from her waist, casting it aside. Underneath she is wearing a small white slip that clings to her thighs, but at least it is easier to maneuver around. “I look like a perfect wreck. Tiam will laugh at me. Looking like one of his own!”

“He won’t laugh,” I mumble, my voice tinged with bitterness. Tiam care about a torn dress? For one so convinced he is her soulmate, she doesn’t know him at all.

We climb on for ages until arriving at the section of the door that I’d kicked in earlier. I stop and shine the torch through, but I can’t see anything. “Tiam?” I whisper into the void.

There is no answer. Again, Tiam has disappeared. Probably out scouting for the exit. I don’t know what about his past actions made me think that he’d stay around and wait in the bunker with Fern for me to return with the princess and the map. I wonder how he’ll react when he sees that I’ve gotten only one of the two things I’ve set out to find. I wonder which of the two he values most.

The princess crawls beside me. “Is he in there?” she asks, wrinkling her nose and wiping her brow with a piece of fabric from her ripped dress. “Oh, dear. Another dark, damp place.”

She bunches up the cloth and begins to tuck it into her cleavage when I notice something very interesting about it. There’s a
B
on it. Is it really fabric from her dress after all? Her dress has a bluish tint, and this cloth is yellowed, old. “What is that?” I point at it.

“Oh, this?” She pulls it from between her breasts and waves it in front of me. “Nothing. A handkerchief.”

I grab it from her and open it up, trembling, unable to contain the glee. On the top it says B MT ENT. Underneath there is a map. A maze of boxes, and a thin, dotted red line running through them. The map! “Do you realize what this means? This is the map to the exit. The way out.”

She squints at me, then grabs the map. “Ridiculous. There is no such thing.”

“No,” I say. She has to be bluffing. “I know about the map. Tiam told me—”

“Tiam?” Her eyes blaze. “He
told
you?”

I bite my tongue. Suddenly the weight of all I’ve said hits me with force. Of course she knows about it. But it’s a royal secret. Only intended for a select few. I wasn’t to know. And now I’ve made things awkward for Tiam.

She sighs. “You weren’t supposed to be told about it until we were well on our way. It’s far too dangerous to let commoners know. I suppose this was to be expected, considering how
close
you two are. I will need to speak to him about this. Who else knows?”

“Well, um, Fern, the little girl...and...” I stop short. Finn. He knows. He’ll keep looking, because the alternative is death. It’s only a matter of time before he finds us. Not exactly a good thing. But he doesn’t have a map. Maybe he’ll get so hopelessly lost that finding us will be impossible. At least, one can hope. I mumble, “Just Fern.”

She sighs. “Well, we’d better hurry. Lead me to Tiam.”

I climb into the room and help her as she lowers herself down beside me. “Careful,” I say. “There are vicious creatures here.”

“Oh!” she moans when she sees the remains of them lying in the center of the path. She buries her face in my shoulder. “That’s atrocious! I will be glad to be out of here. Surely nothing in this new land can be worse than here.”

“So, it really does exist?” I ask.

“My father often spoke of it to me. He had never been there, before, though. I imagine it can’t be very beautiful.”

I swallow. “Why do you say that?”

She nods. “Well, it’s under the castle. Dark, dank, moldy.” She waves her arms around. “Like this. And the people there... Well...they’re different.”

“Different?” A sinking feeling blooms in the pit of my stomach. “Different how?”

“As in, not the same,” she snaps, clearly getting annoyed with my questions. “I don’t know. He never liked to talk about them.”

“Oh.” I have a thousand questions swirling in my head, so I wish she’d be more accommodating. Gently, I venture another. “Did he say...how it came to be under your castle?”

“My father told me it was a city built in the antediluvian times. For protection against any disaster that might befall the human race. Thousands of people were sent there to live, but there were millions of people in the world at that time. Only the most important people were allowed.”

“A city underground!” I marvel. “How odd. How do people survive there?”

She shrugs absently.

“What? You’ve never even been curious?”

She looks around, shivering. “No.”

“And your father wasn’t? Not once?”

Star bites her lip and looks at the ground. She doesn’t speak for a long time. “No. Why should he have been?”

“Why?” I ask, wanting to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “Out of curiosity, if nothing else! There’s a whole world under your feet and all you Wallows want to do is hide in your tower.”

Her eyes narrow. “I hate dark, damp places.”

“But your kingdom is dead! Think of how many people might have been saved if they’d known there was an escape. My father, for one!”

She ignores me and continues walking forward. After all, who is my father to her, but another lowly commoner? “Tiam!” she suddenly shouts, then whirls around to me, accusation blazing in her eyes. “You said he was here. Why is he not answering?”

I give up on her and look around. It’s eerily quiet. Up ahead is the bunker and the entrance to the laundry chute, but Fern and Tiam are nowhere. “They’ve got to be here, somewhere,” I say. I call out, “Fern? Tiam?”

Nothing.

We take another few steps toward the chute when I notice something. Daylight, streaming down the opening, making a tiny square of white light on the floor. Was the chute open? Could I have been so silly as to not peel the grate back into place? I try to remember back to when I’d climbed up there, and realize I have no recollection of ever closing it. At the time, I’d thought I’d quickly be able to retrieve the princess and the map and return to the chute before the rest of the world left the formation.

My throat goes dry. Until now, I hadn’t felt the chill of my wet clothes against my skin. When the tide comes, the water will come through. And closed, nobody could see the opening. But with the grate on the chute peeled back, if someone were searching for us, it would be all too easy.

Stupid, stupid me.

“Tiam?” I whisper again, a little less surely this time.

We round a large pile of crates and the B MT ENT sign comes into view. A white gleam from Tiam’s portable light dances in the distance, bobbing up the passage toward us. I hear his voice, soft and soothing, saying something to Fern likely to calm her fears.

“Coe?” he calls out. “That you?”

I sigh, relieved. The sound of his voice is like clean, pure water after a long walk. I knew he’d never leave me alone. When he comes closer, his eyes on me, I find myself blushing. I hope the light isn’t strong enough for him or the princess to see. “Hi,” I say shyly. Then I curse myself. Could I possibly say anything that screams
I kissed you and I can’t stop thinking about it
any louder?

Fern rushes to me, burying her face in my tunic, and as I stroke her hair, I’m glad to have something other than Tiam’s lips to concentrate on. The princess doesn’t seem to notice my problem. She rushes to Tiam, exhaling dramatically, draping herself over his shoulder. “Oh, am I so glad to see you!” Tiam smiles at her, then his eyes trail to me, and he winces. I can’t tell if it’s because he regrets what we did or if it’s because she’s pressing into his injury. She pulls away from him and inspects him. “My goodness! And I thought
I
looked a wreck. What happened to you?”

“Long story,” he mumbles, sticking his chin out bravely. She didn’t seem as concerned the night she forced us from the steps of the tower as the tide approached. I start to roll my eyes but catch them halfway when Tiam suddenly turns to me. “Did you find the map?”

Star holds it up for him. “I didn’t know you were going to tell
her,
” she says, pouting.

“We have no choice, Princess,” he says softly.

“And why didn’t
you
come to rescue me?” she asks. “I thought my father put you in charge of me?”

I lift Fern onto my back and pretend not to be involved, but it’s not possible. I can almost see Star’s words tearing into him. Tiam swallows and looks away. I know how heavily this weighs upon him, how much he wanted to make good on his promise to the king. “I’m sorry” is all he can say. The way he says it, I can’t tell if he’s speaking to her...or to me.

“Let’s look at the map,” I say after a long silence, choking on Fern’s hair, which seems to be everywhere. Star unfolds it. “Where do we go?”