Brightly (Flicker #2) (48 page)

The sky was a dusky blue when they reached the mouth of the tunnel. Dark and steep, the tunnel reminded Lee of the one from which they’d emerged when they first arrived here. She supposed there were many tunnels branching out from this cavern, forming elaborate passages running deep and far, probably joining other tunnels that led to other caverns. The Maiden had said that the caves below Otherworld were without number. This cavern was only one small piece.

The tunnel was rocky and damp, rivulets of water streaming from the walls. The air grew colder as they descended, still following Eirnin. More than once, Lee slipped on the wet stone as they made their way down the steep incline by the light of the phosphorescent moss that covered the walls. Each time she fell, she immediately felt Filo’s hands on her shoulders, hauling her back to her feet.

In time, the tunnel leveled out and opened into a cave with a low ceiling. Lee could see other tunnels leading into the darkness. They followed Eirnin across the cave, until he finally stopped before a wide, clear pool.

“Here,” said Eirnin. “This is the place.”

Lee, Filo and Henry clustered around the pool. The water glowed; Lee saw the outlines of jagged stones along the bottom, shining with blue-white light, and what looked like the mouth of an underwater tunnel.

“Down there?” Henry looked skeptical. “You’re sure?”

“See for yourself.”

Henry pulled out the crystal shard and held it over the pool. The shard wasn’t pulsing anymore; it glowed a steady, fierce violet that stung Lee’s eyes. “That looks about right.”

“How are we supposed to get at them?” Filo asked, frowning at the water.

“I’m guessing we’ll have to swim for it.”

Lee knelt at the water’s edge and peered down toward the tunnel. “The opening’s pretty narrow. I don’t think you can fit, Henry.”

He squinted at the pool, then looked up at Lee. “You can swim, right?”

Lee nodded and began to pull off her shoes and socks. She dropped them on the stone floor. Deciding she didn’t want to deal with the extra weight of waterlogged denim, she stepped out of her jeans and dropped them, too. Then she pulled off her backpack and dumped its contents onto the ground. There wasn’t much left in the pack, anyway, and less that she wanted to keep. The only thing she left in the pack was her knife.

“If you start to run out of breath, just turn back,” Henry said, as she pulled on the backpack. “It’s not worth drowning yourself. We’ll come up with another approach.”

“Noted,” Lee said, suppressing a shiver.

Filo caught her eye. In Old Faerie, he said,
“Be careful.”

“
I will,”
she answered, in the same language. Her accent was far from perfect, she knew, but it was passable.
“You, too. Don’t fall in.”

That made him smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Lee stepped into the pool.

The water was so cold that she grimaced, but she waded deeper. When she was up to her chest in frigid water, she took a deep breath, dove, and swam down until she could slip into the narrow opening of the tunnel.

At first, the walls were uncomfortably close on either side. Turning around would be difficult here, but as she continued to swim, the tunnel widened and she could move more easily. Her lungs began to burn as the tunnel opened into a chamber where the rounded walls and bottom were carpeted in crystals that glowed with ferocious violet light.

Lee kicked her legs, propelling herself upward, and broke the surface, gasping for air. The water level reached about three feet below the ceiling of the chamber. Only the lower half of the chamber was encrusted in crystals; none grew from the walls closer to the top. At least the whole place wasn’t submerged.

Beneath her, the crystals blazed with light that wavered in the water. The glow intensified and faded, each cluster beating its own rhythm, like countless icy hearts. The water was so cold that it burned.

Lee slid the backpack off her shoulders and turned it so it hung against her chest. She pulled the knife out of the pack, sucked in a deep breath and dove for the closest cluster. Flipping the knife around, Lee gripped the hilt and struck the base of a crystal with the blunt end of the handle. She struck harder and harder, using the knife as a hammer, until she heard a crack. One more strike, and the crystal snapped loose, sinking. She snatched it and stuffed it into the backpack. Then she swam for the surface.

Every time she retrieved a crystal, she had to return to the surface for breath. Soon, all her muscles burned from the effort of swimming, treading water and smashing crystals from the wall. The backpack grew heavier, weighed down with crystals and filled with water.

Lee’s arms felt like lead and her hands were numb by the time she had filled the backpack. Still, she managed to close the buckle on the pack and pull the straps over her shoulders before she swam back to the tunnel.

When she surfaced in the little pool, she was lightheaded and her teeth chattered violently. Filo and Henry waited at the edge of the water. Henry pulled the backpack from her shoulders as she staggered onto the stone. She gathered several handfuls of warm, green magic and used them to dry herself off. It was a trick Nasser had taught her.

“Will that be enough?” Lee asked, wriggling into her jeans. It took her a moment to button them; her fingers were still clumsy from the cold.

Henry opened the backpack. The violet glow illuminated his face. “These are all much larger than the one the Maiden gave us, so they should be big enough to contain the volume of the curse. There are more than enough for everyone on the island.”

“Then we should go. The sooner we get Nasser back to Siren, the better.” Running magic-warm hands through her hair to dry it, Lee turned to Eirnin. “Take us back.”

By the time they arrived at the hill, full dark had fallen. They’d walked through the glowing woods for a long time, the dense clusters of stars above the cavern like streaks of light across the sky. Every shadow, every rustle among the trees, made Lee want to jump out of her skin.

Eirnin and Berrach’s home was warm and bright. In addition to the crystals that lit the alcoves, a cluster of candles burned on the table, exuding a strange, sweet odor. As soon as Eirnin shut the door behind them, Lee rushed to Nasser. He was exactly where she’d left him, and while he didn’t look any better than he had when they departed, he didn’t look worse.

“How is he?” Lee asked.

“Breathing,” Berrach said, her voice clipped, like that should be enough to satisfy Lee—and right then, it was. He was breathing. All else was secondary. “The candles barely cover the smell of that leg.”

“We need to take him back, now.” Filo knelt beside Lee and looked to Berrach. “You said you were willing to bargain for the salt.”

“I still am,” she said.

“Name your price.”

Berrach considered for a moment. “A story,” she said. “A true story. One that belongs to you. A memory.”

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Show me a memory that means something to you. I don’t want to keep it, only share. Show me a memory like that, and the salt will be yours.”

Filo squeezed his hands together. “The memory…. You’ll take it?”

“Only a shadow, in here.” Berrach produced another translucent chunk of crystal, this one much larger than the ones she used before. “A memory of a memory. It is not often that someone comes to us from the other world. We like to keep something of it, when we can.”

“You promise you won’t take it?” Filo asked.

“It will still belong to you. It will still be in your mind. You are only sharing it with me. You have my word on that.”

“What kind of memory do you want?”

“You will help me choose.”

“How?”

“The memories will come and you will guide me through them. It will happen on its own. You won’t even have to think about it. I’ll follow you through and stop you when I find the one I want. It is easy.”

He paused. Then, in a tone Lee had never heard him use before, he asked, “Will it hurt?”

“You will not feel a thing.”

Filo hesitated. His gaze flickered to Lee, just for a moment, and she recognized the uncertainty in his eyes. At first, she was stunned. He’d never looked to her for reassurance before. Then she laid her hand over his.

She felt his hand twitch beneath hers, like his instinct was to pull away, but he didn’t. Touching his skin made her vision flare so bright that her eyes watered, but she squeezed his hand as he turned back to Berrach.

“Fine,” he said. “What do I do?”

“Just hold still.”

Filo tensed as Berrach raised the crystal. When she touched it to his forehead, his eyes rolled back immediately and his whole body went limp. Lee was still holding his hand, and she felt a shock of magic travel through him, an electric jolt that hit her like a knockout punch to the jaw and sent her spinning into his memories with him.

A whirl of light and color swept around her, like a movie projected on every surface, the scenes flashing in random order—but at the same time, it was nothing like a movie. She didn’t just witness the moments that whipped past: She
felt
them, often too briefly for the feelings to register fully. Physical pain. Burning humiliation. Fragile, trembling happiness. Voices overlapped and echoed, more than she could count. She felt as if she were moving, falling, chasing something deeper and deeper.

Alice sat on the floor in the apartment, surrounded by tiny paper animals that walked on their own. She looked young, maybe eight years old. A little girl wearing a pink raincoat waved, her black ponytail bouncing. Morgan would’ve made him pick up the broken glass with his bare fingers, but Nasser didn’t. The smell of cold after a snowstorm. A boy’s voice:
My name’s Jason. What’s yours?

Filo was bent over the sink, rinsing blood out of his mouth.
You would die for her?
A flash of fire, and Jason screaming. A brightly-lit stairway. Bitter powders ground from roots and bones that Neman made him taste. Rows of glass bottles catching the light. A sun-drenched hilltop and Henry.
I accept her punishment.
He was very young and someone was holding his hand. Horns and claws and beaks.

Lee stood under the bare-branched trees in the park, the snowy ground shimmering in the moonlight and her breath spiraling up like smoke.
Hey, Filo, you okay?
An unseen woman was singing a half-familiar song, and the soft sound of her voice put him at ease. Morgan slapped him so hard that it didn’t even hurt, just made one side of his face go numb, and he wasn’t going to cry, not over a little thing…

Beneath Filo’s hands, a carousel dragon shuddered to life. Dust motes danced in golden bars of sunlight.
Your life is ours. Remember that.
Huge black wings unfurled over him. A swing set on a green lawn. When he felt the urge to hurt himself, he pinched his legs so Nasser wouldn’t see the bruises.
I really like you.
Blue-gray rain. Alice laughing.

Filo? That’s a weird name.
The book said “Shakespeare” on the cover and he kept holding it because it felt good in his hands and the words were like jewels in his mouth. He smiled at Jason and, for the first time, it was easy.
You don’t have to go, Alice. You don’t have to go.
Nasser reached for him, and Filo flinched, over and over, until the day he understood that Nasser would not hurt him, except for when he couldn’t help it.

A woman with long black hair disappeared around the corner. Alice clutched his shirtfront.
This is going to hurt, Filo, but just for a second. It’s for your own good.
Neman smiled and patted his head. Neman smiled and shoved him. A man’s voice:
What’s wrong, buddy?
He was falling asleep next to Alice, and he wasn’t afraid.

Teeth. Glittering eyes. The little girl again, squealing with delight as she picked up a calico kitten, her blue eyes sparkling. Everything shining and everything dark.
Ah, yes. You’re Neman and Morgan’s changeling.
Two crows circling in a storm-bright sky. The smell of magic: smoke and sweetness. It hurt to laugh.
Don’t take him! Please don’t take him! Please—

And then it stopped. The scene resolved itself into the bedroom at Flicker, but it wasn’t the bedroom Lee knew. The walls were bare, and four beds were lined up across the room. Shafts of predawn light filtered through the curtains. Someone was lying on the bed near the far wall, under a heap of blankets. Filo.

Neman slipped silently through the half-open door and crossed the room, her bare feet soundless on the wooden floor. The light rendered her strange and pale, except for her wings, which were so dark that they almost seemed to be sucking in the light.

She perched on the edge of the bed, making the mattress creak slightly. “Ah,” she cooed. “You live.”

Stiffly, Filo pushed himself up onto his elbows. His face was a mess of bruises, and his lower lip was split and swollen. He looked a little younger, maybe fifteen.

“Is she still here?” Filo whispered.

“No. When you lost consciousness, she grew bored and left.”

“Did she say if she would—”

“Alice’s punishment has been carried out.” She sounded almost affectionate. “You suffered in her place. And because you suffered so well, we will leave her be.”