Ensnared (15 page)

A mountain rises from the water upon our descent as if it were waiting for us. The sprite and Morpheus, along with his shadow, plummet toward the boulders on the slope. The mountain opens and swallows them before the entrance closes again.

The moment Dad hits solid ground, the griffon transforms into the cane. I land beside them. My wings weigh heavy at my shoulder blades, weary from the workout. I wipe sweat from my brow.

“What now?” Dad asks.

I try to find a crevice or crack that might be the key to opening the mountain. “Could I borrow that?” I reach for Morpheus’s walking stick and use the talons to dig at some pebbles. When nothing happens, I stomp my feet along jagged outcroppings.

“Stop it!” A voice—grinding, like stones clacking together. “Stop it at once!”

My chin drops.

“That’s no way to make a first impression,” the voice speaks again.

“Yes, to make an impression, you really should have a chisel,” a second, less peevish voice, adds.

Two faces appear on the mountainside, one of them made of soil, the other of stone. The stony face is the cranky one and has large bulging eyes. The other—the dusty face—has a squinty, almost humorous demeanor.

Dad drops the duffel bag and takes a seat on it. His left eyelid is twitching as fast as the second hand on a clock.

“It’s okay, Dad. I got this.”

Nodding, he rubs a hand through his hair.

Stepping across some loose pebbles, I make my way over to the squinty-eyed face. “We need to get inside.”

“Ohhhh, sorry,” says the stony, grumpy voice from behind me. “Only the master can open the door.”

“Yep, sorry.” Squinty-eyes looks at me sympathetically. “So sorry, in fact, my heart sinks for you.”

The ground beneath us quakes and we start to sink into the ocean. Dad gathers the duffel bag, and together we climb as fast as the ocean rises around us. All the times I went rock climbing with Jeb come back to me, and I have the added advantage of wings. Dad does, too, with the griffon cane.

“We’re going to have to fly!” I yell. “Before the peak is submerged!”

Dad gets knocked off balance when the duffel bag and dagger slide from his shoulder. He catches them at the last minute but loses the cane. It shuttles down the moving mountainside and plops into
the rising waves. When it surfaces, it’s the griffon. It screeches, wings flapping as it flails, then melts bit by bit until it’s an oily puddle of floating colors.

Dad and I stare in disbelief, oblivious to the waves ebbing at our ankles.

“Allie, go!” Dad shouts, the first one to remember that the mountain is dropping.

Climbing in time with him, I try to coax out my magic. My mind is racing so fast, my imagination can’t catch up. I draw a blank. “Stop!” I screech to the mountain out of desperation.

The movement pauses. White froth laps my shins. “Your master would want you to help us,” I say, hoping to coax the faces back into view.

“Is that so?” The dirt one appears at the mountain’s tip. “Well, there
is
another way in.”

Panting, Dad and I exchange hopeful glances.

“Okay. What would that be?” I ask.

“A horse. A special horse. He can get you inside. All you need is to shout his name at the top of your lungs.”

Something tells me I’m going to regret asking, but I do anyway. “So . . . what’s his name?”

“I can’t say it
for
you, bony fool.”

I scowl, holding back the urge to stomp on the dirt clods making up the face’s lips. “Then give me a hint. The letters of the name . . . an anagram. Something!”

“All’s I can say is it’s a horse.”

The other face appears on the edge of a golf ball-size stone, the features scrunched up to fit the smaller surface. “A horse without legs that can move up and down and forward and backward . . . A
horse without a saddle that can cradle the most fragile rider . . . A horse without wings that can sail with the grace of a bird.”

I slide my palm down my face. “Are you kidding me? Another stupid riddle?”

The stony speaker curls his mouth to a frown. “I’d rather tread water than listen to your bellyaching. You have only one guess, so be sure you’re right!” Then, rocking back and forth until his stone loosens, he rolls into the water with a
kerplunk
.

Squinty-eyes looks up at me and crinkles the sprig of grass that makes up his nose. “Best you figure it out fast. Because your ingratitude has me feeling very low.”

The mountain starts to sink again. Within moments, the waves lick our thighs.

I groan. “Dad, what do you think?”

He rubs his twitching eyelid. “Not sure. Maybe a rocking horse?”

I consider the clues. It does seem to match,
mostly
. “What about the sailing part? Rocking horses don’t sail. Maybe a carousel horse. They’re suspended on a pole, so that could count. They move up and down. But they don’t move back and forth, really. And they have legs . . .”

The water reaches Dad’s abdomen. “Allie.” His expression is the one he gives me when he’s about to lay down the law. I don’t want to hear what he’s thinking, because I already know.

“You’re going to have to fly,” he says as the water laps at my sternum. “Go while we still have ground to stand on.”

“No! I’m not going to let you get hurt!”
Not like I did Mom.

Her face comes back to me, the desperation in her eyes as the mome wraiths snatched her away and dragged her into the crumbling rabbit hole along with Sister Two and all her soul-filled toys. I
couldn’t hold on, no matter how I tried. Tears burn along the edges of my lashes.

“Dad, I summoned the creatures that took Mom away. I’m responsible for the danger she’s in. If she’s gone forev—”

“Alyssa Victoria Gardner.” Dad catches my hands in his. “Don’t even say it. Whatever you did, it was because you had to. Mom knows that. She’s strong, and she’s okay. And we’re going to find her.”

We.
I teeter inwardly, my emotions rocking. “You promise you’ll be with me?”

“To the very end. You can get us out of this.”

“How?” If only I were strong enough to carry him.

“I know how to swim,” he answers. “I can backstroke long enough for you to get one of those automated parasols the birds left, or even a piece of driftwood I can cling to.”

It’s like last year in Wonderland, when I couldn’t carry Jeb across the chasm. I was supposed to find a way to come back for him, but I failed him, just like I failed Mom.

My teeth clamp tight. I can’t let my doubts win.

I nod to Dad.

He drops the duffel so he can lie back in the water. The bag trails bubbles as it submerges. I scan the distance, unable to see land anywhere. I’ve no idea how far we’ve come, or if the parasols disappeared when the landscape changed last.

Still, I have to try.

Hugging Dad tight, I press a kiss to his cheek, tasting salt from the ocean’s spray. “I won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” he says, and nuzzles the top of my head.

He binds his fingers together for a step to lift me from the water.
Taking a deep breath, I push up and spread my wings high, rivulets drizzling from them as I rise.

“When you’re ready, I’ll launch you.” Dad forces his lips into his famous Elvis half smile. His fake confidence has the opposite effect, reminding me of all the times he put up a front when Mom was in the asylum, and during these past weeks she’s been gone. He’s doing it again, even though he’s as confused and scared as I am.

It’s time for me to be the strong one.

Preparing for liftoff, I shake my wings. They’re heavy on my back, not just from being soaked, but from the moss wrapped around them like sea creatures.

Sea creatures.

The waves creep to Dad’s chin. “Allie, hurry.” He spouts water from his mouth. His fingers tense under my boot’s sole.

“Wait,” I plead.
A horse without legs that can move up and down, forward and backward . . . A horse without a saddle that can cradle the most fragile rider . . . A horse without wings that can sail with the grace of a bird.

“A
sea horse
. . . ,” I whisper. They use their tails to maneuver in any direction, carry their babies in pouches, glide gracefully through the water as if sailing.

“No more time!” Dad yells, and thrusts me up into the sky—just before his head disappears beneath the water.

“Sea horse!” I shout loud enough to make my lungs ache, spreading my wings and flapping so I hover in place.

Dad resurfaces, doing the backstroke. The water bulges as something giant rises behind him. An armored hump bursts out, covered with bony plates, clear like glass. Water streams off to reveal the curve of a spine beneath the transparent armor. The graceful neck
of a sea horse—as big as the Loch Ness Monster’s—emerges. Sun glistens off the creature. It’s beautiful, and looks more like a glass statue than a living counterpart: a sea horse’s body with the head of a wild stallion.

Its belly pouch opens, and a funnel of water drags Dad toward it. I dive to join him. We slip into the translucent pocket. The opening cinches closed before the creature submerges once more. The cavity is damp, but comfortable. Dad and I sit and hold on to one another, watching underwater plants and confused fish dart past as we descend toward the sunken mountain. An entrance appears—just as it did with Morpheus—and held safe within our living submarine, we glide into a dark tunnel as the mountain closes around us, shutting out the light.

As we surface, a muted, purplish glow casts shadows all around. The sea horse bends its spine back and forth, squeezing its pouch until we burst free into the shallows.

I cough and shove myself to my hands and knees. Behind me, my wings drape, as soggy and muddy as my clothes. The sea horse snorts, blows froth from its equestrian muzzle, then sinks back into the depths.

Weak from physical exertion, I force myself to stand in the ankle-deep water. Dad gets up, offers his hand, and we wade to a cement embankment to sit and catch our breath.

“Any idea where this is?” I ask, wringing out my tunic. “Did you visit here as a child? Do you remember?”

His brows furrow. “This world is so different than I remember, Allie. It keeps changing. It’s as if we’re in a picture book and the pages are flipping in the wind.”

When I glance over my shoulder for a closer look at the dim tunnel, my breath catches: Graffiti stretches for what seems like miles—words like
love
,
death
,
anarchy
,
peace
, and pictures of broken hearts, stars, and faces are painted in fluorescent colors.

It’s a replica of the storm drain Jeb and I almost drowned in over a month ago, the one we used to go to as kids. It even sounds the same, with water dripping all around. But there’s one huge difference: The images on these walls are moving.

The broken hearts stitch themselves together, beat several times, then break and bleed. The stars shoot from one end to the other, leaving sparkles in their wake that catch fire and snuff out with the scent of scorched leaves. And the faces glare at us, as if angry. I muffle a whimper.

“Do you see that?” I ask Dad.

“It’s not possible.”

“Anything is possible here,” I correct, then stand, facing the ultraviolet images. My legs tremble, but I step forward. “You realize what this means?”

Dad doesn’t respond.

Of course he doesn’t. He can’t see inside my past.

“These are from Jeb’s memories,” I explain. “
Our
memories.” The thought that I’m about to see him makes every muscle in my body leap. I take off for the far end of the tunnel.

“Allie, we need to be careful.” Dad catches up, gripping my shoulder.

I shake him off. “We have to find him!” But with each step, the tunnel shrinks, and so do we. Either that, or it’s an illusion—because I don’t feel like I’m shrinking. I’ve done that enough to have the sensation memorized.

No. We’re not getting smaller. The images are growing, elongating. They lift from their places on the walls and scrape our skin as we pass. The stars singe my sleeves; the hearts drizzle wet blood. The faces nibble at me—their teeth cold and prickly like straight pins.