The Library of Fates(54)

After a few more tries, I sighed, letting my arm drop. Then, a jolt. I looked down at the dagger. The rubies had lit up, shining bright crimson in the light of the setting sun.

“It’s saying ‘not up, but down.’” Thala pointed to the ground below our feet.

Slowly, I crouched, bringing the dagger to the ground with me. Gently, I stuck it into the ground. All of a sudden, the mountain appeared to tremble.

The ground gave way, and we were both falling.





Twenty-Six



WE LANDED WITH A LOUD THUD, and dust filled the air, causing a violent sneeze to escape my nose.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I can’t see anything,” Thala responded.

I palmed the floor, feeling the ground beneath me. My fingers grasped long fibrous stalks knotted into the ground. Roots. I looked up to see where we had fallen from, but the opening was gone. We were shrouded in darkness.

“Hold on a minute,” Thala said. I heard a whoosh, and then a flame lit up her face. She had found a sulfur stick.

The walls instantly illuminated, and I noticed that the interior of the cave was made of bundles of fibers. I had initially thought that they were roots, but they were different shades of blue—cobalt and aquamarine and sapphire and indigo—and they appeared to be breathing.

“It’s alive,” Thala said as she stood up. It was a tunnel, the ceiling just barely touching the tops of our heads when we stood up. She was right. Only something alive could move in this way.

“This is incredible,” I said as I ran my hand over the glowing cords, which undulated like sea hydra. “This must be the way.

“What do you think this is?” I asked Thala.

“No idea.”

“You’ve never seen anything like this before?”

“Just because I’m a seer doesn’t mean I’ve seen everything,” she quipped.

I looked at the dagger in my hand. It was pulsing, the rubies lighting up as if in rhythm with the breathing walls.

We began to walk, carefully negotiating our every step. The tunnel moved and shifted with us, like a rope bridge, twisting and turning in concentric circles.

“I feel like we’re going down, but I can’t tell,” Thala said.

It was disorienting walking through this thing—whatever it was—but we were descending deeper and deeper into it. We kept walking till I noticed tiny bulbous knots growing on the fibers. I stopped before them, carefully touching one with my fingers.

“Mushrooms,” I said, glancing at the polka-dotted lavender toadstools before us.

Even farther on, snails with lapidary shells the color of jewels: peridot and ruby and emerald and sapphire. They moved slowly, crisscrossing the tendons of light and leaving behind dewy, iridescent trails.

“Look out!” Thala yelled. I looked up and saw something approaching: a cloud of glitter, chirping as it made its way toward us. As it flew by us, I realized that the cloud was made up of winged insects.

“Butterflies,” I whispered. They landed in the crevices of the roots, resting their sparkled wings for a moment before they flew off again.

From the spots where they had landed, tiny flowers grew before our eyes. Crimson and ochre and magenta pom-poms, shivering in the cool air.

I shook my head. “I can’t believe this.”

And then I heard it: from a distance, a purring sound.

“Do you hear that?” I whispered.

Thala stopped for a moment. She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Careful,” she said.

“What?”

“This thing . . . whatever it is . . . it’s not entirely benign.”

We turned a corner and were suddenly standing before a dark blue wall.

I moved closer to it, almost pressing my face against it, trying to figure out what it was, when a yellow eye the size of a window blinked open.

It took everything in me not to scream as I recoiled violently, my mind racing to put it all together. When I stepped back, another eye opened. And then I saw it: a face as large as a wall. It moved closer to me. I realized that those roots that lined this entire cave were tentacles of some sort attached to the face. They moved with this creature.

“It’s a spider,” Thala said, her voice shaking.

“I’ve never seen a spider this size,” I said.

I was too afraid to move, too afraid to speak. Thala’s hands shook.

And then it hit me. “It’s Makara. He who creates, sustains, destroys . . . ,” I whispered.

Just then, Makara smiled, baring hundreds of glittering fangs.

I jumped back, the dagger in my hands, my heart racing at such a pitch, I was certain that the spider could hear it. He looked right at me, adjusting his head, inspecting me with curiosity.

As he did, I noticed something behind him: a silver door. On the side of the door, a crack the same size as the blade of my dagger. And just beside the crack, three rubies. The terrifying arachnid moved toward me again, blocking the only exit from this place.

I knew that on the other side of the door were the Sybillines. And this creature guarded the entrance.

“What do I do?” I whispered.

“Are you supposed to . . . kill it?” Thala asked, glancing at the dagger in my hand. I looked down at the blade, trying to decide what to do next.

The creature appeared to sense what I was thinking, because in a flash, a tentacle wrapped itself around my waist. I screamed, the sound of my terror echoing through the cavernous space. Another tentacle emerged from the wall like a rope lasso and grabbed Thala.