I plunged it into the fountain, the water steaming as it came into contact with the blade. I could see through the cloudy pool to the bottom where my knife illuminated something dark and round.
A button.
I jammed the butt of my knife against the button, and it gave easily.
The birdbath disappeared right out from under me, and I almost tipped over and fell flat on my face. I managed to keep my balance, though, and looked down to see that where the birdbath had stood just a few seconds earlier, a small round door like a manhole had appeared in the ground. I leaned down and tentatively lifted it—inside, a stairway spiraled into darkness.
From somewhere high above my head, I heard a loud Ka-caw!
Then, an excited rustling. I’d gotten their attention.
Another crow cried out, and then another and another until they all seemed to be screaming at me.
A rumbling sound began to build as my peripheral vision clouded with a fluttering blackness. The rumble got louder and louder, and then I realized what it was: it was the sound of hundreds of birds flapping their wings all at once. They were all flying right for me.
With no time to worry about what was down there, I stepped through the door and plunged down the twisting stairway. I felt like I was running for my life, trusting my feet to find their purchase against the treacherous stone stairs. They didn’t let me down. Nox had trained me well.
The door slammed shut behind me and everything suddenly went completely black. Able to see exactly nothing, I stopped and looked up and waited for my eyes to adjust.
They didn’t. I decided to light my knife up again, finding it even easier the second time than the first, and held it aloft. Or tried to. I hit rock a few inches above my head. I climbed back up the staircase and examined the back of the door, but it didn’t have any handles or buttons. I had no idea how to open it back up. Well, I thought, at least it will keep the crows out. Plus, I might be trapped. With no other direction to go but down, and only my knife to light the way, I descended.
When the steps finally ended, I looked around, the glow of my knife lighting up an entire room. The Scarecrow’s House of Horrors was almost as I had imagined it to be. Except worse.
There were two long metal tables set up with horrific instruments like the ones I’d seen in his room, and a metal chair with restraints on the arms and the legs. I was pretty sure that’s what Maude had been strapped into yesterday. So where was she now?
Next to the chair was a square, squat machine, with a bunch of circular dials and gauges on it. It was attached to a long leather tube. I didn’t want to know what that was.
Against the wall was a huge shelf lined with big glass jars—the kind that Gert kept her dried herbs and potion ingredients in. But these jars weren’t filled with mandrake root and nightshade dust.
Many of them held what looked like brains floating around in some kind of glowing green liquid. I stepped closer. They were pulsing. They were still alive, I realized in horror. It wasn’t just brains—there were other body parts, too, ears and hands and tiny little white wings. From baby monkeys? I shuddered.
I turned my attention to a wooden drafting table, which was papered with sketches and anatomical diagrams. There were monkeys, Kalidahs, a chicken, and a few other animals I didn’t even recognize.
I tore my eyes away and began looking for signs of actual life. “Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone here? Maude?”
I wasn’t really expecting an answer, but then I heard a noise, a barely audible moan coming from behind a metal door I hadn’t noticed in the back of the room, on the other side of the boxy machine. The moan came again, louder this time, and I knew that as afraid as I was, there was someone, or something, on the other side who had it a lot worse than me.
I held my breath before opening the door, picturing all the terrible things I might find.
The next room was smaller and filled entirely with rusty metal gurneys. They were caked in dried blood, but at least there were no bodies on them.
Then I saw her. In the back of the room, a tiny monkey in a frilly pink dress was cowering in a metal cage that was barely big enough to contain her. Feathers from her twisted, mangled wings poked through the bars.
“Maude?” I asked gently. “Is that you?”
She looked up at me with scared, big brown eyes. They looked like Ollie’s only minus the mischief. But the rest of her was not at all like Ollie. Her head was freshly shaved and her arms were wrapped with cloth bandages.
I crouched down next to her. “I’m here to get you out,” I said in the gentlest voice possible.
“Who . . . ?” she croaked wearily.
“I’m Amy. Ollie sent me.”
“Ollie?” Her eyes filled with momentary hope before clouding over again. “No,” she said. “He would never . . . why would he help me when I was so terrible to him?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” I asked.
“He was right about everything. I should have listened.” Her eyes rolled back into her head.
“Maude,” I said, snapping my fingers in her face. “Can you move? We need to get out of here.”
She nodded, but otherwise she didn’t budge. She was out of it; I’m pretty sure she thought I was a dream.
I started looking around for the keys to her cage, then realized I didn’t need them. The Scarecrow would know Maude had escaped, so screw it. I bashed the lock with my dagger until it broke open.
The banging seemed to wake Maude up a bit and her eyes focused on me. I leaned in and helped her out of her prison and onto the ground, but when I tried to lift her into my arms to carry her, she brushed my hands away.
“I can walk,” Maude said. As an afterthought, she reached over her shoulder and felt for her wings, like she had forgotten whether or not she still had them. As she brushed her fingers through the matted feathers, I couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed.
She didn’t say anything—she just reached up and grabbed my hand and hobbled along beside me, past the gurneys and through the door into the main lab.
I could hear the crows outside, their mad ka-caws echoing down the passageway. We weren’t going to be able to leave that way.
“Is there another way out of here?” I asked.
Maude either didn’t hear my question or chose to ignore it. Her eyes had filled with rage. She was staring at the Scarecrow’s machine.
“Did he use that on you?” I asked, my voice somber.
Slowly, she nodded.
Hell with it. Why stop wrecking stuff now? I walked to the machine and shoved it over. It crashed loudly to the ground, its gears spilling out and spiraling across the floor like loose change. I looked back at Maude.
“He’ll only fix it,” she said.
“I know,” I replied. “But I’d love to see the look on his stupid straw face when he finds it.”
Her cracked lips twitched, not quite smiling, but I thought I saw a spark of happiness in her tired eyes.
“What did he do to you? I asked. “What is the Scarecrow building down here?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”
She put a hand up to her shaved head, her eyes squeezed shut in pain. I couldn’t tell if it was physical or mental. Did it hurt to think? Or did it hurt to remember what had been done to her?
“He drained me . . .” Maude knuckled the back of her head. “He’s trying to make himself smarter.” I thought of Ozma and wondered if maybe the Scarecrow had drained her brain, too.