Saturday’s heart ached in her chest. Perhaps this prison was the gods’ way of punishing her for breaking the world.
She stepped off the pallet where she’d been standing onto the uneven stone floor and a chill raced up through her bones. She hadn’t remembered removing her boots . . . or her swordbelt . . . or changing her clothes. The shirt and trousers she wore now were old, but not ill-fitting. She found her boots resting beside the stone pit. There did not seem to be another lantern handy, so she removed one of the small torches from the wall and used the fire to light it.
Saturday had a measure of experience with dark mazes. She’d been lost in the Wood many times—more frequently as a little girl than now. It happened to every woodcutter from time to time, even Papa. No one but the piskies knew their way around the Wood.
This cavern was nothing like the Wood at all.
Within minutes, Saturday’s head ached from her eyes’ constant refocusing. The icerock walls with their odd patterns confused her, robbing her of her depth perception. The shadows played tricks on her, sometimes revealing a dead end, other times leading Saturday to chasms down which she might fall forever.
Every time the light moved, the cave changed. Around one corner was a forest of trees, hundreds of them, completely encased in snow and dripping with icicles, frozen into a timeless winter. They even smelled of damp cold. Stone faces stared at her from the shadows. Stone icicles rimmed the caverns like bared teeth protecting unknown treasures.
Making rock piles to mark her path in this space would have been futile; there were so many pillared protrusions, tall and knobby and many looking like broken rock piles themselves, that she didn’t bother. She took out her dagger and scratched the walls in a few places, two straight cuts, angled inward to look like her mother’s discerning brow, but from even a few paces away they disappeared into the sheets of white and ice and crystal.
Saturday banged her head for the umpteenth time. No matter what the stories said, caves were meant for dwarves, not giants. Having her sword would have at least helped with the massive headache she’d developed—foul witch. She rested beside a steep drop-off and something dripped onto her. Water cascaded down from the ceiling; she turned her head up to catch the water in her parched mouth. The air had gotten warmer, but rain? Inside? What a curious thing!
She stretched out her arm over the chasm in an effort to keep her balance and was surprised to see two torches casting shadows.
“Why, you’re not a chasm at all, are you?” Her voice did not echo like she thought it might in a maze this size.
Saturday dipped a boot in the mirage and discovered that naught but a shallow pool of water had cast the massive reflection. Laughing, she leaned over the rock on which she sat and prepared to drink.
A stranger’s face looked back at her.
All her life, it had never occurred to Saturday to cut her hair. Girls had long hair and boys had short hair, and that was just the way of the world. She tied it up when she was in the Wood or tucked it under a cap before sword practice and never thought twice about it. Her golden locks were gone now, close cropped at the nape of her neck, while the longer tendrils by her face dipped their ends in the pool. She couldn’t be sure exactly how much she looked like Jack, but it wasn’t the first time she’d been mistaken for a boy.
Saturday stuck her face in the pool and drank deeply. The water tasted of grit and soot. When she’d had her fill, she raised the torch again and moved on through the stone forest.
Oh, what stories Sunday would have told about these decorated monoliths, sparkling in the lantern light, frowning down upon her with their protruding, frostbitten brows. Friday would have imagined the icicles as rows of needles standing at attention among yards and yards of lace. Thursday would have seen the history of these caves through her spyglass, back to when this mountain was nothing but a rolling hill in the landscape. Wednesday most likely would have recited poetry to the dancing shadows, stumbling across a spell or two by design or by accident before growing thick wings and flying herself to safety. Saturday wished she had such wings. The lantern showed them everywhere now, twin peaks of shadow feathers mocking her with their insubstantiality.
One of the shadows flew straight up and slapped her in the face with warm feathers. Saturday recognized that smell. The witch’s familiar had found her.
“Silly troublemaker. Were you trying to escape again? I’ve blocked this way, as you can see.”
Saturday saw no such thing, nor could she see the witch. She held the torch back, squinting into the darkness until she made out the soft light of a stone bracelet infused with magic. In the hand of the skinny arm that wore the circle of light was a long-handled rake with rusted tines.
Saturday subtly pushed the blue-green fabric of her own humble bracelet under her sleeve. Out of raven-sight, out of mind. The witch had taken her sword; she wouldn’t part with this last memento so easily.
“I have your first task.” The witch giggled and cackled with pride.
“I’m ready,” said Saturday.
“Ha!” shrieked the witch. “You think you’re going to sweep the stones or empty the water pots or tame the basilisk? The tasks I set were all too easy the first time.”
“You have new pets?” Saturday guessed.
“No more pets. Tired of them. Killed them and ate them. Slow-roasted them over the fire while they died screaming. They were best that way.” The witch licked her lips, and the raven fluttered restlessly.
“You’re worrying the bird,” said Saturday.
“Cwyn is not my pet. She is my familiar. She serves as my eyes, until you find them. And now you will clean her nest.”
Saturday took the rake the witch thrust at her. Clean the nest of a single bird? How was that harder than taming a basilisk? But Saturday remembered the strange boy Peregrine’s advice and kept her mouth shut lest the witch come up with something more difficult. “Lead on,” she said. “It seems I don’t know my way around these caves as well as I once did.”
“That’s because the ways of these caves are not your ways. They are my ways, and I change them as I will.” The witch threw her arms open toward the false lake and the wall of rocks beyond it. “Here we are!”
The witch ducked through an archway into a small alcove filled with stone pillars and outcroppings. Beneath them, on the patch of somewhat-level floor, was a small amount of dried moss. Saturday wrinkled her nose at the smell, reminiscent of the chickens at home. Why did birds stink worse than horses and cows?
“So, if I clean this up, you’ll give me my sword back?” asked Saturday.
“If you clean this up, you get to keep your life,” answered the witch. “Think, while you work, about where you put my eyes. You will find them, and find them soon, or I will take yours instead. Snip-snap-snurre-basselure!”
8
Epiphany
“BETWIXT! PRAISE the gods. I had quite despaired.”
Peregrine halted his as-yet-infernal lute playing to greet the chimera slinking into the cave with quiet grace. It had been a good long while since Peregrine had last laid eyes on his friend. The chicken-footed scorpion body had morphed into a sleek black gryphon of the smallish variety, much like a young panther with charcoal-gray wings.
“If you despaired, it’s only because you tired of your own one-sided prattle.” The chimera’s head was thankfully more leonine than bird, leaving his mostly mammalian mouth free to converse, though the words that came out were a bit high- pitched and nasal.
“You know me so well. Shall I play you a tune to celebrate your triumphant return?”
“Have you learned to play anything even closely resembling a song on that?”
Peregrine gave his companion a wide and silly grin and curled his toes against the pillar on which he perched. “Not at all. But I could get the flute . . .”