Again, jolting Nel all over the place.
And Nel couldn’t bring herself to care.
They were finally headed home. To Lady Ylva.
And her glorious bath.
Chapter 014
The surface of the liquid was so close. Juliana could see the light glinting off the surface.
She stretched high, pulling herself up through the murky liquid with a long sweep of her arm. Her metal was gone, left back at the prison. All that she kept was around her arms. The two bracers barely made up enough to form a dagger or two.
And Juliana was very seriously considering ditching that much.
Her movements were slow and sluggish. Like she was swimming in honey. The water she had entered at the prison hadn’t felt like this. It had been normal water.
Well, normal as far as Juliana could tell.
The fall from way up in the air had been bad enough. She hadn’t even been able to reorient herself to face what she was falling towards. It was the liquid. Had she known, she would have taken a deep breath instead of screaming her lungs out.
Screaming never helped anyone. Her mother always gave the best advice ever and she had gone and ignored it.
Now she was struggling through the liquid with no air and the bracers were at least partly to blame for keeping her down.
The surface was within her grasp yet her fingers hadn’t broken through.
Her lungs burned. She had to force herself to keep her mouth shut and not breathe in any of the sticky liquid.
There were spots forming in her eyes.
That can’t be a good sign.
Juliana thrashed in the muck until she felt the tips of her fingers touch air.
She was so close.
Her hand cupped and crashed into the honey, attempting to pull herself up.
The black spots in her vision grew larger and larger until her face broke the surface.
Juliana wasted no time in sucking in as much air as her lungs could hold. Some of the honey oozing down her face flew into her mouth with the intake.
And Juliana couldn’t bring herself to care.
She went still. The honey was thick enough that she didn’t need to tread it; it just held her up all on its own. Juliana didn’t move a muscle. The honey slowly seeped underneath her, pushing the rest of her body and legs up to the surface.
Juliana waited until her rapid breaths slowed down to a manageable level before even turning her head.
As the spots in her eyes disappeared, she realized that her eyes hadn’t been open at all; whatever she had seen of the liquid had been nothing more than oxygen-deprivation induced hallucination. They were almost glued shut by the honey.
Once she managed to pry them open, a thin film of the gunk spread over her eyes. It didn’t cause any pain, but she flinched back anyway. She had to blink several times before it cleared away enough to properly see.
There wasn’t much to look at.
The sky was pitch black save for a pale white orb. A moon, perhaps? The crater in the center and the lines spreading out from the crater gave it the uncanny appearance of an eye.
Raising her fingers in the air, Juliana allowed some of the liquid to fall between her fingers.
It was black, as the water in the prison had been. But it didn’t move like water. It slipped between her fingers and around the sides of her hand, meeting back up at the back of her hand. From there, it stretched long and thin while some of the greater mass of liquid rose up to touch the drip.
Only when it connected did the stuff clinging to the back of her hand finally fall into the pool.
There was a thin film left coating her hand and arm.
Juliana shuddered. It couldn’t be a good idea to stay sitting in it. Though, she noted as he tongue found some of the stuff inside her mouth, it doesn’t taste bad.
Sweet. Maybe with a slight acidic tang to it. Honey hadn’t been a bad descriptor; it was rather like licking honey off of a nine-volt battery.
Not that she had ever tried that.
Her stomach growled, its hunger reawakened at the taste of something edible. Juliana spat it out. She could go on a while yet.
“If this is some kind of a sick joke Prax,” Juliana said. “I swear, if you dropped me in the hive of a giant bee-demon…” She trailed off as she glanced around her. “Prax? Shalise?”
No one was around. Not even other thrashings in the liquid. Nothing but a small wooden boat with a single oar resting on top.
Juliana started paddling her way over. Despite being unable to sink, it wasn’t easy. The honey continuously sucked her back to where she was, only giving her a few inches with every paddle.
Moving those ten feet was the hardest workout she had ever had. Given who her mother was, that was quite the feat. By the time she made it up and over the edge of the boat, her arms were burning and she was panting as hard as she had been immediately after surfacing.
She laid back against the bottom of the boat and sat, once again recovering. Most of the honey dripped off while she waited. Juliana still felt sticky with a thin film over her body and the less said about her hair, the better.
Juliana couldn’t think of a single thing better than a hot shower at the moment. A hot meal came close.
Finally having had enough, Juliana sat properly within the boat and grasped the oar. With a final look around for any sign of Prax or Shalise–neither of whom were anywhere in sight–she plunged the oar down into the black honey and pushed.
The initial force almost threw her out of her seat.
She had expected to use a lot of effort just to move the boat a few feet.
She had not expected the boat to shoot off like a rocket powered speedboat.
One side of the boat dipped almost into the liquid while the other side rose up into the air as the boat banked around in a tight circle. The raised side and lowered side reversed as it turned again. None of it was her doing. The boat was moving all on its own.
The boat came to a sudden stop, almost throwing Juliana over the bow. If she hadn’t been gripping the seat with all her might, she would have gone over.
As it turns out, she needn’t have bothered. The boat was sitting on the precipice of a sort of circular hole in the liquid. A waterfall–though none of the liquid actually appeared to be flowing. Before Juliana could try paddling backwards or jump from the boat, it tipped forwards.
Juliana’s iron-like grip on her seat was augmented by actual iron from her bracers as the boat sped vertically through the tunnel of honey.
The boat stopped once again before tipping over onto another flat plain.
By all means, she should have been upside-down. Or falling.
She wasn’t. She simply sat in the boat as it lazily drifted into a worn wooden dock. The moon was even still above her.
With rubber legs, Juliana made her way out of the boat. She did not want to stay on that wild ride any longer.
The moment she was safely onto the dock, the boat reversed, spun around, and dove out of sight down the hole in the liquid.
Turning away from the hole, Juliana looked over the rest of the little island attached to the dock. It didn’t look very big. She could probably run a lap around the perimeter in less than ten minutes.
An old single-room theater building sat at the center of the island. It came complete with a ‘NOW PLAYING’ sign, though the ‘Y’ was hanging upside down beneath the rest. Whatever was playing was missing far too many letters to read the title.
The rest of the building was in much the same state of disrepair. Wood panels had warped and broken. Most lightbulbs around the marquee had shattered and none of the whole ones were lit. Cobwebs stretched from corner to corner over the entrance.
Juliana looked around. She considered walking around the building to see if the island continued straight back. Prax had said his domain was a great castle. This was neither great nor a castle. After a moment of thought, she decided against wandering around. May as well start at the start and avoid backtracking later on.