“Who is the Mad Hatter?” Bale inquired.
“An insane character from a book,” Ireplied, and Kobal shook his head.
In my head, I could hear the words Kobal hadonce uttered to me.You humans and your infatuation withfictional characters.
“I see,” Bale said.
“You’re thinking of the gateway as a holethat cuts all the way through the Earth. It’s not,” Kobal said.“There is an opening on both sides of the planet, but each one isidentical to the other. It’s why we believe if we could close one,they would both close.”
“Think of them as two halves of the samehole, almost literally. If you took a paper and folded it in themiddle, they would meet at a certain point. This is the point,”Magnus said.
“But how would we emerge on the Europeside?” I inquired.
“You go the way you didn’t come.”
“This is what a bad acid trip would belike,” Hawk groaned as I gawked at Magnus. He stared back at uswith an expression that made it clear what he’d just said madeperfect sense to him.
Hellisthe rabbit hole, Irealized. And we had tumbled headfirst into it.
“Am I supposed to understand that?” Iasked.
Magnus pointed above us. “You started thatway, but you didn’t come that way. You’ve taken a differenttrail.”
“So if we were to followthatroadwayout of here, we’d end up in Europe?”
“There are many roads to traverse in orderto get to where you have to go.”
He was making my head pound, and he had noidea he sounded like he spoke gibberish.
“Things work differently here,” Kobalsaid.
“Obviously,” I muttered.
I forced my attention back to the gorycavern. It was almost preferable to the hamster wheel Magnus wasspinning. Now that my eyes weren’t immediately drawn to themassacre, I realized what I’d originally thought was another tunnelacross from me was something else entirely. Before the start of theentrance, the walls were the same black I’d become accustomed to inHell, but something silver poked out from the edges of the rocks,and beyond that, I realized the rocks became a solid silvercolor.
My brow furrowed as I took in the brokenedges sticking more than three feet out of the rock. I could seeswirls of something on those edges, but there wasn’t enough therefor me to make out what it was supposed to be. I realized what Iwas looking at though.
“The remains of the first seal,” Imurmured.
“Yes,” Kobal said.
Without another word, he rested his hands onmy hips and plucked me off the ground. “What are you doing?” Idemanded.
“We have to cross over to the seals.”
“You need your hands free, and I have to beready to help.”
“You’re not walking through this.”
Could I really argue with not having toclimb through rotten remains? No, no I could not. “Let me on yourback then. I can see anything coming from there, and we’ll both beable to use our hands.” I’d also be able to get free of him a lotfaster if it became necessary, but I kept that to myself.
He hesitated before shifting me so I wasriding piggyback. I adjusted the skirt of my dress, clamped mythighs against his sides, and held onto his shoulders as he steppedinto the cavern. I tried not to pay attention to the squishingsounds under his feet, but the only other sounds were the crunch ofbones as the hounds ate their dinner and the diminishing shrieks ofthe goblins. Some of the tiny, flesh-eating monsters managed tomake it into the other tunnels and vanished.
With nothing left to chase, the houndsprowled back and forth, their hackles raised and their continuoussnarls echoing through the cavern. “Ainka,” Kobal said to them andthe noises died down a little.
“What did that mean?” I inquired.
“Best translation would be ‘easy,’” hereplied.
