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“Magic holds up these walls, the magic of summer. The sparkle you see is encapsulated sunlight, woven into the core of the gem.” He glanced over at me, his eyes shining in the reflection of the light, and I began to realize just how much the Court of Rivers and Rushes had lost when Myst came sweeping through.
A thought occurred to me, but I didn’t want to say anything. Not yet. But what if Lainule had hidden her heartstone down in these tunnels? What if that was why she had sealed them over? Could we possibly find it and return it to her?
My promise to her rang sharply, though, and as much as I wanted to take a look around and see what we could find, I couldn’t bring myself to do so. Bound by oath . . . she had extracted a promise from me, and I was powerless to break my word. Right now. But later . . . when the risk wasn’t so great . . .
Gathering my thoughts, I turned to Chatter. “It’s close to two P.M. by my guess. We need to get moving.”
“Right, but you’re going to find that time no longer matters. At least for now.”
I wanted to ask what he meant, but he turned away and led us through the winding tunnel. Though it was empty and clear—and actually fairly warm and dry—I felt we were being watched, and it left me uneasy. But I had no sense that Myst or her minions were aware of us. No, it was more like walking through a memory book, where the scent and sounds of old parties and dances that had long ago faded from time played out just on the threshold of hearing.
Even Peyton noticed. “What’s that?” She stopped.
“What?”
She turned this way and that, then relaxed. “Nothing, I guess. I thought I heard something, but . . . there’s nothing here.”
The sudden shifts and currents continued, and as time went on, it felt like we were wandering through a dream. My feet on autopilot, I drifted in and out of the slipstream, trying to catch the voices slipping past in a rush of whispers. There was a peal of laughter, soft words on a dusky summer’s night, a shout of recognition. After a while, I stopped trying to understand and simply let them wash over me and vanish.
After a long time, Chatter held up his hand and pointed toward a fork in the passage. “To the left, then another few moments, and we reach the ladder to climb out.”
I bit my lip, wondering what might be waiting outside for us. “How long have we been walking?”
“This passage is inside the barrow structure. Time shifts while we’re here . . . it bends. There’s no telling how long we’ve been in here, compared to the outer world.”
I’d experienced the time shift before, when I entered Lainule’s realm over at Dovetail Lake. I’d also noticed a shift when I turned into my owl self. Either time flew by without my realizing it, or I’d seem to be out for hours and when I returned, only moments had passed.
I could never seem to control the time shifts, and I didn’t understand them yet, but they were definitely part of my awakening Fae nature. It was as if a part of myself had been locked away, waiting for Prince Charming’s kiss—only the kiss had been a pendant and instead of waking from a magical sleep, I woke to a magical form. Until then, like all of the magic-born, I’d followed the time threads of the yummanii and the Weres, although magic-born—like the Weres—lived longer.
We climbed the ladder, Chatter going first, and again, the silver compound resonated through my fingertips, into my body. At the top, he did something I couldn’t see, and then we crawled out through the opening, onto the snowy surface. The first thing that struck me was that it was almost dark.
“Crap, the Shadow Hunters will be up and about soon. How far did we come? How far in are we? We can’t have been walking that long.”
Chatter flashed me a ghost of a smile. “We covered well over twenty miles, but I have no idea how long we were walking.”
“We’re deep into the woodland, then.” Shivering, I glanced around. It had been nice and warm belowground, but now the icy teeth of winter bit deep and I shivered, realizing I’d felt safe down in the tunnel. Now I felt terribly exposed again, and terribly vulnerable. “How far to the Court of Dreams?”
“We’re near the portal.” Chatter pointed toward a rocky foothill that rose through the tree line. “We have to go halfway up, and then a path to the right leads to the cave where the portal is. The climb is rough at first, over the rocks, but that part doesn’t last for more than about fifteen minutes and then it’s fairly easy going, though all uphill.”
We scrambled over the heap of granite boulders that had piled upward. Another alluvial deposit, like back at the creek where we’d escaped Myst and her hunters? No, not a wide enough swath, but I definitely recognized glacial activity here. The Washington mountains were full of rockfall and sweeping alluvial fans left from when the last ice age retreated from the area.
During the summer, the conies—or pikas, as some folk called them—lived on the rocky slopes. The creatures were within the lagomorph family, like rabbits, but they looked like a cross between mice and hamsters. Pikas didn’t hibernate during winter but would be hiding beneath the boulders with their haypiles—the grass and food they’d managed to tuck away for the winter.
I scanned the area, looking for any sign one might be out and about, with no luck. I wasn’t sure why I hoped to see one—it would just set off my owl instinct to hunt, but for some reason the thought of the resilient little creatures braving the winter seemed inspiring. And right now, we could use all the hope and inspiration we could get.
We managed to get past the rock slide and finally found ourselves on a snowy slope, leading up through the trees. My legs were burning from the exercise—I’d thought I’d gotten plenty on the streets, running from gang members, irate landlords, and thugs, but the past couple of weeks had put my body to the test and I’d discovered muscles I’d never even known existed. The lactic acid was building in my calves, and I longed to sit and rest.
I glanced over at Peyton. She looked to be sweating as much as I was. “I’m about done in. How about you?”
She nodded, her hands thrust deep in her pockets. “We should have brought walking sticks. Chatter’s fully Fae; he can walk on top of the snow, but we have to slog through it.”
And slog we did. The higher we went, the deeper the snow became, and at this point it reached my knees. Each step was like wading through thick mud.
“Chatter, how much farther?”
He glanced over his shoulder, then stopped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you two were tired. Not much farther. See that clump of fir ahead? The ones next to the snowed-over ferns?” He pointed to a stand of trees about two city blocks away, up the mountain. “The path to the cave takes off there, and we will be on a trail that runs parallel to the mountain. The going won’t be so difficult then, and from there, it’s probably another twenty minutes to the cave.”
I motioned to the sky. “It’s almost dark. Are we in danger from Myst, do you think?”
