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I remove the pouch from my pack and carefully hand it over. Her hands quiver in anticipation, lightly caressing the leather as she sets it on the table and loosens the strings knotted around its neck. I, too, watch with excitement as she reaches inside and removes a peculiarly dark gemstone with smooth edges and a transcendent yet ominous bluish-green glow.
But then Mavyn steps back abruptly, letting the stone drop with a thud on top of the table, almost like it bit her. My gaze jumps from it to her face, stunned at how her color seems to have instantly drained and left her pale, short of breath.
“Mother, are you okay,” Astor says in a panic, quickly rushing to her side as she nearly collapses to the floor.
“I’m fine,” she snaps brusquely, standing up straight again. “I just didn’t expect it to be so… hostile.”
“Hostile?” I mumble under my breath, puzzling at the gem.
Only creatures have such qualities, like anger, hatred, or aggression, so to hear Mavyn say that the stone is hostile makes me almost fearful of it. My heart prompts me to look away, yet I can’t for some reason. A strange aura surrounding the stone instead beckons me to not hide myself, but to approach it. I start inching closer, like a fish to a lure, hearing it call out to me, whispering a hush in my mind.
“Be careful,” Mavyn warns. “It can sense you.”
“Yeah, I feel it,” I say with a soft-spoken reverence.
“Don’t trust it,” she continues more vehemently. “The stones aren’t alive like you or I might
think of it, but in some way that goes beyond comprehension. Whether their intentions are good or evil is unclear. Don’t let yourself be pulled in by it.”
At that instant, I am freed from the strange hex I was under, not on my own power or from intervention by Astor or Mavyn, but by a loud pounding echoing from the canals. Soldiers are coming.
“This way,” Astor says, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the room’s far corner as I hurriedly pick up my pack.
Once we reach where the walls meet, I see that it isn’t a corner at all, but a small exit concealed by the room’s design, each of the walls overlapping the other in order to conceal a secret passageway. Astor slides inside the narrow crevice, but I stop before I reach it, turning around to retrieve the stone.
“You must take this with you,” Mavyn says as she rushes after me, the pouch in her hand.
I grab it, feeling the weight of the stone inside reassuring me that she had actually repacked it. But then she backs away.
“Are you not coming?” I ask confused.
She shakes her head.
“We can outrun them,” Astor implores, emerging from behind me. “They’ll lose track of us in the tunnels.”
“This isn’t about running away,” she calms him.
He looks down in disappointment and doesn’t say anything, disappearing back into the darkness. Mavyn then stares affectionately at me, sad like this is no ordinary farewell.
“I’ll enchant the passageway so they won’t be able to see it or follow you. It will simply appear as though I am trapped alone. There are others besides me who will be able to unlock the stone and create the bridge to the world it came from. Astor will help you find th—”
“Why won’t you come with us?” I interrupt, emotion in my voice because I’m tired of meeting people only to lose them.
“There is something else going on right now, a mystery in the shadows that I won’t be able to uncover if I’m running and hiding. They might kill me, but if they don’t, I will learn what I can, escape, and journey to you where you go. Astor will be tempted to save me. Don’t let him. He is your guide now and will do as you say, even if he can be bullheaded at times.”
I don’t understand Mavyn’s trust in me, nor why I should have any right to tell Astor what we will do as though I know any better than he does, but looking into her eyes now, I can see why my father believed in her. They are a faded light-blue, like crystal, and purer than any I have ever before seen. It saddens me to think that they could so soon be closed forever.
A pounding comes on the door, followed by bellowing orders to unlock it, but Mavyn ignores them, looking down at the ground and whispering something under her breath. The air between her and I seems to glow as she speaks, like flying wisps, fireflies in the air, slowly joining together and creating a thin wall of glass between the two of us.
“Goodbye,” she says peacefully, turning just as the door opens.
Several soldiers flood into the room, two of them seizing Mavyn by the shoulders and pushing her down on her knees while the others search around. One comes toward me and I freeze, his eyes seemingly on mine, yet he doesn’t react. The glass between us somehow makes me invisible to him, or so it appears, and he moves on like all he can see from his side is another a stone wall.
One last soldier enters the room, tall and dark-haired, his uniform decorated with peculiar designs and colors as though he is much more important than those who came in before him. He ignores everything but Mavyn, a satisfied grin on his face like a hunter who has finally cornered his elusive prey.
“Simply forget to hide the way this time, Julienne?”
His voice is snide, like the sliver of a snake, unpleasant and venomous. It makes my blood boil, as do the soldiers who forcefully hold Mavyn, or rather Julienne, in place with her knees pressed painfully down against the jagged floor. I wonder if that is her real name.
