The driving wind and rain whipped hard at our faces. Even without Bennu’s journals, my feet would have carried me to this place, a path I knew in my bones now that Father’s soul was entwined with mine. To other eyes, human eyes, the road would not reveal itself, hidden as it was by tangle upon tangle of thick trees and shrubs, the path rising from the forest floor up to a long rock causeway carpeted with water. That water became falls, the rushing sound at our feet as noisy as the storm above.
“Watch your step!” Khent called over the commotion. The stones were slippery, treacherous, but I navigated deftly, as if I had walked the way a hundred times or more.
Through the wall of the downpour I saw a shape emerge, taller and grander than the trees to our right. To our left, the falls plunged toward a roaring froth of foam and sharp boulders.
The shape rising above us looked like a giant wicker basket, just like the one described by Bennu in his journals. Khent had not arrived at the city through this route, but he had taken a similar path when he fled, and his bare feet hopped across the wet stones with more grace than mine. He took my hand as the path ahead widened and became steep. If I squinted past my scarf and the rain, I could just see the outline of a pair of huge silvery doors.
“Do you think more people inside will have woken up?” I asked him. We spoke in his native language, but his English was improving by the day.
Khent shook his head, his face obscured by a sturdy hood and cowl. “I have no idea. Who can tell what Father’s death and resurrection will have done?”
That felt like the repeated refrain of these recent days. Chaos. Uncertainty. Outside the walls of Coldthistle I felt almost naked, as if some vital part of me had been stripped away. I wondered if my confidence would ever really come. Whatever the case, I pushed on toward the doors, helped by Khent’s steadying grip.
We reached the entrance to the city, the silver doors choked with vines and moss, the intricate carvings almost completely obliterated. I put my hand on the doors, expecting nothing, only to feel at once the old mechanisms engage, a loud, long creak rattling through my body. My instinct was to duck, but I held fast, breathing hard, pushing just a little and finding that the door gave inward. We dodged inside, and the moment we did, the storm abruptly ended.
Within, the air was warm and moist and fragrant, stifling but beautiful. Birdsong echoed off the round walls, the open courtyard similar to the shape and size of a coliseum. I gazed about, awestruck, feeling at once terrified and at home. Home. I did not intend to stay, and I did not know if I belonged there or if Father’s soul was simply reacting to the familiar grounds, but for a moment, I relished that warm and welcoming sensation.
“Louisa?”
I turned at the sound of her voice. It was a little thing, but so, so comforting. Mary called my name again, stronger this time, and I ran toward her across the green stones. Archways splintered off in every direction, leading to what I could not see, and in the middle of the courtyard were the stairs leading downward that Bennu had described. The city felt utterly empty, as if only we three existed inside of it. Mary stood from where she had been sitting, her skirts dirtied and torn. When we met and embraced, my face was wet now from tears and not the rain.
“You came! You’re here! How could you be here?” she cried, squeezing me hard.
I pulled back and sighed, noticing the obvious chunk of hair missing from the right side of her brown locks. “There is so much to explain. . . . So much . . .” I was breathless, elated.
“Oh, but you’re soaked!” Mary said, clucking her tongue. “You must be near freezing!”
“Hush and stop worrying about me,” I laughed, and waved her off. It was so good to see her face again, her shining eyes and freckles, and know that it was truly her. “You’re the one I’m concerned about. . . . How did you stand to be here all this time?”
“I tried to leave, I truly did.” With a frown, she gestured to the doors behind us. They had closed again. “Louisa, there is no way out! The walls are too high, and there are things that stir below, things I can only hear but do not wish to meet.”
“I scaled the walls but only as a beast, else I would not have had the agility for it.” Khent stepped forward at that, grimacing, and touched my shoulder gently before heading resolutely toward the staircase. “More folk must be waking,” he said, and I watched Mary stare at him, dumbfounded. “Stay here until I can make certain they are . . . amenable.”
“You’ll be careful.” I did not mean for it to sound like an order, but it was.
Khent grinned and tossed his head. “They will give me no trouble.”
For a moment Mary was quiet, watching him go, her brow furrowed. “How did you get here, Louisa? There was an awful man who took me from Waterford before I could think a single thought. He took my hair and locked me up in here and would not tell me anything! And who is that person? What language are you speaking?”
I put my arm through hers and shrugged. Where to begin? “As I told you, there is so much to explain, but we should not do it here. I think it’s a story for later, when we are all safe and dry and warm. It would be best told far, far away from here.”
“Oh, please,” she cried. “Please. It has been so boring waiting here. . . . It felt like an eternity. There are only so many times you can recite poems and ditties to yourself before it all becomes a sad jumble.”
“Well, what I have to tell you is certainly not boring,” I laughed. Then, remembering what I had carried so far and through so much wind and rain, I dug into my pocket and came up with a little carved wooden fish. “Here,” I said. “Chijioke made this for you.”
“For me?” Her cheeks blossomed with color. She took the fish and closed her fingers around it, blinking hard. “And . . . does his little gift come up in this wild story of yours?”
From below, I heard a disarmingly hearty laugh. Perhaps Khent had not encountered trouble after all. I steered Mary slowly toward the stairs and waited, looking down into the darkness and wondering where exactly we would all go, where exactly I would find a home.
“It does,” I told her. “I only wonder if you will believe it all.”