Alosha (28 page)

“I have to see if the rope will support our weight,” she said.

“Some of us weigh more than you,” Karl said.

“Not to mention a certain ten-foot-tall troll,” Steve said.

The dwarves were near. Ali could make out individual torches in the distance, and the noise of their chanting seemed to shake the inside of her skull. “We don't have time for another argument,” she said, getting down on her knees. “I only need a minute.”

“Be careful,” Cindy said, kneeling beside her.

“I thought you hated me,” Ali said.

Cindy was worried, but forced a smile. “How can I hate my best friend?”

Getting onto the rope, figuring out how to hang, was the hardest part. But Ali knew there was no way she would be able to stay on top of the rope. Crawling onto her back, she stuck her head over the edge and grabbed the cord and pulled herself three feet out, at the same time wrapping her legs around the rope. Well begun was supposed to be half done, but she did not know if that applied in life and death matters.

Her long maroon hair hung below her head like a red flag waving from the window of a spaceship. Nemi had talked to her about the test of space. She had never realized what he had in mind. She thought if she let go she would fall and never hit bottom. Her soul would be trapped forever in darkness, and, like a dark fairy, she would never have another chance to find the light of wisdom.

She realized that was her fear talking. The tests were about nothing but
fear, and courage. She remembered reading once that all babies were born with two fears: the fear of darkness and the fear of falling. The gorge gave her a chance to face both at the same time.

“How are you doing?” Karl asked as she scooted farther onto the rope, leaving the ledge behind.

“I love it,” she whispered.

“Do you feel like you're about to fall?” Cindy asked.

“Don't say the F word,” Steve said.

“I feel fine. Let me concentrate,” Ali said.

The distance was not far, a hundred feet. If the rope had been strung a hundred feet between two ladders in her backyard, she would have covered it in less than a minute. As it was she moved very slow.

Even before she reached the far side, she realized she had been selfish to go first. The dwarves were closer than she had figured, and there was slim chance all her friends would be able to get to safety in time.

Ali's hand bumped into stone. She had made it across. Reaching out, above and behind her head, she grabbed a steel hook and pulled herself onto the ledge. When she got to her feet, she saw a herd of dwarves approaching behind her friends. Their beards were long, their axes shiny, and their torches seemed to burn the night. Ali didn't understand why they looked so angry.

“Hurry!” she shouted.

Cindy went next—no, it was Karl. Tucking the flashlight in his belt, he told Cindy he needed to get across to secure the rope on the other side. Ali could have done that, she thought, if she'd had more time. But time was the sixth test, after space, and it looked like it was about to run out for all of them.

The dwarves clanged their weapons as they bore down on them.

Her friends started to panic.

Karl was only a dozen feet over the gorge when Cindy climbed onto the rope. Cindy was five feet out when Steve reached for the cord. Then there were Paddy and Farble, who were naturally itching to get to the other side. The leprechaun was banging his head on the wall again and the troll was howling as if he were on fire.

Steve had barely got his feet away from the edge when Paddy leaped onto the rope. The leprechaun's impact caused the entire cord to shake. Karl almost lost his grip and Cindy let out a cry.

Now there were four of them, at one time, hanging over the abyss. It was madness, Ali thought. The rope was not meant to hold so much weight.

Karl almost made it. He was reaching for her hand when Farble decided he could take no more. The dwarves were only twenty feet behind the troll when he jumped onto the rope.

It was hard for Ali to blame Farble for what happened next. No doubt the dwarves would have hacked him to pieces the second they reached him. They had fire in their eyes, or maybe it was just the reflection of their torches.

The troll weighed more than the rest of them put together. When he climbed onto the rope, it was too much, way too much, by about a thousand pounds.

The rope snapped.

It broke on Farble's end. In one deadly swoop, the gang fell like the wrong half of a pendulum and smashed against the wall on her side. Because he was hanging at the very end of the rope, the impact was hardest on Farble. The troll hit the wall and lost his grip. Then he was falling, screaming like a wounded animal as he disappeared into the deep.

Paddy didn't fare much better. The impact from hitting the wall must have stunned him. Or else the closeness of the dwarves caused his nerve to fail. Whatever, five seconds after Farble lost his grip, the leprechaun was falling. It broke Ali's heart to hear his last cry.

“Missy!” he screamed.

Then he was gone. Just gone.

Karl had slid several feet down the rope, smashing into Cindy's head, who in turn had slid into Steve. The three of them were clumped together near the center of the rope like the tangled victims of a car crash. Yet they were still alive, Ali told herself. They could be saved.

Maybe. The front line of the dwarves stood only a hundred feet away, on the opposite side of the gorge. Ali could see eight of them but there could have
been hundreds. They were short and stout, three-and-a-half-feet tall at best, with strong bodies and heavily armored limbs. On their heads they wore steel helmets, and in their eyes Ali saw the darkness and pain of their underground lives. With long coarse beards, they stared at her friends and whispered among themselves, probably debating how the invaders should die.

Ali wanted to shout at them that this was humanity's world.

Desperate, Karl was climbing back up the rope, trying to reach the ledge where Ali stood. Never had she seen such a look of terror on someone's face. Straining with his arms and feet, he accidentally kicked Cindy in the face. Indeed, he hit her so hard that she lost her grip and slipped. But Steve caught her as she fell, grabbed her by the waist with one hand, even as he fought to hang on to his own life.

“Help Ali!” Karl cried as he neared the top. Kneeling, she gripped a steel hook embedded in the floor and stretched dangerously over the side. Again, she cursed herself for having put her friends in such a frightening position. If she could not save them, she vowed, she would die trying.

Across the chasm, a dwarf with gold-lined armor lifted his battle ax. He caught Ali's eye and she knew in that moment she was looking at Lord Balar, master of all dwarves. His long beard was snow white and his dark eyes burned hotter than a red sun. Paddy had spoken of the dwarf's anger and Ali saw it all—an aged ruler bitter with battle scars and personal loss. It would be useless to beg for his mercy, she knew, yet she cried out anyway as he swung his ax over his head.

“Don't!” she shouted.

Her word did nothing, her fairy magic was useless. The sharp blade flew across the abyss, a shining razor in the cursed darkness, and hit the rope. The dwarf's aim was perfect, it was horrible. The ax cut the rope just above Karl's outstretched hand.

The rope broke, her friends fell. They were within reach one second and the next they were mere stick figures, twisting and turning, shrinking in the endless night, until they finally disappeared into a grave that she knew in her heart had no bottom.

Across the way, the dwarves cheered. More axes were raised.

Ali stood and ran. She had no light, she could not see where she was going. She ran from nowhere into nothing. She didn't care. Her heart was ruined; it could never be healed. In that moment she could have been a dark fairy. All she wanted was darkness.

T
rapped in a nightmare, time lost all meaning to Ali. She only knew she had to keep running. She hit the wall, she fell, she got up and ran some more. Her feet tripped her, she got up. The darkness not only surrounded her, it filled her. Each gasping breath she drew in only added to her quotient of darkness. Her heart and lungs were choked with it.

Honestly, she thought, she
was
the nightmare. There was no other way to explain what had happened in her life. Her friends were dead, her mother was dead. Everything she touched died! There was no one left to care for. No one left to care for
her
. There was nothing to do but run.

She wondered if she was losing her mind.

Ali didn't know how long she went on like that, chasing the endless length
of the cave that for all she knew could suddenly open onto another gorge and hurl her into the pits of the Earth. Yet a time came when her lungs could no longer suck enough oxygen from the thin air. Crumpling like a rag doll drenched in oil, she sagged onto the hard floor and closed her eyes.

“Help Ali!”

She tried not to remember the faces of her friends in that second before the rope had been cut and they had plunged to their deaths. She tried not to recall how their eyes had turned to her, to the great Ali Warner and her fairy magic. How they had silently begged her to work a miracle. Because she had been unable to do anything for them.

She had not even been able to say goodbye.

To her friends or to her mother.

She could not stop thinking about it.

Eventually, her breathing slowed and her heart ceased to pound and she was left with nothing to do but sit and wait. Of course there was nothing to wait for and there was no reason to sit. Yet she could think of no reason to get up either. There was nowhere to go.

Since they had entered the cave, she had noticed the volcanic sand that made up the floor. The grainy texture reminded her of the black beach she had gone to with her parents in Hawaii two years ago. That had been a wonderful day, the sun bright in the sky, the warm water rushing onto the shore like the loving arms of an old friend. She had lain on the beach for hours on end with her mother and let the waves run over her from foot to head.

One glorious day in the life of Ali Warner.

Her watch glowed a faint phosphorescent green in the dark—she was able to read it. Five-forty-five—a half-hour earlier, if the watch could be believed, than when they had reached the chasm. But she didn't believe it—the stupid watch must be broken. She didn't believe anything anymore.

Ali felt the darkness close in. She no longer craved it. Suddenly it seemed to her a living being, a hungry creature whose stomach she'd had the bad luck to end up in. An ancient monster that would devour her at its leisure, over the
next two hours or the next two hundred years. No, she did not like the darkness at all.

She laid on her back and tried to close her eyes again. She could not be sure if they were open or closed, not really, not in such a dark place. Sweat formed on her forehead and she wiped it off. She was surprised how hot it was. The temperature had risen at least twenty degrees since her mad dash through the cave.

She felt like a loaf of bread in a stone oven. Soon the yeast in her guts would expand and she would rise up like a little doughgirl. Or else she would die and her spirit would rise up from her body and would join her friends. She felt so exhausted, it didn't matter what happened anymore.

They came for her then.

They flew on a hissing wave, like vampiric bats that had grown large and strong on the blood of mortals. Their eyes glowed a hateful red in the dark. Her own eyes must have been open to see them. But their eyes moved fast, as did their wings, and this time they swooped down upon her without fear. She was not even given a chance to take the fire stones from her pockets. Not that they would have worked here,
on the other side of the red door
.

Three caught her: by her hair, her legs, her arms. Her stones were taken away. They did not care that they hurt her. As they flew down the cave, away from where her friends had fallen, a claw closed over her throat and she had trouble breathing. Yet they did not choke her. They wanted her alive.

It was not long before they entered a vast underground cavern. Its size boggled her imagination. The floor of the dark space could have been miles away. Yet she could see it, even from such a distance, because it was traced with lines of burning lava. The lava choked the air with a stink of rotten eggs, which she knew from school to be sulfur fumes. The ghastly red glow was a horror. She felt as if she was being dragged into a world of demons.

The dark fairies took her lower. They flew in the direction of a giant hive that stood at the center of the cavern like a honeycomb stuffed with sewage instead of sweets. The structure was gray, pocketed, and the buzz that came from
it made her want to vomit. Around the hive flew a thousand dark fairies. They moved through the air like lizards with wings, or black flies with minds. With such a complex home in place, Ali knew it was impossible that they had only arrived in her dimension a few days ago.