Smoke and Mirrors (23)

Twenty-Three

Goose Chase

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“It’s empty.” The confession dropped from my lips like lead. “All of this–and there’s nothing here.”

Sterling sighed. “There’s got to be something else here. She wouldn’t risk her life by leading us out here for nothing.”

Adrian scanned the beach once again. He really never stopped scanning our surroundings since we arrived. “It could be a trap,” he muttered. “You never know with my mother.”

“Wait, I have an idea,” Sterling proclaimed. “Let me see the box.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “No way! What part of ‘I don’t trust you’ aren’t you getting?!”

He held his hand out again. “That’s the whole reason you have Adrian, right? I’ve already taken a beating from him once, so you know he’s not useless.” He gestured towards his eye.

I snickered. “Yeah, that was funny.”

He sighed. “Please give me the box.”

I looked down my nose at him. “Oh, he’s getting desperate now, folks,” I said to myself. “What’s so special about this box?”

Adrian chuckled. “Sterling, I don’t think she’s handing it over that easily.”

Sterling folded his arms. “Look, if it is what I think it is, that thing might actually have the horn in it. We use mirror boxes all the time back home to put things in. The only thing is, instead of just putting something in the box, we put it in the mirrors. You see where I’m going with this?”

I pursed my lips. “Fine, but don’t try anything. You saw what I just did with the water earlier.”

The corner of his lips curled. “Yeah. I saw.”

I handed him the box. He flipped open the lid and slipped a length of mirror inside.

After a moment of feeling around with the strand of mirror, he pulled something out of the box.

It wasn’t a horn, but a piece of folded paper.

I groaned and kicked a shell into the water. “This was a wild goose chase! There’s nothing here!”

Sterling unfolded the paper and Adrian and I peered over his shoulder to read it.

Your next destination is the Light in the Hall of Shadows.

Adrian stepped back. “How could she do this? She knows what’s at stake–all she can do is send us on a treasure hunt?! What is she thinking?!”

Neither Sterling or I said a word. What was there to say? She’d tricked us–and worst of all, we’d fallen for it.

Maybe she never intended to return the unicorn horn after all.

But if that was the case, where was she leading us?

***

Sterling was able to take us to his castle through the mirrors, where we stayed the night. Apparently, getting to his castle was “easier” for him than making a simple trip from Water’s castle to the Weeping Stones. I think he just wanted to annoy me, but who knew what was going through his head. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe.

Once we made it to Sterling’s castle however, another problem faced me.

There was no way I was going to risk sleeping alone. In my enemy’s castle. Nope, nope, nope.

I expressed my fears to Adrian.

“I’m flattered you see me as such a foreboding threat,” Sterling began from behind me. “But trust me, I’m just as tired as you are.”

I turned sharply to see him standing at the edge of the room, leaning against the wall with folded arms.

I thought Adrian and I were alone. It made me uncomfortable to be so close to Sterling all the time, where he could easily kill me with his mirror tentacles at any time he wished.

And what could Adrian do to fight off a thousand strands of mirror, each meant to kill me?

Nothing.

The only reason Sterling was sparing my life right then was because I was helping get the horn back. As soon as we found that, everything would change.

“Sounds exactly like something a psychopathic murderer would say,” I mumbled, wrapping my arms around myself.

He shook his head and pushed himself away from the wall. When he spoke, his words were sharp. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll do as I say here. You may be my betrothed, but that doesn’t give you any power or special treatment, do you understand me? You will sleep alone. I’m not putting out any of my staff for your comfort.”

I rolled my eyes. “I understand.”

But really, I didn’t understand at all. Was it so hard for him to have just one maid or guard sleep near my room? Just in case?

I sighed deeply. It didn’t matter. This was my battle, I wouldn’t hide behind a maid. I hadn’t for eighteen years, I didn’t need that now.

Later, we ate an ordinary and plain snack of bread and soup–ordinary in comparison to the dinners at fathers, anyway. For me personally, I lived off of frozen TV dinners for years, so anything above that was special.

After that, I was shown my bedroom.

It was nothing special at all. There was a bed and a bathroom. A metal shelf in the corner of the room had a towel on it in case I wanted to bathe, but that was the only item in the room that I would consider luxurious.

If Sterling wanted to send the message that he didn’t care about me as anything more than a problem, he’d done so quite successfully.

The walls were grey and empty. So were the floors and ceilings. I noticed the lack of a mirror in the room and bathroom and found that rather relieving since I’d seen how he could look through mirrors just earlier.

I sat on the bed, which was hard and had springs that poked at me uncomfortably. The blanket was scratchy, the pillow was thin, and the room was cold. I hugged myself and tried to calm my racing heart, which feared that at any moment, the door would open and Sterling would march in and strangle me.

I barely slept that night.

What sleep I did get was interrupted by a dream that he was standing over my bed with a dagger made of mirror.

Then I sneezed, which caught the blanket on fire. I panicked for a moment, but stopped when I realized that the fire wasn’t spreading to the walls or floors. After a while, it went out, but the room filled with smoke. I sneezed again and water poured down from the ceiling, filling the room up to my knees with water. A third sneeze emptied the room of both water and smoke, which was relieving.

After that, I stood and began pacing the room.

I absolutely had to get the unicorn horn back so I could get my powers fixed. After that was dealt with, I had to solve the problem of how I was going to break off my engagement to Sterling. If we married. . . there was no telling what would happen to me. I would be nearly defenseless–a kitten trying to swipe at a lion would do a better job at defending itself than I could.

I gulped and tugged at my hair anxiously.

What would things be like if we married? Certainly not pleasant, that was for sure. This room was enough to give me just a taste of the future, and it was very bitter.

I tried to shake my thoughts from my head, but it was hard to.

When the morning came, I was still alive, even though I hadn’t slept long enough to call it sleep.

I yawned and popped my neck as a guard led me out of my room and into the dining hall.

We ate a type of gelatinous, mushy bread, sprinkled with diced fruit. It tasted disgusting. The mystery fruit was the only thing that redeemed it at all.

“You look awful,” Adrian commented as he sat across the table from me. “Glad to see you’re alive though.”

I chuckled, but a yawn interrupted me. “That last sentence is debatable–but thanks.”

Sterling strode in with all the confidence of a king in his castle. The walls reflected hundreds of copies of him, which made movement in the room dizzying.

He placed a map on the table and flattened out the wrinkles. “We need a new plan,” he stated. “Now that Seraphina is leading us somewhere new, we need to think of all the ways this can go wrong. How can she turn this whole thing into a trap.” He looked at us. “You two with me?”

Adrien nodded firmly. “Agreed.”

I yawned, but nodded my agreement around a bite of diced fruit.

Sterling assessed my appearance with a quick glance and returned his gaze to the map. “Your eyes almost look as bad as my bruised one, Tessa. No one disturbed you, I presume?”

I scoffed. “Nope, nobody but me.” I fought back another yawn.

“Good. You’ll need what strength you have for the journey. The Shadow Kingdom–also called Rafforun–is a confusing and dangerous place. It’s nearly impossible to navigate for non-natives.”

“Wait, we’re going to the Shadow kingdom?!” I asked.

Adrien nodded. “Where did you think the clue meant?”

I shrugged. “Look, it was kind of vague, alright? The light in the hall of shadows? That could be a nightlight in my old apartment for all I know.”

Sterling sighed and smoothed out a crinkle in the map. “We’re going to Rafforun. Although a visit to Seraphina may have to happen sometime in the future.” Under his breath, he added, “I don’t like to be manipulated.”

We spent the morning discussing the direction we’d go, what we’d be up against, and how we were expected to act should we encounter any trouble with any of the people there.

Adrien said, “Can’t we message the king and let him know why we’re coming? Seraphina might not want soldiers or guards involved in this, but that doesn’t mean we have to act in secret.”

Nodding, I replied, “Agreed. That sounds safer than any idea I’ve heard so far.”

Sterling thought for a moment. “Fine. I’ll have a message sent out and we’ll leave by this evening.”

By evening, we were well on our way.

The shadows crept across the ground as the sunlight went dim, growing thicker and thicker until the light disappeared altogether like wisps of an extinguished fire. The silver forests twinkled like stars in the moonlight, reflecting light onto grass that looked pale and purple in the dark. My favorite thing about this kingdom was the way the trees reflected the stars, as if they were returning a smile from an old friend. I loved the way the night looked like velvet, soft and black above us.

Sterling was able to get us closer to Rafforun by taking us through the mirrors to places he regularly traveled to. Once we were past those places though, we had to walk.

The walk lasted until we reached a town that had some form of transportation. Sterling called them steamers. They looked like a cross between trains and cars. They came in different colors, with wooden doors just like old cars used to have back on the Outside. They were powered on steam, hence the name, and they were unlike anything I imagined the Inside world having. Sterling paid to rent one and we drove down something that looked like a railroad track until we reached the end of Sterling’s kingdom.

The steamer sounded just like a train. The chugging, the whistling, all of it was just like a train. Combined with the fact that we were following a set of rails, if I closed my eyes, it was just like what I’d always imagined a train ride being like. I’d never ridden a train before, but it had to be just like this.

After a while, we reached the border. The rails ended at a station with other steamers, so we returned the steamer and set off on foot for the border.

The border was black–thick, inky black that felt as if light had been drained from the world when you looked at it.

“It’s not so bad on the other side,” Adrian told me, sensing my thoughts. “I went to a school here for a while as part of an effort to build a better bond of trust between Pyranoth and Rafforun.”

I forced myself to inhale a deep breath. “That does make me feel a little better. Glad you made it out alive and everything.”

He chuckled and looked back at the border.

Sterling glanced at me and added, “It’s going to be entirely different than anything you’ve ever experienced before, I can promise you that. Some people avoid it entirely because of how much they hate Rafforun.”

Anything Adrian said to comfort me vanished at Sterling’s words, but somehow, once Sterling waved away his side of the border and requested access from the guards, I managed to force my feet to move. They felt heavy with nerves, as if my shoes were crusted in thick mud.

I looked down at my feet to make sure they really weren’t crusted in mud. Nope–no mud, but there was definitely a thick layer of mirror caked to the bottom of my soles.

“Wait–Sterling, can you. . . help me?” I waved a hand at my feet. “My shoes are heavy.”

He paused and glanced down at my feet. “You’re kidding me.”

I shook my head. “Not at all.”

He rolled his eyes but snapped his fingers. The movement was quick, but instantly the mirrors shattered into a thousand pieces.

I grimaced. “Thanks.”

He ignored me and started walking again.

“Come on,” Adrian grumbled. “The border won’t be open forever.”

I looked up to see the inky blackness swirling in front of us, as if it was a set of curtains pulled back to allow us to pass.

I inhaled deeply and popped my neck. Then I cracked my knuckles. I was totally ready for this. I mean, what could some measly shadows do to me after all?

We crossed the border and the Shadow guards closed it behind us.

I shuddered as they watched us pass by in silence.

Allow me to paint a picture for you of why I was shuddering.

You see Reader, normal people have skin. Skin you can’t see through. It’s a pretty cool attribute when you realize that apparently not all creatures are entirely solid in appearance. In fact, the guards looked very dark and ghostly, and at first glance, you might not see them at all. The shadow guards had dark, wispy hair that curled around shadowy helmets and dark uniforms, and what creeped me out the most was the fact that one moment I’d be looking at a landscape of empty grey shadows–things like plants and rocks that aren’t scary–and the next, I’d blink and realize that what I’d previously thought to be a tree was actually the body of a guard.

Once, I accidentally bumped into one of these guards, thinking that I was walking through nothing at all. It suddenly clicked in my mind that what I was seeing was not some far away rock, but a button attached to a collar, with faint yellow eyes just above that that watched me closely.

I scrambled back and apologized profusely, casting my gaze to the ground.

When I was sure we’d passed the guards, I began scanning our new environment more closely. But that seemed to be impossible to do, because one moment I was looking at a tree, and the next it was shifting, morphing into a small house, a crooked bush, or a figure that resembled a human form much too closely for me to keep staring.

“How long until we get to the Hall of Shadows?” I whispered to Adrian, who walked beside me confidently, as if there was nothing at all to worry about.

He glanced down at me. In a voice that matched my whisper, he replied, “Depends on where it is now. Nothing stays in the same place here. Things morph and shift into each other and away from each other.” He paused. “Why are we whispering?”

I cleared my throat and spoke normally. “Sorry, it just felt like we should whisper.” I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.

He gave me a crooked grin. “It’s alright. The elves aren’t all that the outsider humans make out of them. They’re usually pretty warm! Er–nice.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Elves?”

He nodded. “Didn’t you notice? Those weren’t humans, Tessa.”

That made me dart my eyes to sides just a little bit more–just to make sure we weren’t being followed or something.

“Can I ask a question?” I said sometime later during our trip. “Why draw out a map? If everything here shifts, why have a map of anything at all?”

Sterling cut his eyes to mine. “To know where we’re going, of course. The locations might move, but they’re not impossible to find.”

Adrian chuckled. “Everything follows a route here. One day, a hospital will be in one town. A few hours later, that same hospital will be in the forest outside the next town over. The next day, it might be halfway across the kingdom, and your house may move there with it.” He shrugged. “It’s confusing to non-natives, but there is one thing about it.”

“What?” I asked.

He gestured towards what seemed to be a shadowy forest around us. “You get to see a lot of the country.”

“Wow, that’s helpful.”

I shivered again as I realized that the shadowy figure of an elf was watching us from a perch in a tree above. I could barely make out her form in the dark branches as her shadow mixed with the other shadows of the tree, much less what she looked like, but the fact that I knew she was there frightened me enough.

“There’s nothing to fear here that you don’t have to worry about in any other kingdom,” Adrian chided, noticing what I was looking at.

I snorted. “Easy enough for you to say. You grew up here.”

Sterling cut in, “Can you two be quiet? I’m trying to think. We need to pay attention to our surroundings so we know which path to take.”

Adrian and I looked at each other and began simultaneously making the weirdest noises we could, just to annoy him.

Sterling didn’t reply to our childish antics, but I saw his fist clench and unclench, and that satisfied me enough.

I felt a little bit better after that.