Ah, Maura! Calla’s stomach twisted. I told you not to go.
“Touch that.” Blue pointed to a large black scrying bowl. It sat askew on the rug, untouched since Maura had used it.
Calla didn’t think much of scrying, or mirror magic, or anything that had to do with plumbing the mysterious ether of space and time in order to actually muck about on the other side of it. Technically, scrying was not dangerous; it was just meditating into a mirrored surface. But practically, it often involved freeing the soul from the body. And the soul was a fragile traveler.
The last time Calla, Persephone, and Maura had messed with mirror magic, they had accidentally made Maura’s half sister, Neeve, disappear.
At least Calla had never liked Neeve.
But Blue was right. The scrying bowl probably held the most answers.
Calla said, “Fine. But don’t touch me. I don’t want you to make this any stronger than it already is.”
Blue held her hands up as if proving she had no weapon.
Reluctantly, Calla touched the bowl’s rim and darkness immediately billowed through her vision. She was sleeping, dreaming. Falling through endless black water. A mirrored version of her soared upward toward the stars. Metal bit into her cheek. Hair stuck to the corner of her mouth.
Where was Maura in all this?
An unfamiliar voice chanted in her head, strident and wry and sing-song:
“Queens and kings
Kings and queens
Blue lily, lily blue
Crowns and birds
Swords and things
Blue lily, lily blue”
Suddenly, she focused.
She was Calla again.
Now she saw what Maura had seen: three sleepers — light, dark, and in between. The knowledge that Artemus was underground. The certainty that no one was coming out of those caverns unless fetched. The realization that Blue and her friends were part of something huger, something vast and stretching and slowly waking —
“BLUE!” roared Calla, because she realized why her efforts had suddenly become so successful.
Sure enough, Blue was touching her shoulder, amplifying everything. “Hi.”
“I told you not to touch me.”
Blue didn’t look sorry. “What did you see?”
Calla was still mired in that other awareness. She couldn’t shake the idea that she was getting ready for a fight that, somehow, she’d already fought.
She couldn’t remember if she’d won the last time.
BELOW
Maura Sargent had the nagging feeling that time had stopped working. Not that it had stopped functioning, exactly. Just that it had ceased to run forward in the manner she’d come to think of as “the usual way.” Minutes stacking upon minutes to make hours and then days and weeks.
She was beginning to suspect that she might just be using the same minute over and over.
This might have troubled some people. Some people might not have noticed at all. But Maura was not some people. She had begun to dream the future when she was fourteen. She had spoken to her first spirit when she was sixteen. She had used remote viewing to see the other side of the world when she was nineteen. Time and space were bathtubs that Maura splashed in.
So she knew there were impossible things in the world, but she didn’t believe that a cavern where time stood still was one of them. Had she been here for an hour? Two? A day? Four days? Twenty years? Her flashlight batteries hadn’t died.
But if time’s not moving forward here, they never will, will they?
She striped her flashlight from floor to ceiling as she crept through the tunnel. She didn’t want to smash her head, but she didn’t want to fall into a bottomless crevice, either. She’d already stepped into several deep puddles, and her scuffed boots were soaked and cold.
The worst part was the boredom. A poor childhood in West Virginia had left Maura with a strong sense of self-reliance, a high tolerance for discomfort, and a black sense of humor.
But this monotony.
It was impossible to tell a joke when you were alone.
The only indication Maura had that time might be moving somewhere was that sometimes she forgot who she was looking for down here.
Artemus is the goal, she reminded herself. Seventeen years before, she’d let Calla convince her that he’d merely run off. Maybe she had wanted to be convinced. Deep down, she’d known he was part of something bigger. She’d known that she was part of something bigger.
Probably.
So far, the only thing she had found in this tunnel was doubt. This was not the sort of place sun-loving Artemus would have ever chosen. She had half an idea that this was the kind of place someone like Artemus would die in. She was beginning to feel bad about the note she’d left behind. In its entirety, it read:
Glendower is underground. So am I.
At the time, she’d felt quite smug; the note was meant to enrage and inspire, depending on who read it. Of course, she had written it thinking she would be back by the next day.
She revised it now in her head:
Going into timeless caverns to search for ex-boyfriend. If it looks like I will miss Blue’s graduation, send help.
P.S. Pie is not a meal.
She kept walking. It was inky black ahead and inky black behind. The sweep of her flashlight illuminated details: stubbled stalactites on the uneven ceiling. Water sheened on the walls.
But she was not lost, because there had only ever been one option: deeper and deeper.
She wasn’t afraid yet. It took a lot to terrify someone who played in time and space like a bathtub.
Using a mud-slick stalagmite as a handhold, Maura hauled herself through a narrow opening. The scene on the opposite side was confusing. The ceiling was spiked; the floor was spiked; it was endless; it was impossible.
Then a tiny drip of water unspooled ripples through the image, momentarily ruining the illusion. It was an underground lake. The dark surface mirrored the golden stalactites on the ceiling, making it seem as if an equal number of stalagmites jabbed up from the lake floor.
The real bottom of the lake was hidden. The water could be two inches, two feet, depthless.
Ah. So here it was, finally. She had dreamt of this. She was still not quite afraid, but her heart skipped uneasily.
I could just go home. I know the way.
But if Mr. Gray had been willing to risk his life for what he wanted, surely she could be as brave. She wondered if he was alive. She was surprised by how much she desperately hoped that he was.
She revised the note in her head.
Going into timeless caverns to search for ex-boyfriend. If it looks like I will miss Blue’s graduation, send help.
P.S. Pie is still not a meal.
P.P.S. Don’t forget to take the car in for the oil change.
P.P.P.S. Look for me at the bottom of a mirrored lake.
A voice whispered in her ear. Someone from the future, or the past. Someone dead or alive or sleeping. It wasn’t really a whisper, Maura realized. It was just hoarse. The voice of someone who had been calling for a long time without an answer.
Maura was a good listener.
“What did you say?” she asked.
It whispered again: “Find me.”
It wasn’t Artemus. It was someone else who’d gotten lost, or was in the process of getting lost, or was going to get lost. In these caverns, time wasn’t a line; it was a mirrored lake.