Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (41 page)

I looked up at him in the most sickeningly sweet fashion I could manage, fluttered my eyelashes, and pursed my lips into my cutest wistful pout.
Wait for it, Udo, wait for it!
"Oh, thank you, Your Holiness, thank you.”

Lord Axacaya spoke a Gramatica Word. As it crackled from his lips, I felt the heat of it whiz by my head, and then heard the snap of ice breaking.

"This water is ice cold, my darling. So cold, you will feel nothing. It will be like falling into a deep sleep. Painless and easy.”

"Oh, thank you, Your Grace. I knew you would not fail me. And—I almost forgot, Your Holiness—Tiny Doom left me a letter. There was a message in it for you.”

"Really? Dear Azota. What did she say?” He sounded pleased that the woman he had betrayed still thought of him, even as she had died. He probably thought that was a compliment.

She said keep your stinking hands off my daughter,
I thought, but I said, breathlessly, “She said to tell you that she is coming for you.”

While Axacaya had been holding me, I had finagled my arms up and around his neck, and now I grabbed two great sheaves of his hair and pulled his head down. Surprised by my sudden grip, he barely flinched when I kissed him. Indeed, he started to kiss me back—yucky tongue—and then he stiffened.

I let go and sprang back. Axacaya stood there, looking extremely surprised. His lips were stained bright red by my zombified lip rouge. His eyes wobbled in their sockets, and his head bobbed. Fike, he was fighting it. The only thing magickal about Jack had been his boots; they were strong but no match for the powder. But Axacaya was an adept, and there hadn’t been much of the powder left—apparently not enough.

A good ranger,
Nini Mo said,
always has a fail-safe.
Mine was Udo and his Greatcoat of Impenetrability, and his legendary bowling arm, which had led the Sanctuary bowling league to victory on more than one occasion. Axacaya took one jerky step toward me, and his lips struggled to pronounce a Gramatica Word that would no doubt negate the zombie powder.

“Hit him, Udo!” I shouted. “Hit him hard!”

Thanks to the Greatcoat, I saw neither Udo nor the blow, but Lord Axacaya staggered and half turned, and then staggered again, as Udo hit him another time. The lacrosse stick (taken from a case of sporting equipment in one of Bilskinir’s hallways) made a wet thunking noise, and Lord Axacaya went down. He did not get back up again.

Get it over with,
Mamma always says. Axacaya lay crumbled on the rubble, darkness slicking his hair. I couldn’t see Udo, but I could hear him shouting my name. I tore at the lacings on my boots, kicking them off, and flung my dispatch case aside. Udo appeared before me, breathless and disheveled. I thrust the buckskin jacket at him; he took it, saying, "Flora, are you sure?”

"Ayah.”

I took one last look at his face, and before I could lose my nerve, turned around and jumped into the Cold Plunge. For a moment I felt only the slap of impact, but then, like a knife through my entrails, the cold cut in. I rolled, floundering, my bones feeling like they were splintering. Teeth chattering, I bit my lip and the hot spurt of blood was only a tiny spark in the giant void of coldness.

"Flora!” Dimly, I heard Udo shouting. "Flora!”

Axacaya had lied, of course; freezing to death was not easy, like falling asleep. Instead, it felt as though my flesh was being cut in ribbons with a razor blade. I tried to give in, to let go, but the instinct to live would not let me quit flailing.

“Is ... he ... still ... down?” I gasped. My tongue could barely move, but my teeth were chattering like crickets. Udo’s warm grip fastened onto my head, and his voice echoed from somewhere in the freezing void. “He’s down and he ain’t getting back up again. I’ll see you in a few minutes, Flora. Don’t go far—”

His words faded to noise that faded into freezing cold. Pressure on my head, pushing down hard. Sputtering, I went under the ice, and my chattering thoughts of Mamma, Poppy, Idden, Flynnie, even silly Valefor, cracked and fell away.

I
LOOK UPWARD
and see the body of a girl drifting in the center of a black circle. Her arms and legs are outstretched, lifeless, and red hair wafts like seaweed around her slack blue face. Her eyes, frosted white marbles, stare down at me blankly. Her head jerks suddenly and her limbs flail; someone is hauling her up out of the water. Her feet are the last to disappear, red socks winking.

Good-bye, Waking World.

Rolling over, I jackknife down, swimming through a rocky tunnel, its walls bristling with lavender and emerald sea urchins, encrusted with crimson coral. I emerge from the tunnel into a shadowy green world. Flat strands of kelp rise from the seabed, tangle on the surface above my head. Narrow silvery fish dart through the kelp forest, their pink bellies flashing as they pass through the shafts of sunlight that stream down from above. The landscape is peaceful and calm, and I am springy and buoyant, as though a heavy weight has been lifted from me. Now that I am dead, I have been released from the prison of my physical body. I do not need to breathe; I cannot drown. Reveling in my freedom, I drift boneless in the water.

Not water, but the Current.

This underwater world is an illusion. My body is dead, but my Anima survives, and it is translating Elsewhere into images I recognize and understand. I know the salmon are really elementals, the kelp is really ^theric energy, the coral is really fragments of old sigils, broken and encased with time. But the illusion is beautiful and I wish with all my Will that I could enjoy it, drift through the Current forever, give in to its pull, allow it to carry me away.

But I cannot.

I must find the Loliga—make sure she has been freed from her prison. Afterward, perhaps there will be time to play
You can’t enjoy the lemonade until you’ve squeezed the lemons
, says Nini Mo.

So I glide through the Current like an otter or a dolphin, though when I look down at myself, I see that my Anima has retained the familiar Flora form. I am disappointed; I would rather be an otter or a dolphin, but I remain trapped as myself. The seabed slopes and drops away, and I leave the sunlit shallows, the kelp forest, the salmon, the coral reef, behind. I swim through a brief twilight and into a darkness pinpricked with firefly phosphorescent lights. As I draw near them, the lights coalesce into fantastic creatures, strangely luminescent, transparent glowing ghosts against the Current’s darkness. A shoal of jellylike creatures, fat as blancmanges, each trailing a plume of glassy filaments. A cloud of tiny crimson shrimp, sparking like embers. A long gleaming strand, thicker than my waist, its length strung with glowing pearls. A sinuous gunmetal-gray eel with bulbous crimson eyes and fangs protruding so far that it cannot close its jaws, with a long fleshy lure, pulsating with a lemon-yellow light, protruding from its forehead tip.

Downward I go, through water that is not water. Axacaya and I had only skimmed the surface when we visited the Loliga. Now, I go deeper, much deeper. The glowing entities grow fewer, and eventually I sail through the velvet blackness alone. Ahead of me, the Current will drop down into the Abyss. If I venture too far, I will not be able to return to the Waking World.

But I do not need to go that far. Soon, the form of a building rears out of the darkness. The Bilskinir Baths, drowned. No, not really the Bilskinir Baths. The Loliga’s prison. Georgiana’s Working.

This version of the Bilskinir Baths is a hundred times larger than its Waking World counterpart. It towers over me like an enormous underwater mountain; below, its foundations are invisible. Like the Working it represents, the building is crumbling. Its walls are crusted with glowing green lichen, and pieces of the facade have fallen away. The marble statues in the pediment above the main doors are missing limbs, their faces pitted with wormholes.

The Baths look abandoned. But I know that someone—something—is still inside.

Directly ahead, I can see the Baths’ main entrance. The doors are closed and I know they are locked. But I wear the Key on my finger. I can open the doors, allow the Loliga to go free.

As I arrow forward, I feel a brief tug, as though something is trying to pull me back. My Will prickles uneasily. But when I look behind me, I see only darkness. I swim a few feet further and feel the tug again. Again, I see only darkness behind me, but something is there. I can sense its malevolence, its hunger, its anger.

The Word emerges from my mouth in the shape of a glowing pink bubble. The bubble bobs in the Current, but its light is too weak to illuminate very far. I flick the bubble with my finger, and it pops, momentarily flooding the darkness with a brilliant pink light.

Revealed in that light is a monstrous shape: a nightmarish creature, half octopus, half spider crab. The horror has long spiny legs, segmented like an insect’s, springing from an oozy shapeless body. Its bulbous eyes protrude on sluglike stalks. The creature is a deep dark pulsating black, which had kept me from seeing it in the darkness. It radiates evil. And though it looks different from the last time I saw it, I recognize it instantly: The kakodæmon that Tiny Doom and I had vanquished in the Waking World. Somehow it has found me in the Current, and I do not think it has come to wish me well.

I flee toward the Bilskinir Baths’ doors. The Working may be crumbling, but it is still relatively secure. If it can hold the Loliga in, surely it can keep the kakodæmon out. I put every ounce of my Will into my flight. I have no lungs to wheeze, no muscles to burn; I am not hampered by heavy flesh. But I can only go so fast, and the kakodæmon is quickly closing the distance between us.

My Will turns molten. If the kakodæmon gets me now, it will consume me completely—I will be worse than dead; I will cease to exist completely The kakodæmon catapults over me, legs scrabbling, body inflating; now it is between me and the doors. Its bulbous eyes glow with hate. Its mantle flares open, umbrellalike; deep within the fleshy core is a sucking round mouth, which gapes wide to reveal a circle of horrifically humanlike teeth. I dart away just as the mantle snaps shut, trying to trap me inside. Before it can reinflate, I dive over the kakodæmon, brushing one of its arms as I do so. The arm, though spiny, is covered with soft black fur. At the touch, pain surges through me and I falter. A heavy dark gooey feeling begins to lap at my edges.

Now I am sluggish. I see those snappy shoe-peg teeth and try to dodge them, but I am too slow. The kakodæmon rears back, preparing to pounce, and then suddenly its mantle collapses. A furry shape has attached to one of the kakodæmon’s arms and is chewing on it like Flynn chews a stick.

I try to dart away, but move slowly. The kakodæmon jerks its arm out of the Coyote’s mouth—Coyote? Can coyotes even swim? This one can, in a graceful effortless dog paddle. Legs held close to its body, using its plumed tail like a rudder, the Coyote circles around the kakodæmon, jaws snapping at its flailing limbs. The kakodæmon retreats a few feet; the Coyote sails toward me and rams me with its long nose. I fly backward and hit the Bilskinir Baths’ door. On my finger, the Key sizzles. I bang on the surface of the doors with my fists, and they fly open. I am sucked inside. I get a last glimpse of the kakodæmon bearing down upon the Coyote, and then doors slam shut behind me.

I am inside Georgianas Working. Inside the Loliga’s prison.

But I am no longer light and airy. I have landed on the floor of the lobby in a heap, and when I clamber to my feet, I find I am once again firm on the ground. The walls of the Working drip with Current, and Current puddles on the cracked marble floor, but the Current that fills the Working is so thin, it feels just like air. After being so buoyant, it is a real drag to suddenly feel so heavy again.

The doors rattle and jump on their hinges; the kakodæmon must have overpowered the Coyote and now its attention is back on me. The Baths echo with a high-pitched wailing. The walls vibrate, gusting plaster; chunks of marble plummet down from above; the tile beneath me heaves and buckles. I careen down the marble stairs. Ahead, where the Pacifica should be, is only darkness. Above, where the sky should shine through the glass ceiling, is only darkness.

A woman crouches in the bottom of the Salt Pool, now drained of Current. She clutches her immensely swollen belly, screaming.

I vault into the Pool and find that though the Current inside the Working is thin, it is strong enough to support my jump. I land lightly and run toward the woman. Even crouching, she’s very tall; my head barely comes up to the middle of her giant tummy. I grab her hands, just as she lets out another shriek. An enormous wave of pain rolls out of her and into me, the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, a huge horrible squeezing sheet of pain that seems to go on forever.

And then is suddenly gone.

The woman has let go of my hands and unsteadily risen to her feet, towering over me. Her red hair lies in slicks around her puffy face, and blood stands out on her lip where she has bitten it. The ragged remains of her blue silk gown are dripping with sweat. A gold collar encircles her neck; it is fastened to a long golden chain that is bolted to the floor. She looks exactly like the portrait of Georgiana Segunda, but I know she is not Georgiana Segunda.