After the Walls

Chapter 21

My lungs burn as the lack of air drains the oxygen from my brain. The siren bears their pointed teeth as they try to stab me with the arrow. I dodge it and reach for the knife in my belt, swinging it and catching the siren's face. They shriek, releasing their grip. I kick to the surface, gasping for air as I set my sights on the shore. Wind howls and whistles in my ears as the water splashes into my mouth and the current pulls me further from the shore. Exhaustion seeps into my muscles and I whimper, knowing I am about to drown.

"Elle!" a Convex lady on the bridge shouts. "I've sent for help! Hold tight!"

Panic surges through my bloodstream and I fight through the rippling waves, coughing and spluttering. Blood taints the water around me and the agony of the wound scorches through me like wildfire. I bite back the instinctive scream as my body floats further and further downstream, toward the walls.

"Elle!" Ruben's voice cuts through my heart. His dark head appears on the bridge in the distance.

I open my mouth to shout back when a hand clamps over my lips, shoving a powdery substance down my throat.

"Elle!" Ruben screams.

But the siren's nails dig into my flesh once again as they wrench me back into the velvety darkness. My muscles and eyes grow heavy, and I plummet into unconsciousness.

I awake to the rhythmic dripping of water and cold air curling around my skin. Darkness greets me like a blanket of night sky, boring into my eyes and ears, silent and thick. I sit up, feeling the slick stone beneath my palms. A deep, inhuman groan emanates around me, licking down my spine, as if it's calling to me. My swimming memories find a pocket of clarity and I stand, wondering if I have, in fact, arrived in the afterlife.

"Hello?" Pathetic, I know. As if the God of Death himself will respond with a cherry voice, telling me I only have to cross the river to make it to my final resting world.

No one responds, of course.

My clothes have somehow dried, yet I shiver. I reach out into the gloom, finding a jagged wall, another on my other side, but none to my front and back. In a tunnel. Could I be under the kingdom? I just need to find candlelight.

Gathering my wits, I fall into step, trudging, barefoot, through the tunnel. I reach for my daggers but realise the siren stripped me of my weapons. Each of my breaths sounds like the wind. My hand trembles at the fear, the trapped feeling, but I keep moving forward until a pinprick of light emerges in the distance. I quicken my pace. As the light grows, it splashes onto the rock walls around me, revealing the green and blue moss coating the cracks and reaching in sea-coloured tendrils across the stony floor. A low hum permeates the distant tunnel, growing louder, like a war cry, over a dozen voices murmuring the same note, and it makes me shudder. Finally, I emerge from the tunnel into a chasm, the rocky ground descending like nature's stairs.

Flames jump and twirl on torches buried into the rock, showing me the path down into the depths. My tangled curls sheen in the dancing light. The further I go down, a more bluish shade of light taints the surrounding rocks, moving and shimmering like rippling water from a sinking pebble.

Finally, I see it. The path gives way to a bowl-like chasm, with carved stairs on either side. Shadowed figures stand at the bottom of the chasm, staring at the enormous window of blue shooting up past the rocky ceiling. My knees shake. Is that the lake?

"There she is!" a voice says that sends a chill down my spine.

"It's Elle Fallon," another says.

"She can help us with Theseus," says another.

Each figure grips a torch, the flames gilding their faces. The sirens, in human form.

A little girl with reddish hair trots up to me. "Will you help bring my father home?" she asks in a squeaky voice, grabbing my hand.