Page 63 of Serpent and Shadow

––and I disappeared through the stone.

14

Trapped

The light confused me the most.

Everything flashed white, in a way I almost remembered.

I felt the shift well before my mind could make sense of it.

I felt it before I’d even stopped moving sideways.

My shoulder slammed into something hard, solid, and I sucked in a breath without making a sound. I somehow kept my head enough to know I needed to make as little sound as possible. It was the darkness, maybe, but definitely not only that. I already knew I hadn’t hit the fountain’s base. The air smelled different.

It felt colder. Mustier. Less open. More cramped.

Where I’d landed was definitely quieter.

I rubbed my arm, biting my lip as I kept my breathing silent.

I blinked, fighting to adjust to the nearly non-existent light.

I felt cautiously over the wall I’d run into.

I tried to make out the material, the size of it, just with my fingers, still without making a sound. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel like stone, but when I found the end of the flat surface, my fingers found stone next. I pushed on the flat, not-stone part, and decided it must be wood.

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t move. Whatever blocked me in, it was heavy.

My hands followed the wood all the way to the other side, but I met stone there, too. I followed the stone but only reached the wood on the other side.

I was trapped.

I pressed my face to the crack where the wood and stone met, but I couldn’t see anything but more darkness. When I pressed my nose to the crack, I got a little more.

There was definitely a room beyond there.

That room felt large, possibly cavernous in size. I could somehow sense the larger space with my nose and breath more than my eyes, which did nothing for me in the dark.

If I’d felt safe, even a little bit, I might have made a sound.

I would have done it just to gauge the echo, or lack of one.

That room beyond the wood and stone walls smelled of mold and damp, and like rotten, disintegrating paper and parchment mixed with rat leavings and layers of dust. Something in the exact combination of smells hit me as strangely, achingly familiar, but my mind was too scattered and agitated to pin down where I knew it from.

I turned around carefully, feeling around for more gaps and holes, but only found another small, dark crack where the wood met stone on the other side.

I was definitely trapped behind something heavy and made of wood, something shoved into the corner of a large room.

My eyes slowly began to adjust to the dark.

I’d often wondered, even on Earth, why I could see so much better in the dark than most kids at school, and definitely better than most adults. Since I’d arrived in Magique, I’d decided it had something to do with magic. It’s almost like I could see through my aura when my eyes failed me, or some combination of my aura and my primal.

In any case, everything around me appeared to glow with the faintest gold sheen.

I peered upwards, and saw a distant ceiling of what looked like heavy logs and plaster.

My ability to see more of my own confined space didn’t change anything, except now I could see the top of the wooden thing blocking me. From the intricate carvings I glimpsed, I guessed it was a heavy wardrobe, or some other enormous piece of furniture.