Page 49

He reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze before releasing me. “Stay behind me.”

Of course. Safe or not, Barrett was still Barrett.

He went first.

The passage was narrow but easily walkable, curving gently downward through darker limestone threaded with pale mineral veins. The air grew warmer as we descended, carrying a faint earthy scent that reminded me of wet roots after rain.

At the first split, Barrett took the right-hand passage without even slowing. The passage narrowed again, then widened into a low chamber. Barrett stopped at the far side and pressed his palm to the rock.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t know.”

“Excellent.”

His eyes closed.

I waited.

“Water,” he said eventually. His hand moved several inches across the limestone. “Other side. A lot of it.”

I couldn’t hear anything beyond the faint trickle behind us.

We followed another passage. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards beyond the boundary when Barrett stopped again.

The cavern beyond us was enormous. Our headlamps couldn’t find the ceiling. Darkness rose above a broad pool of perfectly still water, its surface black enough to look solid.

But the cavern wasn’t dark.

Soft blue light glowed along the far edge of the pool.

My pack slid from my shoulder as I moved forward. “Oh.”

Barrett looked at me. “Hazel?”

“The color.” My hands were shaking before I even opened Grandma’s journal. I turned pages too quickly, nearly tearing one before forcing myself to slow down.

Then I found it. The unfinished drawing. Narrow petals. Blue stamens. A shallow web of roots.

Beneath it, three words in Grandma’s handwriting.

Cold water. Limestone. Light.

I raised my head. The flowers grew along the edge of the pool. Hundreds of them.

For a moment, I was eight years old again, sitting at Grandma’s kitchen table while she pressed flowers between sheets of paper and told me the world was full of things nobody had named yet.

And now I was staring at the plant everyone had decided existed only in the imagination of a sick old woman.

Grandma had been right.

A sound escaped me, half laugh and half sob. I pressed my hand over my mouth.

Barrett came up behind me. “You found it,” he said quietly.

I shook my head. “She found it. She was right, Barrett.”

His hand settled between my shoulder blades. “She was.”