Chapter 20

No one remembered how much time had passed when they woke—but Warren was the first to emerge back into consciousness. Stunned like a sleepwalker waking mid step, Warren found himself in the middle of an action of which he had no recollection: scrubbing. Memory came to life and he glanced at the sliding glass door beneath him. Everything within his reach nearly sparkled with clarity. He gazed below; a river raged with foaming white crescents beneath the glass—a new revelation to him. When he looked at his friends, still mechanistically scrubbing away at the writing and still tinted a disconcerting purple hue, the words on the door came back to him.
But the last few words were missing, having been blotted out by his sponge, which he subsequently inspected. It still dripped when he lifted it. He also noted that his hands were the right color. He held his sponge and stood, stretching his arms and twisting his back—as if warding off the kinks and pains he knew were coming. Then with a moment of decision, he stepped to Sofi’s side, knelt beside her, and started scrubbing where she wasn’t.
His sweeps had an immediate and remarkable effect on the glass—and within seconds, it shone with a fantastic gleam, even for the low-light of the cavernous room. After he had cleared as much as he could reach in front of Sofi, she paused in her motions. Warren sighed and waited, searching her face for signs of consciousness. Her eyes seemed fixed on a distant point, far beyond the giant lamps or the room walls.
Then she blinked, and Warren dared to speak. “Sofi? Can you hear me?” he probed. She dropped an eyebrow and blinked again—but slowly. Her lips parted briefly, then came back together. “I know you’re in there, my love,” Warren prodded. This time, he noticed a flush of color rush to her cheeks—then her hands. She closed her eyes, shook her hair, and ran her hand through it. When she inhaled deeply, Warren knew she was back, and asked her, “Are you alright?”
Sofi nodded. “I think so.” Then she noticed the others, compelled to finish their impossible task. “Are they?”
“I think I have to clean it for them. They’re trying, just like the prisoners before them, but are incapable of doing any good.”
“How was it that your sponge worked?”
“I understood the mystery.”
“The mystery of what?”
“The mystery of the door; how to get in. You remember reading what had been written?”
“Yeah, it didn’t make any sense at all.”
“And then you were powerless to understand…you just did things, trying to scrub it clean. But now.”
“I still don’t understand,” she clarified.
“It said, ‘only one who knows language backwards and forwards will be able to clean this door.’ Except parts of the sentence itself were backwards.”
“How did you figure that out? All I remember is collapsing and falling asleep.”
“It was the power I received. Without it, I would have been done for,” Warren noted.
“And with that power’s aid, you figured it out and…”
“And I got this sponge. That’s all I remember before I drifted off.”
“Hmmm.”
“So then I cleaned your portion for you, and you came back to life…ish when you realized it had been cleaned.”
Sofi nodded and raised her eyebrows. I see. “And is that a river I see down there?”
“Yeah, I think so. Let me wake up the others,” Warren said and scurried to Old Fred’s side. Within a minute, Warren had the whole of the door cleaned and the others, in their own turn, began to stir and lose their shadowed skin color.
And just as quickly, Warren was explaining how their freedom had come about. Livingstone seemed the most curious. “I wonder,” he said when Warren had come to a conclusion, “what happened to those whose places we took.” Warren and Old Fred raised an eyebrow at each other and shrugged simultaneously. Sofi paced around the door, as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite have it all worked out yet. Livingstone waited, watching her movements like a cat, with hands folded across his chest.
“What if…” Sofi began, hesitating for a moment. “What if we opened it?”
“You don’t mean going down there, do you?” Old Fred inquired.
“What if this were a one-way door, locked from this side by the writing?”
“What are you saying, Sofi?”
“I’m saying that this may be a waypoint—but a sealed waypoint. Imagine it like an iron fence between paths, and we just made a gate in what was supposed to be fixed. What was it that the demon told you, Warren?”
Warren’s mind put the pieces together. “That Sylvara had been exiled here.”
“Right. And that this pathway was largely devoid of intellect,” Sofi continued. Warren nodded and furrowed his eyebrows.
“And in that case, it would only make sense for a riddle to bar the way out, but guarded on the pretense of an ancient trap—of physical detriment” she concluded—Livingstone was smiling already.
“Exactly. Also, we know from the demon’s statements through Ali that the Mar know our past location, too,” he added. “They will likely be waiting for us back there, if not actively pursuing us, already. If we can change pathways again without their knowledge, we should give ourselves a decent advantage.”
“Well,” Old Fred declared, “I love rivers. Let’s get wet!” He bent over and slid the glass door open a bit.
“But let’s not be too hasty,” Livingstone cautioned, with a hand on Old Fred’s shoulder. “We have little idea of what lies beyond that door. We may find ourselves on a pathway without many exits—and there’s no telling what sort of dangers we might face.”
Sofi fidgeted with her hair. “I think the Mar poses the greatest threat to us at the moment, and if this will lend us any sort of benefit against them, I say we take it,” she said in a simple risk evaluation.
Warren felt like his opinion would mean little to these two—and yet he also felt he was somewhat entitled to enter the discussion which Sofi and Livingstone dominated. Trent was strangely silent as well, Warren noticed, and wondered why he hadn’t voiced his thoughts. The man stood curiously still, hardly the confident, enthusiastic type he had seemed to Warren a day earlier. His eyes seemed to stare past them, concentrating on the ceiling, or some other far-off space.
“Trent, what do you think?” Warren ventured, but received no immediate answer. Trent raised his cheeks a bit and squinted, cocked his head to one side. Livingstone interpreted his body language and drew his weapon, spinning to find a golden-winged harpy swooping down to them.
Warren could plainly see it was Sylvara—Sofi and Old Fred mimicked Livingstone in firing at the wind-witch as she landed. But the creature hid behind the shield of her ironfeathers and shrieked, “Peace! Peace! Strangers, listen to me!”
The red room fell silent as the last echoes of the gunshots faded to nothing. Sylvara peeked from the refuge of her wings. “Warren, I congratulate you,” she said, morphing again into his poorly-clothed mother. She feigned applause. “You passed my last test without my introduction to it! You are something else, my wonderful Warren.”
Sofi frowned at that final statement. “Leave us, witch, we have no more quarrel with you. Let us be on our way, and we’ll let you keep your breath,” Sofi threatened.
“Oh, so fiery! Listen young ones, I have no desire to injure you anymore…no, I had but a wisp of hope that you might be my liberators. Which is why I had to take you in, before your pursuers fell upon you and carried you away from me. And this special one, oh Warren! Aha! You delight me, truly you do. For look, you have mastered the door. How many years have I glared at that writing, how many nights have I been haunted by its message; incapable of doing or thinking what was required?”
Sylvara’s wings burst forth and she took a flapping lunge towards Warren. Guns bristled from his companions, but she ignored them and stroked Warren’s hair. “You have given me a great gift, Warren Spicks,” she said, producing a vial from her rags. “And now I shall give you a gift.” With that, she popped open the small glass container and dripped a drop of shimmering liquid on the glass door. At the touch of the drop, the glass slid back immediately, and the square door folded back and rotated mechanically into a circular opening.
“How is this a gift? We already had it opened,” Warren asked.
The harpy grinned. “Oh no, this is your gift to me…my gift—well—she waits for you in that small box over there,” she said, pointing back across the room. “I hope it’s the last time you lose one you love, Warren.”
The realization sickened him; he had forgotten about Ali. When and where he had lost her, he wasn’t sure. He scrambled for the box and Sylvara hopped up to the rim of the opening. “I hope you won’t forget me, Warren, for I will certainly remember you. Goodbye, dear one,” she concluded and disappeared through the opening.
Warren, however, wasn’t listening. Instead he was sprinting across the pillows at top speed, with an arm in front of his face to ward off the returning butterflies. When he arrived at the box, an old cardboard thing which Ali could probably chew through in but a few chomps, he tore it open and found himself gazing into those glittering black eyes he had so shamefully forgotten. Ali squeaked and stood on her rear legs, scratching at the edge of the box.
She hopped onto Warren’s hands and scrambled up his right arm to his shoulder. “Attagirl,” he soothed and turned back to Sofi and the others. “I guess we’re all present and accounted for…” he started. Sofi nodded lightly and with a long blink.
“Shall we get out of this blasted butterfly storm?” Old Fred suggested after a moment’s silence.
“Then, I suppose we are all in agreement that our best option is to follow the harpy into the next pathway,” Sofi asked. Warren and Old Fred nodded. Trent stared without anything that seemed like a spark of life, but mouthed the word, yes. Livingstone stood, arms crossed and facing away from the others. He gazed down through the glass door transformed hatch at the waters below.
“I don’t think…” he began, but lowered himself to the ground, gripped the side, and swung his head through. Warren wandered closer in curiosity. “Nevermind,” he heard Livingstone echo from the hole. “Let’s go,” he said and let his body swing over and through the opening. Then his hands, all that Warren could see of him, released and disappeared through the hatch. He looked to Sofi who just bit her lip and shook her head.
Old Fred laughed. “That’s the impossibility you come to love with Oscar.” He winked at Warren. “Let’s get wet!” The old man searched down the hole, then yelled down to Livingstone. “Hey Oscar, how deep is it?”
“No, don’t…jump…” came Livingstone’s muffled reply, tinged with irritation, as if Fredric’s question was wholly absurd. Sofi grabbed Old Fred’s shoulder to keep him from doing anything rash, as she sensed Livingstone had a plan of sorts. “Catch!” Livingstone’s voice echoed up to them, followed by a rope tied to an old piece of pipe. Old Fred trapped it against the edge of the hatch and pulled it up through.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he yelled back down, and tugging on the rope.
“Tie it…” Livingstone began, but faded into concentration. Sofi raised her eyebrows expectantly. “To this,” he grunted, and a bigger metal pipe came at the opening from an angle. Old Fred handed Warren the rope and bent over to grab the pipe. Warren at first couldn’t figure out what Livingstone was up to, until the pipe came through the opening and Old Fred clanged it across the hatch. He secured the rope around the middle of the pipe and tossed the rope through the hole.
“Will it hold us?” Warren asked.
“I bet so,” Old Fred affirmed. Then he glanced to Sofi with a sly grin. “Ladies first!”