hair plastered against her pale face, she looked like a frazzled ghost.
At Sapphira’s feet lay the Ovulum, cold and dark, but unharmed. She breathed a long sigh and gazed at Elam, barely able to whisper, “Thank you.” She reached over and helped Acacia unwind the snake’s coils. A dozen more hands joined in, one pair wringing out Sapphira’s dress, another combing through Acacia’s hair.
Acacia pulled her clinging sleeve away from her skin. “We need to get out of these wet things.”
“You know,” Elam said, pointing his thumb at the exit corridor, “with Morgan gone now, I think it’s safe to explore. There are quite a few rooms I was never able to see.”
Sapphira smiled. Elam’s chivalry never seemed to falter. She nodded toward a lantern near the museum door. “Give me light!” she called out. The lantern’s wick ignited. “There. Come back when the fuel’s about half gone and tell us what you find.”
Elam winked at her and draped the dead snake over his shoulder. “Got it.” He strode to the corridor and dropped the serpent’s body at the entrance. “I’ll leave it here. It shouldn’t stink too bad this far away.” He smiled and disappeared under the arch.
Sapphira pointed at a pile of scrolls stacked against the museum’s outer wall. “Could some of you girls bring about ten of those scrolls over here? That’s my throwaway pile, and they’ll be good for building a fire.” She pulled her outer dress over her head and stuffed the Ovulum into its pocket.
Acacia stripped her outer dress off as well. As she rung out the excess water, her eyes followed the three girls who began building a stack of scrolls. “Why would you want to burn scrolls?” she asked.
“If you knew what was in them, you’d want to burn them, too.” Sapphira nudged a scroll with her toe. “One is Nimrod’s account of his temple activities, and another describes how to prepare human sacrifices for the idols in Shinar. The others are just as bad or worse.”
Acacia picked up one of the scrolls and scowled at it. “Ignite!” One end burst into flames, and she threw it back into the pile. The fire quickly spread to the other scrolls.
Sapphira laughed. “I think you’re getting it!”
Acacia pulled off her inner tunic. One of the girls removed her own outer dress and handed it to Acacia, then helped her stretch it over her head.
Acacia smiled. “Thank you, Yara.”
Yara, now wearing only her inner tunic, spread Acacia’s wet clothes over two broken ladder pieces. She grinned bashfully at Sapphira. “Your turn.”
A taller girl, also dressed only in an inner tunic, presented Sapphira with an outer dress. Sapphira peeled off her underclothes and slipped on the dry outer tunic, letting the bottom hem drop to her ankles. “Thank you, uh . . .”
“That’s Awven,” Acacia said.
Sapphira nodded at her and smiled as sweetly as she could. “Thank you so much, Awven.” Awven smiled back and hung Sapphira’s wet clothes next to Acacia’s.
The two oracles of fire faced each other, sitting cross-legged with the crackling scrolls between them. The other girls gathered in a circle around them and sat quietly.
Sapphira rubbed her hands in front of the fire. It flashed orange, matching the portal column’s new color. “Well, I guess moving the portal worked. This place will be a lot more peaceful knowing Morgan won’t be sneaking up on us.”
Acacia laughed softly. “Right. No more plunges into the chasm. That was no fun at all.”
“I can believe that. Your scream haunted my nightmares ever since it happened.” Sapphira nodded toward one of the other girls. “Do you know their stories? I don’t remember seeing any of them before today.”
“You wouldn’t. We were still in our growth chambers when Morgan decided these girls were too smart for her purposes. She threw them into the chasm not long after we were uprooted. Yara overheard Morgan telling Mardon to keep you and me so he could learn why we were so different and to try to” she glanced at Paili “uh . . . alter the next brood, I guess you might say. Then, Morgan caught her listening and threw her into the chasm.”
“So,” Sapphira said, tapping her fingers on the stone floor, “Yara made it through the whirlpool along with the other eleven who came before us. But I wonder what happened to Taalah and the spawns who came later. And what about the little embryos that Mardon incinerated?”
“Before you came and freed us, the man we listened to