A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,54

leave this place to its business. But it was going to prove decidedly tricky, for I no longer wanted to touch the walls to climb out.

I was rooted in this place by my own chains, my own demons.

And this place had enough of its own.

The prisoners.

The voice.

The golden smoker.

And, in hindsight, I saw as I brushed together a vision in the ashes on my fingers – the one who had starved until his ankle was free.

The one who had gotten away.

S e v e n t e e n –

The Ambassador

Overwhelmed by the visions, and the thought of being surrounded by this disturbing cast, I clenched my hand against further interpretations and my eyes against further imagination. I would be dreaming up visions myself soon, spooked.

I had not realized it, but as my fingers closed I had caught a piece of leaf. It was quaint as a paint chip.

In the end, that's why I opened my eyes.

Not because I was ready to go.

Not because I had regained my composure.

I opened them because there was a whisper still lodged in my grasp, a delicate shard of this puzzle still painting things into my mind.

What it painted this time was something closer than the other snippets. I could feel the heat of it.

The gaze of it.

I saw it, as I opened my eyes.

Even as it stood behind me.

I revolved slowly, until its true form pricked the corner of my eye, and then snapped a full turn.

She was there.

And she was not a vision.

She was in the distance, and I was illiterate to her features. But she was unmistakable.

That was the word that described her.

Unmistakable.

She was hugged by gold, and her frame was one that boasted its tall authority even from a distance. This time, in her hand, she did not clutch her smoking utensil. She clutched a shackle.

It dangled from her grasp, the chain lagging on the ground behind her. When she moved forward, dragging it toward me, she did not seem much hindered by the weight of the rubble.

I did not take well to this woman dragging an anchored shackle in my direction. As she moved forward, I backed away. But each of her steps seemed to double mine. She came forward in flashes.

Oh, gods, what have I fallen into?

I felt her voice in my hand, a tremor in the leaf: “You have fallen off the face of the earth, my dear. You've fallen into the cracks.”

My hand released the leaf with the suddenness of a clamp pried open. Her voice flitted to the ground, where I couldn't hear it. I trampled it as I treaded backward.

I did not turn to flee, though perhaps I would have very much liked to. I was trained in survival, and survival did not always mean running. My hand went to my head, sliding into the niche where my knife was threaded. It was colder than usual, and my fingers were slick with sweat.

There was no use denying that I was out of my element, that I had never encountered a place of this nature, even in all my encounters as an Albino, but there was no time to despair over that nature, nor the desire to analyze it. I just wanted out. I had trespassed, and I just wanted to leave. I had fallen into something that was none of my business.

“It was just a mistake,” I tried, projecting it down the passage while my advancing companion was still a safe distance away. “I just fell in.”

“Most of them do,” came her reply without concern. I had deterred nothing.

My glance took in the chain at her fingertips. “Leave it,” I willed more desperately.

She slunk closer. The dead leaves crawled away from her feet. “This is mine to do with as I shall.”

I bared my blade then, seeking a more deterring stance. “I am not.”

She said nothing, but carried tauntingly onward.

Sweat ran into my eyes. I blinked furiously at it, and when my vision cleared, she was before me.

Right before me.

I lunged away with a hammering heart, but now her strides were long and purposeful. I threw my knife at her.

She caught it by the blade.

She was close enough now that I was stricken by her beauty. I had never seen such beauty. Her skin was rich as the soil of paradise, and her eyes like vast planes of night. Her cheekbones were like weapons, sharp enough to kill, poised above half-mast on her tall, angled face. The mane atop her head was slicked back,