her at all.
When I opened my eyes, I found Matilda standing on the eighth step, shuffling her feet tentatively against the crumbling stone. The step seemed to be holding up under her weight. “I think it’s safe.”
As she spoke these fateful words, something large and black came down at us from the top of the tower, falling with such speed and purpose I barely had time to react before it swooped past and then circled back up. Matilda let out a startled scream and fell from the staircase towards the stone floor, and I darted towards her in an attempt to break her fall. The two of us landed in a heap at the bottom.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
She rolled off me and climbed back to her feet. “I don’t think so. What was that?”
I stood and brushed the dust from my coat. “I think it was a bat. A very large bat.”
“You’re bleeding.”
I followed her eyes to the palm of my hand, where crimson from a cut about an inch long shimmered in the pale blue light. I gently touched my palm with my other hand. “It doesn’t hurt; I don’t think it’s very deep.”
I pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of my trousers and wrapped it around the wound as a makeshift bandage.
The large bat came back down, first circling high above, then diving directly between us. Both Matilda and I reared back, dodging the creature as it passed less than a few inches from our eyes. I watched the black bat soar back up, then alight upon a wooden beam about ten feet above our heads that ran the length of the tower. The vile creature glared down at us with beady red eyes. The image of Nanna Ellen again popped into my head and I shook it away.
I expected Matilda would wish to leave, but instead she again grasped my hand and started up the steps, pulling me behind her. Undeterred by the bat.
I stood still. “What if it swoops down again when we’re way up there?” I asked, pointing at the staircase far above our heads. “A fall from that height would most certainly mean death.”
“Then, perhaps, we shouldn’t fall,” she replied.
I remained still.
Matilda tugged at my hand. “We will watch it closely. I was spooked once; I will not be spooked again.”
A mouse scurried past our feet and came to a halt between us and the entrance to the tower, a mouse so plump it could easily be mistaken for a rat. It was nibbling at something, but I couldn’t make out exactly what. As if to prove her point, Matilda didn’t flinch at the sight of the rodent; she stood firm.
I nodded my head, took a deep breath, and the two of us began to ascend the steps. With this, the candles seemed to brighten.
* * *
? ? ?
WE REMAINED CLOSE to the walls, our hands groping for anything resembling a hold in the jagged surface of the stone. Here, the steps were no more than a foot wide, the surface of each perfectly smooth, worn by time and the countless feet that had trod upon them through the generations. Ascending, I kept a wary eye out for the bat. The creature, monitoring us intently from its perch, took flight as we passed and landed upon another beam just above our heads. The flutter of its wings echoed off the ancient walls, filling the chamber with what sounded like a hundred bats beating against one another. Passing the bat for the second time, I heard the chitter of tiny teeth and was reminded of the mouse we saw earlier.
I dared not glance down; the stone floor was at least twenty feet below us now. With each step, I heard tiny little pieces of loose rock slip from under our feet and hurtle to the ground. Matilda squeezed my hand in hers, then let go. The next step was less than six inches wide, nothing more than a nub of rock protruding from the wall. She tentatively placed a foot upon it, quickly shuffled past to the next full step, then waited for me to do the