A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,47

the urge to lift her finger. She didn’t want to see a troll. Not its gray teeth or skin. She breathed deeper still, shifted her mind a little. She was away from the wall now but still cramped and close to it.

“Above,” she said quietly to herself.

Then she was looking down on the tunnels, looking down on the passageways corkscrewing and doubling back on themselves—empty places, places filled with echoes. She caught a glimpse of a troll rushing along a path beneath her and then of troll houses—rough pockets cut into the earth, roundish, lumpy, devoid of any comfort—and, inside, trolls eating and sleeping and dancing and weeping.

And quite unexpectedly she saw herself in one such house, and Kitty as well.

They were there, huddled on the floor, looking frightened. But she had rushed past that place before she could stop. She tried to backtrack, reverse her finger on the map, but she could not find the room again. She decided it must have been her mind playing tricks. That’s all it could be, and anyway, she felt she was on the right path now. The tunnels were untangling. There was an airiness to them. They were wider. A huge open cavern appeared and a vast dark lake within it. Another little boat was waiting on its shore. She knew that was the right place to be. The Lake of Tears. She removed her finger from her arm.

“The first path,” she said.

“You’re certain?” asked Kitty.

Annabel thought of them huddled in the troll house but shook the image away. The boat at the end felt right. It was the correct path. She knew it in her fingertip and in her heart. It felt good to trust herself. She had asked of her vision and been rewarded. She took a deep breath.

“I am certain,” she said.

In the chosen passage Annabel and Kitty could not stand upright. They had to walk bent over with their hands stretched out before them. Soon they needed to crawl.

Annabel had never crawled on her hands and knees through a troll tunnel while carrying a broomstick and a wand before, and she never wanted to again. Even worse, Kitty made her go first and kept treading on Annabel’s cloak and skirts. Annabel was almost certain it was on purpose.

“We must be careful,” whispered Kitty, carrying the flame. “Trolls are vicious.”

“Have you met one?” whispered Annabel.

“I have. In Tottenham. Well, the back of one, going down its hole. That was enough. The smell of it went up my nose and didn’t come out again for weeks. They have tiny sharp teeth that can rip you to shreds.”

“Raise the flame so I can see what is ahead,” whispered Annabel.

“No, I must keep it low in case we come upon one,” said Kitty.

Which made Annabel feel even more frightened. She didn’t want to meet a troll.

“I heard they eat pretty rich girls for tea,” said Kitty quietly from behind.

“Stop it,” said Annabel.

Kitty was mean and ungrateful for a girl who had been saved from the Singing Gate. Annabel felt the pull on her cloak again and was about to become very cross indeed when she heard Kitty whisper, “Stop.”

Up ahead, there was the sudden glow of a light and the sound of gruff voices. Kitty tugged Annabel back against the wall and extinguished their torch into the earth.

“What Gruen should like very much for supper is rotten apples,” came one very clear voice.

Annabel saw the light ahead stop. A short silhouette appeared, standing at what seemed to be a passage crossroad. Another shape materialized in the light.

“Filled up with juicy worms,” said a second voice.

“Yes, full of worms,” said the first. “Does Mab smell something?”

“What?”

“Gruen caught a whiff of something strange!”

The flame went higher, and light rushed down the tunnel toward Kitty and Annabel. It stopped just short of where they huddled.

“Probably naught,” said the first. “But Gruen could have sworn there was a sweet smell.”

The light went up again, held higher, so that it came within inches of their knees.

“Gruen has rotten apples on his brain,” said the second with a laugh, and then they were moving again, taking another fork in the passage, turning away from Kitty and Annabel, who held each other in the darkness.

They crept forward again, and Annabel’s knees felt terribly wobbly. She fumbled in the dark until she found a way to tie her broomstick to her back using her sash. She tore a hole in her dress high up near her collar and pushed the