Exu circled overhead now, as if he knew exactly where he was going. I picked up my pace to follow his shadow on the trail in front of me, feeling grateful for the creepy bird that was even bigger than Harlon James. I wondered what Lucille would think about him. Funny how a supernatural crow borrowed from the Greats could seem like the one familiar thing in the landscape.
Even with the help of Uncle Abner’s crow, I kept stopping to consult Aunt Prue’s map. Exu definitely knew the general direction of the Far Keep, but he disappeared from view every mile or so. The cliffs were high, the trail was twisted, and Exu didn’t have to worry about navigating those mountains.
Lucky bird.
On the map, my path was outlined in Aunt Prue’s shaky hand. Every time I tried to trace where it would lead, the path disappeared a few miles ahead. I was starting to worry that her hand had shaken a little too far in the wrong direction. Because the directions on the map didn’t have me going over the mountains or between them—I was supposed to go through one of them.
“That can’t be right.”
I stared from the paper up to the sky. Exu glided from tree to tree in front of me, though now that we were closer to the mountains, the trees were that much farther apart. “Sure. Go ahead. Rub it in. Some of us have to walk, you know.”
He squawked again. I waved the whiskey flask over my head. “Just don’t forget who has your dinner, eh?”
He dove at me, and I laughed, sliding the flask back into my pocket.
It didn’t seem so funny after the first few miles.
When I reached the sheer cliff face, I double-checked the map. There it was. A circle drawn in the hillside—marking some sort of cave entrance or a tunnel. It was easy enough to find on the map. But when I lowered the paper and tried to find the cave, there was nothing.
Just a rocky cliff face, so steep it rose into a straight vertical, cutting the trail off right in front of me. It pushed up into the clouds so high that it looked like it never ended.
Something had to be wrong.
There had to be an entrance to the tunnel somewhere around here. I felt along the cliff, stumbling over broken pieces of the shiny black rock.
Nothing.
It wasn’t until I stepped back from the cliff and noticed a patch of dead brush growing along the stones that I put it together.
The brush grew in what was vaguely the shape of a circle.
I grabbed the dead overgrowth with both hands, yanking as hard as I could—and there it was. Sort of. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the reality of what that circle drawn on the mountain actually represented.
A small, dark hole—and by small, I mean tiny—barely big enough for a man. Barely big enough for Boo Radley. Maybe Lucille, but even that would have been cutting it tight. And it was pitch-dark inside. Of course it was.
“Aw, come on!”
According to the map, the tunnel was the only way to the Far Keep, and to Lena. If I wanted to get home, I was going to have to crawl through it. I felt sick just thinking about it.
Maybe I could go around. How long would it take to reach the other side of the mountain? Too long, that was for sure. Who was I kidding?
I tried not to think about what it would feel like to have a whole mountain fall on you while you were crawling through the middle of it. If you were already dead, could you be crushed to death? Would it hurt? Was there anything left to hurt?
The more I told myself not to think about it, the more I thought about it, and soon I was almost ready to turn back.
But then I imagined the alternative—being trapped here in the Otherworld without Lena for “infinity times infinity,” as Link would say. Nothing was worth that risk. I took a deep breath, wedged my way inside, and started to crawl.
The tunnel was smaller and darker than I ever could’ve imagined. Once I squeezed inside, I had only a few inches of free space above me and on either side. This was worse than the time Link and I got locked in the trunk of Emory’s dad’s car.
I had never been scared of small spaces, but it was impossible not to feel claustrophobic in here. And it was dark—worse than dark. The only light came from cracks in the rock, which were few and far between.
Most of the time, I was crawling in complete darkness, only the sound of my breathing echoing off the walls. Invisible dirt filled my mouth, stung my eyes. I kept thinking that I was going to hit a wall—that the tunnel would just stop and I’d have to backtrack to get out. Or that I wouldn’t be able to.
The ground beneath me was made of the same sharp black stone as the mountain itself, and I had to move slowly to avoid bearing down on the exposed edges of razored rubble. My hands felt like I’d shredded them to pieces; my knees, like two sacks of shattered glass. I wondered if dead people could bleed to death. With my luck, I would be the first guy to find out.
I tried to distract myself—counting to a hundred, humming the off-key tunes of some of the Holy Rollers’ songs, pretending I was Kelting with Lena.
Nothing helped. I knew I was alone.