Beautiful Darkness (Caster Chronicles 2)

“Remember—”

The door closed before Marian could finish, and we were gone.

6.15

Exile

The door slammed behind us. Liv straightened her worn leather knapsack, and Link grabbed a torch from the wall of the tunnel. They were ready to follow me into the great unknown, but instead we stood there, staring at each other.

“Well?” Liv looked at me expectantly. “It’s not rocket science. You either know the way, or you—”

“Shh. Give him a second.” Link clamped his hand over Liv’s mouth. “Use the force, young Skywalker.” This Wayward thing apparently carried some weight. They actually thought I knew where to go, which only left one problem. I didn’t.

“This way.” I was going to have to make it up as I went along.

Marian said the Caster Tunnels were endless, a world beneath our own, but I never really understood what she meant until now. As we turned the first corner, the passage changed, narrowing into damper and darker circular walls that felt more like a tube than a tunnel. I pressed against the walls to push myself forward, and my torch fell in the mud.

“Crap.” I gripped the torch’s wooden handle between my teeth and kept going.

“This sucks.” Link was muttering behind me as his torch burned out.

Liv was behind him. “Mine’s out, too.” We were in complete darkness. The ceiling was so low, we had to duck beneath the muddy rock.

“This is really freakin’ me out.” Link had never liked the dark.

Liv called out from behind us. “Eventually you’re going to reach the…”

I hit my head against something hard and splintery in the darkness. “Ouch!”

“… Doorwell.”

Link must have pulled his flashlight out of his pocket, because a flickering circle of light hit the round door in front of me. It was some kind of cold metal, not the splintering wood or crumbling stone of the other doors we’d seen. It looked more like a manhole cover in the wall. I pushed my shoulder against it, but it didn’t budge.

“What now?” I called back to Liv, my stand-in for Marian on all Caster-related issues. I heard her flipping pages in her notebook.

“I don’t know. Maybe push harder?”

“You had to check your little book for that?” I was annoyed.

“You want me to crawl up there and do it for you?” Liv wasn’t happy either.

“Come on, kids. I’ll push Ethan, you push me, Ethan pushes the door.”

“Brilliant,” Liv said.

“Shoulder to shoulder, MJ.”

“Excuse me?”

“Marian Junior. You’re the one who wanted an adventure. You got a better idea?”

The door had no handle or valve. It fit into a perfect seam, a circle of metal in a circular doorway. Not even a slit of light escaped through the cracks. “Link’s right. We don’t have a choice, and we’re not going back now.” I wedged my shoulder against the door. “One, two, three. Push!”

When the tips of my fingers touched the door, it swung open as if my skin was somehow the genetic recognition, the key that opened the door. Link smashed into me, and Liv tumbled on top of both of us. I cracked my head against what seemed like stone as I hit the ground. I felt so dizzy, I couldn’t see anything. When I opened my eyes, I was staring up at a streetlamp.

“What happened?” Link sounded as disoriented as I was.

I felt around the edge of the stones with my fingertips. Cobblestones. “I just touched the door, and it opened.”