Page 98 of Silver in the Bone

“I saw someone go in,” he answered. “And naturally I had to follow the mysterious cloaked figure to see if they were up to no good.”

“A cloaked figure? What a cliché,” I said. “You didn’t see a face?”

“They had a hood up,” he said, crawling in behind me. The smell of green life and pine still clung to him. “Like I said, it was mysterious, and I don’t particularly enjoy mysteries.”

Ironic, I thought, given that you are one.

The door scraped shut behind him, trapping us in the shadows. I took my own flashlight out, thumping it until the batteries rattled and the beam stopped flickering. It was a tight squeeze those first few steps down, but the deeper we went, the more breathing room we gained. The air bore the stench of age and something like damp mulch, but the source didn’t reveal itself until the last of the steps.

Heavy roots spread over the ground, gripping the stone like straining fingers. The hallway was cocooned in them; they knotted and wove through one another, some as thick as my arm, others no wider than a string of yarn.

I looked to Emrys, eyes wide.

“I know,” he said. “And this isn’t even what I wanted to show you.”

“Are we really deep enough in the ground to see the Mother tree’s roots?” I asked, carefully stepping onto the roots.

“I’m guessing these are secondary roots,” Emrys said. “They feel younger to me—they’re probably attracted to the damp down here.”

“You’re guessing?” I shot him a narrow look. “Shouldn’t they be telling you the secrets of the ages or something?”

“I wish,” he muttered, reaching out to steady me as my heel slipped on a root. “They’re not speaking a language I can understand.”

I squinted at him in the dark. “How is that possible with the One Vision?”

“Because like the rose, it’s more of a humming ...” He hummed a melody to imitate it, the depth of the notes strangely appealing—and somehow familiar.

“Come on,” he said, “it’s still a bit of a walk.”

We followed the trail of roots until they thinned. I backed up several steps, aiming my flashlight at a spot on the wall where the roots were so thick, they formed a solid mass. I took another step back, dropping onto a knee to see it from a different angle.

“This is another hallway,” I told Emrys, shining the flashlight where just a sliver of the joint in the paths was visible. “The roots seem to be coming from down there.”

I brought a hand close to one of the roots, letting my fingers run along its rough skin. It throbbed, sliding forward.

I jumped back, knocking into the solid warmth of Emrys’s chest. He reached out from behind me, touching the wall of roots himself. They twined around his fingertips, his wrist. He tilted his head, as if listening to something. Glimmers of cerulean light laced through the roots.

Emrys’s eyes lost their focus and his smile fell away. A single root slithered up his sleeve, winding itself around his skin.

When Emrys didn’t pull away, I did it for him, tugging him back by the elbow. “What are you doing?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, I just—we can’t go that way. We shouldn’t.”

“Good,” I told him, “because I don’t want us to go that way either.”

Any bit of wildlife that had survived the isle’s darkness had likely only done so by absorbing its malevolence.

There was an odd look on Emrys’s face, as if he hadn’t fully rejoined me in the present.

“Seriously, are you all right?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Clicking his tongue, he nodded toward the main path. “This way.”

As the roots thinned and our boots found the stone floor, some of the tension bled out of me. But now and then I looked back, aiming my flashlight behind me. Just to be sure—completely sure—that the sound I was hearing was the scuff of our footsteps and not the slow slide of roots trailing after us like an obedient servant.

Or the most patient of hunters.

We’d been walking the tunnel’s winding path for so long that the chamber startled me with the suddenness of its appearance.

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