Page 26 of The Eighth Isle

Seven

I kept lookingat her feet, expecting to see blood where she stepped or for her to complain that the rocks of those stairs had too many sharp edges, but she didn’t. Reeva continued outside the gate, onto the stone pathways of the town while her black dress floated around her, just like the mess of brown hair on her head. The people stopped and nodded deeply as she passed by, but I didn’t think she even noticed.

“Reeva, where are we going?” I asked, a bit panicked now to be following her—she really did not look well.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let Amika convince me to see her after her warning. Maybe I should have come back another time.

“Keep going, keep going,” she said without even turning to see if I was following. I had no other choice but to rush my steps—she was surprisingly fast for how exhausted she looked.

The people around us watched, curious eyes on Reeva, then me. Nobody stopped us, though. Nobody even asked us where we were headed.

But she didn’t take me far at all. Before five minutes had passed, she stopped at the side of the witch hat structure and finally turned to me.

“You’re still here. Good,” she said, then waved her hand to the side.

“What—”

Doors I hadn’t even noticed on the surface of the witch hat pushed open with a weak screech. I stopped speaking,shockedat the sudden movement.

“It is not customary for us to allow other kinds of Enchanted into our most sacred discoveries, but like I said—it does not matter anymore,” Reeva said, walking backward into the absolute darkness behind those doors, where the bright morning sunlight somehow failed to reach.

“Are you sure?” I whispered because for some reason the thought of walking into the actual witch hat terrified me. My instincts were on high alert already.

“What does it matter whether I’m sure? Come, young one. Come—let me show you,” she said, and she moved slowly, but the darkness swallowed her completely all at once, leaving me to stare with my mouth wide open

Shit.

I looked around me, sure someone would be approaching to tell me that I wasn’t supposed to go in there, that I had to wait for Reeva outside or something, but nobody did. The few witches who saw me only watched me curiously as if they were trying to guess what I would do.

“Coming, Autumn?!”

Reeva’s voice popped into my head and it was a miracle I didn’t scream.

Fuck me, this place was freaking me out worse than I could have imagined—or maybe it was just Reeva and her warnings?

“Here goes nothing,” I muttered to myself, and even more afraid than I’d been to climb Mount Agva to find Storm, I held my breath and stepped into the darkness with my heart in my throat.

Light.

Blue and green light popped up in front of me as if turned on by a switch the moment my foot connected with the floor inside those doors.

“Oh, my God…” I whispered, bringing my hands to my chest.

It was a whole different world in there. Crystals full of blue and green light were hovering in the air over my head, brightening the wide space, enabling me to see everything in detail. The sound of the outside world and the sunlight didn’t reach here at all. It was just us and those balls of light—and the massive space around me. Every inch of the walls was covered in frames that held either paintings of witches, or documents written by hand in big cursive letters.

I shook my head, not sure if I should believe my eyes at all. Stands and shelves and writing desks took up the space around the spiral stairway in the middle, where Reeva had already started to climb up.

Her laughter echoed in the room.

“There’s so much more to the Nella Lexis than this, but I’m afraid I don’t have the time nor the patience to show you,” she said. “Go ahead and marvel at the work of my ancestors, young one. But you only have a minute before we climb to the top.” And she pointed her finger up at the tall ceiling.

A minute.

A minute wasn’t even close to long enough to see everything in this room. I wanted to analyze the colors on the paintings, and the letters that were framed—were they in English or Faeish, or maybe another language altogether? I wanted to see exactly what was in those crystal bowls on the shelves and what the stands were displaying—all of it so damn fascinating andmagical, the effect twice as potent because of those bright balls of light hovering in the air everywhere, floating as if they were living things and seeming to move about the room on purpose.

“Time’s up!”

The echo of her laughter pulled me out of my trance, and Reeva began to run up the stairs.

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