Page 171 of In the Pursuit of Haven
I licked my lips. “What does the ‘one’ mean?” I asked. “Only one may leave? One what?”
“One of us,” Abby said in a sad voice. Her shoulders were slumped. She’d been so close to winning her freedom.
“It can’t mean that!” I still wasn’t ready to accept such a harsh sentence.
“If we can get one of us through,” Hunter said, “we should pick the strongest and then they can help the others out.”
“Oh, are you volunteering?” Zak asked sarcastically. Scrooby’s arms crossed in front of him.
“We don’t put the strongest through,” Jessie said. “We put who we trust through.”
My grandfather squeezed my shoulder. “We send Roxy through.”
That isn’t because he trusts me. He wants me alive.I held up my bandaged palm. “I can’t hold a key right now.” It was the truth. I couldn’t help anyone out when I was hurt like this, but the anguish that glinted through Robert’s eyes didn’t make me feel any better.
“That hurts,” Hunter said at his most mocking. “I haven’t won everyone’s trust by now?”
Nope! Brecker let out a scoffing sound. Most of Hunter’s flunkies were dead, and the one who wasn’t was probably halfway across the ocean by now in her desperation to escape his failed leadership.
Brecker worked free from Caitlyn’s stressed grip to get to the keys strewn across the cobbles. “What do we have here?” He shuffled through them. They were too small for that hole. None of them would fit. “There’s more to this,” he muttered under his breath. “There has to be.”
I couldn’t stop studying the message above us. “Only one may leave,” I read again.
“There’s more.” Jessie nudged me. “There’s more to the message.” He let out a relieved shout. “Look!”
Under the message was a “Be…”
“It’s not hot enough,” I said. We couldn’t see the whole message. “We need more heat on this.”
Groaning at what was suddenly obvious, Hunter turned to search the area around us. “I wonder where we’re supposed to get some fire to light this baby up? Should we wait ten minutes?”
“Are you kidding me?” Scrooby didn’t appreciate the mercenary’s inappropriate joking. He joined in the search for something to use as a torch and finally settled on the blunt end of the silver-handle cane. He was the next to lose his shirt so he could wrap it around the cane to make a torch.
Scrooby thrust it into the wall of fire and brought it up to the “B.” Slowly, a new message began to form under the old one: “Be ye one,” I read.
“We put these keys together,” Brecker said. Crouching against the ground, he began the complicated process of fitting the Relics together, though they kept slipping out of place. “A little help here!”
We knelt next to him, though my scraped palms were next to useless when trying to use them to keep the Relics together.
Breathing heavily, I scooted back to let the others take care of it, but nothing was fitting. My heart lurched when I realized what to do: “Put them on top of each other in the same order as before.”
Hunter sighed. “Everyone get a key, so we can hold this all in place. Get the one you had before… I mean if you’re still alive. We’re going in the same order. Like she says. See!” We lost no time. The newcomers quickly took over for those we’d lost. Caitlyn claimed Dimond’s rattle. The fierce weapon looked strange in such small hands, but she had a warrior heart and she gripped it firmly.
Zak took his uncle’s key—the flat corrugated piece of tin could almost be mistaken for garbage, except for the odd map on the other side of it.
Bette Ann took the blue glass piece that her shipwrecked ancestor had clung to when she’d emerged from the ocean like a mermaid. Scrooby got a firm grip on the Bible.
I tried to collect the Corwin cane from the ground after the ragged remains of Scrooby’s shirt had all been burnt out. My split palm wouldn’t let me grasp it. I winced in pain and tried again.
Jessie’s hand went to my back. “Let me help you.”
“You’ve got your own,” I said.
“I don’t,” my grandfather cut in. He took the cane from me.
Jessie turned stiff, but then nodded. His expression was torn with desperate acceptance. “Stay close to us,” he told me. The fire on either side of us had us surrounded. “I have a feeling that these directions have something to do with us standing at this keyhole when the fire comes. It’s a hunch, but… there are ten of us now, so… we’re going to have to figure out how to get our stowaway through with us.”
How many people does it take to open a door? A blonde, a ruggedly handsome adventurer, an old man, a stowaway…
