The Naiad Within

Chapter 3

The Naiad Trilogy

Part 1: The Naiad Within

Chapter 3

             All day Ava was on edge. She kept her eyes open for anything out of the ordinary; always looking for her sign. She dared not let herself doubt her dream for fear she would miss her chance of escape. “You will know the hour when it is rung.” That’s what Chérie had told her. “When it is rung.” What “it” was exactly Ava didn’t know, but she was not going to lose faith in Aslan now. She couldn’t.     

            When Ava went to bed that night, she went fully clothed and with shoes on. Still, she would not lose faith. Her emotions were strung high. Her eyes stayed open; she hardly slept at all. Silently she waited. Silently she prayed.

            “Show me the way. Give me the strength. Keep me safe.”

            The castle was eerily still and quiet when suddenly there came such a clamoring and a ringing which shattered the stillness. The Great Bell was ringing. Something was dreadfully wrong. The soldiers were being called from their slumber. Their Lord Protector needed them. The bell had been rung!

            Ava threw back her blanket and bolted from the bed. She did not wait for the others to wake. She did not stop when the Senior Maiden called for her to. She just ran, trying to put as much distance between her and the servants’ chambers as she could. She knew now was the time.

 The servants’ chamber in which Ava slept was tucked away in a back corner of the castle, and nestled against a cliff where it could be out of sight and out of mind. The only way for Ava to escape the castle would be by walking through the front gate and over the bridge; unless she could fly of course, in which case she could head up to the nearest tower and fly away. Since she had no wings, Ava knew she would have to find a way through the gate. How, she did not know.

“Father,” she said suddenly to herself. Dr. Cornelius knew a little magic. “Perhaps he’ll know how to get by the gate. And I can’t leave him here.”

Ava turned from her current path towards the gates, and headed towards the dungeons where she knew her father was being held. From her current location, Ava would have to pass by one of the armories first, and as she neared it she heard a stampede of feet. She quickly ducked behind a stone statue in a tiny alcove. The troupe of soldiers, clad in full armor with swords at the ready, did not see her as they passed by. Ava took a deep breath before continuing on her way.

The dungeons were located at the bottom of approximately three flights of a spiral staircase. There was a door and two guards at the top of the stairs and a guard at the bottom. The stairs led to a tunnel that had three branches; each branch held five cells. Aside from the guard at the bottom of the stairs there were three others who roamed the dungeon wings.

Ava had given no thought as to how she would get by all the guards or even open her father’s locked cell, but that wasn’t going to stop her. When she reached the dungeon door she found her way unbarred; the guards were missing and the door was ajar. She quickly ran down the stairs, her feet light and soundless on the stone steps. Before she rounded the last turn she stopped and carefully looked around the edge. The guard wasn’t there either.

She didn’t know which cell her father was being held in or which wing his cell was in, so she chose the first wing because it was nearest. The first cell she came to was empty, the door wide open. The next cell had an old gray lump lying in the middle. Whether it was dead or alive, Ava didn’t know, she only went close enough to see that it wasn’t her father before hurrying on. The next two cells were as empty as the first, and in the last there was a man with a dirty face and long dark hair. His toothy grin sent a shot of fear through Ava, and she quickly turned away and headed back up the wing.