3MA

3MA | Chapter 10

10
CRIMSON SWORD

As a kid, the power would rarely work in Trudge, sometimes throwing the town into blackness for months at a stretch. I had always assumed that over the course of a lifetime living in perpetual candlelight, that I had become somewhat of an expert when it came to navigating through the dark.

But as I follow Amaris down the narrow, twisting staircase, using only the sound her shoes make as they click against the damp stone as a guide, it hits me that I've never really seen darkness before. Not like this. This is a special breed of dark: the kind that makes you forget who you are and where you're going.

"How much further?" I call out. For a moment, I'm surprised my voice isn't smothered by the darkness, too.

I hear Amaris chuckle somewhere down below. "Keep going until you freak out. Then it's another twenty minutes down."

There is no way for me to know how long we descend for. Time seems to be just another thing that doesn't penetrate this place. What feels like an hour later, I see something up ahead. Or is it down below? For all I know, it could even be behind me.

A faint flickering of gold cuts through the void; a single finger of fire. It's accompanied by what sounds like the voice of a singing angel.

I pick up my pace and dart for the light, skipping down the steps and gripping the rough walls on either side of me. The singing gets louder and more distinct as I descend, joined by the strumming of an acoustic guitar.

I nearly run right over Amaris, our bodies colliding in the dark. She grasps my hand to steady me. Something leaps from her hands to mine.

Something electric. Alive.

"Easy now, Punches," she says, "Almost there."

She leads me the rest of the way through the tunnel, our fingers intertwined, until at last I can see the source of the light. A sputtering, almost extinguished torch illuminates a little girl, around Mag's age, leaning under an arched doorpost on the final step of the staircase. She's wearing a holey black tshirt and a necklace made from old piano keys. An acoustic guitar is strung around her neck, her enchanting voice singing: "she left me here all freaking night and now I'm bored, I'm bored, ugh god I'm so bored, when will my stupid sister finally come home."

The little girl's mouth quirks into a squiggle when she sees Amaris. "Do you actually try to be late for everything, or is it just a natural talent?"

"I'm so sorry, Inka," Amaris says, putting her hand on top of the little girl's head and tussling her choppy jet-black bangs. "Have you been waiting the whole time?"

"It's fine," Inka huffs, "I wrote a few new songs about you." She trusts the torch out and holds the flame over Amaris's shoulder, squinting her eyes at me. "Who's this hunk of meat?"

Amaris turns to me with a smile. "Marlon Ambrosia. This is my little sister, Inka."

"Yo," I say, wiping sweat from my eyes. "You have a nice voice."

"Yo yourself," Inka says, returning her gaze to her sister. "They canceled the meeting, you know. They waited for as long as they could."

"I want you to run ahead and get father and mother," Amaris says. "Tell them to meet us in the Rotunda."

"You're too late. They're probably sleeping, Amaris."

"Wake them. In fact, you might as well have Lorna wake the entire Court. I'm Claiming tonight."

Inka nearly drops the torch to the ground. "What? You're Claiming? Tonight? Not him," she says, her eyes frantically moving around my form, taking in one troubling feature after the next.

"Yes, him. Now go wake them."

Inka's incredulous stare drifts across my shredded blue jeans, to my raw, scabbed knuckles, across my tattooed wrist. She shakes her head. "Dad is gonna kill you. Or him. Both of you, probably."

"Inka, go now, before I put you in a headlock."

The little girl disappears in a golden swirl of torch flame. Amaris turns to me and nods her head to the arched doorway in front of her. "This way."

"Meet the parents? Aren't we moving a bit fast?"

She lifts her chin and squints her eyes at me. "They've been waiting to meet you their entire lives." She nods her head for me to follow her. I duck my head and take a step through the low arch of the doorframe.

And in that small, insignificant movement, everything I ever thought I knew about the world comes crashing down around me.

Sprawled out in front of me, in the center of a vast underground cavern, standing tall and proud and ancient and impossible, is a castle. A thousand sputtering torches are secured to its crumbling façade, illuminating the vast fortress in bits and pieces. Mammoth cobblestone turrets and keeps and bridges snake in and out of existence. Hulking in each corner of the castle are high cone-shaped towers with jagged black windows spiraling up their wide berth. Massive walls of glittering gray stone connect the towers, strong and solid in some places, blasted to non-existence in others.

A wandering path lined with lit torches leads across a dried out moat, to the main entryway; a startling sixty-foot-high wooden door, the surface adorned in complex etchings, worn dull and illegible by time.

A long, colorless swatch of tattered cloth hangs from the face of the front door, the embroidered symbol of a crossed sword and wizard's staff, held together by a twist of vines, is barely visible on the surface of the frayed fabric.

My mother's voice suddenly cuts through the still cavern, causing me to stop in my tracks. I can hear her in my head as clearly as if she were whispering in my ear now, reciting my favorite poem from the book of Camelot fairy tales, a verse I didn't even realize was permanently inscribed on the walls of my mind.

A hundred years hence

I've not forgot

The path that leads

to Camelot

That from the door

a banner flew

A crimson sword

and staff of blue

Intertwined

like lovers tragic

One part blade

the other magic

Amaris plucks a torch from the pathway and turns to me, her body outlined by the castle's pointed-arch doorway.

There are some people who are bewildering until you see them in a certain context. Like Mag, who seems almost naked and anxious without a can of spray paint clutched in his hand. Or Fisher, who I hardly recognize without his clanking tool bag slung over his shoulder and a smudge of dirt marring his forehead.

And now Amaris, whose roughness and elegance and infuriating strangeness suddenly make perfect sense, set against the sturdy stone walls of this ancient fortress.

The girl and the castle appear to have been hewn from the same proud material. Neither indestructible. But both damn close.

Amaris winks. "Told you I wasn't crazy."