Page 7 of Up from the Earth

Hot breath washed over my face, the scent of iron following it. I shuddered, tucking inward as I uselessly tried to shield myself from the wolf’s presence.

“You have always been mine…since before your earthly birth.” Whatever this creature was, this wolf, it was no mere animal or evenmortal. “You aremine, little bloom. And there is no changing that.”

It could not be so. I was still receiving my formal training with my mother, still such a novice.

My mother.

Both she and the Sisters needed me. My coven needed me. I could not abandon them. Moreover, I was only a girl—young and inexperienced and with still too much to do.

“I am just Cerri, Wolf. I’m not a witch of great import. I cannot help you.”

A growl cut through the eerie melody, the crescendo of the combined music nearly deafening. I tried to reach for my ears, but the wolf’s paw clamped down over my hands, pressing them to the floor.

“Oh? No great import? Unable to help? Is that so?” The rumbling rasp of its voice rattled my ribcage. “You are Cerri. You are a witch. And you have much work to do here. And if I must, I will remind you.”

One of its titanic paws lifted from my hand, instead pressing against my back to effectively pin me to the floor. The wolf sank low, covering my entire body with his. The contact made every hair stand on end, each nerve go haywire, and all my thoughts empty from my mind.

“I am a very important wolf.” Raw energy wormed through me, filling my blood with intoxicating command. “And youwillobey me.”

From the nothingness, a flash of white speared through the room. My eyes cried out in pain as the blinding illumination screeched through the endless hall. I pulled my face into myself, ducking away to alleviate the horrendous burn in my retinas, fearing I would never see again.

And then I was falling.

Four

Within The Castle of Iron & Stone, Swear Fealty To World Of Below.

Thecoldgroundcameup to meet me, and I landed against the marble with a smack, the impact ringing through my bones. My vision swam, fuzzy and almost snow-blind for the brightness that had at last disappeared. But I wasn’t held down, and I struggled to push up from the floor and take in my new surroundings.

For as bright as it had been mere moments ago, everything around me was now dark once more. Save, of course, for the towering stained glass windows that dominated the enormous black stone walls. The room came more and more into focus, and I looked up, up, up, into the unearthly glowing window that sat ahead of me at the top of a set of stairs.

The long, thin arch of glass was shaped with gothic curves and sections, scenes depicted on its surface that I could not make out from this distance. A hovering mist floated past me, the billowing clouds of gray lazily drifting across the steps and following them the landing several feet away.

And as stark a contrast as the flaring red glow of the window was the dripping yet static trails of crimson that coated the rough-hewn stone floor.

“It looks like—”

“Blood.” A feminine voice cut through the silence, bouncing off the steepled ceiling that stretched endlessly high. “Why, yes. It does.”

I shivered, unable to stop myself. The room was just as freezing as the last, but it was that voice that shook me to my bones. Ethereal and gorgeous while also terrifying and too much for my mind to comprehend. It was backed by that same droning melody.

Except, the notes had altered ever so slightly. A lilting regality was there now, but one that was no less ominous for this change in scenery.

“The wolf. I’d…Who are you?”

A chuckle, sourceless and seductive, rumbled through the throne room. Or what I had assumed was one, though I had yet to see a proper seat for a monarch.

“I am I—as I have always been. Still here, still with you. I have only…adapted.”

Thick pillars, each cut into the curved shapes of ancient columns, flanked either side of the stairs. That scarlet illumination dressed them in chilling lighting, and I could see nothing past them in the shadows. At the juncture of the pillars’ bases at the floor, thick root-like protrusions clogged up the corners, and moss dripped from the loftier edges.

And there is nowhere else to go but up.

Steeling myself as best as possible, I straightened, gathering up the hem of my nightgown—the thing so frail and nearly see-through—and climbed the stone stairs. Step after step, exhaustion clawed at me. But I would not stop. I would keep going. Whatever was trying to weigh me down would find that it took more than some fatigue to beat me.

Time was stretched and thin, but at last, I reached the flat ground before that enormous window. Standing before the glass, the vermillion light it spilled tinted the white of my nightdress pink. It struck me that among this gargantuan fortress, I alone was clad in the color. The pale sheen of my hair—tousled and slipping from the hastily done knot I’d done for bed—contrasted the walls like a checkerboard.

What’s black and white and red all over? An underworld castle holding a girl prisoner, of course.

---