Page 30 of The Ordeals
‘Locke, DeWinter, you’re the last.’
I look up sharply, finding Alden’s eyes fixed on mine. He drops his gaze to the ground, frowning down at the cobblestones as he stalks to my side. ‘Perhaps I should have explained the properties of particular poisonous plants—’
‘No need to fret, I found the information I needed. Even kept it all in mypretty headtoo.’
Alden searches my face and I wink at him, waving him away.
Hess then strides to the mirrors, and begins handing concoctions to each line before we step through the mirrors. I shuffle forward towards the left mirror, and I realise Hess is making our line drink a concoction before crossing through the portal. I shrug deeper into my dark blue jacket, knowing what this means. As a botanist, Alden will pocket the antidote and I will be the one to take the poison.
‘If I had known they’d bloodypoisonyou … It’s not what I was expecting—’
‘You just leave staying alive to me and look after yourself until I can find you.’
He laughs under his breath. ‘Either you have a death wish, or you truly are a risk worth taking.’
‘In more ways than one,’ I whisper and chuckle as he grins.
There’s now just one pair in front of us, one person in front of me. Hess hands the tube of pale, creamy liquid to the young man in front of me with curly black hair and a silver scar cutting across his pale left cheekbone. He downs it in one, wiping his mouth and grins to the other young man he’s paired with, a masquier with light brown skin and blue eyes. But as the masquier steps through his own mirror on the right, the young man in front of me convulses.
‘Kipling, my boy, what on earth?’ Hess begins as the young manconvulses again, the poison spraying from his mouth. Hess’s eyes fly wide as Kipling kneels on the cobbles, clawing at his throat with his fingers, black curls sticking to his forehead as he gasps and gasps for breath. Hess grabs for an antidote, swiftly uncorking it and prising open his jaw, pouring it in. But it’s too late. Kipling convulses a final time, blood dripping down his chin before collapsing on his side, eyes turned skyward.
Fear presses against my chest as Professor Hess kneels beside him, checking his pulse, before shaking his head. He catches Professor Grant’s eye. ‘Poison must have accelerated in his system. Shouldn’t have happened so quickly.’
Professor Grant nods, opening her hands before folding them into her lap, her features grim and pinched. ‘These things happen, sadly.’
I eye the dead young man at my feet, then the mirror before me. All I can see is a dense fog, a smoky hue of utter nothing that I’m supposed to walk into. I brace myself, ignoring the thrum of my heart, the tremors fluttering in my limbs and hold my hand out to Hess. ‘The poison?’
Hess’s eyes widen as he hurriedly hands me the final tube.
‘Salutar,’ I say then throw it back, tasting chalk and milk and violets.
Hess nods to Alden to pass through the mirror on the right and I realise he hesitated, waiting to make sure I didn’t drop down dead like Kipling. Before he steps through, he turns back to look at me, gaze stapled to mine, suddenly serious and utters the words, ‘Don’t die. I will find you.’
Then he’s gone and I’m left holding the empty tube. I pass it to Hess, then stride through the mirror on the left without a backwards glance.
The world through the mirror is mist at first. Pale grey and drifting, gossamer webs of cold draping over me, collecting like dew on my skin and coat. The scent though, the air smells like loam. Like pine and cedar and ancient oak. Under my boots the ground gives with every tread, soft and yielding. I bend low, touching my fingertips to it, and feel moss.
A forest, I realise. But which one?
I shuffle my hands through my pockets, finding the vial of alphemera petals and slip a sliver onto my tongue. It dissolves quickly, and I hope it has countered the poison in the tube. It can’t have been carrow in that concoction; the plant that is scentless, tasteless, as I suspected from the unharvested plant in the poison garden, because I’m still alive. My heart still beats, unlike Kipling, who just died at my feet. There’s no way I’m going to risk waiting for Alden to find me with the antidote. At least all that careful studying by moonlight in the poison garden and the deal I made with Tessa wassomeuse in the end. Now all that’s left is to find Alden and double back to the mirrors together.
Opening my switchblade, I fall into the habits of my training with the Collector, sawing a branch from a tree that’s two fingers thick, then watching the woods around me, making short work of whitling the end until it’s sharp enough to pierce flesh. The switchblade is useful for close combat and stealth, but I’m taking no chances with what may be lurking in such an ancient place.
I press a hand into the gnarled bark of the nearest tree, a memory emerging unbidden. The last time I was in woodland just like this one, I was twelve and locked in a hunting lodge. This woodland feels so familiar. Turning, I breathe in the scents lacing the air again, the damp catching in my throat, cool as a still lake.
‘The Morlagh Woods,’ I whisper, knowing it’s the same place. It has to be. The Great Wood, the Crown’s woodland, is south, near the city, and no lichen grows there. Pendle Wood is like a vein, running through the middle of Kellend, intersecting private ancestral lands, cluttered with manicured trails for visitors to enjoy but the Morlagh is sprawling and mostly wild. A few hunting lodges are the only mark of civilisation in miles and miles of loam and green. Here, tree and rock are patterned with lichen like pale lace. This, the northernmost woodland of Kellend, is ancient and misty, bordering the sea on one side and boggy moorland on the other.
I was here in a hunting lodge for five days and nights. The Collector brought us here, me and Dolly, leaving Banks for some reason in the city. I remember Dolly stroking my hair as howling peppered the night outside, the full moon too big and too bright to be able to sleep. She told me not to be afraid. That it was the safest place I could be. The Collector sitting by the door, a rifle in his lap, knives whittled from wood, encased in iron beside him. He barely ate, did not appear to sleep and gave no reason for why we were there.
When we left the hunting lodge, I was allowed a short walk to see the trees brushing the sky with their spindle branches, half an hour to drink in the misty air, before the Collector took us back to the city in a bumpy, cramped motor car that smelled of wet dog. It’s not something I’ve thought of in years.
I rise quickly as a sound reaches me, fracturing the memory, dragging me back to the present. Breathing. Heavy, laboured breathing.
I’m not alone.
Footfalls, inconsistent and thudding, even on the soft ground, echo in the mist. I bite my lip, taking a few careful steps backwards and release a quiet, relieved breath when I find a tree at my back. The bark rasps against my jacket and I grip the stake I’ve made tighter, raking my gaze back and forth. If it’s another hopeful, they could have a weapon like me, they could be searching for easy prey to whittle down our number. The fog seems to be clearing, theoutline of other trees emerging from the gloom. The person, close to me begins to whimper and I realise it must be another hopeful.
And they’re terrified.
