That made two ofus.
He said nothing for so long I thought he was gone. Or that he’d never been there to begin with.
But then he said, “Why is there a toad on your head?”
When I didn’t answer, he left. The door slammed closed with a resounding clang that echoed across the cell. His footsteps grew quieter until they were gone.
I was alone. Trapped, with no way to help Sam and no way to help myself. With nothing to do but lie on the hard stone floor and listen to the silence.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Prison Breaking
After an unknown number of days locked in the dungeon, I awoke one morning with no bodily miseries more pressing than a runny nose. I lifted a hand to the bite mark on my cheek and found it scabbed over. There was no feeling of heat or pain as I poked at it. It itched a bit. I refrained from scratching.
My fever had broken, and my wound remained free of infection. Sometimes the body is more resilient than expected, needing nothing more than time to heal. Of course, other times, the mildest of untreated illnesses can become a death sentence. If the disease had descended into my lungs, my tale might have ended early. Pneumonia took my mother. Even the bite was no joke. Rabies might never have been a serious danger, but sepsis can kill someone who shrugs off other illnesses.
I’d been lucky. And there may have been those who’d hoped I wouldn’t be. No doubt some of my jailers would have breathed a sigh of relief if I’d quietly expired and spared them the trouble.
I stood and stretched. My joints and spine popped audibly.Half of my body was cramped, and the other half tingled painfully as my sluggish blood resumed circulation. A beam of bright winter sunlight shone through the window. It looked hard and cold enough to chip with a chisel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something moving. Startled, I turned to find the toad hopping about in the corner by the bucket.
“Oh,” I said. “You’re real, then.”
It replied with a croak that resembled a long, loud burp and returned to hunting for insects in the straw. I searched for any piece of my shirt clean enough to wipe my nose on. How was I going to occupy my time now that I had enough presence of mind to be bored?
The building shuddered.
I stumbled and fell to the ground, catching myself on my forearms, barely keeping my face from smashing into the flagstones. A cloud of dust filtered down from the ceiling.
Something flashed past the window outside, briefly cutting off the light. I couldn’t make out what it was. There was a rumble and a crash like a giant bowling a strike with a boulder, and the building shook again. A crack crept up through the mortar and widened. The metal bars groaned as if in pain. Was the whole place about to collapse on top ofme?
I missed the time when I could have convinced myself it was all a hallucination.
As I picked myself up, one of the hunters came rushing down the stairs. Jack, I was almost sure. By this time, I could recognize a particular kind of intentness in her expression. She was running so quickly she skidded down the last few steps, coming close to toppling over at the bottom. She held an unsheathed sword in one hand. As soon as she steadied herself, the gleaming length of it was pointed atme.
“Are they yours?” she asked. “Call them off!”
“Call off who? What’s going on?”
Her mouth twisted beneath her mask. She darted forward. I backed away from the bars, worried she might try to stab me then and there.
Instead, she fished a key out of her jerkin and twisted open the lock.
When she wrenched at the cell door, though, it didn’t move. The walls had been bent askew, and the door was stuck fast.
“Help me,” she snarled. “Unless you want to be trapped in there when the roof caves in.”
I threw myself at the door and pushed while she pulled. With both of us straining, the door crept open an inch. And then another. Finally, it sprang free.
With the sound of a thundercrack, the room jumped a foot to the left. A stone slab the size of a wheelbarrow fell from the ceiling. It broke in two on the floor. One wall of the prison leaned inward, angled like a drunkard on the verge of collapse.
“We need to leave,” the hunter said. “Now.” She grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the spiral staircase. I delayed only long enough to scoop up the toad; it seemed cruel to leave it behind. The hunter pulled more insistently. This time I staggered after her, nearly tripping on my own hair—it still brushed my ankles.
Wherever she was taking me, I doubted it could be worse than staying behind.
The stairway had buckled and warped. We had to clamber over rubble and jump over the odd stair that had broken off and tumbled into the depths. More thuds and booms sounded outside. As well as what might have been screams.
