Elias turned around. “Out!”
I broke from my mom’s embrace as all the doors opened and everyone jumped out. I slipped in the mud, and pain traveled down my entire leg. My mother yanked me up with one arm. We followed Elias and the others through the woods. Branches scratched my face and snagged at my clothes, but I barely noticed. My only thought was getting away from the insurgents.
Lightning. I saw eyes in the dark. Woodland animals, peering out at us from behind the brush, as if they were spying on us.
“Nearly there,” Elias called out.
The rain turned icy then, whipping against my face and burning my cheeks. We pushed on, stomping over sticks and leaves and mud,even as the droplets became chunks of hail. Elias yelled, “Watch out!” as a huge frozen ball the size of an orange hit the ground near us.
We put our hands over our heads and pressed forward. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. Hail bounced off the ground. A piece hit my mom, and she cried out. But we couldn’t even stop to make sure she was all right.
Amid the chaos, the hail became snow, then a blizzard. All I could see in front of me was white. I tried to focus on Elias’s dark clothing, but then I lost sight of that, too. If I hadn’t felt my mom holding on to me, I wouldn’t even have known she was there.
This is how it ends,I thought.The bad guys win.
Both my legs ached now, and I was freezing. I had the urge to lie down in the snow and go to sleep. I slowed. My mom pulled. “No,” she shouted in my ear. “We have to keep going.”
“I don’t want to,” I said, though she couldn’t hear me. I could barely force myself to take another step.
My mother yelled for Elias.
Then, out of nowhere, I saw light.
First it was dim, but it got brighter and brighter, and then the snowfall thinned, until it was merely drifting down, and I saw where the light was coming from.
A huge, glowing outline of a door in front of the massive stone face of the mountain.
“There it is, MJ. The portal to Biringan.” My mom encouraged me. “You’re almost there. Keep going.”
Elias pushed, but the door wouldn’t open.
Behind us, I heard a commotion. Stomping through the woods. Flittering. Like the sound of butterfly wings fluttering together. Sounds that no human could hear, but Elias and I could. We whowere from the other place. More winged battalions. More munduntug hunters. The insurgents were right behind us.Hurry, hurry, hurry.
But the door wouldn’t open.
They were getting closer.
“What’s happening?” my mother asked Elias. “Why won’t it open?”
“They’ve enchanted it against us,” another patianak told her.
Elias looked at me. “Princess!” He waved me over frantically.
I limped up to the door, and he pointed to my necklace. “Hold it against it!” he shouted.
I touched the anting-anting to the door handle.
At that, there was a loud click, and the door began to open.
The stomping was right behind us. The door was opening too slowly, partially enchanted by whatever dark spell our enemies had cast on it.Come on, come on, come on.
“Get in,” Elias called out. “Squeeze if you have to!”
But it was too late. They were on us now. So many of them, even more than had come for me at school. Some were on foot and others were flying down from overhead. One of them landed between my mom and the door, blocking her. We were surrounded. And they were armed.
They charged, swords raised, and our patianaks charged back, metal clanging.
My mom ducked around the insurgents and ran for the door, bodies falling around her.
