He guides us around another corner beyond the sound of their voices. The ceiling lowers. The walls close in. I struggle to connect the path before me to the map in my head. This isn’t the way.
Atom skips his fingers along the wall, still pulling me along with his other hand. “Don’t worry, Milo’s safest with Eli. And I know my way around.”
“How? Zandrite locked you up.”
“I snuck in here hundreds of times before that.” He stops to grin at me then hauls me down the passage with unexpected force for such a small guy.
“Where are we going? This wasn’t one of the routes on my map.” I try to capture the quick turns and find uniqueness in the endless dirt of the walls so I can track our path, but my head seems to constantly be two rights and a left behind.
“I know. This way.” He stops short in front of a square entrance level with the ground, gesturing to it proudly with both hands.
Everything about it boastsbad idea. The side edges are worn away and rounded, as if countless fingers had held on, scrabbling and scratching to get out. A scraping sound echoes from the dark depths, and the scent of raw meat permeates the air inside. I can almost hear the regretful voices of the dead, warning me not to go a foot farther.
“You want me to go in there?” I ask.
“I’ll go first, since you look like you’re about to upchuck a bar.”
“No, Atom, let’s—” I give up with a resigned sigh as his feet disappear, then drop to my knees and crawl after him. I’m not letting him go alone, and he’s already out of sight. Dammit. “Wait up.”
His voice carries through the dank tunnel, ten degrees cooler than the passage. “I hate waiting.”
A flash of fondness flutters through my chest.Me too, kid.
We crawl on, and as the last of the passage’s light fades around a sharp corner, a new light appears.
“I’ve been collecting light stones left in the woods for months and bringing them here,” Atom explains, repositioning the glowing stone. A one-eyed smiley face is drawn on the front in what looks like finger paint made from blood. “This is Wallace. He’s a guardian.”
His loneliness strangles my heart. “How long have you been on your own?”
He passes his thumb over the stone’s smile and turns to continue, avoiding my prying gaze. “A little more than a year.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Not really, if you compare it to forever.”
It’s a strange response from a child, maybe a strange response from anyone. “I can’t really grasp forever.”
“What about never?” he asks.
I understand never. The absence. The endless void. The defeat. It’s familiar, hopeless and without expectation. “Yes.”
“Well, you can’t have never without forever because never lasts forever. And it goes the other way too. Forever never ends.” He stops at the next light stone, another face with two bloody fingerprints for eyes and a squiggly mouth. “This guy is Wart. He makes me answer riddles if I want to pass.”
I’m still turning his words over in my mind when Atom looks over his shoulder. “So what do forever and never have in common?”
“Huh?”
“That’s Wart’s riddle.”
“Oh.” I scratch the dirt, staring down at my rings that aren’t actually there. At least I’m not talking to stones.Yet. “I don’t know. Keep going.”
“Ever.”
“What?” I ask, urgency pressing in from all sides. “We have to get to Zandrite.”
“That’s the answer.”
“Me? I’m the answer?”
