Volume 1: [Perseverance š]
Chapter 1: Purple Soul
Act 4: The Cave, with Synn
Paige doesn't sleep much.
Every time she closes her eyes, she sees the knight's huge metal hands turning the pages of her notebook. Every small sound in the stone house makes her sit up in bed: the candle crackling, water dripping somewhere in the walls, the house settling around her. Each time, she waits for three slow, heavy knocks.
They never come.
When she finally wakes up for good, she can't tell if it's morning. Down here, there's no sunrise to tell her. But a sweet smell is drifting in from the living room, and Paige knows exactly what it is.
Synn is already at the table, pouring tea into two cups. The glow from the kettle lights her skull from below.
Synn: Good morning. Did you sleep?
Paige: A little.
Synn: Liar.
But she says it kindly, and she slides a cup across the table. Paige wraps her hands around it and drinks. The warmth spreads through her chest, and the last of last night's nerves fade away.
Synn: Finish that. Then we're going out.
Paige: Out? But what if the knightsā
Synn: That's exactly why. If they come back, you need to know where to go. I'm not hiding you behind a door with a cup of tea again.
Paige almost smiles. She finishes her tea, grabs her notebook and a pencil, and follows Synn outside.
It's the first time she has seen the outside of Synn's house while she's awake. The little wooden door. The round windows cut into the rock. The lantern hanging by the entrance, still lit. And beyond it, the darkness of the caves, stretching away in every direction.
Synn takes the lantern down from its hook and holds it up.
Synn: Stay close. The tunnels all look the same until you know them.
The tunnels twist and split and twist again. Some are so wide that Paige can't see the walls on either side. Others are so narrow that she has to turn sideways to squeeze through. The lantern light slides over wet rock, patches of pale moss, and roots that hang down from the ceiling like old ropes.
Synn walks without hesitating, and she explains everything as they go.
Synn: Left at this fork goes deeper, toward the town. Don't ever go that way alone. Right goes around in a circle and brings you back to the house. If you ever get lost, keep one hand on the wall and follow it. It'll take you home.
Paige doesn't trust herself to remember all of it, so she does what she always does. She opens her notebook and starts to draw: the house, the forks, the long wide tunnel, the narrow one. Little by little, a map takes shape on the page.
Synn glances over her shoulder.
Synn: You're drawing the tunnels?
Paige: So I don't get lost. And so I don't forget.
Synn doesn't say anything. But after that, she walks a little slower, so Paige's pencil can keep up.
After a while, the air begins to change. It gets warmer and softer, and it smells faintly sweet. Synn turns a corner, and Paige stops walking.
The tunnel opens into a small round cave, and the floor is covered in flowers.
Hundreds of them. They're small and pale, with thin petals like paper, growing in clusters between the rocks. And every single one of them is glowing. Not brightly, but softly, like tiny lanterns, so the whole cave is filled with a gentle silver light.
Paige: Are these...
Synn: The tea flowers. As far as I know, they only grow here.
Paige kneels down next to a cluster of them. Up close, their light seems to pulse very slowly, almost like breathing.
Paige: They're beautiful.
Synn: They're useful. That's better.
But Paige sees the way Synn looks at them, and she doesn't believe her for a second.
Synn crouches down and carefully picks a few, choosing the ones with the widest petals. She tucks them into a small cloth pouch at her side.
Paige: Is that why I stopped shaking? When I drank the tea?
Synn: Yes. It helps calm your nerves. Before the war, my mother and father used to play with me here, among these flowers. And every night, they made me a cup of this tea to help me sleep.
She doesn't say anything else after that. Paige writes it down so she won't forget: Tea flowers. They glow. They help calm the nerves.
They leave the flower cave and walk a little farther, until Synn stops in front of a wall that looks exactly like every other wall.
Synn: Here.
Paige looks. She doesn't see anything.
Synn holds the lantern closer, and then Paige sees it: a crack in the rock, tall and narrow, hidden behind a fold in the stone. From a few steps away, it's just another shadow. Up close, it's an opening, just wide enough for someone small.
Synn: Go on. Try it.
Paige tucks her notebook under her arm and squeezes in sideways. The rock is cold against her back and her chest. Inside, the crack opens up a little, just enough room for her to sit with her knees pulled up. It's completely dark in there, and completely quiet.
Synn's voice comes from outside, a little muffled.
Synn: Can you see me?
Paige: No.
Synn: Good. Then nobody can see you either.
There's a pause. When Synn speaks again, her voice is serious.
Synn: If anyone comes to the house, you come here. Not to your room. Not to my father's room. Here. And you don't come out until you hear my voice. Only mine. Do you understand?
Paige: Only yours.
When she squeezes back out, Synn is holding the lantern up to the crack, studying it as if she's measuring it.
Synn: You fit better than I thought. You're smaller than you look.
Paige: Thanks... I think.
Paige adds the crack to her map and draws a little star next to it.
They head back the long way, following the circle that leads to the house. But before they get there, the tunnel opens up, and Paige recognizes where they are.
It's the big cavern. The one she fell into.
The enormous pile of bones is still there in the middle, pale and quiet. And above it, high, high above, the thin beam of daylight still falls from the hole, lighting up the top of the pile like a spotlight.
Paige stares at it. At the light. At the hole. At the tiny circle of real sky, so far up that it looks like a coin.
That's the way she came in.
That means it's a way out.
If she can reach the top of the pile, maybe she can reach the wall. And if she can reach the wall, maybe she can climb it. Maybe there's a ledge, or a root, or something.
Before she can stop herself, before Synn can say a word, Paige runs.
Synn: Paige, waitā
She drops her notebook at the bottom of the pile and starts to climb. The bones are smooth and cold, and they shift under her hands and feet, but she keeps going. Higher. Then higher. The light gets warmer on her face. Just a little closer. Just a little moreā
Then the bones slide.
It starts with a single bone rolling out from under her boot. Then another. Then the whole side of the pile gives way with a terrible clattering roar, and Paige is falling again, backward and down, with bones tumbling all around her.
She doesn't even have time to scream.
And for the second time, someone catches her.
Synn's arms close around her, hard and cool, and they both stumble backward until Synn hits the ground. Bones rattle and roll past them, and then, finally, everything goes still.
For a moment, neither of them moves.
Synn: That's twice now.
Her voice is shaking. Not with anger. With something else.
Paige sits up slowly. Her palms are scraped and her heart is pounding, but she's in one piece. Synn sits up too, and for a long time she doesn't say anything. She just looks at the bones that slid down the pile, scattered across the cave floor.
Paige: I'm sorry. I just thought... if I could get to the top... if I could reach the wall...
Synn: You can't.
She says it quietly, without any anger at all. Somehow, that makes it worse.
Synn: Even if you climbed all the way up. Even if you reached the hole. You still wouldn't get out.
Paige: Why not?
Synn points up at the beam of daylight.
Synn: There's a barrier up there. Over the hole, and over the whole Underground. You can't see it. Nobody can. But it's there.
Paige looks up. All she sees is light, and a tiny circle of sky.
Paige: I don't see anything.
Synn: Nobody does. That's the cruel part. You can see the sky. You just can't reach it.
Paige: Then how did I get in?
Synn: Humans can come in. That's why the king has his detector. Getting out is another story.
Paige: Who put it there?
Synn: The humans. When the war ended. They drove us down here, and then they sealed it shut, so we could never come back up.
Paige pulls her knees up to her chest. Down here, under all this rock, the barrier feels heavier than the whole mountain.
Then Synn gets up. She walks over to the bones that slid down, and she starts picking them up, one by one, carefully, the way you'd pick up something that might break. She carries them back to the pile and sets each one down where it belongs.
Paige watches her. Slowly, a terrible feeling starts to grow in her stomach.
Paige: Synn... what is this place? The bones, I mean.
Synn doesn't stop working.
Synn: It's a grave.
Paige's breath catches.
Synn: For the creatures who died because of the war. We keep them here, together, so nobody is alone.
She sets another bone back in its place. Gently.
Synn: My father is here too.
Paige feels like the ground has disappeared under her all over again. She looks at the pile. At the bones she grabbed with both hands. At the bones she kicked loose with her boots. She climbed all over it like it was nothing. Like it was just a hill.
Paige: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I climbed all over it, and Iā
Synn: You didn't know.
Paige: But Iā
Synn: Paige. You didn't know.
She sets the last bone back on the pile. Then she reaches into the pouch at her side and takes out one of the tea flowers she picked earlier. It's still glowing. She lays it at the bottom of the pile, very gently, and stays there for a moment, kneeling, with her head bowed.
So that's why she picked the extra flowers, Paige realizes. Not just for tea.
Paige: Is that why you were here? When I fell?
Synn: I come every day.
Paige picks up her notebook from where she dropped it and walks over to stand beside Synn. She doesn't know what to say, so she doesn't say anything. She just stays there quietly, the way you're supposed to at a grave.
Then she remembers something else. The first time they met, Synn caught her right here, on top of this pile. Synn ran up her own father's grave to catch a falling human. And today, she caught her again, right at the foot of it.
Paige looks at Synn's bowed head, and her throat gets tight.
After a while, Synn stands and picks up the lantern.
Synn: Come on. Let's go home.
Paige follows her. But at the edge of the cavern, she stops and looks back one more time.
The beam of daylight still falls through the hole, warm and golden, landing right on the little flower at the bottom of the pile. Somewhere up there is a wall that nobody can see. A wall that keeps Synn, and her father, and every creature in this grave away from the sky.
And humans built it.
Paige holds her notebook against her chest. A thought starts small, then grows, until it's the only thing she can hear.
If humans put up the barrier...
Then humans can take it down.