Chapter 22
I didn’t want to have another meltdown. No one needed to see that. After my last episode, I didn’t think I would ever be able to show my face again to my friends, but at least when that had happened, I had been able to hop on a horse and ride away. Now there was nowhere for me to go. No place to hide. I had fought back the Creepers as long as I could, and there was no stopping them now. As Raspaard trotted out of the dungeon, leaving me alone in my prison cell to dwell on my epic failure, I curled into a ball on the cold stone floor and sobbed.
Normally, it felt good whenever I finally let go and cried, but this felt horrible. My head throbbed, each breath hitched in my throat like the worst bout of hiccups, and I could feel my face turning puffy and red as it always did. The others stood there, watching me in silence, which, in many ways, made it much, much worse. I may not have wanted to hear Miles or Jasmine telling me it would be okay, and that I should calm down and relax, but the fact they weren’t saying anything made me wonder what they were actually thinking. Did they think I was losing my mind? That I was an unfit leader for our Band?
I don’t know how long I was in that state, bawling like a baby, but it was at least a good several minutes until I stopped, but only because something bit me.
“Ouch!” I yelled, grabbing my ear and jerking up. Goon stood on the ground next to me, his beady eyes staring up as though he was waiting for me to give him something. “Why did you do that, Goon?”
I turned to Miles for an explanation, but Miles was gone. His cell was completely empty. So was Jasmine’s—and Sierra’s as well. Dragging the back of my hand under my nose, I blinked in confusion. How long had I been on the ground crying?
“Psst! Hello, sad friend?” Wopper called out. “Did the armored rodent bite you?”
“The what?” I wiped my eyes and looked over at the dwarf sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell.
Wopper pointed at Goon. “I believe your pet is in need of a treat. You don’t perchance have any, do you? And would you be willing to share some with a dwarf? I don’t fancy eating any more hay if I can help it.”
“What happened to my friends?” I demanded. “Did you see where they went?” I was pretty sure I would have noticed if Raspaard had taken them out of the dungeon.
Squinting into the cell where Sierra had been just a few minutes earlier, Wopper wriggled his nose, and then he tossed his hands into the air with a shrug. “Ah, hmmm, I cannot say. Dungeons can play tricks on the mind. Maybe your friends were never there. Maybe it has only been you and I all along.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not true, and you know it,” I said. “Where are they?”
Then, to my astonishment, Wopper disappeared. It happened so suddenly and soundlessly, that the only noise I did hear was the dwarf’s grunt of surprise as he dropped through the floor.
That grabbed my attention. I scrambled to my feet, the Creepers now sufficiently buried back in their box. It was too dark to see, with only those dim candles burning in the dungeon, but then I remembered the torch lying extinguished on the floor next to my pile of straw. I picked it up and with a fizzling whoosh, the torch ignited, and I peered across the aisle into Wopper’s cell.
“Wopper?” I whispered. “Hey, Wopper, quit playing around! Are you there?”
I strained to listen, but no reply came. Then something soft plopped onto my foot.
“What now?” I asked, looking down at Goon. “Are you going to bite me again?”
Goon’s long snout quivered as he pointed his nose to where a square-shaped hole had opened in the ground directly behind me. With a startled yelp, I leapt back, smacking the bars with my shoulder. That was no cave-in or a collapsed section of the floor. That was a trapdoor!
“That wasn’t there before, was it?”
Come to think of it, Nodring had mentioned something about trapdoors in Dunedaveen’s dungeons, back when we were hiding out in the barn. That hole had opened right beneath the spot where I had been lying, and had I not gotten up to check on the others, I would have fallen through for sure. Leaning over, I could just make out what might have been a stone slide disappearing into the darkness. I wasn’t in love with the idea of dropping into a creepy hole, but at the same time, if that’s where my friends had gone, it was my responsibility to go after them. I was the only one left.
Goon began making all sorts of noises, and I tried piecing it together, but it was all nonsense. I may have been the Gamekeeper, but his talking sounded like a bunch of garbled squeaks.
“What is it? Do you want to come with me?” I had no sooner asked this than Goon immediately scurried up my leg. “Wait, just give me a second to—” I whimpered, but he ignored my pleading.
Digging his tiny claws into my chest, the armadillo scaled me like a rock climber and crawled beneath my robe. Goon seemed unusually heavy for his size and scratchy. It was awful! After squirming around for almost a minute, he finally nestled somewhere close to my armpit and fell silent.
“I hope you’re finished,” I said. There was no way I could handle much more of that.
I took a deep breath, and then I dropped through the trapdoor.
Down we shot—Goon and I—sliding and picking up speed. At one point, I tried looking over my shoulder, to see how far we’d dropped, but I lost sight of the entry point as the slide veered to the left and continued deeper. The hole seemed to go on forever. It was like riding the world’s longest waterslide, only there was no water. Though my rear end scraped against the rough stone surface, I couldn’t keep from hollering out with excitement.
Then, without any warning, the slide stopped. There was only one problem with that: I was at least a hundred feet above the cavern floor when it ended. It seemed like I floated in the air for a few seconds, my mind realizing what was about to happen before the rest of my body caught on, and then I dropped into the darkness below.