There’s something strange about finding yourself plummeting through the air with nothing beneath to catch your fall. Something that makes you think:
HolycrapholycrapholycrapI’mgonnadieI’mgonnadieI’mgonna—
I plunged Valkyrie into the side of the sinkhole, the magic blade biting deep into a semi-solid section of dirt. The earth trembled again and thousands of pounds of rocks and sand cascaded down into the oblivion below my desperately kicking feet. I spat out dirt as it clogged my nose and eyes. I heard a faint squeal and looked down just in time to watch the boar fall to his doom.
And if I didn’t hurry, that was going to be me.
“Stay calm, just stay…”
Valkyrie jerked in my hand. I slipped down another foot. The wall I’d lodged myself into was starting to collapse, as though an earthquake was tearing through this place. I wasn’t an expert in geological abnormalities, but spontaneous earthquakes? Weren’t there usually warnings for things like that? What the heck was going on?
Valkyrie sank a bit lower. I forced myself to focus on the increasingly common task of trying not to die. My mom had a spell that’d saved her and Headmaster Lucien in a pinch. I was sure it had a fancy name but all I could think to call it in the moment was the sticky tack spell (what, there’s a billion spell names, you expect me to remember all of them?)
I thrust my hand up. The unstable wall glowed with light. I pressed my palm into it and my hand held, like I’d found a ledge to grip onto. I took a deep breath and wrenched myself up, using alternating hands to cast more of the light above me as I climbed.
But the sinkhole continued to suck me in. I swore I sank three feet for every two I gained, but still I climbed, not thinking, putting my body into autopilot. The lip of the hole was just out of reach. I was almost there…
My top hand slipped. I scrambled to regain my hold but I was already falling back, the dirt crumbling in on me. I cast a last, desperate spot of light at the top of the hole and launched myself up. My hand brushed it, began to stick, then began to fall—
“Gotcha!”
Asher’s hand closed around mine. With a great heave, he yanked me out of the hole and we both stumbled away from it. All around us, the cavern floor was splitting, large ravines opening in the earth, sinkholes swallowing water and sand alike. Typical end of the world stuff.
Asher let out a whistle. “I didn’t expect this when I came back to check in. You’re just a walking harbinger of destruction, aren’t you?”
“Oh, you know, just thought I’d do a little remodeling while I was here.”
The sound of something cracking came from above. Both Asher and I looked up in time to see the ceiling splitting apart.
“Maybe we should catch up later,” I suggested.
“Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
I raced after him as we dodged falling rocks and leapt over splitting ground. Asher tripped once before I caught his arm and shoved him ahead of me. My feet struggled to find solid ground. The destruction was getting so bad that if we fell now then it’d be the last fall we ever took.
The entrance to the cavern was just ahead. It was closing fast.
“Heava!” Asher’s lifting spell caught debris that had been about to cover the exit, holding it long enough for us to slide under before he let it fall. A cloud of dust rolled over us. I stumbled away from the cavern, watching as rocks closed up the entrance. The ground trembled once more before falling silent.
Both of us backed away until we felt safe enough to stop and catch our breath. Asher dusted himself off while I hacked up what felt like half the cavern I’d breathed in.
“Okay, not that I’m blaming you for destroying the inside of a mountain…” Asher said. “But it was there before you went in, and now…” He pointed back at the now-blocked entrance.
“Sounds an awful lot like blaming to me,” I said, hands on my hips.
He held up his hands, smirking. “Just saying. What happened?”
What had happened? I’d been walking along on my pig-hunting mission, minding my own business, when—
Wait.
“There was a mansion,” I said.
Asher paused, halfway through un-caking the dirt that’d built up on his forehead. “What do you mean a mansion? Inside the cavern?”
“Yeah. Kind of like—you know, like from a scary movie.”
“Inside…the cavern?” Asher repeated
“I swear it was there, Asher. One second it wasn’t and the next it was, and it had vines, and big windows, and…and…There was someone inside, waving to me…”
I stopped, realizing how crazy I sounded. I had to be wrong. Maybe one boar hit too many had addled my brains. Either that or I’d been reading too much Architectural Digest.
But Asher was thinking, brow furrowed. I felt an immense swell of gratitude that, for all the crap we gave each other, he at least didn’t dismiss my ravings as complete crap. He might not have seen it, but he had my back.
“I swear it was there,” I insisted.
He motioned for me to follow. We started making our way back down the mountain toward Kalamata, where the Farcast portal would blip us back to New York. “I believe you. I’m just trying to think of why…Wait.” He snapped his fingers. “You remember the cavern we came across when we fought Kasia the second time?”
I shivered, the grip of fear I’d felt inside the tunnel momentarily sweeping over me. “Not like I could forget, Asher.”
“Right, right. But remember how the first time we found it, the place was like a normal cave, but the second time was like some sort of Amazonian jungle? My dad said it must have been—”
“An abandoned city hidden by magic!” I said. “The kind the Supes of New York used to hide in. That has to be it. The mountain must have been where they used to hide and I accidentally revealed it.”
“Yeah…except it wasn’t a city, just a single house. And why’d it collapse as soon as we found it?”
I had no answer for that. Asher made me describe the mansion again and we lapsed into silent thought as Kalamata came into view. The water still looked as perfectly blue as ever, the sand blazing white. I could practically feel the cold drip of condensation against my hand as I sipped on a drink, lounging beneath the shade of a cabana.
Sigh…
“Reminds me a bit of Calypso,” Asher said, breaking my vacation daydreams.
It took me a second to catch up with his runaway train of thought.
“The Greek legend?”
He nodded. “The lone house, the lone figure, both of them hidden away from the rest of the world. Kind of like Calypso. Her father was one of the Titans and she fought alongside them against the gods of Olympus. But when the Titans lost, the gods banished her to live on an island by herself.”
“That’s so sad,” I said, feeling a small ache of grief for someone who’d never even existed.
Asher gave me a funny look. “I’m not saying it was the right punishment, but she fought against them.”
“Yes, but she did it to help her family. Wouldn’t you fight with your dad, even if you thought he was wrong?”
Asher shrugged, but I could tell the question had made him uncomfortable.
“I’m just saying,” I went on, not wanting to get into another argument over something as stupid as a myth, “Maybe she made the wrong choice, but it wasn’t her fault to begin with.”
“Fine, fine, fine, you’re right,” Asher conceded. “Happy?”
“As long as you keep saying I’m right I’ll always be happy.”
Asher made a face that was half grin, half grimace.
We eventually reached the outskirts of Kalamata and made our way to the trafficked sidewalk bordering the ocean. I smelled the spray of salt water. Kids splashed and played in the sand while their parents read nearby. The Farcast portal was further inside the city, hidden inside a convenience store guarded by a grumpy water nymph named Terry. We reached our street and I cast one last, longing look back at the nearest tiki lounge, cold sodas sliding down the bar, people laughing and drinking from coconuts with little straws sticking from the center.
“You know, technically we don’t have to be back to the Academy until tonight,” Asher said.
I turned to find him grinning at me. He nudged his chin back toward the beach. “I’d say we deserve a break. Why not here?”
I could have kissed him.