Twig jolted awake. Ben’s outstretched arm was in front of her, holding her back. When she opened her mouth to speak, he clamped his hand over it. She froze.
A slow, soft creak. Then a click. Someone had turned a key in the lock. The cell door eased open, and a bulky figure blocked the flickering of the corridor’s torchlight.
“I’m a friend,” he whispered. His voice was rough and low. A glimmer of light bounced off a long object in his hand—a sword.
The stranger said, “Let’s go.”
Ben didn’t hesitate. He pulled Twig to her feet, reached for her back to feel that her pack was there, and pulled her toward the door as the stranger eased it open.
Twig’s heart kept leaping between relief and fear. It had been a hard night. They were both bruised and battered from their struggle with Neal and the other guards. When he realized his mother was locking them back up, Ben had burst into a fury Twig had never thought possible. Once they were shut in the cell again—tossed there with no more ceremony than the bundle of their own clothes that were hurled after them—he’d fallen apart.
Twig had cried as she slipped her clothes on under the now-tattered gown, then pulled the ridiculous costume off. She wanted Mr. and Mrs. Murley. They knew what to do with people who were falling apart. What did Twig know? She was only half put together herself. Being this new Twig wasn’t easy. In the end, she’d cried with Ben and prayed prayers that only seemed to echo off the stone walls and back at her, ever damper and darker, until finally they’d both fallen into a restless sleep.
The stranger glanced back at them as they followed. A flash of firelight illuminated his crooked nose and pale, serious eyes.
“Ben,” Twig whispered once the stranger had looked away again. “Isn’t he one of the dungeon guards?”
“Of course. How else would we get out of here? Now shh!”
“But—”
“Merrill,” Ben said. “It must’ve been.”
Merrill had arranged this? Is that what he thought? Twig didn’t know what to think, but they didn’t have time to think, not if they were going to get out of here. Where could this man take them that could be worse than the dungeon?
As soon as she asked herself that question, Twig imagined all sorts of nightmarish possibilities. Her imaginings must be far worse, she tried to console herself, than any real possibilities in Terracornus.
Wonder and Rain Cloud were waiting for them somewhere. And somewhere, in the darkness on the other side of the passage door, wild unicorns were waiting for a leader. Without one, they could attack the ranch again. And now Ben and Twig knew that someone else was using the passage. The unicorns could be stolen. The Murleys and the girls could face not only the dangers of wild unicorns, but also strange people from another world.
Would the Murleys venture into the forest in the dark of night, into the territory of the unicorns, into the shadows where strangers lurked, trying to find Twig?
Twig and Ben turned a corner in the narrow dungeon corridor, and their guide stopped to produce a key from around his neck and to unlock an even narrower door.
“Watch your step,” he said. And then he took a step himself and disappeared downward, into the blackness beyond.
“Ben!”
“There’s a rail,” he said gently. “Here.” He took her hand and moved it until she felt the cold smoothness of an iron stair rail underneath it. “Got it?”
Twig bit back a gasp of pain. She’d forgotten about her hand. She groped around and gripped the rail on the right side instead. “Yeah. Got it.”
“I’m right behind you.” Ben sounded like himself again. The good, solid Ben that she could depend on. He took hold of her hood with his free hand. He wouldn’t let her fall.
Ahead of her, footsteps fell carefully, quietly—but heavy just the same—in a steady rhythm, down and down. The stairs were long and black and winding. Twig felt out the edge of each one with the toe of her boot and lowered herself to the next, until she got a sense for their size, their spacing. She took them faster, faster, fast as she dared. But still, she could not help wondering why they were going down, why they seemed to be heading deeper into the castle that had become their prison.
Finally their path leveled out. Twig feared that any moment they’d turn a corner and a door would slam behind them, shutting them into the depths below the castle where no one would see or remember them, and they would never find their way out. Just as the panic was reaching up from her belly into her throat, tempting her to grab Ben and refuse to go any farther, the dank ground began to slope upward. Gently, subtly, but upward—cautiously, like Twig’s hope.
The farther they went, the less dank and stale the air became. It was still stuffy in its own way, but its heaviness was earthy, not reeking with the stench of hopeless men; it was wet and cold, but like rained-on soil, not like weeping, seeping stone.
The slope gave way to another set of stairs, this time climbing upward. Ben said, “I think we’re on the other side of the wall.”
“The city wall?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know?”
“My father told me about a passage. His passage. From the dungeon, underground, across the castle grounds, through the city, under the wall, and into the forest. We’re really getting out of here. We’re going to find Indy.” Ben’s voice trembled with excitement.
At the top of the stairs, the passage continued, flat and straight, but dark and narrow as ever. Twig was just considering pulling her flashlight out of her jacket pocket when she noticed a blacker patch of darkness just ahead, on the right side of the tunnel wall. Another passage?
Twig squinted. The blackness seemed to shift. Yes, it moved. Someone was there! Someone was listening to their footsteps, waiting for them to pass by the opening. A cloaked figure drifted out of the other passage and stood across theirs. It reached under its cloak, and Ben reached for his sword—his sword that wasn’t there.