Chosen (34 page)

“But now you know that we were linked to them,” Liz said.  “Keep going.  What happened next?”

“Well, the glow from two of the crystals came together.  There was this flash of light, like from a camera.  And then – what?” I stopped, because all the girls were looking at me funny.

“A flash of light?” Eve asked incredulously.

“Yes.  Right when the two halos met.  Are you telling me none of you saw that?”  All three girls shook their heads.  I frowned.  “Well, I don’t know what to say. 
I
saw it! It burned spots in my vision that I had to blink away.”

“Yet it couldn’t have been real,” Liz said quietly, almost to herself.  She looked at me.  “And then what?”

“Well, after that the glow from the two crystals came together as one.  It was more vivid.  More intense.  I saw the halo from the third crystal creep toward it, and that was when the crystals started shaking.”

“Fascinating,” Liz breathed.  “And then?”

“The aura around the first two crystals started fluctuating like crazy.  It went in all directions,
except
toward the glow around the third crystal.  The shaking increased, until suddenly everything just cut off.  And you fell down.”  I stopped, waiting.  That was all I had.  The girls were all looking at me expectantly, as if I were hiding something.  “That’s all I saw.  Is something wrong?”

Liz shot out of her seat.  “Wrong?  Tracy, this is the greatest breakthrough we’ve had in ages!  Nothing’s wrong.  This is amazing!”

“Thanks,” I said, dubiously. ”But, why is that?”

“You’ve done something absolutely astonishing.  You see, there are crystal reserves on the island.  That’s where we got our crystals.  The problem is: none of us can tell which of the crystals in the reserves are suitable for us, and which are – if you will – just clumps of rock.”

“Then how’d you find these?”

Liz snorted.  “It took ages.  We had to try every single crystal by holding it in our hands, to see if it could be activated or not.  Just finding these four took months.  But,” she continued, “if you were able to see the aura around these crystals, well, I think you will be able to tell which crystals are suitable for us just by
looking at them!
”

“But why is it so important to get more crystals?” I asked.  “You have these ones.  Right?  Isn’t that enough?”

Liz stood up, and motioned for Madison and Eve to rise as well.  “Come, there’s something else I want to show you.  It’ll help you understand.”

Liz set off.  Madison and Eve filed quietly after her.  Both of them looked to be deep in thought, as if my ability to see the auras was some great revelation.  Perhaps it was, to them.  After a moment’s reflection, I hurried after the three girls.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I caught up.  We were entering the deeper woods again.  “And shouldn’t you tell Ashley?”

“She doesn’t need to know,” Liz said quickly.  “Besides, I’m not sure I trust her after what she did to you—whether you’ve forgiven her or not.”  I was impressed.  I didn’t think that my well-being meant that much to Liz.  “And where we’re going?  Well, you’ll see once we get there.”

I followed Liz as she led us deeper into the woods.  The air was thicker here than in the clearing, and the canopy of the trees blocked out a good amount of light.  We must have been walking for five minutes when Liz and the others stopped and fanned out before a massive tree stump.  It was so big that if we all linked hands and stood around it, we wouldn’t have covered even a fifth of its circumference.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We’re here,” Madison answered uncertainly. 

“
Here
?  What’s here?”

“The crystal reserve,” Eve said reverently.

“That’s where you’re taking me?  I didn’t agree to that!”

“Relax,” Liz said soothingly. “There’s no danger here to you.”

“Did you just think that, because I can do something that you need, I’ll help you right away?  Without even
asking
me?”  For some reason, I felt angry.  Liz and the others seemed to just want to use me, without considering how I felt.  “And another thing—”

“You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to,” Liz interrupted smoothly.  “I only brought you here to show you something we found.  What? Did you think I would get you to start picking out active crystals for us right away?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Don’t be silly.  I wouldn’t force you into something like that unless you were totally comfortable.”

“Well, good,” I said somewhat mollified, feeling foolish for letting my emotions get a hold of me. 

Liz laughed.  “You don’t trust me fully yet.  Do you?” 

“I trust you,” I lied.  Sometimes it felt like she could see right through me.  “It’s just that some of this is pretty overwhelming.  Even after having a few days to think about it.”

“I understand,” Liz said.  “Come on! Let’s go inside.  Madison, Eve.  You keep watch.”

The two girls grumbled at being left out, but took their positions following a hard stare from Liz.  I still didn’t know where “inside” was.  It was only after Liz led me around to the other side of the massive stump that I understood.

A hollow had been carved in the middle of the stump a very long time ago.  Hidden within, jutting from the ground at a hard angle, was the dark entrance to an underground cave.

Liz stepped inside, and looked back to me.  “Coming?”

Chapter Twenty-Two – Triangulation

“What is it?” I asked cautiously.

“An entrance to the underground tunnels.”

“What’s down there?  The crystal reserve?” 

“After a bit of a walk, yes.  But that’s not where I want to take you.”

“And where is that, exactly?”

“Not far from the entrance.  The tunnel opens up, and there’s a fairly large cavern.”

“And what’s there?”

“I think,” Liz said thoughtfully, “that it is where the crystals were first discovered.”

“You mean where
you
discovered them,” I corrected.

Liz shook her head.  “No.  I only
found
them, and figured out that they could be used.  Truth is, I’m still figuring it out, as we all are.  But somebody else discovered them ages ago.”

“What?  How can you tell?”

“You’ll see,” Liz said, and took a few more steps inside.  “Are you coming, or not?”

After a moment’s hesitation, my curiosity got the better of me, and I trailed in after her.  The tunnel was dark, and after a few paces, the light from the forest faded completely.  We were shrouded in darkness.  I hadn’t the slightest clue where to go.

“Liz?” I called out.  “I can’t see anything.”

“Give me a moment,” she said from somewhere in front of me.  I heard some shuffling noises, followed by a heavy grunt.  After a brief interval, there came a heavy metal clang, like a lever being forced into position.  There was another long pause, and then I heard the cackle of electricity coming to life.  A light bulb flickered on overhead, followed by another one a good thirty paces down, and then another the same distance away, and another, and another, until the entire tunnel was bathed in a pale, weak light.  I looked above me.  The light bulb there was hanging from a wire that ran along the ceiling and down one wall, right to where Liz stood.  There, it connected to a lever that was impressed into the wall, and then trailed down to enter an enclosed metal shape that looked like a car battery.  The other end of the wire kept going down the tunnel, connecting the first bulb to the second, and the third, and so on.

I whistled.  “Did you set all this up?”

“With some help from Madison and the others, yeah.”  Liz beamed.  “Before this, we had to  carry flashlights down to the end of the tunnel.”

“Not bad,” I said.  “How long will the battery last?”

“It has enough juice to last us the day,” was Liz’s reply.  We both started walking down the tunnel.

“So, like I said, the reserve of crystals is at the very end,” Liz explained.  “But what I want you to see is actually much closer.”

“You still haven’t told me what that is.”

Liz shrugged.  “Like I said, it’s better for you to see it for yourself.”

“All right.  I guess.  How’d you find this place anyway?”

“There are tunnels like this running everywhere under Traven Island.  Most were naturally formed, I’d imagine.  But there are a few that were carved by human hands.”

“Why?”

“Do you know what was on this island before Oliver Academy was founded?”

“Some sort of asylum,” I replied, thinking back to what Chris told me.

Liz raised her eyebrows in surprise.  “Very good.  I wouldn’t have expected you to know that.  Anyway, there are rumors that the government used to conduct all sorts of terrible experiments on the inmates here.  My guess is that these tunnels were a way of transporting prisoners from one location on the island to the next, without rousing too much suspicion.”

“So how’d you find it, then?”

“I just stumbled across this particular one when I was exploring the woods my freshmen year.  I guess my curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to see what was inside.”

“Which is where you found the crystals?”

“Right.”

“But weren’t you… scared?”

Liz laughed.  “I was an audacious little kid.  No, there wasn’t much that frightened me.  Which I guess is why I took so well to the discovery of the crystals.”

I didn’t answer, letting the silent implication hang. 
Which is why you
haven’t
taken the discovery of the crystals so well.
  I walked on, careful not to step into the stale puddles of water that dotted the floor.  I took to counting the number of lights we passed, to help estimate how far we were going.  We had passed thirty-two so far, and they didn’t look to be ending anytime soon.

After I hit fifty, I saw the dim outline of an opening in the tunnel up ahead.  “Is that it?” I asked Liz.

She nodded.  “Yeah.  Come on! It’s not much farther now.”

She increased her pace, and I kept up with her.  Not long after, we emerged into an area where the sides of the tunnel widened considerably.  The row of lights kept going straight through, continuing where the walls narrowed again and going even farther.

“Here we are,” Liz announced, and spread her hands.  “The birthplace of the crystals.”

I looked around.  This part of the tunnel looked exactly the same as everywhere else, except that the walls stood farther apart.  There didn’t appear to be anything special about the place.     

“What’s different?” I asked.

“Come here,” Liz gestured. “Take a look at this wall.”  Liz walked over to the side, where she stood and waited for me.

I walked to her.  The weak light cast by the bulb behind me barely penetrated the darkness to reach the wall.  Most of it was covered with shadows created by the uneven stone.

“Yes?” I asked again, growing a little impatient—and somewhat anxious.  The tunnel was dank.  The air was stale.  I kept thinking about the island housing depraved human experiments in the past.  I half-expected to stumble upon the mutilated remains of a human skeleton, or worse.  “If this is some sort of joke…”

“No joke.  Take a minute to let your eyes adjust, and let me know what you see.”

“See?  I only see rocks.  Everywhere!”  My voice echoed down both lengths of the tunnel, amplifying the eeriness of the place.

“Right, but take a look
here
.”  Liz pointed to a portion of the wall right by her.  It looked like anything else, except perhaps it was a bit more flat.  I moved beside her to examine it closer.  That was when I saw it.

Engraved on that part of the wall, and indeed everywhere else, were faint, rudimentary etchings.  There were symbols and shapes, making all sorts of patterns running up and down the rock.  They looked like they had been carved into the stone centuries ago.  Even though I didn’t recognize any of it, the order to the shapes made me sure that it was some sort of writing.

“What is it?” I asked Liz.

“We call it the Wall of Power,” she said reverently.

“
The Wall of Power
?  Why?”

“It was where I first discovered the crystals,” she told me.  “And the markings on the wall are what led me to them.”

“What?  How?”  I looked at the engravings again.  None of them made any sense.  How could
she
understand any of it?

“It wasn’t that hard.  Look here.”  She pointed to her left.  There, three squiggly lines, each like a snake, were superimposed within a large circle.  On the perimeter of the circle were three triangles, each laid out equidistant from one another.  “The circle represents the whole – a person, or some living being.  The lines inside show the power contained within that person.  It’s the… it’s what we draw upon to activate the crystals.  You see, everyone has it within herself.  But, not everyone can access it.”  She moved her hand slightly to the right.  There, the same image was repeated, except this time one end of each squiggly line was connected to an outside triangle.  “The triangles are the crystals.  This one shows how the flow of power is connected to the crystal – how the crystals unleash the power within individuals, if you will.  Without them…” she moved her hand down, to another image that was identical except that the circle was much thicker here, and the lines did not penetrate to reach the triangles, “…the power stays dormant within.”