Quite Contrary (14 page)

“Mary, listen!” Valdis panted. The wolf monster’s head swung back and forth, trying to follow her voice and watch Eric at the same time. “The Sibyl is dead, but we don’t need her! This is the wolf the runes predicted! You can come back with us and with dad!”

She really meant it. I turned and ran through the gap between the bookshelves. I saw a turn, and took it. I kept running. Bookshelves were everywhere, a maze of them. Someone yelled, and the monster growled, but the sounds weren’t clear anymore. I turned again, and again, and ran down a line of shelves until I hit a T intersection and a stone wall.

A stone wall? The library was made out of wood. I’d gotten lost again. I wasn’t in Nieflheim anymore.

tone wall in front of me. I reached out a hand and traced my fingertips over the gray, confirming it was paint. I’d reached the end of the library, but a different library. The ceiling wasn’t far overhead and looked like cement. In one direction, the bookshelves turned around a distant corner. In the other, a modern door.

I wandered down to the door. Well, maybe my feet moved a little faster than that. I didn’t want anything I’d left behind back there catching up with me. The door wasn’t just modern, it was institutional. Painted over metal wasn’t as big a clue as the push bar instead of a latch. The combination punch pad on the wall beside the door sealed the deal.

I gave the bar a push just in case, but it didn’t give. Locked. Well, I wasn’t going back. Going around the opposite corner was an option, but I didn’t want to take it. This door cheesed me off. I was absolutely nowhere, and someone had locked a door, with a numerical password no less. What was the point? The idea of letting something that stupid stop me made me itch up and down my spine. I glanced at the ten little digits on the keypad, but guessing the password was not going to work.

At least, it shouldn’t work. Recalling every story about bad security I’d ever heard, I pressed the buttons 1-2-3-4-5. The lock clicked. Oh, for pity’s sake.

But I’d gotten through. I shoved the bar, forcing the stiff door open ahead of me as I stomped past it. Okay,
now
I’d gotten through.

On this side, the hallway showed no sign of a library. Hallway, nothing. This was a steam tunnel. Rough, unpainted stone walls stood far apart, with a floor and ceiling of cement. Rusty pipes twisted along the walls and ceiling, and sometimes emerged from the middle of the door. A misty haze leaked from the pipes, lit by electric bulbs hanging from wires amidst the tangled pipes.

I felt a little better. The image of a horribly disemboweled woman’s corpse tried to flash through my mind, but I hadn’t seen her. Not really. Maybe I could remember the unpleasant way her arm bent and all the blood, but I could live with that. Pictures like that couldn’t push aside how awesome this steam tunnel was. My heavy shoes thumped loudly as I stepped forward, adding to the ambiance. The scenery was wicked cool. I had a locked door between me and everything I wanted to escape. I was alone, and I’d hear someone coming a mile off. I lost some of the keyed up tension I was carrying.

In the hopes of losing more, I started walking, listening to the echoes of my own footsteps and admiring the striped shadows thrown everywhere by half-hidden lights. What happened to people in steam tunnels, anyway? Sure, they got lost, but I was lost already. Nothing really happened in them, they just led somewhere, right?

This one led somewhere. Through the mist, I saw an intersection up ahead. As my shoes carried me closer, I confirmed a T intersection, with branches left and right. The tunnel I’d come up didn’t continue. Instead, it ended at a gate.

Rough stones formed an archway, in which a black iron gate blocked my path. This was one of those fancy gates with the scrolling metal bars. A plate in the middle read ‘Rose of Delphi.’ The name made sense, because I could see an underground rose garden on the other side. Oh, man, I wanted in there. I checked the latch and, to my surprise, it turned and the gate swung right open.

That was way too easy. Suspiciously easy. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to let that kind of paranoia keep me out. I stepped through the gate and pushed it closed behind me. It swung easily either way, in no apparent hurry to trap me. Maybe this was just a rose garden.

An underground rose garden. I only saw a single room, as big as a cafeteria. A vaulted roof didn’t let in any sunlight. All the light came from glowing fixtures up on the buttresses. They didn’t look like light bulbs, but let’s say they were magic. Did I care? They left the room murky, with shadows crisscrossed over the tangled rose vines covering the walls, twining over low walls or rocks or little statues or something around the middle, leaving only thin pathways free of thorns. Yeah, these were real roses, with wicked thorns everywhere. Flowers dotted the vines, all of them curled up tight.

I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then another. Some more tension went out of me. If I could find a spot where I wouldn’t get punctured for trying, maybe I’d sleep here. I hadn’t brought any food with me, but I’d be okay for the moment.

I could hear my breathing, the faint hissing from back in the tunnels, and one more thing. Slow, irregular, drops of water fell from the roof near the center of the room, splashing loudly as they fell into a wide, circular pool. At its center rose a statue around my height. I picked my way along the narrow paths curiously, trying to figure out what the shape underneath so many interwoven vines could be.

When I reached the edge of the pool, I was pretty sure it was a statue of a person. Hints of a chest, a narrow shape, and the uplifted arms were smooth where the gaps showed. A girl, I supposed. She knelt with her arms held up and forward, hands cupped around the biggest rose I’d ever seen. So big that I’d thought the rose was part of the statue at first. The words ‘as big as my head’ came to mind, but I dismissed them. Folded up tight, this rose was actually bigger than my head.

The rose twitched; I scanned the room around me. None of the other vines moved. The rose wriggled and the petals unfolded. Still none of the other vines moved, only this one flower, opening up to reveal a girl’s face.

It’s hard to tell just from a face, but I figured she was a teenager. With pink skin and no hair, only a crown of rose petals on all sides, it was even harder to tell. Red eyes opened and red lips smiled.

“Hello,” she greeted me, “My name is Rose. Rhodon, if Rose seems a little too obvious, or Rose Red if it’s not obvious enough. What’s yours?” At least a teenager by the voice. Pretty. Having a pretty face and a pretty voice seemed to be a requirement in the world of magic. Somehow I’d gotten an exception.

She was being polite, Mary. Don’t spit it back in her face just because the last couple of days have sucked.
I made myself answer, “Mary Stuart. I don’t suppose you know who Red Riding Hood is?”

“Are you Red Riding Hood already?” She winced, pain lining her smooth brow as she looked down at me with pity. “I was going to suggest you take that dress off, but I guess it’s too late. I’m sorry.”

I grunted. “I’ll deal with it. What is this place?”

“A shrine. A shrine to me, actually. The Rose of Delphi,” she said with a giggle. A wry giggle, and a small smile still tight with concern.

“Seriously, I’ll deal with it,” I lied. “So you’re, what, a goddess?”

“An oracle,” she corrected me. Well, more like answered. Cheerfulness crept back into this girl’s voice like a disease at every moment.

It made it hard to get my back up.

“Be careful about that. You get one question, and only one. That is, only one question I can answer as an oracle. I’ll be happy to answer as many questions as you like as a person. You’re from a city, right? The inner world? The world of order? That’s an American accent, but I’m not sure which American accent is which.”

“You get a lot of Americans here?” I asked, one of my eyebrows cocking up all on its own.

“Explorers and adventurers visit me often. Information is the easiest thing to take back with you, and some want to know where to find a greater treasure, or want help with the adventure they’ve stumbled into.”

If that was a hint, I wasn’t going to take her up on it. “Is there anywhere to sit? I did a lot of walking today.” I wanted to change the subject. That and to stop my hamstrings from twinging. I didn’t know I was getting sore again until I stopped walking.

“If you can clear a bench, be my guest. I’d help if I could, but I don’t control the vines.” She sounded apologetic.

Clear a bench? The rose-covered lump behind me had a bench shape, but I wasn’t eager to grab a handful of thorns. Rose’s vines … I was not going to call her Rose. Rhodon’s vines … forget it, Rose was better. Whatever I called her, she had great vines. Unfortunately, ‘great’ meant ‘covered in wickedly sharp barbs the size of fingernails.’ I wasn’t about to be beaten by plant life. I lifted up one of my impenetrable shoes and wedged the heel into the mass, but stopped.

“Are these part of you? Will this hurt you?” I asked.

“They might be, but I can’t move them and don’t feel them,” Rose said serenely. She could do something, because the roses running down the arms of her statue had begun to open. They’d spread their petals too slowly for me to see it happening, but now it was obvious.

I wasn’t going to tear her up just so I could sit down. That would be stupid. But she really seemed unconcerned. Forget it, I wanted to sit down. I kicked, and crunches and sucker-popping noises accompanied a mass of dark green and red being shoved to the side of the bench. I pushed the vines on the other side all the way off the end with the heel of my shoe. A place cleared, I sat down.

It felt good immediately. It helped this place was so dim and pretty. I sighed.

Rose let the silence stretch before she asked, “What happened?”

I hunched my shoulders up and gave her the list. “I did a bunch of stupid things. I put on this tarty costume in the fairy tale woods, then I was dumb enough to charge into Fairyland, then I was dumb enough to tick off the queen and get dumped into Viking land, then I was dumb enough to run away from the only people who wanted to protect and take care of me, just because I resent a little thing like being expected to like it if some guy decides to get me into bed at sword point six years from now.”

“All the way into the lands of the old gods, and then back here to the hidden paths of your cities,” mused Rose, “That’s quite a trip. You’re welcome to rest here as long as you want, but I can’t protect you while you’re here. I’m sorry.”

‘Welcome.’ Ha! She was lonely. I couldn’t blame her. A talking flower, stuck in one place all her life, hoping strangers will visit for an hour or two. I thought I had it rough.

“Is there any way to stop being Red Riding Hood? How can I get out of this story?” I blurted. For pity’s sake, Mary! It just came out.

Now my heart got tight and I tensed up all over waiting for the answer.

“You mean that—” Rose started to say, then slurred into silence like a broken recording. She stared at nothing, and right about when I wanted to scream at her she blinked and her eyes lifted to mine again.

“The honest answer, the answer you really asked for, is ‘no.’ I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so sorry,” she answered.