Bryan Davis - Eye of the Oracle

Sapphira stepped back from the rectangular screen of light and waved her hand across it, dimming it to a soft glow. “That’s enough for a while. Elam’s just going to sleep.” The screen shrank from a dragon-sized aura back to a spinning orange column, the portal to the snake-infested swamp up above.

Paili bounced on her seat in the center of a pile of straw. “More!” she chirped.

Yara, sitting next to her, wrapped her arms around Paili’s neck and pulled her into a strong hug. “You need to sleep, too.”

Sapphira sighed. “We all do. Elam’s so busy, just watching him makes me tired.”

“It was so strange,” Yara said. “He looked right at us when he said good night to Enoch.”

“I saw that. It’s almost like we’ve been looking through Enoch’s eyes ever since Elam left.”

Paili rubbed her stomach. “Can we eat before bed? I’m hungry.”

Sapphira laid her hand over her own stomach. “Did Acacia bring more food?”

“A couple of hours ago,” Acacia called, waving from the museum.

Sapphira walked toward her sister and peered through the doorway. “Looking for something new to read?”

Acacia held open a scroll. “I’m studying the map again. When I was sneaking back with the food, I overheard Mardon talking about the digging project.”

“Any idea if the giants are getting close to the surface?”

“That’s why I’m checking the map.” She pointed at a drawing of the uppermost floor. “I think they started here, and the legend says that point is about two thousand feet below the surface.” She rolled up the map. “But I have no idea how long it will take. If they hit bedrock between here and there, it could take a thousand years.”

Awven brought each of the twins a jar. Acacia opened hers, dipped her fingers in, and pulled out a gob of black gunk. “But as long as the worm farms hold out, we’ll have their yummy guts to eat for years to come.” She pushed the gob into her mouth, then grimaced as she swallowed. “Not a good batch. Must have had a grub worm in the mix.”

As the two girls walked back toward the portal, Sapphira opened her own jar. “Everything’s going to change when they finally break through,” she said, “but if they don’t do it pretty soon, and if we don’t figure out how to open a portal” she pinched a clump of worm guts and winced at it “I might just choose to starve.”

“Elam never eats,” Paili said, wormy gunk spilling down her chin.

Sapphira stared at her. “What did you say?”

“Elam never eats,” Paili repeated. “Haven’t you noticed?”

Sapphira set her jar down, not bothering to recap it. “I already knew. He ate the fruit from the other tree.” She ran back to the museum, rushed past the statues, and knelt where Morgan’s tree once grew. It had taken days to uproot the awful thing and burn it, and the smoke had filled their chamber with a putrid odor for weeks, but it was worth it. As soon as Paili stopped handling the fruit, her speech improved dramatically.

“Paili,” she shouted. “Do you know where I keep my blossom?”

Paili appeared at the museum’s doorway. “Under my old bed?”

“No.” Sapphira pointed at a bookshelf near the door. “I moved it to that shelf I cleared out. Please bring it to me.”

Finding the blossom, Paili cradled it in her palms, and carried it to the bed of soil.

Sapphira wrapped her hands around the petals and folded them up into a ball. She gouged the soil with her fist and laid the blossom in the hole. “We’ll make a growth chamber right here. There ought to be enough magnetite bricks lying around.” Scooping dirt from around the blossom, she covered it up under a mound.

Acacia strolled into the museum, her arms crossed over her chest. “How do you know it will germinate? It can’t have seeds yet, can it?”

Sapphira looked up at her. “Do you remember hearing Merlin’s prophecy when the dragons transformed?”

“Remember!?” Acacia laughed. “You woke me up, screaming, ‘Look at the portal! Look at the portal!’ I was kind of groggy, but I remember watching.”

Sapphira got up and grabbed a scrap of parchment from a nearby shelf. “I wrote down the prophecy.” Pressing her finger on the parchment, she read the poem.

When hybrid meets the fallen seed

The virgin seedling flies;

An orphaned waif shall call to me

When blossom meets the skies.

Sapphira raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“Well,” Acacia said, “we’re all hybrids, virgins, and orphaned waifs.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a try. Maybe that blossom will somehow sprout and touch the sky.”

Sapphira smiled. “Good rhyme, Acacia.”

Acacia smiled back at her and slid a scroll from one of the lower shelves. “Speaking of poetry,” she said, her mouth stretching into a yawn. “I think I’ll read some. It’s time for us all to get to bed.”

“Great,” Sapphira said. “I could use a good bedtime story.”

“Then you’ll join us?” Acacia asked.

Sapphira nodded. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Acacia gave her a worried-mother look. “You okay?” she asked.

Tightening her lips, Sapphira nodded again. She leaned against the museum doorway as her twin oracle walked back to the girls, who had gathered in a circle around a small pile of scrolls near the portal. Although the museum had once housed thousands of documents, the modest heap represented a precious share of their diminishing fuel supply.

Acacia pointed at the pile and ignited it, then jumped back in mock alarm. The other girls laughed, and as Acacia squeezed in between Paili and Awven, she glanced back at Sapphira, smiling in a sad sort of way before unwinding the scroll and settling down to read.

Sapphira strolled back to the planter and lowered herself to her knees in front of the mound she had piled over the blossom. She gazed up into the dark reaches of the cavernous library. The portal at the museum’s upper crossbeams no longer worked. The orange portal where the girls gathered probably still led to the nest of vipers in the swamp. The whirlpool portal at the bottom of the chasm was now unapproachable. The magma had become so hot, it scalded their faces even as they stood on the ledge, warning them that a plunge into its current now meant certain death. And the portal down in the mining trench where the abyss used to be had fizzled soon after it was created.

Still, any untested doorway could lead somewhere worse than their present location. She couldn’t go to the dimension of dead dragons and risk destroying their new home. Dwelling in the land of the living was out of the question; the people would think she was a freak and put her on display. And showing up at Morgan’s castle would be the worst idea of all.

Sapphira sighed. She and Acacia would just have to be content watching the upper lands from afar, cut off from everything that really mattered from Elam and his dangerous task, from the dragons and their new adventure, and, worst of all, from Elohim and his loving embrace. They would have to consider, however, what to do with the other girls. Since they looked like normal humans, they could find homes up above, and they would be a lot more comfortable there, having access to beds and blankets and something better to eat than worm guts. Of course, getting them there safely would be the hard part. Maybe she could somehow reopen the trench portal. Since it likely led to the hill near the church of Michael, she could find homes for the girls and then go back to the lower realms.

She leaned over and smoothed out the dirt on top of the planter’s hopeful womb. She felt as though she had entombed herself, Sapphira Adi buried alive in a God-forsaken hole. The girl Elohim had used and thrown away had died, and Mara the slave girl had come back to life, a girl trapped in a dismal prison with no rescuers in sight.