Майкл Салливан - Deep Magic. Fourth Collection

Suri tilted her head left and then right. An epiphany dawned and she stood on her head. Viewing the door from upside down, she hoped the new perspective would reveal a secret. It didn’t. She sat on the floor after that, her back against the wall. With her legs stretched out, her toes could almost touch the door. After some time, she sighed in defeat. Turning upside down had given her a headache, and it was difficult to think, except . . .

“The door is short.” She said this as much to herself as to Minna, which was just as well given that the wolf was now completely occupied by licking the water off her fur.

Standing on her head had gotten Suri thinking about which way was up and height in general.

Some birds build nests elevated in trees to keep their eggs safe. Squirrels climb to higher branches to escape bigger animals.

Suri looked up. She did so not merely because of her series of observations, but on account of the thought popping into her head. Initially, she’d theorized that turning upside down might have caused the notion to break free and drop into her mind, but that didn’t seem right in this case. When Elan whispered, she rarely had a familiar voice because, being everything, she must have so many. For this reason, hearing her was easy but listening difficult. Suri would often experience a flash of insight, then ignore the idea, believing it to be one of her many pointless thoughts. The notion of looking up, however, didn’t feel like Suri’s idea at all. That was the clue. Looking up was a suggestion given to her.

Suri stood and studied the top of the outline. The bevel made a little shelf, one just above her eyesight. To someone shorter—a crimbal—it might seem very high indeed. And high up, according to mother birds, meant safe.

Suri reached as far as she could and let her fingers feel along the top edge, exploring what her eyes couldn’t see.

The stone was smooth, polished to a glossy finish, and perfect without any variance . . . except one. Oddly, it wasn’t on the shelf, and her fingertips didn’t find it, but her palm had brushed by an inconsequential bulge on the surface of the door. Examining it more closely, Suri discovered a tiny diamond-shaped protrusion. Placing her palm on it, she pressed.

Nothing should have happened; Suri was pressing on solid stone. And yet, the diamond gave way. The instant it did, the stone door began to move.

“We did it!” Suri exclaimed, jumping back.

Minna abandoned her grooming and got to her feet. The two watched as a giant stone slab slid sideways. A brilliant green glow emanated from inside, and for a moment, Suri wondered if she’d done the right thing.

I don’t really want to go back to Nog.

Suri didn’t think it would be so bad if Minna came with her, but Tura would wonder where she’d gone. It wouldn’t be right to not say anything. She considered just taking a peek, and only going in for a few minutes, but that was how all the stories started. A visitor would enter for just a moment or two, but upon returning home, they’d find that a hundred years had passed. As it turned out, Suri didn’t need to worry. The door didn’t lead to Nog.

Behind the slab of stone was a room. Not much larger than their cottage, but a lot less cozy. It’s difficult to squeeze homey out of rock. The place was cold and hard, but that was the nature of stone. The room was round with a domed ceiling—just how Suri imagined living under a mushroom cap might be. Thick stone pillars set in a circle held up the dome. Decorating the walls were strange markings. In the center, a giant glowing green ball that was mostly submerged in the floor gave off an eerie light that filled the place with a disturbing radiance. Because light normally came from the sky, having anything lit from underneath seemed unnatural; add to that the sickly green color, and the chamber appeared absolutely creepy.

The room wasn’t empty. Chests and boxes formed shadowy figures in the dim light, and what might be a water well was near the back. A five-foot-high stack of deadwood was piled pretty much in the center of the room. The heap covered most of the glowing stone, making it look like the whole thing was the smoldering embers from a magical fire.

Suri smiled with delight. Tura often sent her off to find wood for their fire, but the process was arduous. In summer, plants hid the fallen branches, and in winter, the snow made it impossible to locate anything dry. Suri had come upon a treasure, a surplus of sheltered dry and seasoned wood.

Looking closer, though, she needed only a few seconds to realize her mistake. The pile wasn’t wood at all. She was repulsed to discover a huge stack of white bones. The skulls around its base were what gave away her oversight—hard to mistake a pair of eye sockets and a row of teeth for a log.

“Bones,” she said to Minna. Neither one had set a single toe in the room. They both stood at the doorway, Minna’s white fur turned emerald by the glow. “What do you think this is?”

The wolf lifted her nose and sniffed, then presented the sour expression she put on when she didn’t find her supper appealing. Suri didn’t like the smell of the place, either. The odor was similar to a fetid pond or an abandoned deer kill.

The chamber clearly wasn’t Nog, so after checking to make certain the door wouldn’t close behind her, Suri had Minna wait while she crept in. Moving carefully, she circled the pile, and she immediately noticed two things. The first was that being in the room was drastically different from being outside. It felt like she’d gone underwater. There was a terrible muffled sensation as if she’d entered a bubble, or someone had put a bag over her head. Suri felt strangely cut off from the rest of the world in a way she never had before. She repeatedly looked toward Minna, reassuring herself the exit was still clear. The thought of being trapped in such a place pushed her courage to the limit.

Grit yer teeth, spit in its eye, and challenge your dread to an arm wrestle. All that was easy to say in a sunny garden with daffodils all around, not so simple—

That’s when Suri noticed the other thing. All the skulls on the pile were facing out.

They’re watching me.

The question—the conundrum that caused Suri to lose her arm wrestling contest—was: Were they always facing like that?

She couldn’t remember, and in her confusion, she knew that they were indeed watching. Each pair of empty eye sockets was trained on Suri, and not one looked happy or welcoming. Most seemed to have sinister grins, although some had no lower jaw at all. In another moment, Suri was positive one would try to talk. The idea of a skull without a jaw struggling to speak was several running jumps past disturbing. The certainty that it would shriek in some horribly high-pitched way set Suri running.

Her foot caught part of the pile and sent bones skipping across the floor. Once outside, Suri slammed the bump on the wall and set the door to closing. She knelt and squeezed Minna. There was no better remedy for fear than hugging the soft fur of a wolf.

When the door clicked shut, the light disappeared, and the smell vanished. Suri could breathe again. She let go of Minna and was moving to stand when she touched something cold. For a brief instant, she glared at the foot-long bone, thinking it had chased her. Then Suri realized this had been one of those she kicked, and the only one lucky enough to clear the doorway and escape. Outside the room, away from the green glow, the bone was ordinary, good-sized, and clean. She picked it up, surprised at how light it was.

Hollow , she guessed. Must have been a really big bird. I could make a flute out of this.