Page 110 of The Verdant Cage
There is a moment of darkness, then a single, dim light flicks on at our feet.
I throw myself at the door, digging into the crack until my fingernails peel back.Oscar and Eero are on the other side. There must be a way to save them.I find the lever and tug on it. I’m answered by a bone-deep scraping noise, low and threatening. I stumble back, expecting the door to open, but instead, the walls shake, the stone trembling beneath our feet. With a grinding roar, the ceiling begins to drop.
“Get away from the door!” I yell, grabbing the nearest hand. “Now!”
We dive into blackness, the tunnel behind us shrieking as it collapses. A fist-sized chunk of ceiling glances off my shoulder. I bite down a cry and taste blood. Gryphon’s hand is in mine, or maybe it’s Sal’s—I can’t see. My lungs burn with each breath of debris-thick air, and somewhere behind me, Albert is shouting for us to move faster, but my legs feel like water and the ground keeps shifting. I don’t know if we’re escaping or being buried alive.
Almost as soon as it starts, it stops.
Light blooms.
Weak, flickering points sputter to life along the walls, just like the one at the entrance. They’re unlike any illumination I’ve ever seen, neither flame nor bulb, casting shadows that dance across stone. They provide enough light to show that the direction we came from is now an impassable pile of rock. Blinding dust hangs thick in the air, making my throat tight.
“Is anyone hurt?” I ask. It’s a ridiculous question. Each one of us is shattered. Albert is grieving his mother, Gryphon his father, even if he might deny it. We had to leave Meryl, Eero, Lozen, and Oscar behind.
“I don’t see a ventilation system,” Albert says, anxiety tightening his voice. “This area wasn’t made for lingering.”
The four of us look at one another, then to the only path available to us—the one leading into the unknown. I’m overcome with both dread and sadness. We’ve been confined to Noah’s Valley for generations, and now, we have no choice but to leave. Our eyes meet again, and we exchange a look of silent agreement.
Then we turn our backs on everything we’ve ever called home.
70
Sal and Albert lead the way. Gryphon steadies me, and I start moving, my chest tight with unshed tears. Eero and Oscar might still be alive. Same with Lozen, Meryl, my gran, Aunt Florence, and Marie. I didn’t see any of them die. We may all meet again. I have to believe it.
We walk. And walk. And walk.
The tunnel stretches before us like a wound in the earth. Wooden support beams line the walls at regular intervals, ancient timber groaning beneath their weight. Our footsteps echo on rails that run along the ground, metal like the mining tracks in the history books, gleaming dully in the strange illumination. Those odd lights continue their steady progression along the walls, coming to life just ahead of us and dying behind us, as if the tunnel itself is guiding us forward. The air grows colder, carries new smells. Mossy, sharp.
The only sounds are the hollow thud of our footsteps and our labored breathing. The tunnel seems endless, stretching to infinity. Eventually time loses meaning. We could have been walking for hours or days.
And then, without warning, it ends.
The final lights flick on to reveal a door rising before us, a monolith of gleaming metal. No handle, no hinges, just a smooth silver-gray surface marked with strange symbols that seem to shift when I look at them directly. A red light pulses near its center like a dying heart.
“What’s on the other side?” Sal whispers.
None of us, not even Albert, has a guess.
At our approach, the door hisses open.
All our lives spent inside the Wall, and suddenly there’s an exit. Sal puts one hand on Albert’s shoulder and offers the other to me. I take it, grabbing Gryphon with my free hand. We enter the new world side by side.
71
Overhead are more stars than we’ve ever seen. They wheel above us in an endless black sea, breathtaking and overwhelming.
“By the Soil,” Sal whispers beside me, her fierce composure cracking as she takes in the vastness. No Wall. No boundaries. Just sky forever.
We stand at the edge of a clearing. It’s ringed by thick, dry underbrush, and beyond that, trees. They resemble our hardwoods but a click off, wide where they should be tall, their branches misshapen in the moonlight. The way their skeleton fingers reach skyward, I can’t tell if they’re dead or alive. The grass underfoot is wild, untamed, growing in defiant clumps between crumbling sheets of what look like stone roads.
Our footsteps sound liquid out here, both muffled and over-loud. Or maybe that’s just the blood pounding in my eardrums. I take a trembling breath. I’m not sure what to feel. Shock? Grief? Hope?
I force myself to turn around, to face the Wall that’s defined my entire existence. In the moonlight, it’s both more and less impressive, a massive curve of stone that stretches up into the starlit sky. And clinging to the surface, its body pulsing with an obscene, sickening rhythm, is the Verdant Beast.
On this side of the Wall, the monster is tinted completely violet. I can see straight through parts of its translucent flesh, to where dark shapes move within its digestive chambers, their forms still recognizably human. A hand presses against the membrane, fingers splayed like a final plea. My body lurches forward, but Sal’s arm snaps out, stopping me cold. She shakes her head once, her eyes two pools of sorrow. The Beast is too large, too hungry.
Something cracks open inside me then—not grief, but rage. Cold and sharp and absolute. The Verdant Beast has been built to consume. It will go on feeding, swallowing my friends and family one by one. But I will find a way to destroy it. I will save those trapped inside the Wall.
