“Well, you may not know who you are, but apparently you were brought up in polite society,” Charlotte said sourly, her mood darkened by new suspicions about who he might be. “If you’re planning on sticking around, you’ll find girls here do a lot of things they aren’t meant to do.”
He simply turned his head in her direction, puzzled and waiting for an explanation. Charlotte’s answer was an unkind laugh. Perhaps she should have been more compassionate, but the consequences of revealing their hideout were too dangerous. And Birch was almost too clever with his inventions. She’d never been able to locate the false branch without effort, and delays could be very costly. The Rotpots might have been stopped by her mouse, but nothing was certain. A slowed Gatherer was still a threat.
“I . . . I . . .” Beside her the boy was stammering as if unsure whether to apologize.
“Hush,” she said, keeping her voice gentle, and he fell silent.
Her fingers brushed over a root with bark harder and colder than the others.
“Here it is.”
“Here’s what?” He waggled his head around pointlessly.
“I said hush.” Charlotte stifled laughter at the boy’s bobbing head, knowing it was cruel given his helpless state.
She found the latch on the underside of the thick root, and a compartment in the artificial wood popped open. Quickly turning the crank hidden within the compartment, Charlotte held her breath until the voice came crackling through.
“Verification?”
“Iphigenia,” Charlotte said with a little smile. Birch and his myths.
The boy drew a sharp breath. “Who is that? Who’s there?” He sounded genuinely afraid.
“It’s all right,” she whispered, and leaned closer to the voicebox. “And there are two of us, so you’ll need to open both channels.”
There was a long pause in which Charlotte’s heart began to beat heavily, once again making her question the decision to bring the strange boy with her.
“The basket will be waiting,” the voice confirmed, and a little relief seeped through her veins.
The pale boy was still twisting his neck, as if somehow doing so would enlighten him as to the origin of the voice despite his blindfold.
“What’s happening?” he asked, facing away from Charlotte. Rather than attempt an explanation, Charlotte grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the roaring falls.
As the pounding of water on rocks grew louder, the boy resisted Charlotte’s guidance for the first time.
“Stop! Please!” He jerked back, throwing her off balance.
“Don’t do that!” Charlotte whirled around and grabbed his arms. “We’re about to cross a narrow and quite slippery path. If you make me lose my footing, we’ll both be in the drink, and I don’t fancy a swim, no matter how hot the summer air may be.”
“Is it a river?” he asked. “Where are we?”
Charlotte couldn’t blame the boy for his questions, but she was close to losing her patience. Hadn’t she already done enough to help him? All she wanted was to get inside the Catacombs, where they would be hidden from any Gatherers that might still be combing the forest. What did Meg always say when she was fighting with Ash?
Meg’s warm voice slipped into Charlotte’s mind. Try to see it from his point of view. It’s a horrible burden, Lottie. The weight of leadership.
Charlotte looked at the pale boy, frowning. His burden wasn’t that of her brother’s—a responsibility for a ramshackle group aged five to seventeen—but this boy bore the weight of fear and, at the moment, blindness. Both of which must be awful to contend with. With that in mind, Charlotte said, “I’m taking you to a hiding place beneath the falls. I promise it’s safe. The machines won’t find us there. I can’t tell you more.”
The boy tilted his head toward the sound of her voice. He groped the air until he found her hands.
“Okay.”
She smiled, though he couldn’t see it, and drew him over the moss-covered rocks that paved the way to the falls. As they came closer, the spray from the falls dampened their clothing and their hair. Charlotte was grateful the boy had decided to trust her and ask no further questions because at this point she would have had to shout to be heard.
When they passed beneath the torrent of water, the air shimmered as the native moss gave way to the bioluminescent variety Birch had cultivated to light the pathway into the Catacombs.
Charlotte wished she could remove the boy’s blindfold. Entering the passageway that led into the Catacombs delighted her each time she returned. Not only because it meant she was almost home, but also because the glowing jade moss gave light that was welcoming. Seeing it might ease the boy’s mind, reassuring him that she led him to a place of safety rather than danger.
She turned left, taking them into a narrow side passage that at first glance would have appeared to be nothing more than a shadow cast by the tumbling cascade. Within the twisting cavern, the shimmering green moss forfeited its place to mounds of fungus. Their long stems and umbrella-like tops glowed blue instead of green, throwing the cavern into a perpetual twilight.
The boy remained silent, but from the way he gripped her fingers, Charlotte knew his fear hadn’t abated.
“We’re almost there,” she whispered and squeezed his hand, garnering a weak smile from him.
The passage abruptly opened up to a massive cavern—the place where the falls hid its priceless treasure: a refuge, one of the only sites hidden from the far-seeing eyes of the Empire. While from the outside the falls appeared to cover a solid rock base, several meters beneath the cascade, the earth opened into a maze of caves. Some were narrow tunnels like the one from which they’d just emerged. Others were enormous open spaces, large enough to house a dirigible. Far below them, the surface of an underground lake rippled with the current that tugged it into an underground river. A dark twin that snaked beneath earth and stone to meet its aboveground counterpart some two leagues past the falls.
They were standing on a platform. Smooth stone reinforced by iron bracings and a brass railing that featured a hinged gate. On the other side of the gate, as had been promised, the basket was waiting, dangling from a long iron chain that stretched up until it disappeared into a rock shelf high above them. The lift resembled a birdcage more than a basket. Charlotte opened the gate and the basket door, pushing the boy inside and following him after she’d secured the gate once more. The basket swung under their weight, and the boy gripped the brass weave that held them.