“So you said.” I hear movement, like she’s rummaging in her purse. “I can’t get you out with magic, but I do have this.” Her face is illuminated by a tiny flashlight, the kind you attach to your keys. “Lucky I was holding my purse when you put on the ring.”
“Not so lucky. You’re stuck with me because I put on the ring when I was trapped.”
She shrugs. “It has some glitches, I guess. But we shouldn’t waste time talking about that. We need to find a way out. Where are we anyway?”
“Zalkenbourg. It’s in Europe, I guess. A witch tricked me into using my magic cloak to bring her here.”
“Sorry I asked.” She shines the flashlight. It’s barely enough of a glow to illuminate a foot of wall, but it does its job. The floor is dirt, the walls of concrete. Shiny black bugs scurry away. No door. Meg slides the light to the ceiling.
Jackpot.
A trapdoor. I rush over to it, but even when I stand on my toes, it’s too high, almost a foot above my head.
“Maybe if you get on my back, you could reach it,” I say.
“But how would you get out?”
“You could go get help.” Even as I say it, I know I’m lying. We’re in a country I can’t even spell, much less speak the language. But I know they’re not looking for Meg. She wasn’t the one who decided to risk her life for this stupid quest. She also wasn’t the one who let the witch use her cloak. So she shouldn’t get killed by Siegfried for my mistakes.
I crouch low so she can climb on my back. When she’s up, I shine the flashlight onto the trapdoor and walk, piggybacking her. She pushes it and, to my surprise, it gives.
“Can you make it?” I ask as something scurries across my foot.
She reaches up. “I think so. But wait a sec.”
“What?”
“Give me my ring back.”
If that doesn’t beat all. She’s leaving me here, to die in Europe, and she wants to make sure I don’t take her ring with me. But I say, “Sure. I guess it’s an heirloom, right?”
“It does come in handy sometimes.”
I tug it off my finger and hand it up to her. “Hurry. You’re getting heavy.”
She takes it, then straightens herself on my shoulders to reach the door. I try to hold the light steady, though my hand is shaking and my back aches. Finally, Meg pushes up the trapdoor. She looks out, and I feel air. Real outside air, filling my lungs. I breathe in deep.
“Middle of nowhere,” Meg says, looking out.
“Can you get up?” I turn off the flashlight, but there’s still some light from the full moon, peering out through tall pines.
“I think so.” She swings first one, then the other elbow onto the ground above, then pulls herself up. “Dirt. And pine needles. We’re outside.”
“At least you are.”
She steps on my shoulder.
“Ouch!” I say as her foot lands on my cheek.
“Sorry.” The foot comes back down onto my shoulder. Meg pushes herself out. “Made it. Now you.”
“Huh?”
She reaches down for me. “I’ll pull you out.”
I draw in a hard breath. I should have known Meg wouldn’t ditch me here. But when I reach up so she can pull me out, she starts to backslide into the hole. I let go. “Get farther back, maybe.”
The next time, I slip from her grip and onto the floor. A cockroach or beetle or some kind of Zalkenbourgian bug skitters across my hand. It’s huge, and it makes me think of Siegfried, coming here, maybe soon. Sieglinde had the cloak after all. She only had to find him and bring him back. If he gets here and sees Meg, she’ll be dead meat too.
I make a decision. “You should go.”
“And leave you here? I don’t think so.”
“I’m the one who got into this mess. You shouldn’t pay for it.”
“But maybe I could—”
I don’t stand up. “Look, I’ve got a plan. When they get here, they’ll have the cloak, a magic cloak that transports you wherever you want to go. Now that I’ve got your flashlight, I’ll be able to see them. I’ll sneak up in the dark, turn on the light, and grab the cloak. So I’ll wish to be someplace impossible to guess, like the football stadium, and then I’ll be there. I’ll hide out a while. They’ll never find me.”
“Oookayy.” I can tell she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t get it about the cloak. “Look, I’ll find someone who speaks English, and I’ll bring them back for you.”
“Okay.” I think how unlikely this is, if the witch is working for the king. But I say, “You need to leave now. Please, Meg, don’t let me be responsible for you getting hurt.”
“I’ll find someone.”
“You’ve got a credit card in your purse, right? For emergencies? You can buy a ticket home. And then, you can tell my mother what happened to me, so she won’t wonder like with my dad.”
She draws in a breath. “Oh, Johnny.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’ll get back somehow.”
I think I hear a sniff. “I don’t know.”
“I do.” I make a decision. I look away from Meg’s moonlit face. Before I chicken out, I say, “Go away, Meg. They could be back any second, without warning. Just shut the door behind you so they won’t know you were here. I’m not talking anymore.”
I walk away, and a minute later, I hear the trapdoor thump closed.
I’m alone again, in the dark, and now it’s worse because Meg was here and now she isn’t. There’s nothing to do but think about dying. You don’t usually think about that. I mean, everyone knows they’re going to die eventually. But not any time soon. The most enormous bug so far walks across my hand. I don’t do anything. What does it matter?
Chapter 25
We shouldn’t have worried about Sieglinde catching us. She takes a long time, long enough for me to sit in the corner in the dark, thinking about all the things I’ve never done: I’ve never been on a sports team at school. I’ve never traveled to another country, not even Canada. I’ve never been in love.
I think of Meg in some dark, unknown countryside. All I know is, there were pine trees, lots of them. Lots of needles on the ground too, probably. Was she wearing shoes? Amazingly, I didn’t even notice. I hope she had on sneakers, but I bet she was wearing flip-flops. Sometimes, shoes can make the difference between life and death.
Why didn’t I loan Meg my shoes?
I don’t want Meg to die. I want her to tell my mother what happened, so my mother won’t spend the rest of her life looking for me.
She will anyway.
Then, I hear voices.
“Is dark in here,” a man’s voice says. “Did you bring a candle?”
“No.” Sieglinde’s voice. “He vill not be hard to find, though.”
“Ve could go back and get vun.”
“No! Do you not ever vant to finish this? I begin to think you lost him on purpose!”
“No, Mama, I did not. He—”
“Enough excuses!”
Their voices are getting closer. I’ve been standing in the corner, but now, I slide my shoes off and take one silent step closer. I still have Meg’s flashlight in my hand.