The words worked as a key when a passageway that hadn’t been there a second before opened before her eyes. Alissa stared at it; the glimpse of the canyons, though fleeting, was overwhelming.
“Good luck, little person,” the guardians spoke at last before pushing Alissa into the fissures and closing the door behind her.
Chapter 9
Canyons and Chaos
The world spun around her. She stretched her hand forward, touching a surface that could be harsh or soft, moist or dry—she could not tell precisely. Breathing in as an attempt to calm herself down caused a scent she couldn’t quite process to invade her nostrils, and the lingering taste on her tongue was completely new to her. Her eyes tried to absorb the sights around her, but a thick fog blurred everything. Her wrist was bleeding, but she didn’t know why. Her senses were completely scrambled, and the memory of how she got there was gone.
When the mist finally settled down and the hazy view was replaced by a sight worthy of heaven, Alissa let out a gasp.This is definitely not Bryniard,she thought. But even as her brain fought the amnesiac effect of the canyons, her memory seemed to stubbornly slip through her fingers, just like time itself.
This place could have been the scene of a fairy tale except for the slightly eerie atmosphere that consistently brought the hairs on her arms to stand. The path Alissa walked was narrow, made by a fissure that set the towery walls of the dark-stoned canyons apart, the walls so high above they almost entirely blocked the sky from view. Both sides of the canyons were cloaked in moss, and trickles of water descended in gentle currents. As she walkedfurther, the roaring silence amplified the echo of her steps amid the vastness of the place.
Alissa walked and walked and walked, hoping to find a way out, but the entire extent of the canyon passageway looked the same; empty and haunted. Her heart thundered under her rib cage when disastrous scenarios of how she could have ended up there all alone invaded her mind.
Could they all be gone? Freyah, Dhalia?
The fear of having lost everyone she loved paralyzed her legs for a moment. Unable to walk, Alissa leaned against the canyon walls and closed her eyes. That’s when she heard them. The voices of everyone she had ever loved in life call her name.
“Alissa,”she heard her mother whisper a few steps ahead. Rushing to find her, she learned her mother was not there.
Her father was next.“Alissa, come here, my child.”All of a sudden, she was once again a little girl, hoping to see her father’s face, but, like her mother, he was not there.
She heard her best friend, her sister of the heart.“C’mon, Lissa, hurry up.”She did, she started running, the sharp edges of the canyon walls opening small cuts on her arms as she ran along the narrow path.
When she heard her daughter call for her,“Mommy, help me!”she lost her mind. The canyon carried her scream in agonizing echoes across the surface. But unlike the others, Dhalia’s apparition was there smiling at her, the rag doll in her arms.
Relief flooded her veins as she rushed to hold her child, but at a second glance, the pinch in her stomach became undeniable. The nagging feeling that something was wrong with her daughter stuck to her skin.
Only when she noticed the oversized black dress the girl was wearing, the same one she wore on service days, did she remember everything: the last funeral they attended, SenectusSubita, the glowing threads that should have been floating around her child, the reason she had come all this way. She wanted so hard to believe this was the truth, that Dhalia was now miraculously cured and the threads were gone, that her daughter was safe. But nothing in Alissa’s life had been easy. Why would this be?
“You are not real.” Her voice wobbled, and when the girl she loved more than anything in this world disappeared from sight, she realized she stood at the end of the canyon’s passageways where she reached a dead end.
For a moment, nothing happened, and she almost let desperation reach the surface of her being as the idea of being stuck there seemed more of a reality. But when she turned around, she saw a new face, one she did not recognize.
The woman looked no older than twenty years of age, her whitish hair complementing the light blue of her eyes. Alissa’s first thought was that the girl was an angel, but when she spoke, she knew it was only another of the canyon’s illusions, because the voice that came from her lips could have belonged to a monster.
The ghost of the young woman spoke in a deep, somber tone, “Listen carefully, visitor, for I will answer the question pounding from your heart only once.” And as if Alissa’s heart and the ears of the ghost spoke a language of their own, she recited her words before Alissa could say anything.
“Where secrets lie and truths unfold, hear my words before your girl turns cold. The key to your prayer in Golheim will be. Now, if you wish to live, you’d better run from here.”
Alissa’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Right. Thank you? But I don’t understand,” she said. Only silence came in return, blue eyes coldly staring at her.
“What do you mean by Golheim?” she asked, approaching the ghost when a thundering sound from the canyons startledher. “Could you repeat it, please?” Alissa pleaded as the loud noise became deafening and the ground shook in synchrony.
She quickly shook her head, concerned by the way the walls were trembling and the ground vibrating beneath her. She replayed the woman’s verse in her mind. She might not have yet figured out the mention of Golheim, but when the walls started closing in behind her, she understood the implied urgency to leave the place.
Alissa ran like she had never run before, the walls sealing the passageway behind her. Her clothes were shredded by the narrow path she struggled to cross, new gashes splitting across her skin. The sword she carried with her was so heavy that it slowed her down. Still, she ran as fast as she could, her lungs burning as she pushed herself beyond what her body could handle, but the torturous path made it seem impossible to reach the end of the road.
When she finally reached the entrance she had used, Alissa discovered it was gone—another dead end. “No,” she gasped, glancing back to see death approaching. She desperately pounded the stone, crying in despair, begging anyone who could hear to release her.
Blood still flowed from the fresh cut that gained her access to this place; it reached the stone where the entrance should have been, staining the path it drew. At the touch of her blood, the cave door swung open, revealing her friend waiting inside. Alissa slipped through the doorway just in time. The canyon walls slammed shut behind her, and the fissure vanished into extinction.
She bent over, her hands on her knees, taking a moment to catch her breath. “Well, that wasn’t very helpful.”
Alissa was struck by a hug in her friend’s gentle arms. “It took you so long,” Freyah said, concerned. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” She sighed. “Don’t be so dramatic, Frey. I was there for about an hour.”