CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The North Iron Room

All dressed, we stepped into the bedroom. The first thing I saw was Rhuk sitting by the door. It had been waiting for us.

“Christian,” I said, tugging on his sleeve. “This is Rhuk. One part of it is my earring and this is the other part.”

Rhuk hadn’t moved and for all the world, it looked like I was introducing Christian to a very ornate chair, but a chair nonetheless.

Christian looked at it and then back to me. “You sculpted it?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. It’s very beautiful. Am I supposed to speak to it?” he asked casually.

“Can you hear me?” Rhuk attempted.

Christian made no sign that he could hear the chess piece.

“Um,” I said, thinking of ways to reduce the awkwardness. “I can hear it talk to me. It’s very helpful. It’s trying to talk to you too, but it seems like you can’t hear it.”

He just stared blankly.

“Do you want to ride it?” I offered.

“I suppose any mad thing is possible here.” He straightened and headed toward the door.

I patted my thigh in a silent command for Rhuk to come along with us and ignored Christian’s snobbery.

“You can’t mean to bring your pet rock with us while we’re on the run. It’s huge,” he said, eying the moving rock wearily.

I rolled my eyes. “Relax. My pet rock has charms beyond your wildest dreams. It doesn’t bark or mew. It doesn’t shed, scratch up the furniture, pee, or poop. It doesn’t need to be fed and if you want it to bend reality, it can do that really well.”

Christian held the door to the bedroom open for Rhuk and watched it as it hopped down the steps making the echoing sounds of someone winning at chess.

I cocked my head to the side. “Tell me you don’t love it.”

“It is very cute,” he conceded. “I’m just unhappy about being here, and I just emerged from a prison where they tortured me for months. Yet this place still makes me unhappy, even with you here. It’s just one prison for another.”

He followed Rhuk down the stairs and into an ornate hallway with fine carpets, wallpapers, and molding. I chased after him and matched his pace.

It was quiet in the hall as Christian slowed down. He was looking up at his ceiling, hearing the sounds of distant instruments, like the unnatural beauty meant something more to him than it did to me.

“Do you remember this place?” I asked him.

He rested his hand against a column. Then he pressed his ear against it. “They’re moving the village, spinning it on its axis.”

“You can hear that?”

He nodded and crushed his thumb to his forehead. “We need to leave. Can your pet rock tell us where we can find Brandon?”

I tapped my earring and was about to issue Rhuk a command when it whispered in my ear. “Brandon is talking to Pricina. He knows Christian wants to find him. He’s hiding. Christian is right. They’ve been manipulating the way the village is organized. Brandon wants Christian to see the North Iron Room. Once that has been accomplished, he’ll return his finger.”

“Is that the price for his finger Christian was talking about?”

“From what Brandon is telling Pricina, I guess so.”

I sighed, hooked my arm around Christian’s, and started off down the hall. Tugging him along with me, I explained that he had been right and that the price had been set. If he saw the North Iron Room, Brandon would give him back his finger and we could leave.

“I’ve never been to the North Iron Room before,” I said cheerfully. “I went to the Ocean Room. That was very interesting. Hopefully, this will be interesting too.”

“What do they do in the North Iron Room?”

“From what I’ve been told, you were the only one who could use it. It was used for manipulating the molten iron core of the world and thus--”

“The magnetic poles,” he finished, whispers of his memories finally forming into words.

“It’s up ahead,” Rhuk said, turning to show us the way.

The North Iron Room, like the Ocean Room, was a cave. The only light in the room came from the floor. Large stone slabs made up the flooring, and red light like lava came up between the cracks and lit the room in a scarlet glow. At once, I was confused. If the village moved, how would we safely be able to see lava without huge messes happening everywhere? Looking closer at the matter, I saw that we were not seeing actual lava. We were seeing a trick. Just like the Ocean Room did not contain an ocean, this room did not contain a passage to the Earth’s volcanic veins. However, there was a particle line for relaying instructions, so in a way, there was.

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Since the room was nothing but cardinal light and charcoal shadow, it was difficult at first to see exactly what was in the room. As we moved further in, I felt hot breezes like I had in the Red Forest when I approached Christian’s heart. Finally, I saw the iron lung-like room positioned deep inside the cave. It was red like an antique fire engine. It must have been painted that color hundreds of years ago. Now the red paint looked baked, cracked and dry, like blood.

At the door, there was a figure. I heard him before I saw him. It was a person banging their fists against the door to the core of the Iron Room. The low moaning he emitted suggested it was a man, or once it had been.

“Do you know who that is?” Christian asked me.

I shook my head negatively. “I have only met three people down here.”

Christian twisted his head, searching for recognition.

We couldn’t see a face, for it appeared that the man had a bag over his head. The height and build suggested strength, though anything else about him was difficult to pinpoint with his head covered.

“I forget his name,” Christian said, snapping his fingers in rapid succession. “He was the worst. Orli? No. It was Orlen. On the surface, after I left, wherever I was, he was always hunting me down using an incredibly beautiful woman for me to fall in love with as bait. He promised those women untold riches and eternal life if they could get me to fall in love with them. They never loved me. They only loved whatever he’d promised them. When he stopped sending women, I thought he’d died, or he’d be captured by someone even greedier than he had been.”

“You said you didn’t know any other people who were blocked from death besides Brandon.”

Christian gave me a flirty smile. “If that guy is who I think he is, I last saw him before World War II. I thought he was dead. I hoped all these people were dead.”

“Why?”

“They are the lowest quality immortals heaven has ever seen. This project failed. I don’t remember how or why. I only remember that it failed. It failed. I failed them. I had to leave this Iron Room and if they still haven’t been able to accomplish what I couldn’t, they never will. This place used to be crawling with people. I remember that. They’re dead and this place has become a tomb. Even my closet is a tomb apparently,” he said grouchily. He took two steps forward. “Have I come far enough to satisfy Brandon or do I have to pry that… person off the front door and go inside?”

“I don’t know, but I’d guess they want you to go inside,” I said.

“What Brandon wants is obvious. He wants to show me this Iron Room to see if I can control it again and he wants me to see this person to make me feel responsible for his condition.”

I hesitated as Christian stepped ahead of me to get a better look at the man, Orlen.

Christian approached him and said his name, but the man did not notice.

“Christian,” I called. “He’s crazy. Whoever he was before, now he’s one of the immortals who lost his mind trying to control the poles. You have to leave him alone.”

“Do I? I want to see what’s become of him.” Christian put his hand on the bag and began lifting it.

The tiles in the floor started jiggling. They weren’t talking to Rhuk. They were talking directly to me.

“Don’t take off the bag!” I called in alarm.

Christian paused. “Why not?”

“The floor tiles say taking it off would be bad.”

Christian looked at me incredulously and then at the floor tiles—hexagons and pentagons which had stopped trembling under his gaze. “Am I supposed to take advice from floor tiles?”

I put my hands out feebly. “I have never known floor tiles to be wrong.”

He laughed, before straightening and saying with all seriousness, “I actually do need to see this.”

I couldn’t say another word before Christian snatched the bag off Orlen’s head. The man had taken a few steps away from the iron sphere in the center of the room and caught a good ray of red light. Looking at his face, it was hard to look at him for long enough to understand what I saw. My impulse was to hide my face and run from the room. Christian had to do what he had to do, but did I have to stand by and watch? I thought no. I was about to turn away when the grotesque figure in front of me suddenly started making sense.

Orlen’s hair was not growing out of his head like it was supposed to. It was growing out of his cheeks, under his eyes. It was disconcerting seeing hair grow out in a line under his milky eyes until I realized his eyebrows had moved. They were now growing below his eyes. It was easier to look at as soon as I understood it. His face was more disfigured further down. His teeth were growing out of the sides of his nose and unless I was completely confused, his jaw was upside down, so his bottom teeth were wagging against his throat. Whatever was wrong with him, his eyes were not flawed and he recognized Christian.

“Loooorrrdddd,” he gurgled.

I pursed my lips and strode up to the two of them. Allowing my tongue to bite, I explained, “This is what happens when someone who doesn’t know enough tries to control the force of the whole world. He tried to swap the poles himself and concentrated so hard on making down up that he unintentionally reordered things in the Red Forest, and turned himself upside down. Put the bag back on his head.”

Christian did as he was told. “And you don’t think that will happen to us?”

I sat on Rhuk like it was my throne and started levitating toward the exit. “If I tried to do it today, by myself? No, I doubt that would happen, but if I tried to do it every day for a decade? Maybe. From what I understand, it is not a one-person job, which is why you were never able to do it by yourself. You need someone to control the South Pole. Do you remember where you hid the other Iron Room?”

Christian opened his mouth to tell me that he didn’t know where it was, but he never finished.

“Dddaaaaammmmooonnnn!” Orlen called. He’d remembered Christian’s name.

I turned around to see him pull the bag from his head and start after us. At first, it was a slow amble and I did not bother to increase my speed on Rhuk, thinking the fallen god wouldn’t be able to catch up to us. I turned my attention forward, only to see Christian suddenly sprint past me at top speed. I stole a glance over my shoulder and in the motion, I accidentally kicked Rhuk, who thought that was an indication that I wanted to go faster. It was a good thing Rhuk reacted that way as Orlen almost caught the collar of my dress.

I came up beside sprinting Christian, putting on speed.

“Can I ride on that thing too? I’m pretty sure Orlen can run as fast as I can.”

“Jump on my lap,” I urged. “If you can.”

He could not. He gave it a few running leaps before abandoning it. With Orlen still hot on our trail, Christian made one final attempt to join me on Rhuk. He ended up propping his feet on the molding at the bottom of Rhuk’s cylinder and holding onto the ridges of Rhuk’s crown.

Taking the turns swiftly and holding on tightly, we were soon back in Christian’s room. We shut the door tightly and locked it. Except now, Orlen wasn’t standing outside the North Iron Room crying and beating his fists against the door. He was standing outside our bedroom wailing and kicking.

“I guess we can stay here a little longer,” I said with mock cheer.