CHAPTER TEN

Healing the Castle

I opened my eyes and, though I only felt an odd tightness in my heart, I could see the black hilt of the sword protruding from my chest. I moved to touch it and my fingers went straight through it. I rubbed my eyes. I could see it, I knew it was there, but I couldn’t touch it. Just as King Christian said, it wasn’t made from the one hundred and twenty-five elements I could control. It was made of something I couldn’t even touch.

I slid off the bed.

Aside from the sword, it was obvious the King of the Red Forest had been meddling with my body. When I put my weight on the floor and stood upright, a bunch of pale little balls in my nightgown fell to the floor. I bent over to see what they were. I picked one up and squished it between my finger and thumb. I yelped and dropped it. It was a wad of skin and fat that he had removed and let fall off. I shook out my nightie. There were a lot of them.

I yanked off my nightdress as I rushed to the bathroom to have a look at what he’d done. Looking at myself in the mirror, I saw the sword’s tip poking out of my back as well as sticking out of my chest.

Looking at the rest of my body, I realized quickly that I had never been that lean in my whole life. Removing my body fat had made my muscles visible. My hair was straighter than it had been before, and even though I had been lying in bed for an inestimable length of time, my hair wasn’t even ruffled. It fell in waves almost like it had a life of its own… or at least like it finally knew it was hair and was behaving accordingly instead of frizzing at everything.

Checking myself out, I thought of the attention to detail it would take in the Red Forest to instruct each line in my body. The adjustments I’d made myself had never been that substantial. I didn’t have that kind of power or a reckless spirit. The King of the Red Forest was a sculptor and I had been his art. Yet he had only been alone with my body for a few seconds.

I put on a new set of clothing (leggings and a long button-up-the-front shirt), then I started doing what King Christian had advised me to do. At first, I walked around and instructed individual stones to move by touching them, the same way I had begun giving my body commands in the Red Forest.

Soon, just as he told me, I found the corners of passageways. Too small to fit through, I saw patterns in the puzzle and started moving whole walls with a wave of my hand. As promised, the castle was more extensive than I had been led to believe and soon I was strolling through parts that had been hidden behind stone walls.

Walking through the rooms brought back bad memories because the castle was organized in the same way as the compound outside Edmonton. There were meeting rooms, and rooms like the ones I had just left, intended for imprisoning people who couldn’t die. I checked the spaces, curious as to whether or not there were more people like me locked away, but they were empty.

Finally, it seemed that I had explored everywhere and the only thing that was left was a circle on the floor with the stones arranged in a spiral. I knew what it was immediately. Those were the stone steps that led straight down through a tunnel in the mountain. If I could get them to open for me, I could go down.

It wasn’t difficult. I stepped on them with instructions for them to give way for me, and they immediately obeyed. As I descended downward, I only had fifteen stones to create a staircase that dove miles straight down into the earth. I had to make them move constantly, making stones I had already stepped on leap across the air to catch me as I took a fresh step.

I did that for a while until I realized how inefficient it was. I stopped on one stone and made it travel straight down like an elevator moving at a rate I could stand. The whole thing was nerve-wracking. For one thing, there was no light except the light from above me and it was disappearing fast, and I was falling down a tunnel that had no reasonable bottom. I saw my breath as vapor until the light was gone and I was plunged into complete darkness.

Uncomfortable, I whispered, “Is anyone there?”

The rock slab under my feet trembled and I felt like it was listening.

I rubbed my foot across the stone. Speaking aloud, I asked, “What kind of a rock are you?”

I heard it rumble. “It’s nice that you can talk to rocks.”

“Apparently, I can,” I gaped in surprise. “You heard me and obeyed me earlier. It’s only natural that I should be able to hear you too. You are a very white stone. Do you know what kind of stone you are?”

“I’m dolomite,” it whispered.

“Calcium magnesium carbonate,” I replied, understanding completely. “Did you know you could be a diamond someday?”

“Could I? I thought I was part of a staircase, but you abandoned the others.”

“Were they your family?”

“Rocks don’t have families. Neither do you.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I nodded my agreement before I realized the rock wouldn’t be able to see my nod and said, “I guess so.”

“I’m glad you chose me. It will be interesting to be with a creator.”

I scoffed. “I’m not a creator.”

It didn’t dispute that. Instead, it asked, “When we get to the bottom of the tunnel, may I stay with you?”

I thought about its suggestion. I had never had a pet rock. Previously, I thought things like that were stupid, but suddenly, it wasn’t stupid. It was awesome. “Do you have a name?”

“Dolomite,” it replied.

“But aren’t all rocks that are dolomite called dolomite?”

“There hasn’t been anyone around to name us all.”

I smiled. That had been tremendously cute. I chirped in reply, “What happens when you become a diamond? Will I call you Diamond then?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know how far it is to the bottom?” I asked.

“At this speed, it will be hours, if not days.”

“We could go faster…” I muttered uncertainly.

“Are you worried about falling?”

“A bit,” I admitted in the darkness.

“If you fell, you wouldn’t die. You probably wouldn’t even be hurt. If you’re as good at this as you appear, you’ll be able to slow yourself down before you hit the end of the tunnel. I’d catch you if you needed me to. If we free fall, I can fall faster than you.”

“Freefall through the dark? No thanks.” I shook my head even though the dolomite couldn’t see me doing so.

“Shall I help you?”

“Does helping me entail you toppling over so I fall for a bit before you catch me?” I asked suspiciously.

I felt something minor spread under my feet and for a moment I thought I was feeling the rock smile. “Yes. That is exactly what I had in mind. What are you so afraid of? You already know you won’t die. Are you worried about landing on something at the bottom and killing it? Again, that is completely impossible. There is nothing here you could kill. All the people here are immortal. Are you worried about falling on your face like an idiot?”

“Maybe,” I whispered. “Maybe I’m afraid of a lot of things.”

“Maybe it’s time to stop being afraid of anything.”

“Are you going to drop me?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have to do what I say?” I protested.

It hesitated before answering. “Yes. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love you.”

I felt both my eyebrows arch in the darkness. “Excuse me? Are you threatening me with tough love?”

“There’s no such thing as tough love. There’s only love. If you want my opinion, you should just drop.”

“Is that what the other people did who left the castle and took this tunnel? Just dropped?” I asked.

“Of course not. They were cowards. They did not have the power to awaken rock.”

“So, they couldn’t command every element?”

“Exactly. The first one anyone learns is calcium, and I’m not completely calcium, but I have enough of it in me for a novice to order me about.”

“You’re about a million times prettier than calcium,” I said out loud as I thought of the shiny white stone I was riding.

“How about if you fall a little way and then I catch you?”

I scratched my forehead irritably. I was about to get pushy and make the dolomite do what I said when suddenly I realized that was the wrong answer. I needed to listen to it and do what it suggested. It worked in the same way when I listened to the cells in my body when they told me better ways for reconstruction than what I thought of on my own. Being the one with the control didn’t make me not an idiot.

“Okay,” I said, and without further ado, it dropped me.

I yelped with surprise, but within a second, I had ordered the calcium in my bones the same way I’d ordered the dolomite and I was floating at roughly the same speed as before. I couldn’t see what happened to the dolomite, but sensed it below me, waiting for me. It caught me as promised.

“Do you see? You don’t even need me,” it murmured happily.

I clapped my hands together. “Okay. Let’s drop. Will you be able to slow down at the bottom on your own?”

“You haven’t said whether or not I can stay with you,” it reminded me.

I thought it over before I answered. “If I take you with me, you can’t be a stone in the staircase anymore,” I said. “You won’t fit in the staircase anymore because you’ll be a different shape, and you’ll have a different name. You’ll be my rock.”

“Yes! Please! All that!” it said.

I thought of the shape of Pricina’s pet bishop that she’d left in my room. I wanted something like that, except not a bishop. A bishop was not a good shape for sitting on and I wanted something functional. I wanted a rhuk like a stool. I went over what it did and what it was called in my mind, sending the instructions to the dolomite.

“I’m going to be called Rhuk, aren’t I?” it said, sounding pleased.

“Will you be okay with that?”

“Yes,” it murmured as it finished changing shape. “You can sit on me.”

I crouched down and felt its smooth surface in the darkness. “You are a much bigger rock than I thought you were. You’re the size of a chair.”

It was the shape of a rhuk, but with a few of the turrets on the top missing, so I could sit on it comfortably. The turrets were high enough to be armrests and a backrest. I sat down.

“This is better than falling like a maniac,” Rhuk said. “Hold on. Let’s speed up.”

I held onto the ridges and we fell with a rush of cold air.

When I finally arrived at the entrance to Nhagaspir, I was met by Christian and Brandon.

They watched me gently descend on my enormous white rhuk and looked at me like they’d never seen anything weirder in their entire lives. Maybe their expressions had more to do with the black sword still lodged in my chest than descending on a chess piece.

Judging from the scar still looped around Brandon’s throat, he couldn’t be very skilled.

When I was close enough, I leaped off Rhuk into Christian’s arms. Clasping him to my chest, I asked him, “Get your hands bloody yet?”

He stared at me in confusion with his tongue tied.