I didn’t tell Fellen about listening to the winds right away. It took enough effort just get us both up and walking again. Taking the time to rest might have recovered some of our strength, but the cold stone floor had left us stiff and sore. I was glad I pushed for the break though. Fellen was steadier as we moved forward and my legs didn’t threaten to give out right away with every step.
We didn’t catch up to the shamble man before we reached the first split in the path. Now that we knew there was an underground section to Flickermark, it didn’t surprise me that there would be a second maze. After all, the entire premise of the trial was about the Beloved finding the correct path to the Grove. What was surprising was the chamber that connected the four different paths you could take.
We didn’t need Fellen’s flickers of flame to see again.
Because in the middle of the small chamber was another statue of the goddess holding a glowing blue disk. We both tried to scramble back into a bow when we first caught sight of it before we fell into a heap at its feet. That was when Fellen noticed that the statue was made out the same black glass as the hands and statue at Flickermark’s entrance, and I realized I didn’t feel the same pressure that I felt at the goddess’s procession. Fellen and I stayed wary—and a bit awed—as we picked ourselves up and took in the statue and its chamber.
The disk the statue was cradling in one arm was a glowing piece of ice, semi-opaque, and perfectly cut into an oval. A single word had been carved into the disk’s center and it took me several long moments to puzzle through its simpler, more archaic form: Pick. The goddess statue itself was also worthy of note. Every part of the statue’s body language drew your eye to a different path.
Her stance, her shoulders and feet, pointed to the entrance directly to our left. The entrance was wide and low, barely high enough to clear our heads, and surrounded by tree roots made out of smooth stone. The roots stopped just short of the statue’s bare feet. She looked past that entrance though, to the other one on the left. We had to shift to see past the tree roots before we saw that entrance was blocked by closed double doors. The doors were plain and, from what we could see, they didn’t have any handles.
Opposite of the closed path, the goddess’s hair tumbled in an exaggerated length and fashion across the floor before curving back up to frame the entrance to a path that seemed to disappear into the ceiling. The statue’s free hand reached back toward the entrance immediately to our right. That path looked more like a jagged crack in the wall, full of shadow, and had a downward angle.
Fellen found her voice first. She pointed to the character on the disk. “Can you read it?”
I gestured to the different paths. “All it says is ‘pick’.”
Fellen slumped. “Are you sure you didn’t get it wrong?”
“Yes, I’m sure!”
“It’s not very helpful.”
“Well, I doubt the goddess was trying to be helpful!”
“I know that!” Fellen glared at me. “But we can’t exactly go fishing down every one, and the longer we take the more likely it is we won’t catch up to the shamble man! Are we just supposed to pick one and hope for the best? That hasn’t exactly gone well so far!”
I shook my head. “We can try something else first. While you were asleep I remembered about the Beloved’s first trial and…” I laid out everything I had theorized about listening to the winds to her before ending my speech, “…I know you don’t want to waste time, but waiting for a breath of wind and feeling which way it blows is our best chance about figuring out which way to go. If it doesn’t work then we can still take the time to figure out which path we think is best.”
Fellen considered our options before giving in. “We can wait while we figure out which way to go. If we happen to feel a breeze and can tell which way it takes, then that’s better than nothing.” She pointed to the crack in the wall. “But I don’t want to go downward. There’s still that abyss below us.”
I nodded and we sat while we worked through which way would be best. I didn’t want to take the path to our right either. It was too…enclosed. I did my best to keep from looking at it, so I wouldn’t feel the familiar bands tightening around my throat and chest. I also didn’t want to take the path that led up into the ceiling. Given all we’d seen underground, I doubted we would be able to find the entrance to the Statue Garden if we went back above—and the idea of climbing the goddess’s hair, even if it was only statue, to reach the entrance was unsettling. Which left us with the two paths on the left, one of which was blocked unless we figured out how to open the doors. Fellen thought we should take the tree path because the Beloved gained the ability to walk through their shadows during this trial, but I doubted it would be so simple.
My gaze kept going back to the ice disk. Something about it bothered me. The goddess wasn’t one to do something for no reason, but given the way the room was laid out there wasn’t really a need for Her to tell the Beloved to pick a path. And the ice was clearly a callback to the first trial. There was too much significance in that and the way the disk was being cradled against the statue’s chest for it to mean nothing.
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I got up and began to examine the statue, but after respectfully inspecting every inch of the black glass I could see without climbing on it, I didn’t find anything new. So, I turned to Fellen.
“Why do you think the goddess had ‘pick’ written on the disk?”
Fellen sighed and gestured to the four paths.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but why would She need to tell the Beloved to do that? That’s what doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe She wanted to remind her of the choice she had to make during the first trial?” Fellen shrugged. “Maybe all the paths lead to the Statue Garden, but they either have a reward or punishment and She was telling the Beloved she had to pick between them.”
I waved Fellen’s second option away. It had the same problems with it as our current situation. But the first…
“The goddess had her make a lot of choices, and they’re all bound up in the Question of Ice. We can’t know what they are unless we also take the trial—which is obviously impossible right now.”
“We know the biggest decisions She had Her Beloved make: leave or stay, try to prove yourself or die, her blood or everyone else’s. Maybe—” Fellen cut herself off as a gust of wind brushed her hair against her cheek.
We met each other’s gaze for a couple heart beats before I demanded, “Which way?”
She gestured toward the statue and the ceiling entrance behind it. “That way.”
“Are you sure?”
She gave me the same annoyed look I had given her earlier. “Yes!” She didn’t looked too thrilled at the thought of climbing the statue’s hair either. “So it’s that one?”
I ground my teeth. That answer didn’t feel right. “Fellen, what were you going to say before the wind blew?”
“I thought we could try offering our blood like she did. At least as a sign of respect. It feels odd to leave a statue of the goddess without doing anything.”
Everything clicked into place.
All the goddess’s questions Fellen mentioned drove toward the same point: pick the goddess or you pick wrong. All or nothing. And during the Question of Ice the Beloved had responded by breaking off a shard of ice, dragging it across her forearm, and declaring that her blood, her life, was the goddess’s to take while the long cut on her arm bled into the snow. Her people had been quick to follow her in the act and She accepted the act of fealty and respect.
I turned back toward the statue and pulled my prayer needle from its place in my belt before using it to cut a thin line on my thigh. Tucking the prayer needle away, I smeared the welling blood across my hand and pressed it to the ice.
Immediately, there was a very soft grinding noise as the blank wall between the two far entrances slid open. Fellen and I shared another wide eyed look. Then Fellen quickly got up and offered her own blood to the statue, but nothing changed.
She turned to me. “How did you figure it out?”
I gave her a small smile. I could let her have some of the success. “You helped.”
She stared at me. “Are you okay?”
I ignored that question in favor of doing what I could to pull her toward the new entrance. “Let’s go.”
We went. I did explain to her how I figured out what to do as we walked, so that she would stop bugging me. Fellen was pretty proud of herself after that, but after giving me a sidelong glance declared that the ‘competition of the branching paths room’ was a draw. Part of me wanted to argue, but I decided to save my energy for walking instead.
The path we were on did start to incline after awhile, but it was a more gradual incline than what the hair path seemed to be. There were also more branching paths, but after working our way through the entrance room Fellen was more willing to wait for a breeze. She didn’t want to get hopelessly lost anymore than I did.
The wind became stronger and more frequent the further we went until all we had to do at an intersection was wait for a couple moments to double check which way our hair was blowing. I didn’t notice when the tunnel started to lighten from a pitch black to a deep blue. I was too focused on staying upright and putting one foot in front of another at that point.
Fellen did.
She even dropped her skirt from her hip to point. “Look!”
The excitement in her voice pulled my gaze up to see the change. It was then that I noticed the air also tasted fresher. We grinned at each other and hurried forward as fast we could. When we saw the lip of the exit Fellen gasped out a relieved laugh. When we saw the night sky, the real night sky, my legs gave out and Fellen and I both tumbled to the ground. We landed on grass—not stone or dirt, but blessedly soft grass.
I’m not sure how long we lay there catching our breath and losing it again as we cried and laughed. We had made it out of Flickermark and back aboveground! We had made it to the Statue Garden. There was no other explanation for the lack of narrow ravines and wide view of the sky. We also recognized the smooth high walls of the depression the Statue Garden was situated in from when we had to skirt around them to reach Grislander’s Maw.
Nevertheless, it took us much longer than it should have to realize what it meant to reach the Statue Garden. We came to the realization at the same time as we helped each other sit upright and finally took a proper look at the area around us.
A few feet behind was the plain entrance to the underground tunnels set into the high cliff face. To our sides was open air and grass. And in front of us were rows upon circular rows of shamble men. Still as statues, not even twitching to acknowledge all the noise we made, but still so many that they blocked our view of the bottom part of the Grove. Every shamble man faced toward the stand of huge trees, but according to the myths all it would take was a single touch from a single shamble man to give you their curse.
Fellen swallowed audibly when she noticed what I had.
There was only one path through them, and it was about as wide as the natural rock bridge that started this whole mess.