The Dragonfly in the Tower

8. The Heart of the Tower

Sharon studied the board before her.

We know the enemy has units in the north. Did he cluster tham all here? Or has he moved south?

“E20,” she declared confidently.

Ilya’s face fell, then he covertly hid his head behind his board, making suspicious plastic clicking noises.

“Ilya! Don’t cheat!”

“Can anyone prove I just cheated?” he countered smartly.

“So… that’s a yes?” said Sharon, already slotting in the red counter for a hit on her Battleship board.

She looked out the window. Today was warming up, just like it had been for the stretch of the last few days. Sharon wanted to go relax in the shade, but by the time Sharon was walking downstairs to the library Ilya had already set the board game up by his favorite spot, the window.

Ilya, Sharon thought, was starting to look even healthier than her. His eyes were glowing and he even had a light tan on his skin. He had gained some weight, which was good, because he doesn’t just look like he’ll fall over like a leaf in the wind . But he was still weak at times, which made Sharon concerned for his health.

Nearly a month had passed since that day in the west end of the tower.

And I haven’t been back since…

She remembered that night, but in muzzy, high color fragments, like if the feelings had been stolen from her heart and painted in vibrant, fevered colors.

“No, I’m going forward,” Sharon said. She tried to sit up but she was so weak she fell back to the chaise on her first attempt.

“No! No! You can’t! I won’t let you!” Ilya’s face, previously lit up with happiness, now turned with shocking speed into an ugly bawl.

He knelt by her side and beat the arm of the chaise. “I won’t let you! I won’t!”

“Calm down, Ilya,” Sharon said, a bit shocked at his outburst.

He curled up in a ball and began to wail.

Sharon shot Rainer a look full of meaning, then they both helped him up. He calmed down considerably as Sharon walked with him, hand in hand, back to the marble platform to ascend back to the library.

The look Sharon had shared with Rainer said this:

I’m coming back. No matter what.

But, deep in her heart, as she supported Ilya who was now out of breath from crying, Sharon knew she didn’t want to go back.

She didn’t want to see the dead bodies. She had never seen another person before Rainer, much less a dead person. She didn’t want to see the waxy skin, looking cold as marble. She didn’t want to see four dove heads, she didn’t want to see the fine, precise stitching, the thread holding the dove heads to the torsos, keeping them from rolling onto the floor. She didn’t want to be in that cursed room where they had been electrocuted, the room where they had been given a gruesome surgery.

The first morning after, she had descended the banister, intending to return straightaway to the gruesome lair she had discovered.

Dracrys led the way like a tiny, glowing marshal.

But Ilya was there first. He must have moved his mattress and pillows and other bedthings in the middle of the night, and when Sharon came he wailed again, and made such a scene that Sharon didn’t feel like she could return.

And anyway, I have tomorrow , she thought. Tomorrow I can go and unlock the key to the lair. I have a feeling I’m almost at the end. I am so close to never having to stay here again. So close to learning what the outside world will be like… learning who I am in the outside.

In a part of her she didn’t want to acknowledge, not to Rainer or even herself, she felt an incredible relief and spent the rest of her day lightheartedly playing with Ilya.

But she didn’t go tomorrow.

Or the day after.

Or the day after, or after that, or after that…

Just like that, almost a month had slipped through her fingers. A month of growing closer to Ilya, learning to love his gentle demeanor and laugh. Some days, Sharon actually did forget about leaving the tower altogether.

Dracrys was having none of that. Every morning, it flitted around Sharon’s face. In the library, it swerved to the diamond button and back. Sharon swore that if it could, it would press the button for them. But Ilya, who had adored the dragonfly at first, now completely ignored it, even when it knocked over game pieces. He simply set them back up as though knocked down by an accidental nudge. Sharon, with feelings of strong guilt, followed suit.

After two weeks Dracrys had seemed to grow tired. Sharon wasn’t sure, because she wasn’t an expert on dragonfly behavior, but it almost seemed to retreat in itself. It spent long hours by itself on the kitchen cabinet, unmoving. Motivated by guilt and love, Sharon would bake tiny appetizing treats and hold it up to Dracrys. Dracrys, who used to shimmer with green powder in excitement, no longer responded.

Then one day Dracrys was gone.

“Ilya! Where’s Dracrys?”

Ilya blinked. “I haven’t seen it since yesterday.”

“Neither have I,” Sharon said, panic rising. “You check the north end and I’ll check the south end.”

By afternoon, both had ransacked the tower, calling Dracrys repeatedly, but had not seen even the tiniest green glimmer.

In my dream it left me forever.

Sharon wanted to sit down and cry, but Ilya was looking at her expectantly.

He thinks I know what to do.

I have to stay strong, for him.

And just like that, her resolve returned.

“I’m going,” she said softly.

“No! NO!” Ilya dissolved into tears.

I don’t want to go either , she internally said back to him. I hate that room. I hate the lair. I hate the study. I hate everything about that place. And I’m scared to find the last room.

But it’s time. For Dracrys and for me.

But she said none of this, only raised herself up and, for the first time in weeks, pressed the diamond button to start her path to the west wing of the tower.

In the west wing, Sharon found Rainer, writing out what seemed to be complicated equations in chalk. The previous line would vanish when he waved his hand, and another gesture would begin to write out the next line.

“Math?”

“Every good magician is a good mathematician.”

Sharon had a lot of question, like why that was and how the two fields related, but Rainer’s next comment focused her mind elsewhere.

“I’ll be going soon. It’s June, and it’s almost end of term.”

Like me, he and I were just passing through this tower.

There was a pause, and Rainer looked at her like he was waiting for a response to an unasked question. But Sharon had no clue what that question could be.

Finally he said, looking back down at his blackboard, “I’m just documenting my project now. The research part is done.”

“What year are you in?”

“In human terms, I’d be a sophomore, in high school.”

That makes him two years older than me…

“I’m 14,” Sharon suddenly volunteered.

“I know.” Rainer looked up and grinned, and all of a sudden Sharon felt that pain in her heart she had felt when Dracrys left her in her dream. “Humans and mages aren’t that different after all.”

Sharon took a few deep breaths, and closed her eyes before opening them once she reached the second room.

She was back in the lair with the bodies.

But this time, her purpose was firm, and while the bodies still horrified her, the sensation of vertigo and terror that had overwhelmed her at first no longer came.

Now what?

Now I solve this puzzle , she thought grimly, and get the hell out of here.

Sharon flashed back to what Rainer had said about the ‘key.’

“He appeared twice, but in the first room, he appeared with a human head, and in the study, he appeared with a dove head. That’s the ‘key,’ that whatever mechanism it takes to trigger the next room has to be associated with the head.”

She deduced that the way the tower worked was by leaving a ‘key’ in the previous room.

And here we are, in the next room. Four bodies, a man, a woman, and their children. Four birdcages. And a light switch that electrocuted them all…

And in the last room, four birdcages. The light switch that I unknowingly turned on…

What do the two have in common?

The key was so obvious, but so brutal.

Was that the plan? That whoever came in here, needed to have the same cold heart as the designer of the tower?

The last key checked for intelligence, but this key checked for…

Desire to do malignance?

Or maybe… the total impartiality to good and evil?

Without hesitation, Sharon returned to the study and pulled the second cord. The birdcages lit up like factory neon signs. Then she walked over to the second room and again, pulled the cord.

The light display from the birdcages was dazzling, and the noise of the sparking almost dwarfed the noise of the wall in front of her simply falling flat to the ground like a concrete mattress, opening the final hallway.

I’m done hesitating.

So what does that make me?

She raised her hand over the light orb, activating it, and walked through the hallway.

It was cool and drafty, and her steps echoed on granite now, and eventually she passed by four chests.

They were red and inlaid with gold. The first was already half open.

Sharon peered inside and immediately leapt back with disgust and fear.

This will not stop me. The will not stop me. This will not stop me , she chanted.

This will NOT stop me!

She walked on, leaving the head of the beautiful blonde woman behind. She didn’t need to look into the other three chests.

They are long dead. No harm will come to me.

Then she looked in on the next and final room and the same dread she had learned to fear pressed in on her, but mixed with panic, like she couldn’t breathe, like a fine cling of plastic film hung onto her face.

The next room had nothing, absolutely nothing inside of it.

The room itself was a birdcage.

The birdcage has become the room…

An enormous, ballroom sized birdcage. Each bar of gold was thicker than her leg and looked more like a pillar before curving upwards to meet at an apex in the center. The room/birdcage extended much, much higher than Sharon’s full height; it was built to be about the same size as the library. And indeed, the floor was a marble dais, looking very much like the marble platform that could raise or descend in the library.

Two cords from the ceiling fan, crystal pendants dangling, their clear and pure depth belying the darkness they could wreak.

And a huge gold bar, presently raised, which could latch the door. From the inside.

“I don’t think you know the cost of that freedom.”

And now she did.

My turn to die.

Next Chapter: 9. The Choice of the Tower

Previous Chapter: 7. The Bodies in the Tower

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