Dead Boy by Laurel Gale

Author:Laurel Gale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2015-09-28T16:00:00+00:00

A dark passageway led to the next area, which was more cave than room. The rock walls, ceiling, and floor jutted and receded in irregular patterns. A deep chasm cut from one side to the other, with only a narrow bridge to provide passage. Like the other rooms, this one had engravings of an animal decorating the walls. There were torches, too, though their weak light illuminated only the edges of the cave and not the vast center.

“Do you think Luke made it this far?” Melody asked.

Crow thought back to the screaming they’d heard earlier. “No.”

“Then where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Crow said. “But I think I’ve figured out these engravings. The tortoise stood for perseverance. We couldn’t give up no matter how hopeless it seemed. In the second test, the bird was a crow, my namesake, so I should have guessed sooner. Crows are really smart. They even make simple tools out of twigs. The crow stood for cleverness, and we had to be clever enough to find a way out. The dog in the last room stood for loyalty. We had to be loyal to each other, even if it meant giving up what we wanted.”

Melody looked at the new engraving, which depicted a small mammal with a long, broad body and a wide stripe down its back. It was eating a cobra. “What’s this supposed to be?”

“I think it’s a honey badger.”

“Are they known for having a good sense of balance?” Melody asked. She was looking at the bridge.

“No.” Crow had done a report on the weasel-like animal in July—his mother didn’t give him summers off—and he’d learned that the honey badger would fight anything from a swarm of bees to a lion. “They’re known for their fearlessness.”

He took a torch from the wall and, using his one attached hand, carried it to the bridge. It was an old thing, made of rotted ropes and decaying wood panels. With the slightest touch, it swung back and forth, a threat in every creak.

No matter how Crow held his torch, he couldn’t get a glimpse of the chasm floor. Melody threw a rock into the gulf. They waited and waited, but they never heard the satisfying thud of it reaching the bottom. For all they knew, there was no bottom. Fall down there, and they would fall for eternity.

“What if none of this is real?” Melody asked.

“Huh?” Crow, who try as he might had nothing in common with fearless badgers, was distracted by a growing dread. Even the severed hand in his pocket was trembling.

“Our wishes weren’t real,” she explained. “They were illusions, right? So maybe everything else is an illusion, too. We’re not really in any danger.”

Crow handed her the torch. “This seems pretty real,” he said, taking his severed hand out of his pocket and waving it perhaps a little too close to her face. He didn’t want to be mean. “Some of what we see might be illusion. But some of it’s real, too. To be safe, I think we’d better assume it’s all real.

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