Storm in the Shadows 5

In which the shadows darken

 

Whilst Storm and Lila headed for a café to regroup and re-plan and try to work out what the next clue meant and where it would lead them, Lexi was alone and in the dark, again.

She had been so surprised to hear her sister’s voice that she hadn’t even known how to react for a moment. Since she had arrived at wherever it is that she was she had heard almost no sound at all. She had been blindfolded, but had managed to remove it only to discover she was sitting in near darkness anyway.

Her captor appeared a few times a day and brought her fresh bread, fruit, cheese and plenty to drink. So she wasn’t suffering in that sense, but he (and she was quite certain it was a he) didn’t speak to her at all and just went about the task of caring for her in silence. She had a separate place to go to for when nature called and that was also clean and well kept. But she felt so alone and afraid by herself for hours in the semi-darkness.

She had a blanket to wrap herself in, but no real bed to speak of and had to make do with trying to get comfortable on the floor. She was pretty sure she wasn’t on stone though as it seemed warmer and more forgiving than stone would be. She had her school bag and books so used that as a pillow, but there wasn’t enough light to read by and her phone seemed to have disappeared. So had her iPod for that matter, so she didn’t even have anything she could use to pass the time.

The time seemed to pass so slowly and Lexi had begun to talk to herself as she sat there just to keep from going insane. She smiled internally as she thought of all the times she’d teased Storm for constantly doing the same. And as she thought about Storm and her family and other friends she felt her eyes well up and the tears slowly run down her face.

And then today she’d heard Lila and she’d told her that she was coming. And her heart had lifted. She’d said that she was being held by someone who was setting clues to find her and she was glad that Storm was helping as she knew how clever she was. But she wished she knew how much longer it would be and when Lila’s voice had just disappeared again she’d been distraught for quite some time.

She didn’t understand why this was happening to her and she was inconsolable as the strange captor came to refresh her food and water. She didn’t know whether this person who attended her was the same as the person who had taken her, so she didn’t even try to ask him anything. She just lay on the floor, sobbing quietly to herself. She heard the little man stop and she knew he was looking at her, but she just ignored him and he eventually moved off and disappeared into the darkness once more. She sat herself up and rubbed her fists into her eyes. Crying all the time didn’t really help her, she resolved to try and toughen up a bit.

The first couple of times the man had appeared she had tried to talk to him and to follow him when he left. But he’d just vanished into nothing and she’d been incapable of following so she’d given that up pretty quickly.

She was trying to decide how long she had been gone for and whether it was now actually day or night as the darkness around her was pretty much constant. But without any proper way to mark out the passing of time she couldn’t be 100% sure. The only thing she knew was that it had been afternoon when she had been brought here and she’d had food and water already in place, then she thought it must have been the next morning when he showed up to replenish it. Then he’d been at least 3 more times that day and so far twice today (if it really was another day). So she thought it must be somewhere around 48 hours that she’d been here.

And if she’d already been gone for 48 hours and her sister and Storm had only solved the first clue, how much longer was she going to be stuck here! She was just about to curl up with her blanket and start crying again when she noticed something glint out of the corner of her eye. It was hard to pinpoint where it was coming from as there was so little light in the room she was in. But she found if she tilted her head about she could make whatever it was out at the far side of the room. She walked over there slowly and had a good look around. She couldn’t see anything that was obvious but wondered if getting down on her hands and knees might be the only way, given the murk she was in.

As she knelt down she realised that this part of the floor was much more like stone than in the rest of the place. It was very cold and hard with a certain sharpness that made kneeling really quite uncomfortable. She felt about on the floor and after pushing her hands out nearly until they touched the side wall she felt something different under her fingers. It was smooth and cool and about the size of a penny, but when she tried to pick it up she found that she couldn’t. It was raised above the surface of the stone it was on, but appeared to be stuck somehow. She moved a little closer and tried to lever it up using her fingernails but only succeeded in breaking one and chipping most of the others.

Time for a new plan. She left her shoe next to the smooth spot and went to find a knife from her dinner plate, she came back with it and quickly set to with it in the hope she could loosen whatever it was that way. And slowly, but surely, she managed to lever it up out of the floor. When she had it in her hand she could see that it was made of some other kind of stone that had been polished to a high shine, like some kind of jewel. But as she couldn’t tell what colour it was she was at a loss to know whether it was a precious stone or not.

However, the possession of it made her feel warmer and safer somehow. She held it in her palm and closed her fingers around it and then nearly dropped it in fright. The stone had become warm. And not just from her touch, warmth that seemed to emanate from inside this tiny little polished pebble.

She closed it in her hand again, only more loosely this time and sure enough she could feel it start heating up. It seemed to max out at a temperature that was just on the hot side of bearable. Lexi raised it up to see if she could make out any details through her fingers. As she did so she muttered to herself “I wish it was lighter in here.”

The pebble seemed to get suddenly hotter and Lexi gasped and dropped it into her lap and then she noticed that the gloom around her was receding slowly. She rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t just imagining it, but no. She could make out the shape of the space and the floor became more obvious. There, too, was the archway through to her bathroom and she could see the blanket was actually made up of checks that were different shades of blue. The room didn’t become as bright as if it were full daylight in there, but it was certainly the sort of light that you might find just before the sun comes up in the morning. Where the light is more of a glow, soft and new and quite beautiful, casting off hints at what’s to come.

Lexi was afraid of what might happen when the man came back, he was bound to notice the place had suddenly got brighter! And then she remembered the pebble that was now in her lap. Was she prepared to believe this had happened because she’d wished it to? What other explanation was there? She held the pebble up in the new light and saw it was a beautiful deep black. Like the jet her mother had brought back from some childhood holiday in Whitby and still kept on her dressing table. It was very tactile and so soft and smooth to the touch. It was quite heavy, given how small it was and Lexi still wasn’t sure how it had been stuck into the floor. She turned to find the place she had freed it from and saw there was a small hollow in the piece of stone that happened to be in that corner of the room. As she scanned the rest of the room she saw that there was no other stone on any part of the floor, just that corner. How strange. She got back down on her hands and knees to look at the hollow and decided that it was actually a defect in the stone that the pebble had just happened to get stuck in.

As she held the pebble she slowly rubbed it between her fingers enjoying the feel of the warmth it emitted. She remembered some of the many stories she’d read to Lila when they’d been growing up. There had been lots of fairy tales with magical and mystical creatures that inhabited inanimate objects for no apparent reason. She wondered if this pebble had something like a genie attached to it, whether there were a finite number of wishes that she might be granted before its powers failed her. She wondered how on earth she might find out about it. And all the while she kept playing with the pebble and rubbing it over and over with her fingertips.

Lexi decided that the only way to really test the powers of this little pebble would be by making another wish with it in her hand again.

She held it loosely, in the same way she had before, and tried to think of something to wish for. She noticed the pebble getting just a little too warm as it had last time and then she just wished the first thing that popped into her head. “I wish I had a proper place to sleep.”

It was only as she opened her eyes to see if it had worked that she realised she’d had them closed at all.

But there, materialising slowly in the corner which she’d been using for sleeping was a proper bed. It seemed to be slowly forming out of the air, taking firmer shape, becoming more defined until it was ready. And Lexi practically threw herself on it from the other side of the room. It was a real bed. Soft, warm, comforting and it smelled great. Lexi closed her eyes for a blissful moment and drifted off into the first proper sleep she’d had in the last couple of days.

~~~~~

The imp arrived to carry out his side of the bargain he’d made with Storm. His guest had been clever enough to try and follow him a couple of times but as he could disappear at will he wasn’t too worried about her escaping him. And anyway, she would have to be remarkably clever to work out the complicated system needed to unlock the room.

As Yogi gathered everything he’d need to take with him and make the jump he thought about how well the two girls had done this morning. They had managed to get around his silencing spell remarkably easily for ones so little versed in magic. He resolved to make this clue harder to complete, just stopping them from speaking his name was not enough. He would hide their destination and see how they got around that.

He jumped into the room he had designed for his guest and found her sleeping in the corner she had been in earlier when he’d left. All the crying must have worn her out. Silly humans. What purpose did crying serve, anyway? He never had understood it. And they seemed to be able to cry no matter what emotion they were experiencing so that he wasn’t always sure what was going on. He placed the food and water in their usual spot and went to check the bathroom didn’t need anything. He gave the room another quick once over and then jumped back into the outside world to go back to waiting for Storm and Lila to arrive. He smiled to himself as he thought of the best way to hide from them.

But what he hadn’t noticed were the changes to Lexi’s room. And another, even older, magic that was being worked around her. Yogi was not the only one who liked playing games. And if he’d wanted to stay hidden he should never have let himself be seen.