19One morning, the bell failed to sound as it usually did and Laurel woke up a half an hour late, panicking beyond belief. She looked over and saw that Grace was still in her bed, sound asleep.
"Grace!" she yelled frantically as she tried to put her clothes on as quickly as she could. The effort was failing miserably. Grace didn't stir. "Grace what is the matter with you?" asked Laurel. "Get up!" Grace still didn't move. Laurel let out a groan and went to shake her awake. "Grace! Get up!" she yelled. She went on sleeping.
Laurel couldn't believe it. Grace was obviously alive; her chest went up and down with each breath. "Forget it. You'll be late and lose your pay! See if I care!" She rushed out of their room and sprinted as fast as she could to the castle. No one was out and about, strangely, but the sky was getting darker. Laurel figured that everyone had gone early to avoid the rain. Yes, but everyone? It hardly seemed likely
The castle loomed over the city as Laurel took the path up to it, hurrying for fear of the rain. She knocked on the door and waited for a page. None came. She knocked again with the same result. The third time, when no one answered, Laurel decided to try and pull open the huge wooden door herself.
It was absolutely enormous, and at first pull, she made no progress whatsoever. Eventually, she came to figure that if she put her foot up on the door and pulled, she would obtain enough leverage to open it.
Laurel heard a crack of thunder in the sky, and out of sheer terror, pulled with all her might and kicked the opposing door as hard as she could. It gave way and she rushed in just as the first drops were beginning to fall.
The castle was dark inside; apparently, no one had bothered to light the candles that morning. Laurel lit a candle from the basket just beside the door and rushed up to the records office, ready to burst in and apologize. She knew that Pyt would already have been by. Wes would have been scolded for not being able to control his workers and get them here on time, which wasn't his fault at all.
She almost slammed into the door, she was running so fast, but she managed to reach out and turn the knob just before she made contact.
There was no one inside.
The room was exactly as she'd left it the day before. Neither Wes nor Altheda's coats were hanging on the pegs beside the door.
This is just too strange. Wes is never late. Laurel began to take her coat off but immediately put it back on. The room was extremely cold due to the fact that the fire had not been lit. Where is everybody?
Laurel stepped out of the room and decided to explore the castle a bit and see if she could find anyone.
After fifteen minutes of searching, it became clear to her that no one had stirred in the castle since the night before. She had stepped into a room where the door had been slightly open and found a small girl, most likely a maid, asleep in her bed, under the same conditions that Grace had been: A calm expression, breathing, but in an extremely deep sleep.
It only confused Laurel all the more when she walked the hallway, peering into rooms and finding people the exact same way. What is going on here? Nothing made sense. Their state disturbed Laurel to no end. She didn't know what to do, or if anything could be done.
Her solution was to search the entire castle, trying to find a single person that was awake. She randomly opened doors in every hallway, not worrying about whether or not she would disturb anyone; they all were sleeping. She opened doors at random in every hallway she came to, figuring that it didn't matter if she made noise because the worst thing that could happen would be the children waking up and that would be good. She even took to calling "Hello?" at random spots, but no one answered.
It's hopeless, she thought as she opened a door, only to find a blast of heat come at her. What the…?
Laurel pushed it open further to find the library that she had been in not a month ago. It was lit brightly by the large fire blazing in the fireplace. The flames cast shadows over the entire room, creating an eerie atmosphere. The tall windows that were across the room for where Laurel stood were dark and looming; the sun had not yet began to come up.
Laurel stepped into the room, quickly shutting the door behind her in order to prevent the hot air from escaping.
She spotted somebody sitting in a chair. Somebody moving. The chair faced away from her, so Laurel was unable to see who it was. He or she(a he, Laurel thought, by the look of the cut of the person's hair) appeared to be reading a book very intently, so intently, in fact, that he didn't hear Laurel step in.
"Hello?" she called, hoping that her voice wouldn't be such a surprise that it would make the person jump up and attack her.
The person in the chair turned his face and Laurel's mouth fell open as she saw that it was Max Fortregine. His eyes immediately widened as he quickly set down his book.
"Laurel?" Max said, looking startled and confused. "What are you doing here?"
"I might ask you the same question," she said, staying where she was. "Why aren't you –"
"Why aren't I…sleeping?" he asked, finishing her question for her.
She shook her head. "No–Yes. I mean, why aren't you…like everybody else? Out there. They…they won't wake up."
"Oh that," said Max, suddenly realizing where she was going with this. "This always happens. Once a year, without fail. I've just accepted it…Philip knows what's going on. But he won't tell me." Max paused, and began to sit down in his chair.
Laurel stepped farther into the room, gazing at the shadows the fire cast on the bookshelves. "He doesn't tell me a lot of stuff anymore. Ever since his family died, he's never been the same. Everybody sees that," Max continued.
Laurel stopped. She turned her head slowly towards Max, her heart beat speeding up. Was this all a dream? Could it be?
"W–what did you just say?" She was struggling to get the words out.
Max eyebrows narrowed in confusion. "Ever since his family died, he hasn't been the same," he said slowly.
She wasn't dreaming.
"Why are there no adults in Salidocious?" she blurted out.
"Laurel, what kind of question is that?" asked Max, his eyebrows suddenly shooting up in surprise.
"Just answer it." She was shaking with anticipation.
"There just aren't," he said, shaking his head and wondering what she was getting at.
"But why?"
"Why are you asking all these questions Laurel?"
"Just answer me! Why are there no adults in Salidocious?!"
"I don't know!" shouted Max in pure frustration. The fire cracked loudly, but they ignored it.
Laurel breathed a sigh of relief, her heart still racing. "Exactly." She wasn't dreaming. The entire conversation proved it. Thoughts raced so quickly in her head that she couldn't even begin to sort them out. It still didn't make sense. "Why aren't you like them?" she asked softly.
"Them who?" asked Max, taking a cautious step towards her.
"Them everybody! You gave me a straight answer about the adults."
"It was hardly a straight answer," said Max grudgingly, still annoyed by the questions. He crossed his arms against his chest defensively.
"Maybe so, but it still wasn't some stupid cryptic poem!" Laurel sighed, trying to put into words the magnitude of what she was feeling. "Max, I see things that shouldn't happen in your average city, like children going into trances, eyes behind gates, and people who just suddenly go quiet when a certain subject comes up. It's not normal! There is something wrong with this place and these children, and I know it, and I know you know it, even if you won't admit it. But why doesn't everybody else?"
"Laurel, they're still people," said Max, dismayed. "They just…react strangely to different circumstances."
"Aha!" exclaimed Laurel. Max took a step back, startled. "You do agree with me!"
"No! Yes! Ugh…I guess. But you see them as…" He searched for the word. "Monsters, and perhaps "He searched for the word, pausing until he said, simply: " Monsters."
Laurel was insulted beyond belief. "Did I ever say that? I never said they were monsters, I said there was something strange about them, and this entire accursed city."
"Laurel, why does it matter?" asked Max, He had lived in peace with them for about six years, and although he knew without a doubt that something about the city and its inhabitants was horribly wrong, he had never felt obligated to point it out. He had also never known anyone like Laurel who didn't enter the sleeping spell, but that was besides the point.
Max's question stunned Laurel. "Why does it matter?" she replied softly, repeating his question. To Max, Laurel almost looked hurt. "It matters because I don't feel safe here I mean, I guess I live what any child of Salidocious would call a normal life, but it's not the same." Laurel paused, trying to put it into words.
"Max, I don't know how I got here," she said, a punch of emphasis to each word, as she tried to make him understand. "I was sleeping in a gypsy camp one evening and I wake up and find myself outside these walls. I'm harassed by the gatekeeper, terrorized by these…horrendous things with eyes like death, and then I'm told I will never be able to leave this place.
"When I walk through the streets at night, I feel like something is watching me. And it's this feeling that is so scary and indescribable that all I want to do is vault myself over the wall and go and find my sister and my parents and stop living in fear of this…this place. But that's not possible."
Laurel was quiet for a moment; her hands shook with trepidation, clenched into fists that even the strongest of men could not have forced open. She was looking at Max directly in the eye, and it was taking all her strength not to go curl up in a ball and cry.
"And that is why it matters," she finished, a defiant look in her eye.
Max said nothing. He only held her gaze for a moment, and then looked away.
"Now are you going to tell me why you aren't like them, or aren't you? And don't you dare evade the question."
Max took a deep breath and sat down in the chair next to the fire. He motioned for Laurel to take a seat, and she did, on a comfy-looking chair that had cushioning on every edge. She pulled her knees up to her chest as she stared into the fire, waiting for his explanation to start.
Max sighed, long and exasperated "Truthfully, Laurel, I don't know."
Laurel turned her head to him, about to give him the reprimanding of his life, but he stopped her with a raised hand.
"I don't know…but I have a theory," he said coolly. He clearly was not afraid anymore of Laurel and her frequent temper outbursts, and she attributed that to the fact that he had seen them so often. "A theory to which you have added a considerable amount of credibility."
Laurel looked at him, waiting for the answer. "How so?"
"You are not originally from Salidocious. You are not sleeping. I am not originally from Salidocious. I am not sleeping. I hardly think that's a coincidence," he said, lowering his head, but still looking straight at her.
"Wait," said Laurel, confused. "You're not from Salidocious?"
Max shook his head. "I'm from Gralix. I told you that, once."
Laurel thought for a moment and then shook her head.
"I told you when you were getting your workstation. You wanted to know what I was the prince of."
AHA! thought Laurel, remembering now. It had been during her "I Hate Max" phase.
"In any case, I know kids who have come here and don't sleep like the others. There's not many, but it's not just us," said Max.
There was a faint knock at the door that made the hairs on Laurel's neck stiffen
"Speaking of," said Max quietly as he crossed the room to answer the door. There was no hesitation whatsoever when he opened it to reveal two young girls clutching each other's hands like their lives depended on it. There was one small girl and another of middling height. Laurel guessed their ages to be about five and seven. They were shivering from the cold and tears streamed down both their faces.
"MAX!" they cried as soon as they saw him. They ran to him and hugged him so hard that Max was almost bowled over by the sheer force. The smallest one started crying even harder and soon the room was filled with sobbing.
Max just stood there, letting his shirt become drenched with tears. Laurel thought it almost comical, and she tried to keep from giggling.
When they had calmed down, he picked the youngest one up, kept the other close to his side, and walked them over to his seat. He had them sit on both of his knees, let them get situated, and proceeded to question them.
"Now what's the matter with you two?" he asked kindly.
Both girls started talking at once but Max gently shushed them and had the oldest one speak first.
It took her a few seconds to muster up the will to speak again. "I woke up and Edra was sleeping, and she wouldn't wake up, and I remembered what you told me and so I went and got Dena and she was just sitting in her room crying, because she thought her roommate was dead, 'cause you know, she hasn't been here before, and then we left and went to the castle, but it was dark inside, and we thought we heard a scream and Dena started crying 'cause she was scared, and I started crying too, because there was no light, and I was scared too, but I found like the library like you told me to."
Max nodded. "Good girl, Kerrie. You did fine," he said, patting her on the back. He turned his attention to the smallest child. "And what's wrong with you, Dena? You're okay now."
Dena nodded, still sniffling. She didn't say anything. She just snuggled into Max even more, and he put his arm around her. Laurel couldn't help herself. She smiled at the sight of Max and the two girls, comforting each other against the firelight. It was simply adorable.
"Who's she?" Kerrie asked Max in a quiet voice that Laurel was not supposed to hear, but she did. Laurel looked around the room pretending to not have heard.
"She's a friend of mine. Her name is Laurel. She's not from here, just like you aren't," said Max.
Kerrie looked over at Laurel curiously. She got off of Max's lap and tapped Laurel's leg. Laurel looked at Kerrie and pretended to be surprised.
"Where are you from?" asked Kerrie, her head tilted curiously. She had dark red hair that looked like it might normally be straight, but hadn't been washed in so long that it had many kinks from sleeping on it.
"I'm from just outside of Farrisburg. Do you know where that is?" asked Laurel kindly. Kerrie shook her head. "Well, it's very far away from here." Kerrie seemed to understand and went back to Max.
Max smiled at Laurel and nodded towards the two girls. Dena now was curled up against Max, tears stopped. There was a forlorn look on her face that saddened Laurel. Where were her parents? She obviously missed them very much. She had curly dark hair, like Max, that fell to her shoulders. Kerrie was less pitiful looking than Dena, although there still was a sense of abandonment and helplessness in her eyes.
Laurel looked around at the room they sat in, the library. The sky was getting lighter, as she could see through the windows and she could make out much of the library. An idea was forming in her head…
"Let's play a game!" she said, smiling at the girls. "Hide and Go Seek!"
All three people in the chair looked up at her. Only Kerrie smiled.
"Yeah!" She jumped out of the chair and ran up to Laurel. "I wanna play!"
"I don't know, Laurel," said Max, frowning.
"What's wrong with it?" asked Laurel. "It's not like we're going to wake anybody."
"Don't you wanna play, Dena?" asked Kerrie excitedly. Dena, seeing Kerrie's enthusiasm and figuring that it must mean something good, nodded and crawled out of Max's lap.
"I'm just almost one hundred percent positive that Philip will be furious when he finds the library destroyed," said Max, giving Laurel a look that meant she knew Philip would be furious too.
"Hide and Go Seek is hardly a rough game, Max," said Laurel, getting out of her chair. "And besides, I think you're just scared that we'll beat you."
"Beat ME?" asked Max in mock surprise, rising out of his chair. "I'm not gonna let a couple of girls beat me!" he said, turning to Dena and Kerrie, who started giggling.
"We'll see about that!" said Laurel. "You're it!"
And with that the three girls ran off into the library as Max turned around to face the fire, covering his eyes and counting aloud.
"One, two, three, four, five, six…."
Both Dena and Kerrie raced up onto the balcony where they proceeded to hide behind furniture. Laurel took a different approach and ran to hide behind the curtains that lined the windows. She arranged them so that Max wouldn't be able to see the form of a body outlined in the curtains.
"Ready or not, here I come!" shouted Max, and Laurel could hear his footsteps walking deeper into the room and then going up the stairs. She heard the giggles of the girls, who couldn't keep quiet in the extreme suspense, and Dena's shriek of delight when Max "found" her.
"She's over there!" shouted Dena when Max next went looking for Kerrie.
"Dena!" shouted Kerrie, giving herself away. "You're not supposed to tell!" Dena just giggled.
It sounded like Kerrie was getting angry, because Laurel heard Max trying to calm Kerrie down.
"It's alright, Kerrie. I saw you anyways. Now let's go look for Laurel!" Both girls forgot the conflict and raced downstairs to find her. They hadn't seen where she had hidden and so they looked all over the entire library.
Laurel peeked out of the curtain to see Dena crawling around on the floor, Kerrie looking behind furniture, and she couldn't see Max….
She retreated back into the curtain, turned, and gave a loud yelp.
Max was standing right next to her behind the curtain. He smiled at her reaction. Laurel couldn't believe that he had gotten behind it and she hadn't felt the curtain move.
"Girls, I found her," said Max loudly, still smiling. Both of them cheered as Max and Laurel slipped out of the curtain together. "Dena, you were found first. It's your turn to seek." Dena clapped with delight and ran over to the fire to cover her eyes.
"One, two, three…"
Laurel decided to go up to the balcony, but quietly, so that Dena couldn't hear her. Both Max and Kerrie stayed downstairs, and Laurel watched as Max helped Kerrie climb into a small trunk used to hold books and then proceed to hide behind it.
She crept along the bookshelves to the balcony, where the light had not yet reached. She brushed against them, making sure to be careful and not make any noise. She felt so powerful somehow, for being able to be so quiet. At any moment she could jump out and make Dena scream, but of course, she wouldn't want to do that.
She crept into the very back corner and hid behind a chair that faced the wall Dena was near. She sat back against the bookcase, thinking it would be a while before Dena came up to look for her.
Suddenly, she felt herself being carried away in a whirlwind of movement. She looked up and saw the library disappearing on the left and a dark room coming into view on the right. What in the…
It all stopped and Laurel found herself in a dark room where she could see absolutely nothing. She sat still for a moment, becoming adjusted to her surroundings. What just happened? She was extremely confused. One moment she was in the library, the next in some sort of secret room.
She felt the floor around her. It was smooth, just as the floor in the library was. It actually seemed to be the same floor… She got onto her knees and felt around even farther, being very careful to feel her way and not bump into anything in the dark.
There. She felt something. It was…a crack, in the floor. She followed it to the left, but it ended at the wall, which was the same bookcase that she had leaned against. She followed it to the right, very carefully and slowly, and discovered that it was in the shape of a half circle. That must be how the floor can move.
It suddenly hit her and she felt extremely stupid. It's a revolving bookcase, a trap door! She had read so many stories with them, where characters would use them to escape from the police or from robbers that were trying to kill them.
But how did it work? She was certain that she hadn't pulled a book to trigger it. She had only sat back against it. She turned around to examine the bit of wall she had touched, but there was nothing strange about it.
Her eyesight began to adjust and she could see that there was nothing amiss about that area: no buttons, levers, or disheveled books. She felt around the area with her hands, hoping to set off the trap door so that it would carry her back into the library. No luck.
She began to feel the entire surface of the shelf, not just the area that she had touched. That didn't work either. She proceeded to then frisk the wall two more times: one patting it a bit harder and the next pounding on it.
She pounded so hard that something stirred in the room, behind her, and she whirled around to see what it was. Her vision in the dark had improved drastically, but even so she had to creep closer to see what had caused the sound. It only took a second for her vision to adjust, but when it did, she let out a large shriek of terror, nothing compared to what she had done when Max found her behind the curtain.
It was a skeleton, old and yellow and decaying. The head was tilted a bit to the side, but the body was in a normal resting position: torso propped up against the wall, legs flopped out onto the floor.
It still wore clothes, men's clothes, and the smile no the skeleton's face was so eerie that Laurel wanted to kick the head off, just so ti wouldn't stare at her.
She turned and started banging on the bookshelf.
"Max! MAX! Help! Please! I'm behind the bookcase! On the balcony!" she called, hoping he might hear a faint pounding from the other side.
There was no answer.
She stopped for a moment and listened for any noise that might come from the other side: giggling from the girls or anything that meant they were in there. When she heard nothing, she stood there and tried to think of a way to get out.
However, there wasn't much to do in the dark room, and she soon began to wrap her mind around the possibilities for the skeleton's being in the room. It didn't help to calm her down much.
She pounded on the bookshelf again, hoping to attract their attention. She had been in the room for about five minutes, and both Kerrie and Max would have been found. Neither of them had seen where she had hidden, and so she didn't have a lot of hope that they would come up to the loft.
She stopped again and listened. Nothing. Why can't they hear me?
It seemed as if the bookcase was the only way out of the room and she would be forced to wait until Max and the girls found her, unless there was another door…somewhere. However, she had no desire to go searching for it, especially after finding the skeleton. She doubted that there was another entrance anyways, because then the man wouldn't have died in here. Unless he couldn't find it.
She began to crawl about on the floor, searching for a possible trap door of some sort. There would be an etching in the floor, she knew, just like the revolving bookcase. She stayed away from where the skeleton was, but the room was small, and she didn't have a wide area in which to search. There were boxes everywhere that were too heavy for her to lift, and so she didn't try.
"Laurel!"
The call was so faint that she could barely hear it, and she guessed that on any other day, she wouldn't have been able to, but the sleeping of the citizens provided an eerie silence to the city. Max and the girls were the only ones making noise.
She got up and began pounding on the bookcase, hoping he could trace it to that particular one. It wasn't long before there was pounding echoing back. Pounding that she wasn't making. She stopped and listened to it. It was a little farther off than her bookshelf. She hit the back of the case three more times. The next time she heard Max, it was on the exact opposite side of her bookcase.
"Laurel! Are you in there?!" she heard Max yell, much more clearly than the first time.
"Yes!" she yelled back, pounding a few more times in case he couldn't hear her. He banged on the shelf to let her know that he could.
"How did you get in there?!" he yelled immediately after he stopped hitting the shelf.
"It's a revolving door!" she called back. "I leaned against it down here!" She hit the place where she had rested only fifteen minutes ago. She could hear Max striking the shelf, trying to trigger whatever mechanism that made the door work, but to no avail.
He stopped for a moment, and Laurel thought that she could very faintly hear him talking to one of the girls.
With a sudden jerk, she was propelled into the library with such force that she was thrust up against what she assumed to be Max, nearly knocking him over as the small girls had done in the hour previously.
"Laurel!" he said, surprised, clutching her arms so that she wouldn't fall down.
"Ahhh!" said Laurel, almost comically, scrambling to get away. "Sorry! I'm just clumsy like that. Did I hurt you?"
"Forget about me! Are you okay?" asked Max, his face incredulous as to what had just happened. Laurel could hear both Kerrie and Dena cheering with delight in the background of her hearing.
"I'm fine. Slightly ruffled, but fine. Max, there's a skeleton in there!" said Laurel, blurting out the first thing that she could think of.
"What?" he said, completely shocked. The girls didn't hear and kept on giggling about something. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah," said Laurel. "It's a man, and it's really creepy." Max took a moment to register that. "How did you get me out?"
"Kerrie found a lever. It's over here," said Max, motioning to a shelf about three feet away from the revolving door. Sure enough, there was a small lever sticking out from underneath a few books. "You must have brushed against it or something." Laurel nodded. It all made sense now. "A revolving door," said Max, still amazed.
I knew there were secret passageways in here, but I'd no idea it got this complex."
"Seriously," said Laurel. "It's like something out of a mystery."
The girls ran downstairs, fascinated by something shiny they saw on the ground. Laurel and Max followed them, determined to keep an eye on both girls after what had just happened.
It was only as they were coming down the stairs that they realized that daylight had come, and that they could see Salidocious spectacularly from the window that stretched vertically along the wall.
Laurel walked up to the window, and touched it gently with her fingers. She then noticed a peculiar occurrence outside, one that made the entire view all the more special.
It was snowing. Laurel watched at the tiny snowflakes drifted down from up above, carefree in their paths, so graceful and effortlessly beautiful. They came to rest on the streets, the roofs of buildings, and the brown grass that lined some of the walkways, and she only wished that Salidocious could always be that way: tranquil and entrancing and…magical.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" asked Max, coming up beside Laurel and putting a warm hand on her shoulder.
"Gorgeous," she said in an exhale. Snow had been beautiful in her home on the farm, but here, in a city, it somehow seemed more…real.
"This is my favorite time of year," said Max, smiling as he placed his other hand up against the window. "It's so magical."
Laurel turned her head to look at him as he gazed out at the falling droplets of snow, and somewhere, deep inside of her, she felt something click.
The rest of the day was spent exploring the castle, searching for food in the kitchen (Everybody discovered that Laurel could make a mean omelette), and having a good time. They happened upon a room full of extra clothes that Max said nobody wanted, and so they all played dress up and paraded throughout the entire castle. The highlight of the adventure was when Laurel, Dena, and Kerrie made Max dress up in an old frilly turquoise dress and have him pretend to be princesses with them.
It was altogether a satisfying day, and Laurel completely forgot about the sleeping children of Salidocious. It was only when she retired back to her room, when night had fallen, that she saw Grace, and the whole matter sent chills tingling through her spine once more.
A/N: You all are completely wonderful and I lvoe this chapter and I love you all. I am SO EXCITED for the next chapter it's not even funny. It's been in the making for a while, and now I'm there, and excitement is bursting out of me right now. I know I said I'd post this on Saturday but I won't be able to tommorow and therefore u get it today! Lucky you! Thanks so much, once again for reading. I do review people who review me, only don't make it generic "It's great" just to get a review. I'm not stupid. Have a happy holidays!