The stairs seemed endless, and the opposite effect remained disorienting. I felt as though I climbed, but every time my gaze fell on my feet, it looked like I should be descending. My thighs burned with exertion. Definitely up.
Twice, I stopped to rest and breathe, and to fight the sensation of walls simultaneously near and far. When I reached, there was nothing to either side of me. It was difficult to tell how wide the stairs were. I could crouch and extend one leg all the way without running out of floor, and do the same on the other side, but I’d also been able to feel the stairs going down, so I didn’t trust anything.
I should have stayed back in the big chamber down—or up—stairs. I wouldn’t have known what to do there, but at least I wouldn’t have been so blind and confused, straining all my senses for a hint of anything else in this empty temple. What if I was trapped here forever? Alone?
Surely there was a way out.
At last I reached . . . somewhere. The floor leveled out, and the light was dimmer on one side of a long room, which made it easier to see, but didn’t cure my headache. And, even though I knew better, I checked on the stairs. They were gone. I doubted I could trust anything to stay where I’d left it.
Fifteen darkened archways led out of the new room, which was about the size of Sam’s parlor. Books sat on the floor at the opposite end. Dark leather covers, shiny as if freshly bound. I almost ran for them—a sign of something other than me and a lot of emptiness—but the last thing I wanted to do was meet an ugly death because I hadn’t exercised caution.
“Hello?” The air and walls smothered my whisper. What if there were others trapped in here, caught in the white nothingness?
I listened, but there was only the absence of sound.
Biting my lip, I inched across the room, making sure to test the floor before I trusted it to bear my weight. Or stay there. The stairway hadn’t dropped me, but it had probably thought about it.
The temple’s heartbeat continued. Steady. Drumming. I clutched my knife. It was useless here, but the smooth rosewood handle sent a ripple of comfort through me.
There were only a dozen or so books at the far end of the chamber, but they cast eye-friendly shadows. My headache retreated as my hand hesitated over the blood-red cover. No title. No indication of what was inside.
No dust, either.
Holding my breath, I laid my palm on the front and waited.
“Janan?” I whispered. “Are you there?”
No answer but the rhythmic heartbeat in the air.
My hands shook as I slid the book off the stack. It was thin, but had a good weight to it. Cloth paper, leather cover. The binding creaked when I opened it, but the stitches held. The faint scent of ink tickled my nose.
That had been another thing missing from the temple: odor.
I pressed the paper to my face and inhaled, stupidly grateful for something so simple I hadn’t noticed it was gone. Then, embarrassed even though no one was there, I cradled the book in one hand and flipped pages in search of writing. Answers.
Dashes of black spread across the papers, as though the writer had tapped his pen to make ink splatter everywhere, or a squirrel had gotten ink on his claws and used the paper to clean them. The markings weren’t left to right like the words I knew, or even music.
I tried another book. Same nonsense scribbles. No matter how many pages I flipped, the markings never made sense.
I’d felt this before, knowing that something should work, but unable to see how. I’d been ten years old. Li had taken one of Cris’s books and skimmed through it, hmm-ed like she understood the ink splatters, and repaired the septic system with ease now that she’d read how to do it.
After she’d gone to bed, I had sneaked into the library and opened the book she’d read, but it didn’t make sense. It was just ink on paper.
But then I’d placed the book on the table and squinted right, and suddenly saw the way everything made lines and spaces.
It had taken another year to figure out all the letters and words, but I’d known they must work somehow. I’d trusted that they did.
I needed the same kind of trust with these. Spending a year in here deciphering them was out of the question, but perhaps it would be wise to look for anything useful—like a map—before heading off through any of the archways leading from the room.
Before I could settle on the floor to sort through the books, the temple heartbeat paused. The temple gasped.
Murmurs snaked through the temple. That didn’t help the heaviness of the air or the general discomfort now that the heartbeat was back, but it was the first sound other than mine, and it sent shivers along my back.