Where Bluebirds Fly

Chapter 25



As Corwin led Truman down the dank stairwell, Truman’s heart beat wildly in his chest. The witch dungeon. It did exist, after all. Historians debated its very existence.

The stench burned his nose as they descended the rickety staircase. Large, wet stones echoed their footfalls as a rat swept past in his peripheral vision. His boots tramped through an inch of water. He shivered, imagining all the diseases swimming in the fetid pools, ready and waiting to germinate in their unwilling human hosts.

The prison cells were abundant and diverse. Some were larger, housing several people. Others were upright, as small as telephone booths; requiring the person to choose between standing in perpetuity or a cramped, crouched squat.

Those are the coffin cells I read about. For the poor.

He shivered, imagining the depression of imprisonment there—day in, day out. The injustice, awaiting your death for a crime you didn’t commit. And here were the faces of the damned, staring back at him with huge, hollow eyes.

The colors. He swallowed hard. They were a tide of hopelessness. Like the place was a vacuum, sucked completely devoid of positive energy.

No wonder so few survived—the diseases, the complete inability to sleep.

He swallowed, hoping he wouldn’t find out first-hand.

Honing in on his ability-the room thrummed with colored emotions and patterns, making him instantly ill with vertigo. He battled it, trying to filter and channel it, reading one person at a time.

“Are you well, sir?” Corwin was eyeing him again.

“Yes, fine. The smell.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I will leave you to your work. There is a jailer outside the door at all times.”

“Thank you.” He dipped his head in a little bow of thanks, hoping the gesture wasn’t over the top. He hadn’t had much time to study the manners of the period.

Without the distraction of Corwin, his discrimination instantly zeroed in on Verity. Her cheek pressed against the stones, either asleep or unconscious. Her colored blinked like a strobe light between her normal gentle lavender and a blinding red fear.

All eyes in the room watched him warily. Their colors spoke one communal feeling—enemy.

Despite Verity’s small stature, her legs pathetically jutted out of the coffin cell. He felt the lump rise in his throat. He swallowed it, determination setting his jaw.

Gently shaking her boot, he tried to rouse her.

“Miss? Miss?”

A young man in the next cell turned a slow, sunken gaze toward him. His ashen complexion and black circles underlining his eyes, gave him a look of the walking dead.

“Do not you touch her.” His hand launched out of the cell, grasping Truman’s collar, shaking him.

“John, stop. It’s all right.” Verity’s eyes opened, looking both terrified and hopeful.

John dropped his hand and nodded, never taking his fervent gaze from Truman’s hand, still clasping her boot. Truman ordered his hand to release her. He pictured grabbing her through the bars and kissing her. He swallowed instead.

“I’m here from the constable’s office in Andover. I need to talk to you about when your illness began, and whether or not the dark man has presented himself to you, in spectral form, to sign his book?”

Truman conducted approximately five interviews, taking the histories of the accused. Verity’s eyes burned his back as he moved from cell to cell.

Finally after an hour, the door to the outside opened.

“Time is up, sir.” One of the guards stood with hands folded at the entrance. “We need to feed the prisoners.”

“Yes, all right then.”

Truman dropped a note to the ground, immediately stepping on it with his boot. As he turned to go, he slid it toward Verity’s cell with his pivot.

It read, Tonight.

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