“No. That thing is built to tear down walls. Or buildings.”
“Just what we need,” Miss Dupuis said as they ran for the back door of the place. “A gun big enough to destroy cities.”
“Ain’t progress just dandy?” Hink asked.
And then there was no time to talk. No air left to talk with anyway. An explosion blasted out and the world shook like a wet dog.
Chapter Thirty-six
Rose made her way down the slope into the cavern. The closest child lying on the floor was a little girl, maybe three, hair braided at each ear, a tattered blanket clutched in her stone hand.
Statues? Who would go through the trouble and time to carve statues of a hundred sleeping children? It was an eerie thing, and gave her the same feeling had she been walking a graveyard.
She knelt and placed her hand on the little girl’s blanket. It was wool and ragged at the edges where it must have been dragged behind her. Then she touched the girl’s cheek.
She was warm and at Rose’s touch she exhaled ever so slightly.
Rose pulled her hand back and rocked up onto her feet, startled. That was no statue. These children, all of them, weren’t statues. They were enclosed in stone, but they were still alive.
She wanted to run. Thought maybe a good scream was in order too. But Alun’s voice cut through her panic.
“Rose Small, what do you see?”
She backed all the way to the opening of the cave, unable to look away from the children. Afraid to do so.
“There are children here,” she called. “A lot. Maybe a hundred. They’re all sleeping, I think. But they are covered in stone like moths in cocoons. Like statues.”
There was a moment of silence while Alun worked that through.
“Strange work, most likely,” he finally said. “Old trick. Hard to do for one, much less a hundred. Can you carry them out of there?”
“Not with only one arm.” Just the knowledge that this was something Alun Madder had heard of helped make Rose feel a little less horrified at the scene before her. If they knew what was causing the children to be stone, they might know how to fix it.
If it was some kind of spell, they’d need a witch.
“Should we get Mae?” Rose called.
“No,” Alun said. “We can’t last this pain, and her blood wouldn’t fulfill our promise. We Madders, or you, bound by this bloodline, must find the children and return them to the city. No other can help in this deed.”
“What do you want me to do?” Rose asked.
“Can you reach the children?”
“Yes.”
“Then touch one. Skin would be best. And wait; don’t let go.”
Rose moved back to the little girl with the blanket and sat down beside her. “Wait, he says,” she said to the girl. “What in the world can they do? They can’t come any closer. I don’t think they have a witch in their back pocket. And even being this far from the city is giving me a headache. Not that I’m complaining,” Rose said, just in case the girl might have heard her words.
“I’m sure sleeping under a stone blanket isn’t all that much fun either.” She reached down and put her hand on the little girl’s hand this time. Soft. Warm. She thought she heard the girl sigh and wondered what sort of dreams she might be having.
“We’ll get you out of here, honey,” she said. “You’ll be home soon.”
The copper wire around her wrist grew warm. Not so hot as to be uncomfortable, but warm enough she looked down at it, almost expecting it to be glowing. But it was just as it was before, dark copper spun into the tight petals of a rosebud, with a stem and latch.
The Madders were doing something, like sending a message down the wire. She could feel a low rumble at the base of her spine, a subtle hum that seemed to grow and roll out from the wire, out through her body, like the deepest thrum of a train in the far distance.
The hum spread until the cave picked it up, vibrating softly.
No, not the cave, the stones.
The Madders had bragged about talking to mountains. They’d said rocks and stones were an amiable sort that didn’t mind giving up their secrets if a man knew how to talk to them. They’d said their people, their blood, were from the old country, where men and stones had often sat down to converse.
And now, here, in this winter country, in the cold heart of a cavern used for a Strange spell to trap living children, the stones sat up and listened to old Madder blood.
Rose held tight to the little girl’s hand. Held tight while the stones rumbled and grumbled. Tiny cracks spread out from where Rose touched the girl, cracks stretching across the girl’s hand, just like the cracks in the jail cell. Stone fell in dusty rivulets away from the little girl, building soft piles of sand around her.
The child coughed, opened her eyes, and whimpered. Then she leaned up into Rose’s arms, clutching her blanket tightly.
“Hush, now, hush,” Rose said, rubbing her back gently. “You’re just fine now. Just fine.”
And then she heard another child cough. Another child wake. In one big rush, the stones released all of the lost children of Des Moines out of their grasp and returned them back to the living world.
The rumbling faded to a chuckle, faded to a soft garbling grumble that gave way to silence. The cave was just a cave again. The mountain had had its say. And the copper wire around Rose’s wrist was no longer warm.
The message from the Madders was sent, received, and answered.
“You’re all going to be all right now,” Rose said to the children, who were waking, rubbing eyes, and looking about. “We’re just a little way from your homes and we’re going to take you back to your parents. Can you all try standing up?”
The children were too dazed to panic, and she hoped they listened to her and trusted her long enough to get them back to town. Whatever it was the Madders had done to talk the stones into freeing the children had cost more than just heating the copper wire. All the pain she’d been feeling was doubled now. And if she were feeling this much pain, the Madders must be in agony.
“I want you all to hold hands,” Rose continued. “Can you do that for me?”
She stood and set the little girl on her feet, then held her hand out for her. The little girl took it. Seeing that, the other children each took the hand of the child next to them.
“Very good,” Rose said. “You’re doing very good. Now, we’re all going to walk out into the daylight. Ready?”
The children just stood there, blank-eyed. She didn’t know what was normal and expected for a child who had just been turned to stone and back, but these children acted as if they were still in a dream.
Or that they were mindless, empty—and as stonelike inside as they had been outside.
A shiver ran down her spine as Rose glanced at all those blank eyes staring at her. They weren’t behaving much like children at all.
She swallowed hard and pushed her unease aside. The children were alive. They were breathing, standing, and they could understand what she was telling them. That would be enough. Maybe if they got out of this cave, farther away from this spell, they would begin to act like children again.
“Here we go,” she said. “This way. Don’t let go of hands.”
Rose walked back up the slope to the cave opening, then ducked and pushed her way out into the daylight, still holding the little girl’s hand.
In the short time she had been in the cave, it had begun snowing rather heavily. She couldn’t see more than a step or two in front of her, but there was no wind behind the snow. There was just snow, a constant, blinding, wet curtain of white closing down on everything.
But with the wire around her wrist, she could find her way back through total darkness.
“I have them,” Rose called. “I have the children.”