Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
“Look out below!”
Benji didn’t jump. He traveled on the magical tide of the inkwell, appearing before us. Maude came after him, and Rory caught her, and she winced in pain. “It’s massive.” She peered at the walls around us. “It must have taken centuries for the sea to wear down all this rock.”
“How could someone live like this?” Benji asked, the cave throwing his echo back at him. “Ever in the dark?”
“You’d be surprised,” Rory murmured.
We struck out. Rory led, coin in hand, and I followed closely, gripping my hammer and chisel. Behind me was Maude, then the king, then the gargoyle at the rear.
“So you’re really not going to tell us how you knew this was here?” Maude asked him.
“I should think it rather obvious.”
“I promise,” Benji said, “it isn’t-“
“Quiet.” I perked my ear. “Listen.”
There. A harsh sound, and its echoes.
Clack, clack. “Do you hear that?”
Rory’s gaze narrowed. “Yes.”
The cavern was widening. Diverting. We passed pools of dank, stagnant water. Ahead, the sprites glowed fewer, scattered. Everything was colder. Darker.
Rory stopped. Ahead, three separate tunnels loomed like valves into a black heart.
“Which way now, all-knowing gargoyle?” Maude said.
He made a contemplative hmm. “Perhaps those weavings will instruct us.”
I hadn’t seen them at first. They were worn and wet and growing velvety moss, just like the walls of the cavern. But the closer I got-yes. There were weavings on the wall. Three of them, each the size of a child’s blanket.
Worn down by time and the salt in the air, the colored dye had all but faded, the thread long frayed. Still, I noted how fine the stitches were-how intricate the braided patterns.
“They’re pictures,” Rory said.
So they were.
The first was of worms. Hundreds of them, crawling over walls.
The second picture was of small pale clusters, hanging from thread over a fire.
The third-
I felt my pulse kick.
The third was of moths, fluttering over a stone slab.
“She’s a silk weaver.” Benji pointed at the weavings. “The worm grows. The cocoon is boiled. Those that remain become moths.”
“Grotesque, educational, yet uninstructive,” Rory said. “We still don’t know which path to take.”
“There are five of us.” Maude’s knuckles were white as she leaned on the stone oar. She nodded at the first tunnel. “Benji and I will take this one. You and Sybil take the second, the gargoyle-“
“No one travels alone,” I said. “The gargoyle comes with me.”
“The moth,” the gargoyle whispered, turning to the third tunnel. “We’ll follow the moth.”
It was the darkest of the three paths. The tightest. When I stepped toward it-breathed its damp air-it was as if someone had put wet cloth over my mouth and nostrils.
“Meet back here in twenty minutes, and we’ll explore the final tunnel together,” Rory said, taking my hand. “If one group is not back, the other comes after them.”
Benji’s eyes lowered to our hands together. “Twenty minutes.”
Maude gave us one of her reassuring grins, and then she and the king were disappearing down the first tunnel, and Rory, the gargoyle, and I into the third.
Darkness closed its fist around us. The path sloped downward, deeper into the earth. I could touch both sides of the tunnel with my arms spread, and Rory had to slouch so as not to strike his head. “Can’t see an inch in front of my nose.” His breaths were fast. Labored.
“You all right?”
He didn’t answer. Then-“Just stay close to me.”
The gargoyle, undisturbed by the gloom, hummed to himself. “She did her best to spruce the place up, didn’t she? The old Heartsore Weaver?”
I peered over my shoulder. He was running his claws over both sides of the tunnel-snagging over a long, thick thread I had not noticed. “And look. She made a happy little rope to guide herself on dark nights like this.” He gave the thread on the left a tug, ripping it entirely from the cave wall. “Hmmm. Not very sturdy-“
A deep groan sounded from above. Rory and the gargoyle and I went rigid. I heard, then smelled, water rushing, far away at first, then closer, closer, until it was right behind us. We turned.
A wall of water came careening toward us.
Rory was shouting and I was ushering the gargoyle forward, and then all three of us were sprinting into darkness. But whatever pool had been emptied into our tunnel came on a monstrous current. The water caught us-threw our feet out from under us. We were swept into blackness, faster, faster.
And then we were falling.
We hit something hard, a loud ting sounding. Gold, I realized. We’d fallen onto a vast bed of gold at the bottom of a pit-a hole in the tunnel-water pouring over us in a torrid rush. I lost Rory, lost the gargoyle, coughed and spluttered. Salt water shot into my eyes and nose and mouth. I fought against the current, desperate to find my feet.
But the water kept rising.
I choked on Rory’s name. The water held me down, and so did my armor, and I was seized with the vibrant horror that I might easily drown like this. Weighed down without purchase, unable to stand, unable to swim-
A hand found the nape of my neck. Pulled me up.
Rory was coughing, too, struggling like me to keep his feet in the pit of slippery coins with water pressing down on him.
He shouted over the din. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. We held on to each other, steadfast as we pulled, each the other’s perfect counterbalance, until we found our feet. When I looked up, I saw that the water was not so torrid as before, running out of furious pressure.
“I say, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle called from the lip of the pit. He hadn’t fallen in. He’d flown to the other edge, the prat-and looked furious to be wet. “Are you quite well?”