Author's Note: Sorry for the delay, if anyone is still reading this. I was on vacation, and then it took a while to really get caught up with all of my internet commitments. Enjoy the next chapter, and please review!
Chapter Eleven – Waterfall
When Ico had his breath back, he took the time to look around at their surroundings. They were on a balcony close to the top of the walls of the courtyard. Leaning over the railing, Ico could see the entire courtyard below him. He could see the balcony below that led out to the parapet that ran to the tower, and he suddenly noticed a great wooden bridge drawn up on that balcony. When it was lowered, it would lead to another balcony across the courtyard, which had a large open doorway that he thought led back into the great hall with the chandeliers. To his left, he saw an exact mirror image of the balconies and another bridge, also drawn up.
Then Ico noticed a lever on the balcony he and Yorda stood on. He pulled it, and saw the bridge beneath him begin to lower. As it touched down on the other side, a low thump could be heard all around the courtyard. Ico beckoned to Yorda and led the way back down the long ladder to the parapet, and through the door they had come through before, to the balcony where the now-lowered bridge was. They crossed over and walked the length of the balcony on the other side to the wall on the left. Ico saw a rope in a pulley over the side of the balcony, attached to the wall of the castle over his head. Directly beneath this rope was a stone shelf, but it was too high for him to climb. Then he noticed a metal crate in the corner, and pulled it over to the shelf. He clambered up, then cut the tight rope with his sword.
Leaping down, Ico looked over the railing to see what had happened. The rope had fallen out of the pulley, but it seemed to have caught in a pulley lower down the wall, so that it hung limply down almost to the floor of the courtyard. He had a feeling about this, so he took Yorda by the hand and entered the hall with the chandeliers through the doorway on the balcony. Ico led Yorda along the balcony that ran around the walls of the room, and remembered how he had broken the great stone bridge that now provided the only way across the dark pit in the floor. They made their way down the sloping bridge, slipping every now and then, and emerged back into the large courtyard through the open statue-doors.
Turning to his right, Ico walked over to where the rope hung down in front of two levels of large windows in the stone wall. The glass in most of them had been broken or completely shattered, and he could see another room through them. He supposed it was probably an empty room that wouldn't help them at all, but there was no harm in looking. He tugged on the rope, testing it to be sure it would hold his weight, but it seemed to still be strong. He climbed, hand over hand, up the rope to the higher of the two windows and swung himself in. He glanced back out the window and saw that Yorda was standing beneath him, looking up at him with a slight frown. "I'll be right back, I promise!" he called down to her, and turned into the room.
He was standing on a wide windowsill that ran along underneath the row of higher windows. Below him was a small stone room with a single guttering torch, empty except for a flight of stairs that led up to a pair of statue-doors. That had to be the way on! Ico spotted a door-like opening at the far end of the windowsill, so he carefully walked towards it, keeping close to the wall. He found that it led to a small loft that looked out over the rest of the room. Tucked into the far corner was another metal crate. Remembering how far off the ground the lower windows were, Ico pushed this crate off the edge of the loft and leapt down on top of it. He pushed the crate over to the windows, and picked the one with the least amount of glass still in its frame. Checking to make sure Yorda was out of the way, he pushed the crate out of the window to hear it hit the floor with a bang.
Poking his head out the window, he beckoned to Yorda and helped her climb from the crate to the window. Then he led her up the stairs and watched as magic poured from her chest to open the statue-doors. Ico suddenly wondered why her magic was only triggered in front of these doors. She had the power to banish the spirits and to heal his body, but she could only use it when she opened doors like these. Why was that the case? Why couldn't she simply get rid of the spirits as soon as they appeared? How could she be taken by them and dragged into a portal, if she had so much power? These questions, he realized, would probably never be answered. He wouldn't be surprised if Yorda didn't know herself. She always seemed a little shocked when the electric-like magic came out of her chest. Maybe it's the queen's doing, he thought. As usual, thoughts of that terrible person spurred him onward. "Well, let's go," he murmured, and led the way through the door.
The next room they found themselves in was a tall one with a large cataract of water pouring down one wall from an opening high up near the ceiling. The pool that this waterfall filled was very far down, and there were two bridges, one above the other, across that vast expanse. Ico and Yorda stood on the highest of the three levels of the room. Ico could see the afternoon sunlight through a large window on the wall opposite them, a window not much more than a large gap in the stones.
The two children made their way across the topmost bridge, but on the other side they met a barred-off door. Ico could see a courtyard outside, but the bars remained strong and would not budge. "I'll have to find another way," he muttered to himself, motioning for Yorda to stay where she was. He turned aside and spotted a long chain hanging over the side of the narrow shelf that ran along this wall. As far as he could tell, the chain reached all the way down to the bottom of the room. Ico carefully inched over to it and let himself down over the edge, climbing down hand over hand. Sometimes Ico wondered what all these chains and ropes and metal crates had once been used for, but he supposed he should just be grateful that they allowed him a path onward.
Ico dropped from the end of the chain, expecting to hit the floor with a clatter of sandals against stone, but instead he fell into something very cold with a loud splash. Bewildered, Ico discovered that he had dropped right into the pool, at the shallow end near the wall farthest from the waterfall. The water only came up to his waist, but it was as cold as ice. Ico was almost surprised it was still fluid. Behind him was a flight of stairs that led up to the middle level. Ico sloshed over to them and pulled himself, dripping and shivering, up out of the water. Teeth chattering, he hurried up the stairs and saw that he was directly underneath the door they had entered this room by. When he set down his foot onto the bridge in front of him, it swayed beneath him and he had to clutch at the rope railings. He realized this bridge was not made of stone like the one above him where Yorda stood waiting, but of rope and boards, so he proceeded across very carefully.
At the other end, Ico stepped out of the room through an open, unobstructed doorway. Jumping down a short series of step-like ledges, Ico found himself in the courtyard they had seen through the barred door. A large aqueduct-like structure stood directly in front of him, spanning the length of the courtyard. There didn't seem to be any water running in it; Ico wondered if perhaps it had fed the waterfall at one point. Still, there was no use in idle wondering. Ico spotted a man-sized metal box-like structure in a corner to his right. Seeing a lever attached to it, Ico hurried over to it, hopped in, and pulled the lever. The box thing suddenly shot upwards, nearly throwing Ico off-balance. It stopped with another jerk at a wide ledge against the side of the wall shared with the waterfall room.
Ico trotted along until he reached the barred door where Yorda still stood. He spied a lever on the wall, and pulled it. The bars lifted with a clatter, and Yorda rushed out to him, looking relieved. Ico led her to the metal box elevator, pulled the lever again, and they rode down to the floor of the courtyard. Then he took her to the pillars supporting the aqueduct. He thought he had seen something earlier, and sure enough, attached to one of the pillars was a metal ladder leading up to the lower of the two levels of the aqueduct. The two children climbed up the ladder and walked the length of the trough where water had once run.
At the end of the aqueduct, they found another ladder that led up to a doorway. After climbing it and entering the doorway, they stood in a huge L-shaped room, completely empty except for torches lining the walls. The only other door out of this room was closed, and the windows were high up on the wall. Thinking the room offered no way to continue on their way through the castle, Ico was about to give up when he chanced to look up towards the windows. Under each window was a ledge, and a pipe ran over them along the wall, high above the children's heads. A ladder in one corner of the room led up to another ledge under the pipe, a considerable distance from any of the windows. Ico hurried over to the ladder and swiftly climbed it. Hooking his legs around the pipe, he pulled himself hand-over-hand along the pipe.
Blood quickly rushed to Ico's head, and several times his sweaty hands nearly slipped off, but he managed to make it to the ledge under the first window and slipped off to crumple up in a heap. When he had regained his breath somewhat, he pushed himself to his feet and looked out the window. He could see a long drop to the grassy floor of a courtyard below, with no means of breaking his fall. Heaving a sigh, Ico clambered back up onto the pipe and continued on to the next window, and the next. Each window provided a view of a fatal fall, and Ico had given up hope when at last he reached the final window. To his surprise, when he leaned out, he saw a ladder attached to the side of the wall. Ico paused, looking down at Yorda standing in the middle of the room. She seemed occupied with examining her own arms, as though looking for the cuts and scratches that so often appeared on Ico's arms. Ico saw that, once again, he would have to leave her where she was, so he lost no more time in descending the ladder.
In the small, grassy courtyard he found himself in, a man-made stream flowed from one side of the enclosure to the other. Here it poured through a wide opening in the stone wall, and Ico could see it plunging downwards into the tall room with the pool of water. So this was where the waterfall came from! The water entered the courtyard Ico was in through a wooden gate in one wall, and there was a stone structure above this gate with a large metal valve. A small idea began forming in Ico's mind, though as usual he wasn't sure if it would do them any good.
First he decided to test the current of the stream. Spying a large wooden crate nearby, he pushed it into the water, where it bobbed down the stream rather fast and disappeared over the side. Ico gulped; if he wasn't careful, that could be him. He pushed his fears aside, backed up, and set off at a running start. He leapt right across the stream, dropping down safely on the other side. Ico let out a relieved breath and hurried over to the gate. He climbed onto the top and threw his weight against the slightly-rusted valve. With a protesting groan, it slowly began to move, and Ico continued pushing until he heard a thump that meant the gate had closed.
Ico paused for a moment, panting and resting his aching muscles, and then hurried back to the stream. The flow of water had stopped, leaving only the wet stones of the artificial bank. Ico didn't have the strength to leap across this time, so he merely dropped down one side and clambered up the other. Ico's journey back into the room where he had left Yorda was enough to bring tears of weariness to his eyes as he pulled himself hand-over-hand along the pipe. When he looked back on it later, he wondered how in the world he had managed to keep from falling off when his limbs already ached so much.
When he finally stepped back down onto the floor of the room, he found Yorda waiting there for him. Ico tried to smile, but his face seemed frozen with weariness. Yorda, seeming to see this, took his hand gently in her own. The shudder that ran up Ico's arm from her touch revived him slightly, somehow waking him up a little. His muscles were still sore, but he felt that now he could deal with it. Ico squeezed Yorda's hand in thanks. He didn't know if she had used magic, or whether it was simply the sight of her that had revived him, but all the same he was reminded that he would be nowhere without her.
Ico and Yorda made their way back into the room where the waterfall had been before. By this time, all the water had drained out of the pool. The room seemed empty and lonely somehow without the constant sound of rushing water. The two children made their way down the stairs to the floor of the room, for they had seen a pair of statue-doors behind the space the waterfall had occupied. The floor was slippery, and they stumbled a couple times, but they made it across. Ico noticed the wooden crate he had pushed into the water lying several feet away, and pushed it over to help them climb up a ledge to reach the statue-doors. The magic emerged from Yorda's chest, seeming to revive Ico even more, and the doors parted to let them through.
The title for this chapter is self-explanatory, I think.