Beta-read by the clever lethemoirai and the imaginative Commandante Theresa.
Previously, in "An Age Cannot Sate Love":
Emma and Killian have traveled through the barren, snow-filled landscape toward the final test of faith, and have discovered a large cocoon of silk threads, the product of silk worms. Entering one end of the cocoon, they find an inscription:
Flowing like water that never ends
Sands leach out without mend
Tear the fabric
Rend the cloth
The silent orbs spin without a thought,
Following innumerable laws not wrought.
The person himself determines the degree
Hoping to succeed on bended knee
And has one hour to find the key.
The countdown has begun, but before they get much further into the seemingly endless cocoon, Zoso (the Dark One before Rumple), hiding in between the strong silken threads, drops a large rock on Killian's head, fatally wounding him. Magic doesn't work in the Balgienit's lair, and so Emma makes a deal with Zoso: she will give him the key to the door of time in exchange for the true love potion he'd made with hers and Killian's hairs. The potion heals Killian, Zoso makes a quick exit, and Emma decides that even though she might not make it through the door to her own time, maybe she and Killian can hide out in Neverland until she can eventually be reunited with her family.
Chapter 29: The Face of Despair
"Bloody hell," Killian said in awe, turning his head in every direction as if he couldn't decide what to take in first, finally settling on staring straight ahead.
The cocoon opened onto a steep-sided dirt pit in the ground, roughly a hundred yards deep and housing a giant tree whose branches nearly spanned its width. It was covered in worm nests. The topmost branches barely stuck above the snow-lined edges of the pit, and the nests were comfortably protected from the rushing wind as it swept over the landscape and blew Emma's hood back from her face. Crackling, splitting, and crunching sounds rose from the tree as the millions of writhing worms chewed their way through the leaves, safe in their gauzy refuges.
Emma glanced down at her feet, noting several woven strands of silk leading from the cocoon, each about the diameter of a medium-sized rope, offering a sure but dangerous descent to the bottom of the pit.
"Come on, pirate, there's no time to be enchanted by the view," she said dryly, as she bent down to grab a couple of the lines, pulling on them and testing them for weight.
"Right." He joined her side, taking one of the lines in his hand. "I'll go first, in case…"
He didn't have to finish; she knew what he meant. If she fell or slipped, he would be there to catch her.
"We'll go together," she said with more confidence than she felt, "I've got this." His answering half-smile told her he wasn't sure she did, but would let it lie for the moment.
"Alright. Keep your gloves on. Wrap the line around your wrist before grabbing it with that hand. You can let it out as you move down and use the other hand for balance."
"It won't break?" she asked, the line cutting into her glove.
"Not woven together as they are. Silk is one of the strongest fibers known. Now, allow the line to ride the outside of your body, then let it wrap under the outside foot and over the inside foot. Pinch the line together with your toes." He demonstrated what he meant, and she could see that the friction from his weight and the way the line was caught between his feet effectively created a foothold and consequent relief for his arms. He looked like he could swing like that all day.
She wrapped her wrist like he had, then slowly dropped over the edge, maneuvering awkwardly while trying to avoid lying on her belly and feeling the press of his hand against her bottom for extra support, until she could secure the line around her feet. "Always looking for an excuse…" she teased under her breath, smiling at the wall in front of her since she couldn't exactly wink at him.
"Can you blame a man for trying? You have the loveliest arse, quite possibly my favorite part of your anatomy, Swan," he quipped, patiently waiting while she adjusted the line between her feet and let her body rest on the trapped foot.
"Timing, pirate, timing," she admonished, happy to take her mind off the drop below her feet, the silk strands dangling in the air like fragile tentacles.
But he was back to being serious again. "You can let the rope out as fast or slow as you want, I'll let you set the pace." He watched her for a moment, making sure she had the hang of it, before attending to his own descent.
She moved tentatively at first, slowly letting the line out between her feet and subsequently releasing it from around her wrist. As they descended, the sounds coming from the nests grew in volume until they became ear-splitting, and she felt like a spider dropping into a crystal glass when the rim is stroked with a wet finger. But instead of a single, pure note, these sounds were ugly and menacing, growing and gnawing until she fervently wished her hands were free to cover her ears.
And yet, in the midst of all the noise, the unmistakable sound of a clock ticked the seconds away, as though the tree itself found it necessary to add its own rhythmic heartbeat to the dissonance.
Intentionally ignoring the noise, and concentrating on her careful movements, it took her a minute to realize Killian had been speaking to her.
"What?" she shouted over the din.
"What happens if we fail?" he hollered back, keeping true to his word and making sure to stay just a little below her.
"I don't really know." That wasn't true, but the truth would likely make him angry with her, and she couldn't take that right now, not with the stress of what they had to accomplish in such a short time.
"You mean you didn't work out an alternative plan with the Dark One in case we didn't find the key?" he asked, perplexed.
"No. It didn't occur to me," she said, keeping her eyes on the line. She could almost hear his doubt drowning out the sounds of chewing. "I was a little upset at the time," she offered by way of explanation, nearly wincing with the lie.
"Ah," he said, not buying it, which was just like him. But it was too hard to talk, and he stayed silent. She let him, his question reminding her of the cost of failure.
Zoso stood over her like a black cloud, holding all the cards, having just told her that he would extinguish her husband with the same emotion as one snuffs a cigarette. It made her angry, but there was no time for anger.
"And if we fail, and are unable to find the key at all?" she managed to ask through the haze of fear and grief and fury.
"Your child, Mrs. Jones," he smiled gleefully, like he almost relished their failure. "I want your child. The price of failure is that I get to raise your child as my own, and take back the life I was robbed of all those years ago."
No choice at all. They simply couldn't fail and she simply couldn't live without Killian.
"Give me the potion," she demanded.
The jolt of Killian's body as he jumped the final few feet startled her from her memory, and she set it aside, refusing to entertain any thoughts about the possibility of failure. The noise had abated somewhat, now that the lowest branches of the tree sat high overhead, and thank God, since the constant munching ate right through her brain, grinding away at her resolve. She couldn't help but wonder if that was their purpose.
.
.
As soon as his feet touched the ground and he could see Emma was safe, Killian circled around, taking in the large cave-like openings at intervals along the sides of the pit.
"Twenty-four," he counted. "Ah, like the hours in a day. Of course," he said, running over to one, seeing the opals embedded in the dirt, reflecting the light through the short tunnel that seemed to be a quick passageway to the next chamber or similar pit. He estimated that they had approximately thirty minutes to find the key and needed to find the most efficient way to use that time. A plan was already forming in his mind.
Emma's feet hit the dirt floor with a dull thud. "How do we decide which one leads to the Balgienit's lair?"
A quick search of another tunnel uncovered a similar short passageway. "Let's split up. Starting here," he pointed to the nearest tunnel, "I'll search the odd-numbered tunnels, you take even, and if it's not the lair, then mark an 'X' in the dirt like this," he used the toe of his boot to mark the earth, "and move onto the next one. And if it is the lair, then return here and wait until the other gets back. We'll face this thing together."
Her eyes were tired, and she nodded once, trying to hide her fear behind a brave smile, but he could see it, plain as day. The watery light from above painted the bones of her face in starkness and shadows, and suddenly he was staring into the skeleton face of his beloved, her flesh eaten away by those munching, crunching creatures squirming only meters above their heads. He shook the feeling away like shaking off a clinging fly, removing a glove to reach up and caress her cheek, more to ensure himself that she was truly alive than trying to comfort her.
She pressed her face into his hand, and the shadow was gone just as quickly as it had descended. Perhaps it was only a trick of the light, but the lingering sense of premonition wouldn't release him, even as she turned to go and he trotted through the first of the tunnels, its ghostly touch raising the hair on the back of his neck.
It was darker in the tunnel than it had been in the pit, understandably so, but the few opals did reflect some of the light from both ends, allowing his eyes to make out the packed dirt floor and walls, so similar to the tunnels they had traversed together on the way to Mac's. Once again, the picture of a giant earthworm slowly eating its way through the earth filled his mind as it had before.
It took less than a minute to run to the other end of the passage, and he could see that it opened into a pit much like the one they had been in, only without the giant tree. He had barely stepped free of the tunnel to check the entire expanse for any traces of the key or the monster, when he felt himself being lifted high into the air by the collar of his heavy jacket. Bloody hell! he thought, keeping his arms by his side so he wouldn't fall out of the slipping cloth, and realizing with a growing sense of dread that whatever had him was big. Twisting his head to look behind him, he saw nothing but the furry hood of his overcoat blocking everything from view except what was directly in front of him.
Whatever it was moved him quickly through the frigid air, depositing him on a high dirt shelf, carved into the side of the pit. Its edges were crumbling, and fell away at a steep angle, so that even before he was dropped, he knew he wouldn't be able to escape. His feet barely touched the soft dirt before his overcoat was being pulled upward in short jerks, and he fell beneath it, like a nut falls from its hull.
Whirling around and drawing his sword, he swiped it outward from his body, slicing nothing but air. Huge finger-like projections that extended from the end of a giant tail had already moved out of range, his coat dangling for just a moment before it was released, floating like a piece of paper caught on the wind, until it touched the earth far below in a forgotten heap. The tail retreated slowly, as though it had all the time in the world.
It curled itself around the opening through which he'd been plucked, twisting its body above and around in such a way that it was concealed from anyone who emerged. Having caught only a glimpse of the back of it, the head tucked into one of the curves of the body as though it meant to sleep, while the finger-like projections on the end of the tail picked up several strands of silk from the floor and continued weaving them together, forming a larger piece of cloth, a random, yet beautiful white-washed pattern emerging from the silk threads.
Killian was near the edge of the precipice on which he stood; a slight shift of his weight caused the soft dirt to melt away beneath one of his feet and he caught himself, retreating a few steps until his back hit the cold dirt behind him. He slid down the wall, covering his knees with his arms in an effort to preserve body heat. Of one thing he was sure, he'd need all his strength once Swan entered the room.
====o0I0o====
Emma ran through the first corridor as quickly as she could manage with aching arms and legs, mostly ready for all of this to be over. Not yet. Just hold on a little longer, she told herself, realizing that it would end soon enough, her fate decided in less than an hour.
The tunnel opened onto another dirt-lined pit exactly like the first, the same large openings at the base that she could only hope they wouldn't have to search, a giant tree in the middle of it, the same cacophonous sounds of crackling and munching, creaking and tearing, penetrating her mind like Nicholas Stranger's pipe, threatening to rob her, of what, she couldn't be sure.
Seeing nothing resembling the Balgienit, she was about to turn around and run back through, when Killian emerged from the tunnel next to hers. He turned and winked at her, then ducked back through his tunnel, with the air of a man playing tag. She smiled and returned down her own, marking a '2X' at the entrance, noting the '1X' at his, before entering the fourth.
The fourth tunnel also opened into a tree-filled pit like the first, causing her to wonder if it was the same. She marked an 'O' on the ground in front of it, and would check for it if the next tunnel proved to end similarly.
Killian came to a skid out of the next tunnel. "Swan," he said cheekily, "Fancy meeting you here. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were following me," he smirked, then turned away before she could answer.
There was no time for an answer anyway, but at least he was distracting, in the best kind of way. Running back through her tunnel, she marked a '4X', noted his '3X' and entered the sixth tunnel. It ended the same. Drawing a line where she stood to mark her place, she ran toward the opening she thought she'd come through before, noting the 'O' on the ground there.
Two pits. Two trees. Okay then, she was somehow moving back and forth between the same two spaces. That made things easier. Eventually one of the openings had to lead to the lair, right?
Killian burst from the nearest tunnel, nearly running into her as she made her way back to the one marked with the line. "Bloody hell, Swan, what's the matter with you?" he asked, brow furrowed in disgust and angrily stopping just short of her.
She paused in a wide-eyed startle, unable to do anything but gape at him. His change in attitude was so abrupt and his features so cloudy that she stepped back, suddenly feeling like she was staring into the face of the dangerous Captain Hook she'd heard so much about, but had never been able to imagine in the kind-hearted man she loved.
"Killian?"
Even to her own ears, her voice sounded like the frightened little girl she'd once been. And all at once, the sounds of the ravenous, writhing hordes of worms broke through the walls of her mind, steadily chewing all other thoughts, robbing her of the logic she'd been using to distract herself from the impossibility of the task before her. Hopelessness and despair replaced reason and purpose, and her shoulders slumped, as if unable to bear the weight of her chest any longer.
For standing before her was a man who was most definitely not Killian, or at least, not the Killian she had arrived with. This Killian, and the others she realized now, was dressed in leather like always, no furry overcoat or gloves to be seen, and the air was simply too cold to travel the tunnels any other way.
And the scar on his cheek, that she'd lovingly kissed more times than she could count, was on the other side of his face.
====o0I0o====
Mirror images. Once again she was dealing with a mirror image. But not of Graham. Of Killian, her Killian. And if they were anything like the mirror-images of the guards in the Piper's compound, then they were under the control of something else.
"Damn-it!" she cried loudly and tersely to the opal-embedded dirt wall, having fled the other Killian as quickly as her legs would carry her.
What now? Where was her Killian? Was he still searching the tunnels like they had planned? If he wasn't, did that mean she had to check his tunnels too? Was she going to have search throughout this whole accursed place without his help? Had he abandoned her like everyone else managed to do at some point in her life?
Roughly scraping the tears from her face, she kept moving forward, as fast as she could manage without collapsing from exhaustion, marking the ground and checking every other tunnel. Her legs carried her forward, without her having to make a conscious effort to move them. Her mind was far away, the questions swirling in her head like wine in a glass, rolling around and around, faster and faster, until it threatened to spill over the edge, and carry her sanity with it.
The munching grew louder. Despair covered her like she was buried in a suffocating tomb, and yet she carried on, with no other choice, listening to those horrid noises accompanied by that even more ominous ticking, ticking, counting down the seconds until her child was taken away.
She ran into the other Killian several more times, but ignored him. Sometimes he said something, mostly he was silent, letting his face express his thoughts. It was as though he was trying out every emotion he'd ever felt, so that once he was forgetful, once he was protective, once he was loving, frustrated, doubting, and so on, as she recognized the many faces of Killian Jones. Or not-Killian, as the case seemed to be.
And then she saw it. The 'O' on the ground, or at least part of it, since it looked as though someone had hastily tried to erase the mark she'd left earlier. Only she'd left it on the fourth tunnel, not the sixteenth.
She sank to the floor in abject misery. This was impossible. The task was impossible. She was a pawn in a hall of mirrors and now she'd have to go back and check all the odd numbered halls too. And Killian, her Killian was nowhere to be seen.
.
.
"Swan!" he yelled again at the top of his lungs, pushing his voice past his shivering body. He hadn't noticed it at first, but a tiny hourglass hung from a couple of arms set into the dirt wall above the curled body of the large worm, and judging by the rate at which it was dropping sand, they had less than fifteen minutes to get the key.
There were no sounds in the large chamber except the swish of silk as the spinnerets on the worm continued weaving, and he began to wonder if he would be stuck there until he froze to death. His hands and feet were already numb, the coldness slowly seeping up his limbs toward his heart. He wanted to jump up and down, anything to keep the blood flowing, but the shelf was too unstable for that, and it was a very long drop to the floor. The most he could manage was to squeeze his muscles intermittently, hoping it would be enough to keep him alert if Emma should run into the chamber and he should somehow make it down to her.
====o0I0o====
Emma had to get up. Had to move past the point of pain and anguish, had to move. She tried holding the sight of her unborn child in her mind, knowing she couldn't fail their baby, she couldn't fail Killian. But it was a dream, all of this was a dream, wasn't it? How could she really be in this freezing place with munching worms, mirror-image Killians, and monsters that held keys? She must be stuck in a nightmare.
Her heavy coat lurched, her baby kicking and rolling over, moving so solidly that it nearly took her breath away. Well, at least her baby was real. She continued to sit, resting her tired limbs, letting the ground hold her up, and hugging the life within her. Time was going to run out, as it had so many times in her past, and her baby, their baby, would be lost forever.
Her tears hit her gloves with soft pats as her heart flowed out of her chest and into her belly, framing the tiny body with all her love. Dreams of this child growing up differently than she had, than even Henry had, shattered all at once, and mournful wailing surrounded her like a giant wall until that was the only sound she could hear.
And then a voice poked through a crevice in the wall of sound and floated oddly through her exhausted brain, disconnected and drifting on a silken thread: "Swan!"
The name formed in her befuddled brain clearly and distinctly, and Emma lifted her head in response.
"Swan! You have to hurry!"
Killian's voice was straining and cracked a little, as though he'd been shouting for a while. She hurried toward it, not bothering to go back to the original room where they'd arrived, but heading toward her left, to enter the backside of the tunnel Killian had entered at first.
She could see it was different even before she reached the end. Instead of the worms' noises getting louder with her approach, they abated as she trotted forward, carrying away the despair that had been steadily growing as she had moved back and forth between the tunnels. Maybe it had all been a ruse to force her to lose precious time.
Furious with the monster and its tricks, she ran headlong into the cavern, stopping instantly when a huge rounded face suddenly appeared before her. Its menacing mouth spread open, so wide it gaped like the maw of a black-bottomed pit, ready to swallow her whole, revealing rows upon rows of pointed teeth like a shark's, gleaming in razor sharp spines. The mouth turned to the side, and she looked up into a giant human eye, blood-red pupils regarding her in a malevolent stare.
A horrified gasp escaped her mouth, but she quickly shed her gloves and grabbed her dagger, holding it up before the monster, feeling like an ant holding a sliver of wood for protection, just before a large foot descends on its head.
She swiped her dagger at the face, the impact shocking her as the knife bounced off the armor-like skin. Her arm went numb, almost like she'd hit her funny bone, and she nearly dropped the only weapon she had counted on for self-defense against the thing. The sound of laughter filled the chamber, and the huge face lifted up, attached to the body of a large worm covered in thick scales, half its body crawling up the walls of the pit while the other half sat on the floor.
"Swan!" Killian shouted.
She looked up to see him on a high shelf, waving his hands. Relief washed over her, fueling her desire to finish this once and for all.
"Come on!" she shouted. "I've had enough of this! Where's the key?!" she yelled at the retreating head.
The thing chuckled, or at least she thought it did, and then she heard as clearly as if it had been spoken, And what kind of guardian would I be if I just willingly gave up the key?
Emma jutted her chin forward angrily. "Then how does this play out?" She gestured toward Killian. "We obviously can't defeat you, so what do you want? A deal?" The huge body was covered in thick segments, each overlapping the next, so that even if there was some kind of thin underbelly, her arm would be crushed trying to get her dagger close enough to slit the skin.
Deals? Really, Mrs. Jones, I can't be bought, unlike you… humans. The voice in her head sounded derisive at best.
"Then what do you want?"
The knot removed! the voice thundered.
She flinched from the intensity of the response, but recovered quickly. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she asked indignantly.
The huge body moved aside, revealing several strands of woven silk, the slight differences in the natural fibers creating a beautiful design. She could see the unfinished end, tapering from the main cloth. A large knot sat near the end of the work, marring the perfection with its contorted strands.
"And you think I can do something about that?" It wasn't as if she'd asked to come here.
You can run out of time and die! it screeched through her mind. Once the two of you are gone, the cloth will unravel, history will rewrite itself, and it can be rewoven into perfection.
"Why not just kill us now?" she screamed in fury, so tired of being at the mercy of impossible situations that required more than she had to give.
Without warning, its head struck downward, those horrible rows of teeth bared and Emma standing there like a tiny morsel. She ducked and rolled sideways, a little more slowly than she would have liked, feeling the hot breath of the creature brushing just past her head.
"No!" she heard Killian cry from above.
An awful snickering filled her head. It doesn't work that way. The hour of time must be honored.
But the monster had made its point. Emma blearily raised her head, wondering why the hour mattered, when something else caught her attention. At least twenty mirror-image Killians, each with a different expression, stood before her, swords at the ready. The Balgienit was going to run down the clock first and then it was going to kill her and her husband.
.
.
Although his limbs felt as though they were slogging through mud from the cold, Killian was on his feet and rushing forward, having forgotten how precarious the shelf was. As soon as he'd taken the two steps toward the edge, the dirt fell away, and he was falling through the air, his stomach doing a nauseating tumble as he descended.
But the descent stopped abruptly as he was pulled up by the collar, once again held by the worm's spinnerets. It delivered him in the midst of the fight amongst the Killians, Emma's blonde head bobbing here and there as she fought.
"Swan!" he yelled, just as several other Killians echoed him, and Emma turned her head, trying to determine which was the right one. A knife jab at her face caused him to realize his mistake, and he clamped his lips shut, cutting through the leg of one of his counterparts as another struck at his middle, trying to make it to her back, where they could fight together as they always had. But one of the Killians was already there, protecting her and fighting against the others in a confusing fracas.
There was nothing for him to do but attack. He would take out as many of the other Killians as he could, staying clear of Emma herself, so he wouldn't confuse her and get speared by that lovely little dagger.
Taking a hit on his shoulder as one of the Killians stopped fighting another one to turn on him, he twisted his head to the side, barely missing the swipe of a cutlass aimed for his neck. Swan was only just holding it together, looking more dazed than anything, and he focused on fighting the Killians nearest her, while still keeping his distance.
They were all talking, some engaging in playful banter, some calling her name pitifully, others angrily shouting insults. The melee was never going to end before the time ran out.
"That's it!" Emma shouted above the bedlam.
He looked up to see her face shining with the determination that comes from having finally worked out something that had long been elusive. She ducked under the outstretched sword of one of the Killians, jumped over the fallen body of another and hurled herself in front of the monster, skidding in the loose dirt to her knees. She tucked her head as deep as it would go and wrapped her arms around her belly, clutching her dagger in her hand.
The beast, whose expression had been one of angry interest, cocked its head back in a lazy arc and opened its nightmarish mouth, then struck down incredibly fast, and devoured his beautiful Swan.
Triumphant laughter filled his mind as the monster lifted its human eyes to the clock, and Killian watched as the last couple of grains of sand fell through the constricted neck.
No longer needed, the Killians turned and retreated down the nearest tunnel.
And the Balgienit went back to weaving the threads of time.
A/N To the guest who is consistently disappointed in this story: You're wrong in your assumptions and you really have no clue how this is going to end. On behalf of myself and all writers doing our best to entertain, your discouraging reviews could never be construed as constructive criticism, only 'very bad form', in the words of Killian Jones. Please find another story to read. ~DD
To all my awesome readers: I'm sorry for such negative words, but I felt something should be said. I love you and appreciate you all the more for recognizing the hard work involved in such a detailed story. Your support brings me much joy!
This is a busy time of year, but I'm going to do my best to continue with more regular updates. Thanks for reading, and leave a review if you want to make me smile. ;D Happy Thanksgiving! ~DD
