The Bone Princess

Chapter 6: A Passage of Blood and Bone

Sutton led the way, the three of us waving our torches through a stone corridor, the temperature dropping with each step. And then we stopped short—the path forked off in three directions. Three different tunnels.

"The red clay mines of Crimson Peak," Sutton said, as if the mines were something he knew about but had never experienced himself.

A cave kiss dripped onto my forehead, like the time we'd gone on a family vacation to Howes Cavern to see the stalactites. Behind us, we heard the elevator yank back up. It would be only minutes before my father would join us in the pits. I didn't want another family trip to the caves.

"Which way," I asked.

Sutton paced the length of the space, waving his torch at each entranceway, anxiety building, knowing we'd have to quickly choose. He had no data, no research to base the decision. And then I felt it—cold fingers slowly strummed at the base of my neck, and it whispered: "Sadie . . . you're never leaving Crimson Peak."

"They're here!" I yelled as the wraiths poured in from one of the tunnels. Sutton quickly bent a knee to the ground. "Hang on tight," he told Tabby, her eyes bulging, nodding her head as she climbed on Sutton's back. I frantically waved my torch through the air as ghost-echoes touched my legs and slid underneath my shirt and around my stomach. "Run!" I yelled, choosing for us—the middle tunnel—remembering those cold digits squeezing my heart.

The tunnels branched off this way and that. Up. Down. Left. Right. Our feet slapped against the quarry, choosing one path after another as they continued to fork off like capillaries. More wraiths and more cave kisses and more running—their freezing fingers grabbing at our faces as we twisted and turned through the winding tunnels at random until the ground began to slope down and down, deeper and deeper, and we spilled into a great open space—a giant rocky chamber that seemed twenty stories high, with dark holes at every level, leading to more and more tunnels.

Mother Dust might have been the Queen of Allerdale Hall, but this cavern was the heart of Crimson Peak.

We paused in the middle, looking around, trying to choose which way to go, my chest heaving so hard I thought my lungs might actually explode.

Sutton put Tabby down and went to work, drawing a circle around us, chanting his Latin words. High above, thunder rumbled like mountains grinding against mountains, and then the rumble crept up through the ground and to our feet, louder, and louder still. Something was coming. Something was close.

And then Sutton and I looked to each other in abject confusion as all the wraiths scattered out of the cave.

"What is hap—" I began, before the earthen wall to our left exploded in a thick burst, red water, crimson from the clay, flowing like blood from a giant's decapitation.

"We must get higher—" Sutton yelled, losing his footing, but he was too late—the clay swept out from under him, and he vanished into the churning red flood. More of the ground beneath us began to give way. I grabbed my sister, who managed to hang onto her tiny torch while I flung her onto my back. I jammed mine into a crevice in the rock wall and began to climb. One rock after another, until I reached the ledge of the nearest tunnel.

"Go, Tabby. You have to climb up."

No more coaxing was required. I did my best to remain steady as she dug her little feet into my hips and then onto my shoulders and on my head, and she scurried over the ledge with her little torch. "Stay, here!" I yelled. "I'll be right back!"

And I scrambled down, half climbing, half sliding until I reached the bottom, which was now just a smattering of large rocks, most of the clay having been washed away.