Sort of Deadly

Bee's POV:-

Cold and shivering, I navigated the direction from memory. Last time I had been here, Mr. Om had been leading the way and Es had been gallivanting about in the foliage and See had been licking my shoe and now I was so alone and I was so scared and ahhh I didn’t want to die like this.

I remembered the horrendous, carnivorous plants from earlier and followed their trail. It was dark, so their purple glow alone was guiding me. Once I nearly stumbled into one of their jaws because their light had been off for some reason. I also spotted this person's shape imputed on the ridged ground and I moved towards him, only to see that the shape belonged to a skeleton eating a tiny, two-inch dinosaur. And it wasn’t a human or even a human-like skeleton, so I darted, twisting my ankle.

I knew the walk was kind of long, having done it once before – but I didn’t know it would so much longer with my ankle sprained. Like, sweet particles of astrophysics! The pain!

I breathed white fog, which kept hindering my vision. I’ve been thinking my eyesight is getting weaker, anyway, I should have had an optical exam sooner. Welps.

'Stay calm, Bee,' I told myself again and again. ‘Stay calm. You just had water, so you can stay hydrated for a while. After that . . . well, we’ll see.’

I surely couldn’t drink water from the lake. That could prove fatal.

But I really wasn’t even much worried about that. The fact that I was missing from the mansion was bound to be discovered soon. Momma and Pops – they’d blame Mr. Om and my friends . . . and they probably wouldn’t even figure out I had used the amulet to come here (by accident or not), because who the heck in their right mind would do that?

And if they did figure it out, they’d come here . . . and die, too. Ravenna was far more wary and careful than the Grahi Witch. She wasn’t drunk with power; she was fighting to have it.

I kept walking, my feet hurting like you wouldn’t believe. I kept walking and walking – and unknowingly stepped into the lake.

I sank in, warping my already sprained ankle – pretty sure I broke it, sharp, hot, searing pain ran up my leg in multiple lines – and felt something cold truss around my calf, pulling me in deeper. I started to drown, kick, gag. I looked down, suffocating, and found a sickly green weed tightening around that calf.

Ultimately, I ran out of breath, and the weed-rope kept pulling me in deeper still – you’d never have guessed a lake would be this deep – and I opened my mouth – and found that I could breathe.

I mean, water – doubtlessly filthy, grimy water – entered my nose and my mouth, but it somehow didn’t bother me. I could breathe, I was alive . . . and my good foot hit the floor bed of the lake. The weed-rope loosened and crawled away into a bush by what looked like an anemone where some sea cucumbers were having a marathon.

I looked up, but the surface of the lake was way too far above. The water in my nasal canal got it ticklish, so I snorted to get some out, even though there was water all around me, but only expunged a giant bubble.

I was too busy marveling at the wonder and horror of it all – heck, I was breathing underwater and snorting bubbles – that I barely noticed the enormous, inhabited shells behind me.

'Trespasser, do speak your name,' said a croaky voice, so I turned to face its owner, and saw a four-feet tall lobster sitting in the largest central shell, which gleamed like opal. (Opal is, as I’m sure you must know, an amorphous form of silicates – and it glows bright turquoise when hydrated with water about 8% its net weight.)