In his Trance

The three of us walked into the living room, their was still little to none light outside. I opened my Dumbledore’s army bag, that I had snagged as we were leaving the bedroom, and looked at my cell, the time said that it was 10 minutes till midnight. I had forgotten that Ginger and I came here at night, and then everything else happened, so I didn’t realize that we slept through the whole day.

As I was thinking through it all, Damien walked into the room, with his arm looped around Ginger’s waist. “Evening everyone, well Aislinn, your week will start once the clock strikes midnight, so let’s get to your hints. The faster that this is over and you fail, the faster I get you and your little friend as my slaves, and don’t worry we’ll have a great time.” He licked his lips at me as he said the last sentence.

Ginger pouted at him. “We won’t let them have to much fun, you know I don’t like to share.”

Damien smiled almost genuinely at Ginger. “Don’t worry, I have my priorities.” He kissed her, for a little bit to long for comfort. “Ok know, on to your hints, it’s a few minutes to midnight, so listen up.”

“ She lies in the land where the sun is never lit,
The moon can’t scream,
While people are still.
Few will watch, but the ones that can,
The wind whispers through the ground.”

Damien finished his cryptic hints with a smirk on his lips, he knew it wasn’t super easy to decipher. I opened my mouth to object, but Haden put a finger to my lips silencing me. “Say it again, so we can write it down.” Haden asked with little emotion.

Damien shrugged, then repeated himself, this time I grabbed a scrap of paper from my bag and a pen to scribble it down on. As he finished with the poem, their was a loud gong like noise, it was from a clock, and our time had started.

“Well, have fun with your failure, I’ll be waiting for you Aislinn.” He winked at me then led Ginger out of the room, leaving my group alone.

Blake finally spoke, as if she was finally awake. “I don’t know about you guys, but I have no idea what that crap of a hint was.”

I sighed flopping onto the couch, with a sinking feeling in my gut. “Me neither Blake, Haden any ideas?”

He was silent at first, you could tell that he was thinking hard, the wheels in his head turning. He paced back and forth for a moment. “Aislinn can you give me the paper for a second?”
I raised my eyebrows at him, then handed the crumpled scrap to him. “Ok.” He stated. “It starts off, ‘She lies in the land where the sun is never lit’ that part is easy. It means that she’s here in the underworld, because we have no sun. The rest I’m kind of confused about. We’ll try to break it down some more in a little bit for now, let leave here at least. I have a place not far from here, we’ll go there for now.”

Blake and I didn’t reply, we just followed Haden out the door, and back to the lobby area. We then walked out onto the cobble road, we turned and started south wards. Haden led us a few blocks down, past shops with things I’ve never seen in their windows, luckily the light spilled out from them onto the street. After 20 minutes or so we stopped in front of a modest looking house.

It was a two story smushed between two taller building, it was painted white with two windows showing from the downstairs, and a huge window that covered half of the upstairs wall that showed. A few brightly colored plants were beside the large dark red door, it had a old golden looking knob, with a knocker with a lion head on it.

Haden led us to the door and he grabbed a large key out of his pocket, and pushed it into the doorknob, it seems the Underworld hasn’t come up with some crazy lock system yet. The inside was wasn’t as cozy looking as the outside, it was super clean and everything just seemed to sharp. The floor was a swirly gray marble, in what seemed like every room, and the walls a pale blue.

In the living room area, there was a white couch in an L shape, the material was some kind of animal fur, in front of it was a giant marble fireplace. The couch was sitting on a dark purple ornate rug. I sat on the couch and Blake scooted beside me, while Haden went to turn on the lights. He then came over and joined us. “Now, lets look at the clues again.”

I pulled the piece of paper back out and Haden and Blake scooted closer to me so that they could see better. I didn’t mind feeling Blake’s warm body against my side, but Haden was cool and every time he breathed I could feel it hit my neck. I took a deep breath. “Ok, this is just like any other poem right? So we just need to break it down like I would do in English class to find out the meaning. We already know that the first line means that Luna is in the Underworld.” I took my pen and wrote beside the first line Underworld. “Next ‘the moon can’t scream’ so what does the moon represent and why can’t it scream?”

We all thought about it then Blake exclaimed. “Luna is the moon!”

Haden and I looked at her confused. “In Spanish Luna means moon, so she’s the moon and she can’t scream because……” The excitement faded from Blake’s voice.

“That makes sense.” I nodded my head in agreement with Blake, I circled moon and then drew an arrow pointing to the word Luna. “Ok we kind of have the line next is ‘while people are still forever’ now my great question of who is the people and why are they still? So their still, that means they can’t move but why? Because there…..?” I kept mumbling to myself.

“Because their dead.” Haden whispered.

Blake and I looked at him. “Yeah, because dead people are still, well, forever. So far we got, Luna is in the Underworld, she can’t ‘scream, and theirs dead people….” I replied to him, we can crack this, I know it. “Few will watch, but the ones that can.” I read the next line to Haden and Blake. “Well if their all dead that’s why they can’t watch I guess, but some people are still alive?” I wasn’t to sure about what I was saying but I stared at Haden in hopes that’d he know.

“That sounds about right, but I’m still confused by the dead thing….”

“Why is that?” Now he was confusing me.

He cleared his throat. “Since it says she’s in the Underworld, well we don’t usually die, it’s quite a rarity. That’s partly why we started to live on Earth, because it gets kind of crowded with everyone living forever but luckily, not a lot of babies are born.”

Blake murmured. “Then that’s our link, we have to find a place where a lot of people died, shouldn’t you guys have an encyclopedia or history book or something?”

“I’ve never heard of place with many deaths, it not like we get plagues or anything but, we can see.”

I almost smiled, we were doing great so far, and it was only the middle of our first day, we could do this and find Luna, and if not well, I’d rather die then be a slave to Damien. All I have to do is break the promise then……