Chapter 6: Chapter Six – Waning Gibbous

Chapter 6

"Ok, go!" Lina whispers in my ear. 

I dart into the street, and into the door of the pastelaria right next to us. Lina made sure to check to see if any police were around, but we don't want any neighbors seeing us either. 

I stumble into the dark pastelaria, and reach to turn on the lights. 

"No light!" Lina whispers at me as she silently closes the door behind us. 

"C'mon, take my hand. I can see in the dark." Lina says as she grabs my hand. 

I can't see, but from memory I can tell that Lina is dragging me to the back of the kitchen. She quickly and gracefully guides me around chairs and tables, until we reach what I think is the back wall.

Lina drops my hand, and I hear what sounds like the large commercial dishwasher being picked up and gently placed against the other wall. 

"Ok, be careful. There's a ladder here, I'm going to guide you down it." Lina whispers to me as she grabs my hand. "Don't worry, I won't let you fall." 

Sure enough, to my utter confusion, there was a ladder. Once Lina safely guides me to the bottom, I hear her climb back up the ladder and close something. Maybe a door, or a hatch? 

Without hearing her climb back down, I hear a cord being pulled, and suddenly I'm bathed in a dim, gentle red light. I struggle to process my surroundings. 

We are standing in a small room that I can only assume is under the pastelaria. Every centimeter of the walls are covered in strange symbols that I don't recognize. There's a large workbench with an assortment of strange tools scattered on it, and what can only be a salt neutralizing plate in the middle. On a large rack above the workbench sit rows upon rows of jars filled with strange substances, and stones I can’t recognize. Lina is standing in the middle of the room with her hand still on the chain attached to a single red light bulb hanging from the ceiling. 

"What is this place?" I whisper. 

"My workshop." She replies. "It's where I do my research and experiments, charge my artifacts, practice my magic, and store blood." Lina says with a gesture to a mini-fridge under the workbench. 

"Here, start channeling, we need to move quickly." She instructs me, as she taps the salt slab on her workbench. 

She grabs a big jar filled with dead spiders, dumps them out, and fills it with water from my bottle. 

"Here, this is the best I can do for a water anchor. Will this work for you?" She asks me, as I'm still looking around in wonder. 

I nod, and begin removing my jewelry. I place my aquamarine necklace on the plate first. 

Lina pats me on the head. "Good. We need a water breathing spell, a swimming speed spell, and a desalination spell. Can you do all that?" She asks me. 

"Yea no problem. So we're taking the river out then? But how will you get out of the city? My magic won't help you swim." I ask Lina. 

"I'm not going to swim, you are. I'm going to fly." She replies with a smirk. "Here, start channeling and I'll explain the full plan…" 

By the time Lina finishes explaining our escape plan, I have all my artifacts charged with as much aether as they can handle. My necklace and shark tooth earrings charged with water breathing and swim speed spells, like before, and my coral ring charged with a desalination, filtering, and cleansing spell. I'm also wearing every piece of quartz I own. 

"Ok, that's the last one." I say as I secure my final shark tooth earring in place on my ear. "So you've had this place under the pastelaria this whole time? What are all these symbols?" I ask, gesturing at the strange writing covering the walls. 

Lina glaces quickly at the walls, then back to me. "It's Ugaritic Cuneiform, but we don't have time for me to explain. Let's get moving, we need to put as much distance between us and the city as we can before the sun rises." 

Lina stuffs the neutralizing plate into her bag, and we make our way back up the ladder. In the darkness I hear Lina pick up the dishwasher and gently place it back down over the hatch we just came up. 

Lina guides me back to the front door, and pauses with her hand on the handle. I feel her hesitate, and even though it's dark, I can tell she's looking back at her pastelaria. 

"It's ok. We'll come back some day." I say as I gently squeeze her hand. 

"I'll check the street, make sure it's clear." Lina says as she returns my hand squeeze. 

With alarming speed and silence, Lina is gone, and the door is shut without a sound, leaving me alone in the dark. My anxiety rises as I feel her presence moving away from me. It's a strange sensation. I can't see or hear her, but I can feel exactly where she is, almost like I've acquired an extra sense. Even more strange is how fast she is moving. One second she is at the end of our street, then the next she is two streets over, then up on the rooftops. I start to feel nauseous trying to process her rapid motion. Then she's suddenly standing next to me again. 

"Ok it's safe, let's move." She whispers to me. 

Lina opens the door, allowing moonlight to illuminate the calm, serious expression on her face. 

"Slip into my shroud." She tells me, as the shadows in the street begin to move, converging on her body, and climbing up her legs in a cloud of black smoke. Once Lina is fully engulfed in smoke, I lose sight of her completely. The shifting smoke has an eerie, unnatural texture that plays with the light in a way that makes it difficult to see at all. Lina looks like a strange shadow, but with nothing to cast it. 

I hesitate, then step into the dark space that my friend used to occupy. I feel nothing as I slip through the smoke. Suddenly I'm face to face with Lina again, tightly surrounded by a dark, swirling cloud that I can't see out of. 

"Ok stay very close to me so you don't poke out." Lina whispers in my ear, as she wraps one arm around me, holding me tight to her chest. 

"I can't see anything." I whisper back.

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"It's ok, I can see out of the shroud, I will guide us. We are going to move slowly, sticking to the smaller side streets and alleys. We need to stay close to the walls and move from shadow to shadow. So when I say stop we stop, and when I say move, we move. Got it?" 

"Got it." I nod up at her. 

"Ok, move." 

With that command we set off. We make slow progress, moving along the edges of our street, and then down our hill. I can't see anything but the road below our feet, but that combined with my memory tells me we are moving south, down our hill, and towards the river. 

When we reach the bottom of our hill, Lina has us wait for a long time. 

Lina looks down at me in the tight space of her shroud. It feels comforting, like cuddling with a friend, wrapped up under a warm blanket. 

"We have to cross the Praça da Figueira." She says to me. "There's people there, so we need to make quick movements. I need you to do exactly what I say, immediately as I say it. Can you do that?" 

I nod at her.

"Ok, then we go on my mark…now!" Lina squeezes me and we rush forward. We go down a few steps, then rush ten meters.

"Stop!" Lina suddenly whispers, before pulling me into a crouch. 

A dark round stone pokes through the shroud. It takes me a moment to recognize it as the Memorial Judeus Vítimas. We are right in between the Rossio and Praça da Figueira! There must be so many people around, how have we not been spotted? 

I hear a loud group of drunk tourists pass by us, within touching distance by the sound of it. How have we not been spotted? I only have a moment to ponder this before Lina hisses at me again. 

"Go!" She commands as she drags me forward. We rush to another wall that we then follow until it ends. Then another wait and a rush, and we are against a temporary wall of a construction site, with scaffolding above us. 

"Ok hold onto my shoulders." Lina says to me.

I wrap my arms around her neck, then Lina suddenly grabs me tightly, and launches us upward. Before I can process the sudden upwards movement, I'm back on my feet, on the other side of the temporary wall.

"Ok c'mon." Lina says as she grabs my hand. 

We carefully move through the construction site of a building under renovation, until we reach the other side. I can hear the bustling of traffic just over the wall in front of us. After a long wait, Lina suddenly picks me up in a princess carry, jumps over the wall, and dashes across a street, into a small side street moving south before placing me back down, but still holding me tightly. 

It takes me a moment to catch my breath, despite being the one that was carried. Lina on the other hand isn't breathing heavily at all.

"You ok?" She asks with a squeeze of my shoulders as she looks down into my eyes. 

"Yea...y-your really strong…" I stammer out as my brain scrambles to collect my thoughts. Wait, did I say that out loud?

Lina giggles and flashes me a heart stopping smile. "Thanks! That's the perks of shadow magic. It focuses on stealth, concealment, and enhancing physical abilities like speed and strength." 

"Oh, o-ok." I stammer again, still lost in her eyes. 

"C'mon, we're almost there." Lina says as she begins to drag me along. 

My brain manages to reboot by the time we reach the river. Lina drops the shroud, and I find myself standing next to her, at the edge of the water. We are behind a warehouse, not too far from O Celeiro de Lixo. They would have noticed my absence at work by now. I hope Chama will be ok. There's a single ship in the distance, making its way out towards the Atlantic Ocean.

"Are you ok?" Lina asks as she bumps her shoulder into mine. 

I look up into her kind dark eyes. "Yea, it's just… This is my home, you know? I'm going to miss this city." I say as I break from Lina's gaze and stare at my feet. 

Lina steps in front of me and lifts my chin with her hand to look in my eyes, before wrapping me in a tight hug. 

"I know." She says. "We'll come back someday. I promise." She reassures me. 

"Thanks… So, should we?" I ask as I break away from her hug, and nod towards the river. 

"Yea, let's get started. Take off your shoes and sweater and give me your bag. I'll carry it. We wouldn't want Tiamat to get wet, would we? Swim just below the surface. I'll fly directly above you in my shroud to cover you. Swim as fast as you can. I can keep up. Once we get out to sea we'll stop and decide our next move." Lina looks at me with determination. 

"Got it." I reply with more confidence than I am feeling. I begin stripping down to my wetsuit. I haven't swam with magic in the river since I was a child. The EF made it illegal after Hamburg. Now I'm not only going to swim in the river, but the open ocean too! I hope I make some new friends. I wonder how many fish are left out there? 

I finish stuffing my clothes into my bag and hand it over. Lina takes it, then disappears into her shroud. Even with the moonlight I can barely see her right in front of me. 

With nothing left to say, I turn and step up to the edge of the water. I take one final look at Lisbon, then quietly slip beneath the moonlight, shimmering off the silver surface of the Tagus River.

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