Page 15 of Shadowed Summer Sun
If you walked up the hill, passed through the gate, or came up from the other side, the ruins of the old church sat as a silent reminder of what had once been. But if you walked up the steps, counting each one as your foot landed on the cold stone, your journey could be different.
The Undertaker awaited those individuals. Dressed in black and forever waiting at the top of the 100 Steps, he would appear with a message—a vision of your death. If you counted the steps on your descent and arrived at the same number, however, the Undertaker had only sought to frighten you, and the vision was false.
If you came up even a single step short in your count back down, the Undertaker’s words were an omen.
It wasn’t his only purpose. He was also the only being who could grant access to the Guarded Wood.
Pass over 100 Steps, beseeching passage to the Guarded Wood from The Undertaker.
With Badb perched on my shoulder, I walked to the 100 Steps and began my ascent. I counted the decaying stairs one by one in my mind, progressing slowly.One, two, three…
Chilled air rushed over my skin, stealing my shawl and losing it somewhere in the trees. I hesitated momentarily on the twentieth step, cold without its covering, but a gentle warmth bled into me from the still-glowing red on my skin. I kept going.
Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…
The steps were uneven and went up at odd intervals and inclines. One appeared to be far wider than the others, but I saw the thin outline of its adjacent stair just peeking through the dirt, having slipped down into the soil.
‘Fifty-four,’ I counted it and continued on.
Reaching higher, a patch of moisture from a tiny stream coated a step, and I slipped, landing on my knee. Blood trickled down my shin as I stood back up. The ache magnified the exhaustion pooling in my muscles, but I put my foot squarely in the middle of the slick stair and counted it.
Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four…
The abrasion throbbed, my skirt torn and raw. The angle of the stairs became steeper, and Badb flew up ahead as I practically had to climb the 100 Steps on my hands and knees. I neared the top, and a tiny glimpse of the stone arch appeared just beyond the steps.
Seventy-nine, eighty, eighty-one…
As the path leveled out a bit, I straightened, my back sore from hunching over. In a similar trick of nature, this section had also seen two steps partially buried in the Earth, and one had been shoved nearly a foot out to the side. I counted them and touched each in order, zigzagging precariously from one slippery stair to another.
Ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five…
The next handful of stairs was the most well-kept, and the final step mingled with the landing in front of the stone gate.
“One hundred steps,” I proclaimed at the top, my thigh burning and lungs working double-time.
Waiting, perched on the gate, Badb cawed at me. The empty arch was missing a section near the top, cleanly gone like someone had come up and simply taken the missing stone. The Vinemire Forest loomed beyond it, and then a man in soiled black clothes stepped out from the edge of the gate, appearing as though he’d been there the whole time, and I simply missed him.
His skin was ashen gray and dark. Solid white eyes gleamed from beneath his heavy brow, and he held a long-handled shovel, the blade covered in fresh dirt. The Undertaker made no sound as he approached me. As he passed through a beam of Sunlight that split through the trees, his body was transparent.
“One hundred. And you, Summer, wish to know your fate?” Only his mouth grinned as he stared at me.
“No. I seek passage to the Guarded Wood. I must reach the shores of Cottlewick Lake there and return home when my work is finished.”
The Undertaker studied me, his sightless eyes raking over my exposed arms and fading injuries. He turned, hefting up his large shovel and digging it into the ground where the gate penetrated the soil. As he sliced the blade of his tool up along the arch, a terrible ripping sound wailed through the air.
Using the shovel as a lever, the Undertaker pried the space that hid the Guarded Wood out from between the arch’s stones. The vision of the Vinemire Forest wrenched away from the gate, the edges dripping with roots and packed mud like a freshly dug grave.
The deep, twilight forest that was revealed called to me, hooking into my ribs and forcing my steps forward. Just between here and there, the Undertaker held me in that In-Between under the stone arch with a firm grip on my arm.
“It should not have come here. It is not wanted. Return it home, Summer Rowan Black.”
He spoke so low that the words were like snails traveling through the wind to reach me. They knifed into me, snatching my breath and showing me the corpse husks littered across the land surrounding the forest. The Undertaker released my arm, and I gasped, struggling to find breath.
The coldness of Death left as he released my arm, and I pulled fresh air into my overworked lungs. Looking at his wrinkled, ashen face and then back to the Guarded Wood, I nodded.
“It’s why I’ve come.”
“It’s why you were always going to come. This the only way you would pass under Death’s hand at the Tearing Gate.”
