Ruth marched up to Richard. “You? My night just keeps on getting better. You’d better not be involved in any shady dealings that’ll get us disqualified.”
“Got it,” Richard replied. “If I know anything, I’ll be sure not to share it with you.”
One of the men held his hand out to me in a handshake, his facial features disproportionally small, like a child whose head had suddenly ballooned. “I’m Duncan. I don’t believe we’ve met.” He indicated towards a big, clumsy-looking man with glasses. “This is Saul.” He then pointed at the third man, a short guy with deeply olive skin. “And this is Andre. So, we’ve got our team.”
I shook their hands in a series of quick grabs. “We have to go!” My voice was edged with an impatience that didn’t sound like me.
Poppy nodded fervently.
We ran in the direction of the cloister.
The hallway speared into darkness. I wished the monks would use more light, but I guessed they lived too frugally for that.
The monastery at midnight was a different entity to the monastery at any other time of day. I couldn’t have described it to myself in words. It was more a sensation, of being caught somewhere that no one should be. An in-between place. I guessed it was the age of the monastery bearing down on me—hundreds of years of history, the knowledge that people called the afflicted had once roamed the halls.
It seemed to me that I could hear the same kind of rustling, scuffling noises behind the walls that I’d heard in the morning. Like things were running along with us. Only, the sounds were even more muffled beneath the echoes of our feet pounding the stone floor.
No one else seemed to hear any of it. They were focused on the destination. I told myself that lots of old places had rats, and this place was old.
Still, I stopped and turned, looking back.
A ripple of clothing—monk’s robes—vanished into the alcove I’d blundered into in the morning. I took a few steps back, peering into the alcove. “Who’s there?”
There was no one in the alcove. Just the winged statue, staring back at me. There hadn’t been any monk. What I’d seen had just been some trick of the darkness and my own fear.
“C’mon, slowpoke,” Poppy breathed, running back and pulling me along.
I was holding everyone up. I had to forget everything and just concentrate on the challenge.
The four mentors were waiting for us in the garden, like statues in their white robes.
Brother Sage smiled warmly. “Ah, the first of our groups to begin the challenges. Are you ready?”
“I was born ready,” Ruth told him.
“Good,” he said. “The challenge room awaits you.”
Brother Vito nodded at us. “Come this way.”
We followed them to an arched doorway and through to a curved corridor. The inner six rooms were here.
Brother Sage unlocked the door of challenge room one.
“Remember,” Brother Vito said close to me in hushed, reassuring tones, “just do the best you can do.”
Inhaling deeply, I gave him a quick smile.
The door slid open automatically on being unlocked. As the last of us stepped through, the door swiftly closed again.
The room was exactly the same size and shape as every other room I’d seen in the monastery so far: hexagonal and enormous in size. This room was completely bare except for a wooden hexagonal prism about the height of my chest in the middle.
“Okay, so . . . where’s the challenge? Bring it.” Richard puffed out his shoulders.
“I think this is the challenge.” I stepped up to the prism. The aged box was constructed of a dark wood, with six rectangular sides and a top and base that were hexagonal. On top it had six inlaid triangular-shaped panels of a lighter shade, the triangles all pointing inwards to a single point in the centre. “Maybe it’s some kind of puzzle box. I bet the challenge is to open it. Though . . . I can’t see any lid.”
Poppy wrinkled her nose. “I hate puzzle boxes. I had one for a money box as a kid. I ended up smashing it open.”
“Says a lot about you,” said Ruth. Marching to the box, she placed her hands on its surface like a religious healer. “It’s old and it’s a beauty. They told us the rooms are challenges of the mind. We just have to figure this out.”
“We’ve got twelve minutes,” said Duncan, the guy with the overstuffed head and tiny features.
“Say what?” Ruth angled her face around, her brow deeply creasing as if annoyed by the interruption.