Glory Alley and the Star Riders (The Glory Alley Series) (6 page)

Glory plucked a few blades of grass, weaving them together,
and
then tossed it aside.

“But don’t
you
worry, Mom.” Glory’s confidant tone belied the doubt gnawing at her stomach. “
I have a plan,
I’m going to strike it rich
in Queen’s Mesa, and when I do
,
everything will be better for the whole family.”

She looked to the mountain
—
just gazing upon it, so ancient and unchanging, usually gave her a p
eaceful feeling, but not today
.
Somehow, someway, she had to turn things around for herself, for all of them, especially George. At least the people from Child Protective Services hadn’t come around since Nana and Grandpa moved in—that was good—right
?

Her face suddenly brightened.

“Guess what, Mom.
”
She slid off her backpack and heaved it onto the ground in front of her
.
“A couple weeks ago
Clash
and I found a new cavern
with a pool and everything. I picked up some great stuff. Nothing worth a hill of credits, but still very nice, so even though your birthday
’s a few days away,
I’m going to give you part of your present now.
”

She took a coil of rope from the bag, her water bottle and other spelunking gear,
and
then emptied a pile of rocks onto the ground
.
She arranged the stones over the gravesite into the shape of a heart and then paused to look out over the horizon at the mesa.

Grandpa said the place was enchanted and vicious creatures full of magic guarded her winding tunnels
.
In the deepest recesses of the mountain
,
a virgin cavern hid a gem beyond compare, but nobody could get at it because a red-eyed devil devoured anyone who came near. Now that Glory was older, and had explored the mountain many times over without meeting anything scarier than a bat, she laughed at Grandpa’s silly tales. Devils didn’t exist, Glory knew, but jewels were another matter.

“When I find my fortune, Mom,” she promised. “You’ll have the best marker in the whole graveyard.
”
Until then
,
she’d build one the best she knew how. Glory returned to the project at hand, spelling
Rose
Alley
with stones inside the heart
.
She studied the crooked letters and frowned, rearranging them until perfect
.

“Happy Harvest Day, Mom,” she said
,
and with a wave was off through the dim woods, toward the mesa.

If only she had a han
d-held Sliver like most kids
,
she
woul
d call Clash to let him know she was starting for the mesa earlier than planned.
The devices weren’t reliable underground, but the flexible polymer cases made them waterproof, and practically indestructible
—
perfect for caving.
It
would
be nice to chat online, play video games, or read an electronic book to pass the time waiting for her
best friend
to arrive
.
 

After an hour at a steady pace
,
her goal loomed large in the distance.
Before long she reached the
top
where the entrance to the caverns below opened wide like a mouth holding a high note for all eternity
.
Above the opening
,
a message was etched into the stone with weathered lettering:

Beware: this mountain and everything in it

be private property.

Trespassers devoured on sight.

According to Grandpa, the message had been there when he was a boy and as far back as anybody could remember, but there was no public record of anybody ever owning Queen’s Mesa
.
Glory found it a curious thing, but knowing the person who wrote it had no doubt turned to dust long ago, being devoured wasn’t high on her list of concerns.

Cave exploration was dangerous enough on its own. A slip into a crevice, a backbreaking fall
,
the Cold Crazies
—
otherwise known as hypothermia, were all possibilities, yet part of the thrill.
Go back and wait for Clash, she
told
herself, only idiots cave alone.
She took a deep breath, switched on the helmet light
,
and ventured down
deep into the
belly of Queen’s Mesa.

Glory wriggled through the same tight tunnel
they
ha
d discovered
on their
last trip. After a long stretch
,
it opened into an airy cavern where the light from her helmet illuminated a pale brown ceiling. She guided her flashlight over a sloped limestone shelf running along its upper perimeter. Boulders dotted the landscape, including a shallow pool that covered half the floor. Bloink, bloink, bloink echoed the steady sound of dripping water.
Yep
, she grinned
. I’ve
found the mesa’s sweet spot for sure. From silvery barite specimens to translucent blue crystals, there was no telling what lovelies the Queen
might give up
.
Maybe, Glory dared to hope, this would be the day the mesa parted with something priceless.

She let her bag of gear drop with a
dull clunk. “Prime hunting ground,” she announced to the empty cave, her echo bouncing down the cool cavern walls. “Thirteen! Hundred! Hours!” the male voice programmed into her watch barked like a military commander
.
“Oh crud
.
”
Had it been that long
?
She pictured
Clash
waiting for her
outside the mesa passing the time playing games on his Sliver,
not realizing she’d gone in without
him
.
He’d pro
bably hang around an hour
before
los
ing
his
patience
.

“What a lousy best friend I am.” She considered turning back,
but a tall crevice—one
she hadn’t noticed
last visit
—
caught her attention.

It zigzagged up the wall and looked wide enough to squeeze through.

“Well, hello
there,” she said to the crack, aiming
her light toward it into the dim unknown. Hundreds of crisscrossing rainbows appeared on the ceiling, dancing with every jiggle of the flashlight. Her eyes traveled over the spreading colors at the top of the cave. “Whoa!” she gasped, mouth gaping.

The number one rule of spelunking was
bring a light, bring a backup light, and bring a backup to the backup
. Helmet light
,
check. Flashlight in hand
,
check
.
Spare in bag
, c
heck. The second
rule
was
always bring a
budd
y
.
Clash, er…despite the risk
,
she had to go in there.

Glory
slid into the crevice
.

The
bumpy
walls were high in places
. The
top opened like a valley. The space quickly narrowed
.
She sucked in her pudge, shifting
her
bag to the side, and squeezed through hip first. The view on the other side took her breath away.

A natural cathedral ten times bigger than the school gymnasium stood before her in dizzying splendor. Thousands of years of water droplets
,
mix
ing
with calcite from the stones
,
formed cream-colored stalactite and stalagmite pillars. They thrust upwards and downwards twisting and turning into a maze of delicate ivory. Its arched ceiling
,
crusted with sparkl
es
,
appeared as a starry night straight out of a fairy tale. Mirrored crystals magnified the beam from h
er
flashlight a hundredfold explaining the rainbow effect. Glory felt like she had burrowed out of the sewer and into wonderland.

“
Holy s
c
hmoly,” she whispered, eyes like sponges, absorbing the spectacular vision before her.
S
talagmites resembled a forest of candles dripping with wax. Glory walked through them until she came to a vast dome that rose up and up. Below
,
the floor gleamed like polished marble
and a
lone stalagmite spiraled from
its
center
.
A black rock the size of her head, perfectly round and smooth as ice, balanced upon it.

Glory’s heart fluttered
.

In their natural state
stones rarely
formed with such symmetry and shine. The walls of the cavern slanted inward as if bowing to the rock at the center. Water trickled in the distance. Heat rushed to her clammy cheeks. She had found the most perfect rock in the universe and it was just sitting there begging to be taken.

For a minute
,
she stared, drooling in its presence, feeling her spirit
being
drawn toward the stone ahead of her tiptoeing feet
.
The unexpected sound of sniffing prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. She stopped
to listen.

What if Grandpa’s tales about enchanted man-eating creatures living in the mesa were true
?
Glory shook her head
.
Impossible. She’d been in Queen’s Mesa dozens of times without seeing the slightest hint the legends were true
.
But what if other spelunkers were in the cavern and tried to grab it first?