“Now what?” He told Bryson he didn’t know. “Do we go up, or should some of us take different stairs? I mean, it’s sort of a long looking way up or down, don’t you think?”
“Up.” Duncan nodded when Jude told him up was the way to go. “I think if we were meant to go down, it would have told us so. But up…. I have no idea why, but that seems like where we should begin. Don’t you think?”
They couldn’t go up the flight of stairs in pairs because the stairs were narrow but sturdy. As he led the way up, he could see there were torches above his head that lit the areas as they got closer to it. When he was ready to have a seat and rest, he saw the floor leveling out just as he cleared the last few steps.
“Oh, Mother.” The room, for this was a room, expanded by magic as he stood looking around. The others came into the room, and it grew again, making the room look as large as the living room they’d only just left. But it was nothing like a living room with the items that were in the place. “Look, Mercy, this has your name on it. There are trunks with each of our names on them. Including Miley.”
Piper started laughing, and he asked her what she’d found. “It’s a trunk for my mate. It hasn’t a name on it, but it says, ‘to the man who loves my bird, Piper.’ I wonder what this could be? Surely it’s not money, do you think?”
As soon as Esme touched her fingers to the box that had her name on it, it disappeared. The note under it explained the trunk was now in her room in the house. So they’d not have to carry them down, Duncan supposed. Each of them did the same, touching just a finger to the top of the trunk so it too would be in their room. The trunks, however, were not the only things in the room.
There were pieces of art covered in waxed cloth—sacks of seeds with the names and how to grow them on each bag. Duncan handed Miley a sack that had her name on it, and she laughed when she poured the gems, all of them worth a fortune, into her hand. There was an entire wall with swords leaning against it. They, too, were wrapped up in cloth with their bejeweled pummels showing.
“How do you suppose she was able to stash all this here? It must have taken her years to do this.” Joel picked up one of the larger handwoven baskets and saw it was filled with saplings. Trees he was sure no one had seen in centuries. “How does this even work? I mean, to look at these, you’d think they were only just pulled from the ground. But they’ve been in here for at least as long as Dante has been gone. Your mother, she must have been more powerful than we even guessed her to be.”
“I think you’re right.” Duncan looked at the unframed paintings that leaned against one of the other walls. “I know some of these artists. They were here and gone long after Mom died. How did she do that?”
“She wanted you to have a nest egg.” Grandma picked up a smallish trunk that had her name on it, and Duncan was glad she’d thought of her parents too. “Oh, Charlie. Look. They’re our eggs. The ones we had to sell off when it was needed. All my little eggs.”
They were beautiful too. Each egg was handmade, the opening covered in gold and diamonds. There were a dozen or so in the chest she had, and Grandda opened his to show the rest they’d had at one time. Duncan felt his eyes fill with tears at how his mother had taken care of them all, even after all this time. But what he wouldn’t give to have her there with them today.
The room’s contents emptied to their separate bedrooms as they touched each of the pieces. He noticed that Miley had somehow found herself a cane covered in gems and stones. Some of the things, like the crates of eggs, were sent along too after his grandparents put them on the floor. As he was making his way to the lower levels of the magical place, he wondered why his mom hadn’t just put it away someplace they could all have it. As soon as he stepped into the very lower level of the hidden rooms, he understood everything.
There in the corner was the very thing he’d been hunting for since he’d started working on the castle, what he thought was his mother’s jewels. There were a great deal of them too. More than he thought there would have been. Mercy took a look at it and smiled at him.
“It’s from the raids we were on. She never said what she was doing with the jewels we took. Being birds then, I guess it never occurred to us to ask. But this is it, all of it, I’m sure. Not only is it the jewels, Duncan, but I’m sure if we were to look around a little more, we’d find all the stash from all the raids we were on. She’s hoarded it for all of us. Your mom, she was a gem of all gems if you ask me. I miss her more every day.”
There weren’t names on things here. It was just piled up, some of the piles as tall as he was. Gold coins, too, spilled out of the trunks they were in and onto the floor. The sparkle of diamonds made the room bright—gems of all kinds laid
