Moon stone.
Moon . . .
Elena drew in her breath suddenly. No, that couldn’t be it. That was insane. Impossible. Too easy. It was just . . .
She reached forward, startling the others, and grabbed the globe, picking it up with both hands. Then she put it down again and took the atlas and moved it to a clear area of the kitchen table. She picked up the books that were holding open the vellum page that had the path to the Nether World scrawled on it.
“Elena, what are you doing?” Stefan’s green eyes were intent.
Elena shook her head. She rolled up the vellum page together with the page that represented the Dark Dimension. There was a blank piece of vellum underneath. Elena fixed the blank vellum in place with books at the corners.
Then she set the globe squarely in the middle.
“What? What?” Bonnie almost wailed. “That globe is no good, Elena, you know that—”
“I need a pen,” Elena murmured, fumbling in the messenger pouch she carried now instead of a purse. She’d taken it off when she’d first arrived this morning and it now rested on the kitchen table next to Bonnie’s. “I have an idea.” She found a pen.
“What are you—talking about?” Bonnie had to sniffle in the middle of the sentence. “That globe—whatever you’re thinking—it’s just impossible to work with, and . . .”
Elena shook her head. Using the pen, she traced a large circle on the white paper by going around the base of the globe with the pen.
Then she took the gemstone globe and put it on the floor. She marked an X approximately in the middle of the circle she’d traced.
Bonnie looked at the stark circle on the paper in front of her in bewilderment. “What’s that even supposed to be?” she demanded as Elena sat down again.
“It’s half of the Nether World moon,” Elena said. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest and throat and fingertips. “It’s blank because the Tree is gone, but that X is for Damon’s body. I remember that there were pools of water in several places, but I can’t draw them and I don’t think they matter.” She dared to look at Mrs. Flowers as she said this, and she realized that she was flushed with emotion.
Mrs. Flowers was looking pensive. She murmured, “I’ll get us some fresh tea,” and fluttered off.
Elena’s eyes went to Stefan’s. He was looking more than thoughtful. He was looking startled and shocked—electrified, even.
“But that’s the one place we know that—he—isn’t,” Bonnie argued, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Just try it,” Elena said, looking at Stefan again.
“I mean his—his poor body might be there, but that’s all!” More tears traced their way down Bonnie’s pale cheeks.
“Give it a try,” Elena suggested gently.
“But—”
Just DO it! thought Damon, startling himself.
“All right! You don’t have to shout!” Bonnie cried.
Elena stared at her. Damon could feel her heart beating hard. Strangely, he could also feel his own heart beating. He hadn’t been able to do that before.
Bonnie picked up the crystal by its gold chain with trembling fingers. She held it up gingerly, positioning the translucent quartz over the bottom of the circle, about an inch from the vellum.
Stefan leaned forward. Mrs. Flowers came quickly back to the table with a fragrant pot of tea. She put the teapot down without attempting to pour anything into the four cups that sat at four different places on the table.
Elena leaned forward, her eyes on the quartz crystal.
“Bonnie, my dear, you might want to name that map. Aloud, I mean: just say what it represents, so that there’s no question about what you’re looking at,” Mrs. Flowers advised.
Bonnie hesitated. Elena gave her a few seconds and then said, “The circle I drew on this piece of vellum”—she touched it—“is a map of the smallest moon of the Nether World, the one on which the great Tree existed until I destroyed it: root, branch and leaf.”
Bonnie glanced at her sideways with wide brown eyes. Elena’s voice had been quiet, but not repentant. She wasn’t sorry for destroying the tree. It had already killed Damon and had been in the process of trapping Stefan, Bonnie and herself permanently in a prison of wooden branches when she’d used Wings of Destruction on it.