When the hole was so deep that they could no longer see the back of it, they stopped. Mattias reached his arm in nearly up to the shoulder, then shook his head. “I can still feel ice back there,” he said. Thea thought she saw relief flash across his face.
She took off her gloves and stroked Peg. It felt good to flex her cramped hands. Ham and Gru were a few feet away, next to the sleigh piled high with furs.
“Maybe we're looking in the wrong place,” Thea ventured.
But they both knew that if the map was telling them what they thought it was telling them, the tunnel shouldbe here. The bend in the lakeside fissure was just yards from where they stood, and it pointed to this spot on the wall.
“We'll keep going,” Mattias said, hoisting the blower again.
Thea hoped that their dimmed lightglobe couldn't be seen through the trees from the Mainway. Someone was sure to pass eventually, despite the hour.
Peg signaled: Four blades.
Thea had just enough time to black the lightglobe before two skaters fairly flew past the lake on the Mainway. Mattias sighed loudly in the dark as Thea rekindled the lantern—even dimmer now.
“Stop worrying,” she said, taking up the blower again. “You'll probably be in bed within the hour. Now aim.”
Something gave way almost as soon as they began. They heard chunks of ice fall into an opening behind the wall. Thea's stomach turned over.
Mattias stopped the blower and put it down carefully. “Could be an air pocket.”
“It isn't, and you know it.” Thea was surprised to hear her voice shaking.
“I'll take a look.” Mattias picked up the lantern and, bracing himself with one knee, swung it gently into the hole by its woven strap. He leaned in after it, wiggling through the hole until Thea could see nothing but his knees and feet. Then he was still.
“Mattias?” Thea whispered. “What do you see?”
He struggled out again. Without a word, he waved Thea up toward the opening. His expression was hard to read.
Thea put her arms through the hole and inched herself through the tight space toward the lantern's glow on the other side.
It was there: smooth walls leading straight away from her. A passage, wide enough to fit a sleigh and a team. A door to the wider world, and she'd been walking past it her whole life.
They hadn't talked about what they'd do if they found it. But Thea knew as soon as she saw the pathway disappearing into darkness in front of her. Her heart banging, she squirmed her way out and faced Mattias. “I'm going in.”
“Take the lantern and stand back,” he said, raising the blower again. “I'll try to make the hole big enough to fit the sleigh through, but I warn you I won't run the blower dry. We may need it again.”
We. Thea smiled. He was coming with her.
In a few moments, the hole was big enough to step through easily. Mattias went first, with the lantern, then Peg, Gru, and Ham, boosted up by Thea, followed by the sleigh, the blower, and finally Thea, with her water sack slung over one shoulder. They had to be back well before first light; there was not much time.
With the dogs harnessed and everything tied down on the sleigh, Thea signaled Peg to lead them. But they had taken no more than two steps when Gru gave a sharp bark and stalked to the lead position. Peg fell back next to Ham.
“Strange,” said Thea. “Gru always lets Peg lead.” There was no question of Ham's leading. Though he was the largest of the three animals, he had no interest in telling others what to do.
Mattias had fastened the dimmed lantern to the front of the sleigh. Something stopped Thea from telling him to brighten it. It may have been the look on his face. Mattias was scared.
Thea had imagined that the tunnel would climb sharply, like the steep steps to the balcony in the council chamber, but for some time they walked on level ground. Then, hardly realizing it at first, they began to ascend.
Although she had traveled in the dark many times on the backways, the closeness of the space and the flickering of the lightglobe made Thea uneasy. She kept one hand on Mattias and trailed the other along the smooth tunnel wall. The slope became gradually steeper until they walked with effort.
Then Thea gave a yell, gripping Mattias's arm tighter and pulling him close. There were drawings on the walls. Detailed figures walked alongside dogs and sleighs heaped with bundles. The images were shockingly familiar: Thefaces from the walls of the council chamber. These were the Settlers, walking down into their new land. But they weren't the icy figures she had grown accustomed to— here there was color.
“This one's Sarah!” she said. Her foremother wore fur pants and a green tunic that showed under her fur jacket. Sarah looked much happier here than she did on the council chamber wall, her cheeks bright as she smiled down at the Chikchu next to her. “Look, Mattias! Here's Sarah's companion—four white feet!”
“Thea!” Mattias shouted. He pulled her to the other side of the tunnel, where more figures were visible in the dim glow.
Thea looked closely at the painted figures, but she didn't recognize any of these faces. Mattias loosened the sleigh's straps and removed the lightglobe from its tight nest of furs. He held it up to the wall.
There were so many of them, every face a fresh one-there were babies wrapped in colored cloth and held by their mothers, children carrying Chikchu pups, older men and women riding on sleighs, their backs straight and long. Lots of people.
“It doesn't make sense,” Mattias said after a while.
“What doesn't?”
“Who are the babies?”
Mattias was right. There were no babies among the Settlers. Nor were there many old people. These peoplecouldn't be Settlers. She glanced behind her, to Sarah and the others, and realized what they had missed.
“Mattias.”
“What?”
“The Settlers are walking down.”
“And?”
“The Settlers are walking to Gracehope.”
Mattias followed her gaze to the Settlers on the other side of the tunnel, then back to the wall in front of them, where children held hands and mothers held babies and clusters of young men walked together. There were so many of them, and every one of them was headed in the same direction.
Up.
To the wider world.
This was how the Settlers saw the future. It was how Sarah had imagined … imagined her, Thea realized.
Mattias was silent. He walked a few steps away from her and then came back, the lantern raised in one hand. “Do you know what this means?” he said quietly.
“The Settlers meant for us to leave.”
“Grace's hope.” Mattias said. Thea's mind conjured an image of the map that lay safely in her trunk at home, the two words written in flowery letters across the top: Grace's Hope. Gracehope. We have it all wrong, she thought.
Water. Peg's signal came out of the darkness just infront of them. It took Thea a few extra moments to absorb her meaning.
Water, Peg signaled again.
“The dogs are thirsty,” Thea murmured absently to Mattias. He was at the wall again, moving the lantern from figure to figure as he examined them.
A moment later, water was rushing over their booted feet, flowing down the tunnel from somewhere above them. Cold water. In a few moments it was ankle-deep.
Peter woke to the sound of his mother calling out in her sleep.
“No!” she said loudly. And then, “Because it's gone.”
His father was whispering. “Rory, you're dreaming. Wake up, Rory.”
The night was overcast—Peter could barely see his hand in front of his face. He flipped onto his side with a jerk, pulling his blanket tightly around him.
“I'm trying to make sense of it.” His mother's voice, awake now. Agitated.
“I know you are, my love.”
“It's disappeared, hasn't it?”
There was a pause, and then Peter heard his father's voice again, very low now. “Perhaps. Though I don't see how.”
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“Are we too late?”
“No, not too late.”
Peter wondered what Jonas was making of this, and then remembered he was sleeping in the igloo tonight.
“Find it for me, Gregory.”
“Shhh.” Peter could imagine his father smoothing his mother's hair.
“Don't shush me,” she said, and then there were no more words.
Peter reached out into the darkness with one arm. His hand found the knob of the drawer where he had hidden his mother's drawing. He gripped it tightly, trying to decide whether to pull. He didn't want his parents to know he was awake. His father would feel compelled to come and tell him everything was fine.
He heard the clicking of Sasha's nails on the floor, coming toward him. She walked around at night sometimes, moving from post to post according to her own agenda. Now she lay down next to Peter's bed and began licking his hand. His fingers were covered in wetwarmth. He released the knob and pushed his hand into her fur.
A bit of starlight shone faintly through his window, and he could see Sasha's face resting on her paws below him. The clouds were clearing off.
Tomorrow, he told himself.
“What 's happening? W here's the water coming f rom?” Thea slipped, jostling the sleigh. Still harnessed to the three Chikchu, it hardly moved. But the heavy blower, freed from the straps that Mattias had loosened to retrieve the lantern, toppled from its perch, slid down the steep slope of wet ice, and disappeared from view.
Mattias let out a long, low noise, echoed by a cry of concern from Ham so sharp that Thea covered her ears.
“It isn't safe to be here without a blower, Thea. We have to go down after it. Now.”
Thea shook her head. “There isn't time. The blower has to be back at the waterwheel before first light. It will be waiting for us at the bottom. I'm going up.”
“Thea,” Mattias said in a grave voice. “No one knows where we are. This water will turn to ice down below. We could be shut out within hours, with no way back in.”
“The water might stop at any time. I'm going up while I can.”
Mattias grasped one of her wrists. “It's not going to stop. Our hole must have created an air current that diverted this icemelt from another path. We have to go back down before it seals us out. Now.”
“Mattias, think. Think of what is up there: the sun, the sky, the ‘horizon’ that you've tried to explain to me so many times. I need to see it. Don't you?”
“Maybe I don't need to see it. Maybe I'm not like you, Thea!”
“Go back if you want to, then. I'm going to the surface. I think we're close.”
Peg seemed to agree. Air, she observed.
“We have to stay together,” Mattias said. He drew a long breath and let it out. “If I go to the top with you, will you come straight back down? Right away?”
Thea grinned with relief and excitement and held up one hand. “On my line, Mattias.”
They started climbing the path again, as quickly as they could with the water rushing over their feet. The sleighwas much lighter without the blower, and they moved quickly, Mattias holding the lightglobe, its netting wrapped tightly around his wrist.
They didn't speak, concentrating on their steps, Thea anticipating the wider world while she knew that Mattias fretted over the one that awaited their return. The path was steep, and she could hear herself breathing hard. She slipped once or twice, but caught herself before she fell. Finally, she felt the quality of the air changing, ever so slightly.
Air, Peg offered again.
Mattias appeared to notice the change as well. He held the lightglobe up a little higher. He was breathless and looked scared again; she slipped her hand into his.
Three minutes later, they stood gasping in front of an archway. And on the other side of it was the wider world.
It was mostly dark. Thea felt something drop heavily inside her. She had so hoped to see the sun.
The archway stood no higher than the rest of the tunnel, barely three hand-lengths above their heads. It was roughly cut, and when Mattias raised the lamp two words were visible just above their heads.
Hope lives.
Thea realized that Gru was trembling, and bent tocomfort her. Then, no longer feeling the cold water that soaked their boots, she and Mattias stepped together into the darkest hours of an April night.
Thea almost tripped over Gru, who was suddenly between her feet, pulling hard to the right. Thea grabbed the dog's collar.
“Watch out.” Mattias's eyes were keener than most. Despite the darkness, he saw that they were at the top of a steep slope, on a lip of frozen earth not much wider than their sleigh. Stretching one arm around Thea's shoulders, he peered into the night. “Right or left?”
Thea looked down at Gru. “I don't think she'll go left,” she said.
“Then we'll go right.”
There was a cluster of high ridges in the ice, each about the height of a man. The cousins wove their way through them carefully until they reached an empty space where the flat edge of the slope broadened a little. Mattias relaxed his grip on Thea.
The vastness made Thea's legs feel weak. She tipped her head back: There was nothing, absolutely nothing, above her. She had a brief sensation of lifting off the ground, as if she might just float up into the sky. She stood on the ice, marveling that it could be both light and dark at the same time, blackest night lit by an infinity of stars.She heard both nothing and everything—it was as if the very air were crackling around her. She looked at Mattias and smiled. He smiled back.
She freed the dogs from their leads, and Gru immediately began to pace around the small space with her nose to the ground.
Mattias turned his face to the sky. “Look!” he said. “It's Leo.”
Thea looked to where he pointed. At first she didn't see how Mattias could distinguish any kind of pattern among the masses of light points above her. Then, as if someone threw a switch in her brain, she began to recognize star patterns.
“Hercules!” she shouted, loving the way her words were absorbed by the air.
The cousins called names back and forth to each other, laughing as each of them recognized another group of stars.
“Ursa Major!”
“Lyra!”
Peg and Ham settled themselves into one furry bundle and fell asleep.
Thea nearly fell over them, and laughed. “Well, they're certainly comfortable. You see, Gru, everything is fine. You can stop your pacing now.” But Gru continued to walk the perimeter of the clearing, her ears forward and an occasional whine escaping her throat.
Thea stood still and enjoyed the movement of the air against her face until Mattias said, “It's time, Thea.”
She realized with a start that the stars had begun to fade. Yes, it was time to go. She had so much to tell everyone! But she would return, soon enough.
They roused Peg and Ham and attached their sleigh traces. Thea called Gru to her and stroked the Chikchu for a few moments before putting her in the lead position, but Gru wouldn't settle. I shouldn't have brought her, Thea thought. The poor thing has been through enough for one lifetime.
Thea and Mattias picked their way along the narrow edge of the slope, the Chikchu following with the sleigh. They were nearly to the tunnel when Thea heard a short whine behind her and turned to see that Peg had a foot tangled in the sleigh traces. She dropped back, bending to free the dog.
When she stood up, Mattias was gone.
“Mattias!” Thea called. Could he have ducked into the tunnel ahead of her? But she had looked down for only a few seconds. More than that, it was something he would never do.
“Mattias!”
Nothing.
She knew that she should turn her head. She should look to the right, to where the ground fell away from them into darkness. Instead she looked at the dogs. Theyappeared frozen, as still and lifeless as the Settlers who circled the walls of the council chamber. They were listening.
Then Ham started barking fra
ntically. The sound of it was shocking—the air seemed to soak up the noise and throw it back out again, louder. Thea's ears rang painfully. She squeezed past Peg and released Ham from the sleigh with one hand.
“Find him, Ham. Find Mattias.”
It was still a little dark when Peter woke again. The tent was silent. He dressed quietly while Sasha looked on expectantly. He had decided not to bother with a team. The ice wall was not so far.
It took him a minute to find the notepad in the dim kitchen. He wrote “went for an early walk” and left the note on the table. He planned to be back before anyone was up. If not, well, they wouldn't be happy, but they would have to live with it. He filled a canteen and grabbed his knapsack.
Outside, he hitched Sasha to the sled. They walked past Jonas's igloo, where there was no sign of life.
Sasha cantered eagerly toward the ice wall, pulling the sled while Peter ran behind it with his mother's drawing in one coat pocket and a handful of chocolate eggs in the other. He half-doubted his memory of the ring in the ice. Maybe in ordinary weather, he told himself, the thing would look ordinary.
The sky was still half dark but clear, and the cold air stung his nose and his lungs. He felt his body shedding the warmth of bed and sleep, as if he were letting go of something heavy. He ran harder, feeling lighter and happier, flying away from his mother's sadness and his father's worry and the smothering dark of the tent. He didn't want anything holding him down. He resisted the temptation to take off his coat and fling it away from him.
He kept his eyes on Sasha, watching the way her front legs pulled the ground under her and then her back legs pushed it away. He tried in vain to match her stride for stride, his legs moving so quickly it was hard to stay on top of them. He breathed fast and hard; the cold filled him up and burned.
And then they were there, at the ice wall, standing in front of the red ring. He looked.
There was nothing ordinary about it.