They traveled downward.
They’d only needed to chip away a few armloads of stone before the opening was big enough for the larger members of their party. The passageway beyond was not so much a tunnel as it was an emptied vein in the rock made of fallen slabs of stone, pinioned together. Several times, the going became so tight that Prue and Curtis were forced to slide on their bellies to arrive at the other side of a particularly small fissure. Occasionally, Curtis would discern that the tunnel was beginning to climb, and he felt a thrilled leap in his stomach. But invariably, the ascent would be minor, and then the tunnel would slope down and they would lose, to Curtis’s best estimation, whatever altitude they’d gained. The longer they spent down here, the further they got away from the true goal of this journey: to get topside, to find out what had happened to the bandits. He worried that Prue did not share the same thinking.
The tunnel continued down.
Curtis remembered a trip he’d taken several years ago, with his school, to some nearby caverns. The caverns, he was told, were discovered by spelunkers who’d happened on a small crack in a cliff face and decided to explore; one of their number had died after he’d followed an artery of the cavern and, not reading the geography correctly, had gotten stuck. They didn’t find his body for three weeks. Despite Curtis’s best efforts to dispel this thought from his mind, it continued to haunt him. At one point, he grabbed Prue’s boot and shook it.
“Hey,” he called.
She stopped. “Yeah?”
“So when do we finally decide this is crazy?”
A pause. “I’ve kinda already decided that.”
“Really?”
“But as long as there’s an opening here, I think we should continue.”
“I was just thinking—”
Prue interrupted him. “About that spelunker who got stuck in that cavern, the one that we visited on the class trip a few years ago?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m thinking the same thing.”
“Let’s not do that, okay?”
“Okay.”
Septimus’s voice came echoing down the shaft; he moved more swiftly than his humanoid compatriots, using the extra time to check out the upcoming terrain. “It gets bigger,” he hollered. “Just ahead.”
To their relief, the rat spoke true: The tunnel gradually began to widen until it was big enough for them to sit up in. They stopped and opened Prue’s knapsack, rifling through it for the last of the remaining victuals she’d packed. The tally was three pieces of jerky in parchment, two apples, and a few heels of bread. They split one piece of the dried meat and shaved a few slices off an apple with Prue’s hunting knife, which had miraculously survived the fall from the rope bridge, landing within inches of her head. Curtis, who was starting to feel a pang of thirst, sucked at his apple slice, drawing every bit of liquid from it before popping the desiccated thing into his mouth. Prue pulled off her boot and they inspected her ankle; the swelling seemed mild.
“At least I don’t have to walk on it,” Prue said with a half smile.
They continued on. Curtis took the lead with the lantern, and Prue scraped along behind him. The tunnel was not yet tall enough to stand in; they remained on all fours, though their knees and palms were beginning to smart. Curtis could see Septimus in the barely visible distance, hopping along through the small tunnel as if it were a second home to him.
After traveling this way for a time, Curtis saw the rat come up abruptly at a sharp turn in the passage. He cocked his head and looked at the two children. “Listen,” he said. “Do you hear that?”
Prue concentrated. “No,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s like a … I don’t know … slushing sound,” Septimus said cryptically. Shrugging, the rat continued on into the darkness.
Curtis crawled a few more feet forward, and the ground below his knees promptly gave way.
He fell.
It would be a stretch to say that Prue saw it happen; more like: She saw him there, in front of her, and then he was simply not there anymore. It was like he’d vanished.
“CURTIS!” screamed Prue. She was petrified, too scared to move.
A loud splash.
“That’s what I heard,” said Septimus, peering over the break in the tunnel. “Water.”
Prue ignored the rat. She yelled Curtis’s name again, mustering all the volume she could manage. The tunnel rang with the sound.
A surprised yelp met her cry. “WATER!” Curtis shouted back, shrilly, from below. “COLD WATER!”
Luckily, the lantern had not fallen with him; it remained, tipped sideways, in the narrow tunnel. Prue grabbed it and swung it in front of her, trying to get her bearings. There was a gaping hole in the rock directly in front of her; it was roughly Curtis-sized. Oddly, the edges of the hole seemed to be angular, though the reason behind this did not immediately occur to Prue. She was too focused on the well-being of her friend.
“Are you all right?” she called to Curtis.
“Y-yeah!” he sputtered. His voice reverberated eerily; it occurred to Prue that it was the voice of someone occupying a very large space.
“What happened?”
“I fell into this—this pool!” he called. There was some more frantic splashing. “It’s really cold!”
“Hold up,” Prue called. “I’m going to try something.” She cocked an eyebrow at Septimus. Her tongue fixed between her lips, she quickly unspooled the rope from her bag. Once she had it in hand, she waved the rat toward her.
“Hold on to this,” she said, handing him the lantern.
He did as she instructed, though he eyed her warily as she tied the end of the rope around his belly and pushed him toward the hole in the floor.
“I got it,” he reassured. “I got it.”
Light began to flood the lower chamber once the rat had been dangled into the orifice. Septimus squirmed uncomfortably against the rope at his waist but continued to hold tight to the lantern.
“Over here, Septimus! Keep it c-coming!” Curtis shivered. “I can start to see … There!” There came more splashing; Prue peered over the edge of the hole and saw her friend swimming, frantically, in the middle of a vast pool of jet-black water. The light, cast backward toward the hole he’d fallen through, illuminated in silhouette the distinct pattern of brickwork, like a collapsed wall on some old abandoned house.
Curtis let out a loud gasp of relief. “God, that’s cold,” he yelled. He’d reached dry land.
“You guys,” shouted Septimus. “Look at this.”
Prue peered her head over the edge of the hole and found the rat’s swaying shape. The lantern light was dim, but she could see it illuminating the space as the rat swung it about his head. “It’s a chamber of some sort. Man-made!” She felt at the break in the tunnel floor—felt the cool, damp roughness of the bricks. She must’ve gotten overzealous in her inspection, as the mortar crumbled again and Prue went crashing, rat, rope, knapsack, lantern and all, into the giant pool.
The water was positively freezing; Curtis’s shrieks had even undersold it. She felt a lightninglike bolt fly through her body, from her feet to her head, as she plunged into the cavern pool. The lantern was immediately extinguished; it was like someone had thrown a black shroud over the world. For a second, she floated in the black fluid, feeling the frigid water find its way into every fold of her clothing. She felt suspended there, like some ancient insect hovering in amber. And then she exploded to the surface, gasping for air.
“PRUE!” she could hear Curtis shout.
She was having a hard time getting air into her lungs. Her whole body was searing with sharp, cold pain. She hiccuped; she gasped.
“Over here!” yelled Curtis. She desperately swam for the source of the sound.
“I can’t see anything!”
“Here! Follow my voice!”
Paddling with abandon, one of her swim strokes made contact with hard rock. She felt Curtis’s hand grasping hers,
and she was hauled to the bank of the pool. Water poured from her hair; her skin was a million pinpricks of icy cold. She was racked with shivers.
“Septimus!” hollered Curtis, once he’d gotten the girl to safety. A series of frantic splashing noises was sounding from the middle of the chamber.
“Help!” shouted the rat. “The lantern!”
Curtis dove back into the pool. He reemerged, sputtering, minutes later. Septimus was clinging to his back, badly coughing water. The rope was still tied to his belly and the lantern still gripped in his paws, though it was now quite extinguished.
The three of them, prey to the cold subterranean air, succumbed to violent shivers, and they began to push their bodies closer together in order to kindle whatever heat they could create. With fumbling fingers, Curtis opened the lantern door and felt at the soaked wick. Prue grabbed the waxed cotton pouch that housed the matches; she was amazed to find that the cloth had kept the box of matches dry. She handed Curtis the box and he, with some difficulty, managed to get one of the matches alight. The wick of the lantern, however, was soaked beyond hope.
“Here,” said Prue, “let me try.” She grabbed the lantern and, pulling a small tin of kerosene from the knapsack, emptied the lantern of the water that had collected in the tank. Refilling it with the kerosene, she soaked the wick and set a lit match to the fabric. To her relief, it caught flame; a warm pulse of light came from within the glass.
In these brief, flickering cadences of light, the cavern in which they sat was revealed to them: the walls, brick and stone covered in ages-old layers of lichen, rose up from the dark pool to an arched apex, where a sizable hole—the one they’d fallen through—had been broken. One thing was imminently clear: the chamber had been built by human—or animal—hands. The three of them followed the glow of the lantern as it revealed more of the room; it illuminated, in slow mosaic, the brickwork of a forgotten century, from the hands of forgotten masons, before falling on an arched doorway, just yards from where they sat.
CHAPTER 15
A Place of Salvation and Solace
The record player was dug up from its tomb in the hallway closet; the speakers, rescued from their tenure in purgatory as end tables, were wheeled to face the room. A favorite LP, Betty Wells’s All-Time Favorite Two-Steps, was unearthed from the cabinet and placed, spinning, on the platter. The lonesome tones of a sole pedal steel guitar moaned, and Joffrey Unthank took Desdemona Mudrak by the hand and danced her, amorously, to the middle of the office.
“What is this?” asked a surprised Desdemona, who’d just returned from the girls’ dormitory to report that the map Unthank had been looking for was not, in fact, in number twenty-three’s footlocker. She’d expected unmitigated rage; she got country music.
“Baby,” Unthank cooed, “just follow my lead. Step. Step. And step back. Step. Step…”
“Yes, I know this two-step,” said Desdemona. She’d played Annie Oakley in a Ukrainian biopic, shot in Odessa; the cast had been taught the dance by an American expat. “But my question is why.”
Her boyfriend of thirteen years looked her directly in the eye and said, “I did it.”
Desdemona’s eyes went wide. She nearly stepped on his toe as they shuffled about the room. “Have girls returned?” she asked.
“No, no, no,” he said. “All that—that’s gone now. Done with. That’s the past.”
“And so what is future?” she asked, eyeing him warily.
“This.” Never losing a beat, he ushered their marching dance steps to the desk, where the schematic for the Möbius Cog lay. Desdemona barely had a chance to look at the thing, with its hieroglyphic-like scrawls and enigmatic diagrams, before Unthank led her in a pretzel-like swing that left her on the other side of the room.
“What is that?” she asked, catching her breath.
“I don’t know,” Unthank said gleefully. “But I’m gonna make it.”
“Darling,” chided Desdemona, “I’m very confused.”
“No worries, baby,” said Unthank. “In fact, when we’re living off the fat of the land, there won’t be a single worry to your name. I should clarify: living off the fat of the Impassable Wilderness, that is.”
“What is this? What has happened?”
He spun her around so that they were both facing forward; they did a promenade around the dentist’s chair in the middle of the room. “Let’s just say I received a visit from the ghost of Christmas future. And we’re gonna have a full stocking next year.”
“Still, I am not understanding.”
“Baby, come this time two months down the road, we’ll be living high on the hog. Old Wigman’s gonna be begging me for favors when all the cards have been dealt.”
“Stop with metaphors!” shouted Desdemona.
Unthank smiled. “This guy, this guy who wants me to build that cog there is gonna get me into the Impassable Wilderness. Not only get me in there, but he’s gonna give me the run of the place. As far as I can tell. And then: no more sad machine shop, no more whining kids, no more complaining parents. It’s going to be wine and roses, champagne on tap. Good times, metaphorically speaking.”
Desdemona tried a smile. “And film studio? What of film studio?”
“Pah! Dessie, baby, you’re going to be queen of this place. You won’t need to make those silly movies anymore. Condescending directors, overprivileged producers. Who needs ’em? And dirty old Los Angeles? That’s not good enough for you, baby. In the Impassable Wilderness, you’re going to be too busy eating caviar from a palm leaf. Or something like that.”
The music was still going; Desdemona ground their dance steps to a halt. “Silly movies? Condescending directors? Dirty Los Angeles? Joffrey, this is lifeblood to me.”
“Listen, I—”
“No, you listen here of me. I could care less of Impassable Wilderness. It is nothing. It is just dirt. And trees. I have, for these years, listened to your shoutings about getting into this place because I think it is your hobby, and every man should have hobby. Boris Nudnink, great Ukraine actor, he had hobby: building replica of Soviet-era memorial statues with Legos. It is silly, yes? But who are we to judge? It does him some good. This is how I see your Impassable Wilderness. Sputnik statue in Lego. But I go along and I carry transponder units and I make sure girls and boys do not run away. This is what I do for your hobby.”
Unthank had fallen silent; he listened to the barrage with the obedience of a lapdog. The music carried on in the background.
Desdemona continued, “All in the hope that one day you will be good on promise, promise you made thirteen years ago when first I meet you. Desdemona, you say, one day I’ll leave this machine-part making behind, and we will live to Los Angeles. I will make movie studio there, and together we will make great movies, great American movies. Like Scorsese and Tarantino and Bay. I will produce and you will star, you say. In Los Angeles. Not Portland. Not this Industrial Waste. And not Impassable Wilderness. This is the promise you make.”
“I know, honey, but I just think—”
“No, that is your problem. You do not think. Only for yourself.”
And with that, she pivoted on her heels and strode from the room, leaving a drifting wake of lavender perfume behind her.
Betty Wells was singing longingly about a west Texas gaucho when Joffrey Unthank, pulling the needle from the platter, cut her off midsentence. The speakers issued a little skrick. Stuffing his hands in his chinos pockets, he strolled over to his desk and, standing before it, began looking down at the Cog’s schematic. Like a composer tapping out the music of his written notation without touching an instrument, Joffrey allowed the schematic to come to life in his mind: The little gears rotated around the axis in a fluid, silent motion, setting the blue-gray writing into a flurry around the rotating cog. He’d already forgotten what Desdemona had said to him; his mind was deeply in the world of parts mechanics, where no trivial distraction could hope to divert him from his task.
When Elsie, Rachel,
and Martha descended from the trees and approached the milling crowd of children in the house’s yard, a kind of quiet fell over the kids. It was a quiet of resignation, of surrender. They saw the yellow tags on the three girls’ ears; there was no need for explanation as to why they were there. For Martha, the faces of the children were like a flood of old memories: There was plump Carl Rehnquist, shaking dust from a rug. And Cynthia Schmidt, red-haired and pimply; she was carrying wood from a pile and stacking it neatly near the house. Dale Turner, always quiet as a mouse, was reading a book on the porch while two little girls, Louise Embersol and Sattie Keenan, looked over his shoulder. The children all murmured hello to the newcomers as they walked, trancelike, into the yard before turning back to their tasks.
The three girls crested a small hillock and found themselves looking down into the trough of a narrow vale, where lay nestled a quaint wooden cottage.
The house itself seemed to be as old as the hills themselves; it was mostly made of rough-hewn logs, lain one on top of the other, sitting on top of a foundation of river stones. The wood had been deeply stained by time and weather. The sloped roof, cedar shingles under a layer of bright snow, crested at a high gable that boasted a copper rooster weather vane, its ancient patina a beaten green. A wide porch gave shelter to a few benches and a washtub.
As if mute, the three girls said nothing as they approached the house. Finally, Martha broke the silence: She saw a boy walk out of the front door of the cottage, carrying a bucket of what looked to be kitchen scraps. “Michael!” she shouted. The boy, dark skinned and sporting a red bandanna around his neck, smiled broadly to see her.
“Martha!” he replied. He set down the bucket. Martha ran to meet him; they gave each other an enormous hug before pulling apart.
“How did you—” sputtered Martha. “What did you—”
The boy was about to answer when the dale was suddenly alive with the barking of dogs; the stampeding herd, which had so eluded the three girls, came galloping down the slope and into the yard. As soon as it came in contact with the laboring children, the pack splintered as the children were forced to drop the instruments of their chores to meet the demands of the happily barking and slobbering canines. The pug who Elsie had briefly pet came running up to her leg; she knelt down and started scratching the underside of his neck, and he let his tongue loll from the side of his mouth with pleasure. Rachel cringed and held her hands defensively to her chest.