We put the rest of the Children ashore on the river’s southern bank. In the lightened canoe, Paku, Tulu, and I paddled hard down the middle of the current, rammed the Island of Bones. Rent its full length, the swamped canoe jammed between white boulders, the weight of water tearing off, carrying away the split side.
“Lutha will think we’ve gone under Grave Mountain,” said Paku.
But, as we swam, I said aloud, “Kalik won’t be deceived,” and took in a mouthful. Tulu smacked my back, giggling to herself, helped me up the bank.
“That should fool them!” Paku was enjoying himself. He was going to be good under pressure.
“Not if they bring Nip.”
Maka was waiting with the others. When she heard me mention Nip, her face went still in the moonlight. I shook my head. “Chances are they won’t.”
Maka and Tulu had stolen the bows and arrows of the two snoring guards, Paku and Tepulka their spears and knives. I had my bow and arrows, spear, knife. The pregnant Kitimah and Sheenah had each grabbed a string of fish as we ran past the smokehouse.
There was no time to cover our tracks. We hurried the little ones along, retracing the way I had followed the spiker. The moonlight helped.
“See that bluff on Grave Mountain,” I told Paku. “At its foot there’s a clearing with a tall grey rock. Behind the rock, there’s a hole under a flat stone, a branch dragged over it. Get everyone down the hole. There’s plenty of room.”
“I’m telling you just in case. Hide there till it’s safe to move.”
Paku grunted and took my pack. I dropped back. Listened but heard only the Children ahead. When I caught up, Paku had kept the right direction.
“Not long now.” Tama and Puli were struggling, but Puli actually tried to smile! “You’re doing well!” I patted them. Through scrub. Under trees. Stark, the bluff heaved higher.
Something? So faint, I stopped, held my breath, cupped both ears. The bray of a distant horn. Would sound travel all this way from the Headland? I ran to catch up to the others. Paku was glad to slide off the pack.
When the horn sounded again, it was closer, probably on the river. Kimi yelped. I swung Chak up on top of my pack. Maka carried Tupu. Tepulka and Paku picked up Kimi and Hurk. Tulu carried the bows and arrows, the spears. Kitimah and Sheenah were keeping up well. Far to our left a different horn brayed. “It’s all right. They’re across the other side of the river,” I called.
We neared the bluff. Horns moaned around us. “Just echoes,” I called. “Not far now!” And I heard Nip crying.
The clearing. The tall grey rock. Around its back. Throw the branch aside. The black hole. I pointed. “Be rabbits!” Kimi and Tupu laughed, scrambled out of sight. Chak. Hurk. Puli. Nip yelped closer. The Maidens’ screams, Lutha’s highest.
Tama dithered. Shove him aside. Kitimah, Sheenah sank and vanished. Tulu. Paku and Tepulka. “What about you?” asked Maka.
“Get down!” I pulled out the deerskin, threw her my pack.
Tama rocking in his old hunch, I knocked him out with my spear shaft. Rolled him in the deerskin. Shoved him in. “Grab his feet!” Halfway down, he woke, fought, jammed across.
A bark. I slide down backwards, feel Tama with my feet. Drag at a rock above my head. Creak! Drive the spear into the roof. Dirt tumbling in my eyes. In the moonlight I see Lutha leading the Maidens. Arms, faces, breasts patched with black daubs.
Nip crying. A spear strikes beside me. I lever and bring down part of the roof. Nip’s bark, and the shrieks. My feet feel Tama disappear. I let myself go, slide, and land on something soft. A rumble. Air pushes against my face. I reach up, drive the spear into the roof again and lever. The shaft bends, snaps. Rocks thump, the roof collapses, the howl of shrieks and Nip’s whine cut off.
“Go further into the tunnel! To the right!” I levered down more debris with the broken spear shaft. A sliding roar. Rubble seized my feet, gripped around my knees. Rose sudden up my thighs, waist. Helpless. Unable to breathe. And something hit my head. Lights. Pain! The Children’s cries fading.
Then returning from far off. The little ones sobbing, voices echoing. And the sound of water running. Hands digging me out. Lifting me. Breath coming back. My own voice mumbling something.
“He’s awake!” Maka.
“Take his legs.” Paku.
“I’m all right!” I pulled myself up. Running both hands over the wall of rocks and soil. Clambering over uneasy, shifting rubble, I came to the curved roof of the tunnel. Well-blocked, not just the hole but the tunnel itself. No way now to the left, what I thought was north. I felt my way down the pile, touched a painful lump on my head. Wetness down my neck. I licked my finger, tasted blood, and stepped into water over my knees.
“Are you all here?” I felt their faces. Said their names. All twelve! Hugged them together. Moved them further along the tunnel. Sat them in a huddle, arms around each other. Tama sounding dazed. And because I didn’t know what else to do, I told them the story of the Five Friends who ran away and found a place of their own. The whimpering stopped. Just the twelve Children pressing around me. Their breathing. The trickle of water in the dark.
“Hee-haw!” went Chak. And they howled, and brayed, and barked, and crowed. If our hunters could have heard, it must have been more terrifying than the bray of their horns. I laughed, told the Children, and they laughed, too. A desperate sound.
Maka had kept hold of my pack. My broken spear, bow, and arrows were under the rockfall. Tepulka’s spear gone. I had my knife, Paku and Tepulka theirs. Tulu still had the guards’ two bows, but only three arrows. I took Paku’s spear, felt with it, but could find nothing. Water pooling deeper.
“I think I dropped a couple here,” said Tulu. She splashed to my left. “Yes!” She found one arrow, then another. “Get out!” said Paku’s voice. Tulu came out of the water just as there came another rumble and splash.
“Quick!” Down the tunnel I counted everyone again, touching them, hearing them say their names. Making sure. Saying their names aloud myself. The two older girls, Maka and Tulu. The two older boys, Paku and Tepulka. The two pregnant ones, Kitimah and Sheenah. The two depressed ones, Tama and Puli. And the four little ones, Tupu. Hurk, Kimi, Chak. “Twelve!”
The tunnel was heading south, I hoped, the direction we wanted to go. “Twelve!’ I said again.
On a sandy patch we sat and shared some bear meat. The Children drank thirstily. At least the air was good, and we had water.
I led, feeling with the spear, remembering the holes in the floor of the Droll’s tunnel. We were walking over fine silt and small pebbles, the water running shallow towards us. The Children in pairs, holding hands. Maka and Tulu feeling for the walls with their bows. Tepulka and Paku at the back, making sure nobody fell behind. Now and again I raised the spear, but could not feel the roof. The walls were as smooth and even as the tunnel behind the Shaman’s cave.
“How are we going to know when it’s morning?” the sick little one, Tupu, asked. I had taken her on my back, hearing exhaustion in her voice. Her face burned against my neck, the fever of her disease.
“It depends how long the tunnel is. We’ll keep going as long as we can. Then have a sleep.” At least the floor was clear, nothing to stumble over. And always the sound of water.
I counted the Children each time we rested. Checking by touch as well as voice. “Keep in your pairs.” The older girls, Maka and Tulu; the two little boys, Chak and Hurk; the boy and girl I had despaired of, Tama and Puli; pregnant Kitimah and Sheenah; the older boys, Paku and Tepulka taking it in turns to carry Kimi. Twelve! In the dark, it was as if I had to learn their names, their voices, their appearances all over again.
Lutha must think we had been crushed by the rockfall. If they dug after us, they would find only a hole filled with water. A few days, and it would be as if we had never lived on the Headland. Kalik would change his plans and start plotting something else. What about his cold rage? “I give up nothing,” he once said. Neither he nor Lutha would understand what I had done. Nor why.
All that time in the Land of the White Bear I had loved Lutha’s memory. I remembered the night she helped me escape from the Island of Bones. Telling me how the priestesses had ordered a Salt Man killed. “He took a long time to die,” she said, and I heard again the catch in her voice. But that was before, corrupted by leadership, she learned to use cruelty herself.
Then I was back in the tunnel, hearing our feet splashing through water. The Children’s voices tiring. We found a raised heap of dampish sand and slept, but first I made everyone drink. It would keep them feeling full. The four little ones slept on the deerskin in the middle, the bigger ones around them. Paku’s confident voice said, “We are escaping!” and I heard an excited sigh from Kimi. A tired chuckle from Chak.
“Where’s Nip?” he asked.
“Lutha had her on a rope. I couldn’t get her.”
“Will Lutha be cruel to her?”
“She’ll be kind to her. And her pups.” There was no point in telling him Nip had died, crushed in the hole.
Everyone woke hungry. Maka and Tulu cuddled the youngest ones, reminded them where we were. Tepulka made them laugh. Not what he said so much as the way he spoke. We finished the bear meat, shared a smoked fish. “Suck every bit off the bones,” I said. For some reason, that made Kimi laugh. And we all laughed at her. Then Chak laughed at the sound of somebody piddling. I felt, counted all twelve, and we went on.
I didn’t say that the run of water had increased. I had known by its sound, the moment I woke. Nobody else seemed to notice.
Then we saw a lighter shade of darkness, felt air on our faces. But the light came from above. Paku climbed and stood on my shoulders, Tepulka, Maka, and Tulu supporting his legs. He reached up into the dark with the spear, said he could feel a round hole in the roof.
I told the Children the hole was built by the people who made the tunnel. “To bring in fresh air. We couldn’t climb it.”
“Did somebody really build the tunnel?” Chak wanted to know.
“The Old People, the People of the Walls, they tunnelled through the hills to save climbing them. The tunnels were their Ways, what they called their Roads.”
“Remember,” said Puli, “‘…the donkey ran down the road.’ In the story?” I listened astonished to her voice. It was one of the few times Puli had spoken. There was a new spirit in the Children: they had something to live for.
“I remember!” said several others.
“Well,” said Puli, “we’re running away from our cruel owners, too. Down a road through a tunnel.”
“Up!” said Chak’s voice, “because the water’s running down,” and we all laughed.
Then it occurred to me, the tunnel might be one of those the Old People used to carry water. For making the thing they called electricity. The sooner we got out, the better.
“How do we know we’re going the right way?”
“There isn’t any other,” Tepulka told Chak. “The water’s running back to where we came from, so we should come to where it starts.” There was a long silence as Chak thought.
“Does the water come in through the mouth of the tunnel?”
“I don’t know,” said Tepulka.
“How far have we got to go?”
“Not too far.”
“How long have we been walking, Tepulka?”
“Most of the night and the next day.”
“But we’ve been going for days and days!”
The younger children thought we must have been going several days at least. I knew it couldn’t be that long, or we’d have run out of food. And because I had to cheer up the others, I felt no distress myself.
“We’re getting there,” I said, but there were times it seemed the darkness would never end. At least the water showed we were heading in the one direction. Not wandering lost in different tunnels. I didn’t say anything about that.
“What if the tunnel just goes round and round?” asked Chak.
“Does it feel like it?” Maka said to him, her voice warm, comforting.
“No.” Chak didn’t sound very sure.
“Who would build a tunnel that goes round and round?” asked Maka’s sweet voice. Somewhere in the dark, a little voice said, “Chak!” And we all laughed at Kimi.
The next rest we had, they asked about Nip again. There were more tears, and they asked for their story. They wanted it again before we started off. I didn’t tell the story of the Dark Forest and the Showman.
The water had deepened while we were resting. Holding hands, the smaller children walked along the side of the tunnel. I kept checking their names. Trying to sound unconcerned.
We had two smoked fish left when I smelled fresh air. No point in exciting the Children if it was just another ventilation hole. The floor of the tunnel was more uneven and slippery with larger stones, water running fast. We had to feel our way. Waiting for someone to catch up. Making sure every pair was in touch. Six pairs. Twelve children.
I took Tupu on my back, and Tepulka carried Kimi. I felt my way around a large stone, and another. The biggest so far. As I crossed from one side of the tunnel to the other, the water was over my knees. Again, there seemed a lightening, a greying. Then I became sure of it. I stopped. Despite the rising water, I had not felt the closed-in feeling, the choked breathlessness of the Droll’s tunnel.
“You haven’t got time to worry too much about yourself,” I said under my breath.
“It’s lighter!” Chak shouted. “We’re out!” he cried.
“Don’t run outside the mouth of the tunnel!” I felt it myself, the urge to burst into the light.
Water roaring nearby. The air fresh. The tunnel shrinking. Bigger rocks and sand half-filling it. Something like a net between us and the light. A grating of huge metal bars rising into the roof just above our heads. Between their criss-cross a glimpse of a brown and green valley in sunshine! And the other side of the barrier of rocks and sand outside the gate, the tops of waves, the rapids of a river. Its surface almost level with where we stood.
The river had blocked up the entrance to the tunnel, turned, and run down its old bed, but it was in flood now, and some of it was coming over the barrier. If it rose much more, we would be swept away. Probably carried to join the river under Grave Mountain. Like the Shaman, swept back to the Land of the White Bear that Ate the Sun.
I could hear exhaustion in the Children’s voices. Tired, hungry, disappointed. And scared. As if it was my fault.
“I thought Nip would be waiting for us,” said Chak. And he sobbed.