When I left our sleeping mat, I didn’t go straight to the cranny that hid our escape tunnel. First, I stopped at Big Mother. The rock was slick and cool like always. I put a hand on the lump that was shaped like a full belly and thought about Romi. Please don’t let Krux take her. Not yet. I rested my forehead against her and wrapped my arms around her bulging middle. I imagined Big Mother hugging me back, telling me in her way that everything was going to be okay.
Just past Big Mother was the pool. Even without a headlamp, I could see that it shimmered. Little glow bugs stuck to the ceiling and lit up the darkness with a yellowish glow. I was almost at the cranny when I heard it. The familiar tap tap tap of a hammer on rock. A trickle of dust fell out of the tunnel entrance. Jacob! Was he back?
I gave a long, low whistle, the secret signal that Jacob had taught me. I held my breath and waited.
Pebbles skittered down to me and dropped on my feet. The whistle was returned, but right away, I knew it wasn’t Jacob. Scrambling into the tunnel, I used the handles we’d dug to propel myself up higher. Noah was the only other person besides Romi and me who knew about the tunnel, but he scoffed at it and called the plan foolish.
I whistled again, the sound echoing up the tunnel, to let him know I was on my way. It was met with a reply. Jacob was always reminding me how dangerous a tunnel that went up could be. If Noah slipped, we’d both tumble down. I ducked as dirt and pebbles rained down on me but kept climbing.
“Wondered when you’d decide to join me,” Noah said when I hauled myself to below his feet. He looked down, and light from the headlamp shone in my face. His feet were on either side of the tunnel stuck in footholds.
“How many sleeps have you been working?” I asked, miffed that he hadn’t asked me to join him. He knew the tunnel mattered to me as much as it did to Jacob.
His rock hammer faltered and he almost lost his grip on it. The system Jacob and I used was that I went first and made a narrow tunnel and Jacob widened it below me. I didn’t like being underneath Noah, or the way the rock dust fell in clouds around me. “Only a few. Didn’t think he’d be gone this long.”
I waited for him to say more. To confirm my fears, that Jacob wasn’t coming back. But instead, he surprised me.
“He’ll be mad if he sees we haven’t been working on it.”
“I thought you said it was a waste of time.” It was hard to keep the judgment out of my voice. Digging the tunnel after muling all day left me bone tired.
“I want to get out of here as much as you.”
“You do?”
He stopped chipping at the rock and looked down at me. “Course, I do. And if Jacob did make it outside somehow, then I know he’s waiting for us.”
“How come you never helped before?” I asked. “Noah?”
“Wasn’t my place,” he finally answered. “This was Jacob’s way to stay sane. You Unders got your ways. This was his.”
“What’s yours?” I asked.
Part of me didn’t expect him to say anything. As it was, he’d said more to me in the tunnel than ever before. “Who says I have one.” I didn’t press Noah. He wasn’t like Jacob, who I could ask about anything and he’d tell me. When Noah started talking again, it caught me by surprise.
“It’s thinking about my people on the Mountain. I’ve got a daughter, Nadia. She had red hair like mine. Or like it was.” He laughed. “Red like hot coals. She’d be grown now. My wife was pregnant when I left, so there’d be another child too.”
All my life, Noah was like Old Father. Angry and unpredictable. But hearing his words and how his voice could be soft, made me wonder if I’d been wrong about him.