Birdie entered the tunnel last, behind Louisa and Rich, as the earthy perfume of weeping stone and hard-packed dirt filled her lungs. Sam plucked a torch from the wall and passed it up to Marielle to light the way, leaving Birdie in the shadows far behind its weakened glow.
As they traveled deeper underground, she wished she could double back and retrieve a torch of her own, but she didn’t dare. As Rich and Friedrich had suspected, they were not alone in the tunnels. The search party’s shouts drifted through the shafts, the deep voices booming as they drew closer, then fading as they scoured the maze of passageways.
Her back tingled as she strained to determine how close the guards were, certain that at any moment a hard, hot glove would strike out of the darkness and haul her away from the others.
She peered over her shoulder but saw only velvet blackness closing in, pushing her along.
They were going more slowly than she’d have liked, hindered by the size of their group and the narrow cut of the walls. More than once she froze in place, holding her breath as the search party neared, sometimes so close she could feel the rumble of their footfalls in an adjacent tunnel.
The walking was difficult too. The ground was bumpy and pocked, and the height of the tunnel, which had been tall and airy near the storeroom, gradually shrank the further they traveled, as if the builders had grown tired of digging halfway through the job.
Birdie ducked as she followed the others down a short flight of spiral stairs, then banked right and hurried in silence deeper and deeper underground.
The low bay of a hound sounded somewhere far above, and the hair rose on the back of her neck. Up ahead, Rich dropped to his hands and knees to crawl through the passageway, which had diminished to nothing more than a long black chute in the earth.
She pushed forward in the dark, her shoulders brushing the walls, the ceiling forcing her lower. She squeezed her eyes shut as she squirmed into the tunnel behind the others, trying to forget the tons of dirt and stone above her.
Her breath came in short bursts, and her heart raced as she prayed the aventurine would hold, that it wouldn’t trigger while they were deep beneath the fortress. She grew dizzy at the thought and opened her mouth wide to gain some air.
She had to keep moving, to push through, to get out.
She forced her mind to imagine a larger space – and daylight – bright, beautiful daylight.
“Here!” Louisa’s muffled voice reached her from several yards ahead. “We’re here!”
Birdie crawled blindly, feeling her way through the base of wet clay that coated her elbows and caked between her fingers. She jumped when she felt someone touch her shoulders and cried out as Sophia helped her slip out of the hole and onto the hard-packed earth.
She stumbled forward and opened her eyes. The single torch illuminated a round chamber and the other campers, streaked with mud and breathing hard.
Friedrich motioned to Rich, and together they heaved crates and debris away from the last stretch of tunnel until a pinpoint of sunshine poked through. Encouraged, they moved faster, handing each crate off to the others, who stacked and shoved them against the curved walls and out of the way.
“Now what?” Rich crossed his arms and grimaced at a stack of boulders that stood between themselves and freedom.
“We need to move one of them.” Louisa examined the pile. “But not all of them. If we push the top one out, we can climb out over the others.”
Rich positioned himself against the stone like a football player preparing to shove a practice barrier. Friedrich lined up beside him.
“Ready?” Rich said.
Friedrich flexed his fingers.
“On the count of three.”
When Rich reached three, they heaved their shoulders against the boulder, grunting and straining as they pushed. The boulder didn’t budge.
“Again,” Rich said.
They lined up and tried again. Ryan squirmed between them and added his weight to the thrust. Still, no movement.
“That thing isn’t going anywhere.” Ryan ducked back into the chamber and rubbed his arms as Marielle dropped the torch and moved past the boys. She shoved at the stone herself, but her bony hands were no match for its weight. She spun to face them, her eyes pleading.
“If we could just get that one corner lifted.” Louisa placed a gentle hand on Marielle’s shoulder to move her aside. She pointed to a concave area on the bottom of the boulder where a bit of light filtered through. “If we lift it there, we could push it out the other side.”
“Use this.” Sam picked up the torch Marielle had abandoned. He snuffed it out against the wall and the chamber fell into darkness.
Birdie closed her eyes. She had to get out of there. She listened intently, waiting for the scrape of the torch’s wooden handle against the heavy stone.
Instead, rustling rose behind her from deep inside the tunnel. Birdie’s eyes flew open, and she froze in the center of the chamber.
“What is that?” Raina crouched low.
“Hurry!” Kayla cried, swiveling to peer behind her as the sound grew louder. “Someone’s coming!” She seized a crate and shoved it at the tunnel entrance, but it was too wide for the hole.
Rich snatched the torch from Sam’s outstretched hands and shoved the end into the crevice beneath the boulder. He rocked the handle up and down, back and forth, until he’d wedged it under the stone.
“You ready?” he yelled to the others, who’d clustered behind him. “This wood won’t hold for long. As soon as I lift, you’ll all need to push.”
The noise in the tunnel intensified.
“Do it!” Kayla shouted.
Louisa, Sophia, and the boys placed their hands on the stone. “One, two, three!”
Rich groaned as he leaned on the torch with all his weight. The boulder lifted barely an inch, but it was enough. The others channeled all of their force against it, and just as the torch handle splintered, the boulder tumbled out to the forest floor.
A shaft of sunlight shot into the chamber.
“Yes!” Louisa cheered.
“Oh, thank God.” Kayla dashed toward the opening and freedom. She was nearly there when the shrill screech of attack drowned their whoops of joy.
“Bats!” Raina screamed. She covered her head and dropped to the ground.
Hundreds of bats streamed through the room, forming an undulating black mass of flapping wings.
Birdie sprawled flat on the floor and covered her head with her hands. The ripple of flight reverberated overhead, and she wondered fleetingly if it would ever end, if this would be the way she would go, discovered dead on the floor of an ancient chamber, her heart arrested by the sheer terror of it all.
The swarm seemed to go on forever as the squealing bats passed through the chamber and out into the forest beyond. When the last of them careened through the hole, the swath of sunlight once again brightened the space.
Birdie sensed the light but was reluctant to open her eyes, to witness the aftermath of the attack.
“Holy crap.” It was Ryan. At least Ryan was still alive.
She opened one eye and surveyed the scene.
Raina was flat on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut. She was sobbing – huge, loud, body-shuddering sobs.
The others were gazing at the chamber, shell-shocked.
“Is… everyone okay?” Louisa swatted at her clothes as her knees shook. “Are you all okay?”
“What the hell were those bats doing?” Rich stared out into the forest. “It’s not even dusk.”
“They better not have rabies.” Ryan rose to his feet. “Unbelievable.”
At the sound of her brothers’ voices, Raina opened her eyes, which were swollen with tears.
“I’m okay,” Birdie said, more to herself than the others. She sat up and touched her hair. “Not sure why I bothered to brush it.” She yanked the ponytail holder out once and for all.
Raina sob-hiccupped into a laugh, which made the others crack up too.
“Good.” Louisa petted her braid, which was frayed, but still mostly intact. “Good. We are all okay. Now we must get Marielle to the cave.”
“Too late,” Ryan said. “She’s gone.”
“What?” Louisa said.
“Gone.” Ryan raised his chin toward the place where the boulder had been. “She crawled out with the bats.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Kayla rolled her eyes.
“I told you we couldn’t trust her.” Raina got to her feet.
Now that the shock of the bats was wearing off, Birdie remembered the aventurine. They weren’t safe underground, especially if Marielle was no longer with them. “It doesn’t matter. We still need to get out of here, fast.”
“With pleasure.” Kayla scrambled over the boulder and the others followed. Birdie almost cried out at the freedom of it.
Louisa was the last to leave. She hopped down and inhaled deeply. “The forest. We made it.”
Marielle hadn’t waited for them. She was dashing down a narrow path in the dense woods toward the valley floor. Birdie could just make out the flow of her black skirts as she ran between the trees.
“Marielle!” Friedrich set out after her and the others fell into step behind him.
“Wait!” Kayla yelled, and they slowed. From far below and centuries away, the eerie moan of a barge’s horn coursed through her words. “Just hold on. Do we really need to trudge all the way down there?”