Downward
“OSCAR, YOU NEED TO stop screaming,” Saige said calmly.
Oscar opened his eyes.
The shark was still in midair, still aimed directly at them, but it… wasn’t moving.
Oh.
That was because it wasn’t real.
It was a model of a shark.
“Shark,” Oscar said weakly.
“Actually, that’s an orca,” Saige said. “A killer whale. It’s not a shark. It’s not even a whale. It’s a dolphin.”
“It has as many teeth as a shark.”
“Actually, the average great white shark has about two hundred and fifty more teeth than an orca. But I see your point. And at any rate, it isn’t real.”
“Yes, I can see that now,” Oscar mumbled.
“And sharks don’t fly through the air,” she added.
“Okay, I get it!”
“So where is the tunnel entrance?”
“In the basement, Frederika said.” Oscar’s heart was still beating very fast. He felt a little foolish that he’d thought the giant creature suspended from the ceiling was real, but to be fair, he was pretty on edge to begin with.
“Over there,” Saige said, pointing. “It looks like a directory.”
There was considerably less water in the aquarium than there was outside—only about a foot on this floor.
That probably had something to do with an enormous staircase in the center of the space, which led downward to a lower floor of the building. All the water that made it into the aquarium was rushing wildly down those stairs, transforming them into a literal waterfall. Oscar found himself wishing for an elevator, even though that seemed extraordinarily unlikely.
The directory was in pretty good shape, though, so that was lucky. The entrance to the tunnel was down one flight of stairs, then all the way in the back corner of the building.
“I don’t suppose you brought a chairlift,” Oscar said weakly, in such a sad and small voice that he and Saige looked at each other before dissolving into a fit of wild, high-pitched laughter.
Then Saige pretended to dig around in her backpack for a chairlift, and that made them laugh even more, and when they stopped, Oscar felt better, like he’d laughed out most of the fear and anxiety from his body. The mood felt lighter as they stood as close to the stairs as they could without fear of being swept away.
“This isn’t ideal,” Saige said.
“Right.”
“But it isn’t a total roadblock, either.”
She withdrew a coil of sturdy rope from her backpack and held it up for Oscar.
“I don’t know about that,” he said nervously.
“I have my wheel wraps,” she reasoned. “They’ll help me glide down the stairs. We can attach one end of the rope to the top of the staircase, and I can lower myself down slowly. We can wrap the rope around my handles and use them as a sort of pulley.121 Actually, you can come with me, on the platform. The extra weight will make us sturdier, and it will probably be safer for both of us.”
“Didn’t you just say I was the smartest person in the world? You should trust me.”
Oscar smiled. “I said you were the smartest person I’d ever met.”
“Close enough. Let’s do this.”
They set it up like this:
Oscar got close enough to the top of the staircase to tie a knot122 on the banister. He then tied the same knot to Dot’s bottommost horizontal bar, just underneath the standing platform (they took off the prop motor and left it aside). He made sure to thread the rope around both sides of the wheelchair, to keep the weight distribution as even as possible. Next, Saige adjusted her hanging weights to be half on her left and half on her right.
“I have approximately fourteen thousand doubts about this,” Oscar said as he carefully stepped onto Dot’s platform.
“That’s about twelve less than I do,” Saige said with a chuckle, but before Oscar could question her, she let out a few feet of the rope, and they went barreling toward the top of the staircase.
They were teetering123 right on the edge now, the wheelchair tilted at a stomach-churning angle.
“You have fourteen thousand and twelve doubts?” Oscar shouted over the crashing of the water.
“Yup!” Saige yelled back.
And then she let go of the rope.
Once again, Oscar screamed.
Once again, Saige asked him politely to please stop screaming.
They’d plunged downward about three or four feet, but Dot was miraculously still upright.
“CAN YOU PLEASE GO A LITTLE SLOWER?” Oscar shouted.
“I’M TRYING!” Saige shouted back. “THIS ISN’T EXACTLY EASY. AND LOOK, IT’S WORKING.”
“YES, YES, FINE. GOOD JOB, BUT BE CAREFUL!”
Saige let out a little more of the rope, and they glided somewhat more gracefully down another foot. Then another. Then another.
They were about halfway down the staircase when they heard a tremendous rip.
Saige froze.
Oscar twisted his head around to look up at the top of the staircase, and his stomach sunk when he saw what had made the noise.
Part of the banister had lifted up from the floor—
And as Oscar watched, a second part lifted, and the rope slipped—
And the wheelchair plummeted124 downward.
Footnotes
121 A pulley changes the direction in which something, like a rope, is pulled, which does in fact decrease the amount of exertion needed to lift the object being pulled (in this case, Saige, Oscar, and Dot). You can use multiple pulleys to further decrease the weight of a load. Physics!
122 The knot he uses is called a double figure eight fisherman’s knot. Neko had taught him how to tie it once. It is sturdy and, when properly tied, won’t come undone.
123 Imagine yourself on a seesaw, the exact weight of the companion across from you. If both of you lifted your feet, you would hang somewhere in the middle, gently bouncing up and down. That’s basically what it was like for Oscar and Saige now, right at the edge of the stairs.
124 As a general rule, one doesn’t want to plummet down a waterfall. This meant that they fell. Quickly. One would do much better gliding down a waterfall. Or floating down a waterfall. But it seems too late for that now.