I felt rock scrape against my back and heard Sukey scream, but in a couple of seconds we had cleared the rock and were floating along quietly in a new part of the system of caverns. The river was bordered on both sides by sandy little beaches and a rocky floor that stretched out toward the high rock walls, which were made of the same beige limestone we’d seen in Drowned Man’s Canyon.
“Did the birds follow us?” I asked the others. When I turned to look, I could see that we were alone in the cavern. My heart was pounding and I wasn’t taking in the details very well.
“I lost the flamethrower,” M.K. complained. “What are we going to… Wait. You guys! It’s light.”
It wasn’t light, exactly, but as we looked around we realized that there was late, orangey light coming through the ceiling of the cavern, filtering through holes in the rock into the shapes of little moons and stars and other symbols, so that the sun hit the floor and the water through the openings, decorating every surface with dancing spots of golden light.
“It’s beautiful,” Sukey said in a quiet voice. “I didn’t know how nice it would be to see the sun again, even like this.”
But Zander and I were staring up at the holes in the rock.
“Someone drilled those,” Zander said. “Those aren’t natural.” Pucci flew up to examine them, squawking loudly as if to confirm Zander’s opinion.
“Of course they’re not.” I pointed up at them. “M.K., how would you do something like that?”
“Mechanical drill,” she said. “That’s a lot of precision. Something pretty good.” There was something thin about her voice and when she reached up to rub at her arm, I felt fear wash through me again.
“M.K.?” Sukey asked her. “Does your arm hurt?”
“Just a little.” But she looked pale and I knew that it must be bad for her to admit that it hurt at all.
“Let me see.” Sukey moved next to her and rolled up her sleeve. I heard her gasp when she pulled the bandage aside. “This is really bad. We need to put some of that antibiotic stuff on it…” She trailed off and her eyes widened in alarm. Her backpack. The first-aid kit was in her backpack, back in the cave.
“Where’s that other stuff, the stuff Dad put in our vests?” I put my vest back on and started searching the pockets.
“I put it in my backpack, too,” Sukey said quietly.
“I’ll be fine,” M.K. said. “It’s just a little sore, that’s all.” She pushed her sleeve back up and winced.
“Maybe we can find some kind of medicinal plant when we get to the end,” Zander said. The current had slowed and we were just floating along now, the river moving us through this wider part of the caverns.
“Should we wash it?” I asked Sukey.
“Can’t hurt,” she said.
“The water’s moving,” Zander said. “At least it’s not stagnant.” We rowed over to the side of the river and Zander jumped out and pulled the boat ashore as we got out, too.
“Those birds were creepy,” M.K. said, splashing the cold water on her arm. “What was up with them?”
“They must be some kind of subterranean bird of prey,” Zander said. “I think they’ve evolved to eat those slugs. You okay, M.K.?”
She nodded bravely.
I got the map and my compass out of my vest, trying to figure out where we’d landed. “Where are we?” Sukey asked me, looking over my shoulder at the map. When I looked up, I could see that a little wound on her head was oozing blood. There were drops of blood on her jumpsuit and aviator’s jacket, but I was surprised to see the synthetic fabric had held up pretty well to the water and dirt.
“Are you okay? Your head’s bleeding.”
She brushed my concern away. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about M.K. Show me where we are.”
I traced our route on the map and did some calculations, then pointed to a spot near the end of the rows of contour lines that described the tunnel and underground river we’d just traveled. Beyond it, the caverns seemed to widen for another six or seven miles and then end. “Here.”
“We’re near the end,” Sukey said. “Do you think that means that we’re near the mine and the treasure?”
I didn’t say anything, because the truth was that I had no idea. The sun was setting. In an hour it would be almost completely dark again.
“I guess we keep going. Right?” Sukey asked in a small, exhausted voice. But no one answered her. I yawned. I was about as tired as I’d ever been, my muscles aching and my stomach so empty it felt like it was trying to digest itself.
“We’re all tired,” I said. “I think we should rest.”
“But we’ve got to keep going,” Zander said. “According to the map, we’re almost there. There may be plants there.”
“I’m tired,” M.K. said in a thin voice. “And cold. We could get out the sleeping bags. I can share with Sukey.”
“Do you think we could build a fire,” Sukey asked, “to warm up?”
She was looking tired, too.
“There’s no wood down here,” Zander said. “And we don’t have the flamethrower anymore, so we don’t have any way of lighting a fire. Come on, guys. We just need to keep going. The river’s leading us somewhere. The treasure can’t be far away. And we need to find something for M.K.’s arm.” He was looking at us as though he couldn’t understand why we weren’t just following him. It was how he’d always been, stubborn, convinced he knew better than anyone else. I remembered suddenly a hike we’d taken when I was seven and he was eight. Dad had let us go by ourselves if we promised to stick to the trail, but Zander had almost immediately decided that it would be more fun to trailblaze. We’d been lost for a couple of hours but he’d gotten us out of the woods by following deer tracks back to a marshy little field near the trailhead. That was the problem; we usually did what Zander said because he was pretty good at getting out of tight spots. Not this time, though.
“Zander,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “we have no idea what’s up ahead. If we’re going to keep going, we’ve got to have some rest. We can sleep in shifts and the others can keep watch.”
“He’s right,” Sukey told him. “I’m so tired and hungry, I can’t keep anything straight in my head.” She sat down on the ground, looking forlorn.
It was so rare that Zander didn’t get his way that I’d forgotten how angry he could get.
“Come on,” he demanded. “We can’t stay here. We have to keep going.”
“I’m staying here,” I said. “We’ve got the sleeping bags. We have to rest.”
“I’m with Kit,” Sukey said.
“Me, too.” M.K. stared up at Zander, her serious little face fixed in determination. Zander was tough, but M.K., even in pain, was tougher.
He scowled and zipped up his vest. “Fine,” he said. “But I’m going ahead to see what’s up there.”
“Zander,” Sukey called after him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if something…?” But he just ignored her and kept walking until he was out of sight. Poor Pucci looked back and forth between Zander and the three of us, unsure about what to do. Loyalty won out and he followed Zander. From the way Zander kept looking over his shoulder, I could tell that he thought we’d give in and follow him.
We didn’t.
“Is he always that stubborn?” Sukey asked once he had disappeared around a turn in the caverns.
“Yes,” M.K. and I said at the same time.
“Should we go after him?” Sukey looked worried now.
“He’ll come back,” I told her. “He just hates it when we don’t agree with him.”
“All right.” But she didn’t seem particularly relieved. “I’m not sure I could walk very far, anyway.”
The sun must have been sinking fast outside the caverns because one by one the little star and moon shapes disappeared from the rock floor.
“I was just thinking,” M.K. said. “Do you remember when Dad used to make pancakes for dinner?”
“Those were the best pancakes.” I could almost taste them, warm and floury and filled with blueberries. “I would kill for one of those pancakes right now.”
“Is Delilah a good cook?” M.K. asked Sukey dreamily. “What does she make?”
Sukey laughed. “She’s an awful cook. But my grandmother… You should taste my grandmother’s food. In the summer, when I’m staying with her, we pick blackberries and she makes blackberry crumble, with vanilla ice cream on top. The blackberries get all sticky and on top there’s this brown sugar cake with a sort of crust on it. When it’s cooking the whole house smells like—”
“Stop,” I groaned. “You’re torturing me.”
She grinned. “Sorry.”
“Sukey?” M.K. asked her after a minute. “Do you have a father?”
Sukey picked up a little rock and pitched it into the water. “Of course. Everyone has a father.”
“But who is he?” M.K. asked.
“I don’t know,” Sukey said in a small voice. “Delilah won’t tell me.”
“But—” M.K. started.
“M.K.,” I warned.
“No, it’s okay,” Sukey said. “I just wish I knew.”
The last bit of light died away and we found ourselves in complete darkness again. I switched on my vest light and was glad to see that the faint brightness in the cavern had recharged the battery. M.K. and I got the reflective sleeping bags out of our vests and unfolded them. I gave one to Sukey and wrapped the other one around M.K. and me. We were warm enough, but I was starting to wonder about Zander.
“He has the light on his vest,” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as I was trying to reassure them. “And he knows what he’s doing, even if he is stubborn.”
But the truth was that I was worried, very worried, and every minute that went by that Zander didn’t return tightened the knot in my stomach.
We sat there in silence, too tired to talk, and I was just about to say that maybe we should go and look for him when we saw, coming toward us in the darkness, a bobbing light: Zander’s light.
He was running and when he reached us he stopped, breathing hard, and said, in a voice full of a fear I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard from him, “There’s something out there. Something big. A wolf or a cat. It was stalking me through the caverns. I could see its eyes shining in the dark.” He took another breath and as we looked at his wide, fearful eyes, Pucci came winging through the darkness and alighted on his shoulder. “Pucci scared it off, but it would have gotten me for sure.”