The old sage led the group along a slow and winding route through the quiet streets and alleys, sometimes closer to the wall, sometimes a little farther away, but always generally northward toward the old Peasant’s Gate.
Finally, after inching silently down a narrow walkway between two dark wooden warehouses, he stopped and motioned with his walking stick toward a pile of straw lying against one of the walls.
Boro scooped the hay back from the wall with his hands, and found a small wood and iron door, no more than two feet square, with a rusty padlock.
The old man handed Boro the key.
It fit in the lock, but took all Boro’s strength to turn. At last he felt it click, the lock opened, and he was able to swing back the little door with a creaking sound that made his bones tingle.
The sage said nothing, but motioned with his stick for Boro to enter with the lamp.
The next pair came forward out of the darkness. Mati frowned at the size of the door. With Sata’s help, she lowered herself to the ground and scooted in. The pain that shot from her knee brought tears, but she remained silent.
Sata brought in the crutch.
Rini could feel the frustration in Toli and the fear in Buna. When they came to the little doorway, Toli got out half a word before he was silenced by a sharp poke in the ribs. The tall boy managed to hold his tongue as he twisted himself through the opening, having almost as much trouble as Mati. Buna
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came next but was breathing rapidly. Rini slipped in after.
Neti and Miko nodded their thanks to the sage who stood silently by the opening, and crept in toward the light of Boro’s lamp.
Kibi looked into the elderly man’s eyes and could feel the wisdom there.
She kissed him on the cheek and climbed through the little doorway behind Ilika.
The sage slowly pushed the door closed. They could hear him fumbling with the lock, and for several minutes they hardly dared breathe. Finally it clicked, and they faintly heard the straw being pushed against the door once more.
Then there was silence.
“I don’t like this,” Boro said softly.
Ilika looked around. All ten adventurers crowded close together in the first few yards of a rough tunnel about four feet wide and just as high, with stone and mortar walls, a heavy wooden floor above, and uneven dirt below.
It continued straight across under the building into the darkness. Boro, at the far end of the line, had one glowing lantern, and Kibi the other. “I don’t like it either,” Ilika began, “but it does seem to be the path we must follow. And someday, perhaps a story will be written about our adventures, and students will pay two great silver pieces to purchase a copy to learn to read.”
Ilika’s prediction brought smiles to many faces in the near-darkness.
“Are you going to teach us to write?” Buna asked with renewed courage and determination. “Writing down our own stories would be so wonderful!”
“Yes, I am, Buna.” After a moment of thought, he continued. “I think I know why this entrance was not discovered and sealed. It’s not in the city wall itself, but the width of a large building away. Clever.” He looked down the line of students. “Boro, even though the sage had great faith in you, I want you to lead us very slowly and carefully, and stop so we can all talk when you come to anything dangerous or strange.”
“No problem,” Boro agreed. “Heroes die too young, seems to me.”
Sata
chuckled.
“Rini, I’d like you to join Boro in the lead now,” Ilika said. “Mati may need Sata’s strength, and maybe yours also, Boro. Toli has the rope?”
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“Yep!”
“Miko has the shovel?”
“Sure
do!”
“Everyone remember — there’s no hurry. We’re not going a great distance, so even if we crawl the whole way, we’ll get through. If we get tired and decide to spend the night in here, we’ll be okay.”
“Oh, I hope we don’t have to do that,” Neti said with a slight whine.
“Me too,” Buna mumbled.
Boro and Rini crept forward into the darkness, leading the group to one side of the passage or the other to avoid sharp rocks or muddy places.
Since the tunnel was not high enough to allow her to stand, Mati was reduced to scooting along backwards with two hands on the ground and her bad leg dragging behind.
The others crawled, but with the saddlebags, bedrolls, and other burdens they carried, they could move no faster than Mati.
After what seemed like an hour or more, Boro came to a thick stone wall pierced by an irregular hole. He looked through with the lantern while waiting for the others to gather.
“Wall about three feet thick,” he said softly. “Inside is an old stone stairway that goes down to the left, up to the right. Littered with rocks and old cement.”
“Sound? Light? Smell? Signs of recent use?” Ilika asked from the end of the line.
“No,
nothing.”
“Thoughts,
anyone?”
“Since we’re at ground level, we don’t know if we should go up or down,”
Toli said with a hint of despair.
“Okay, Boro and Rini, go through and report.”
The lead pair had no trouble getting through the hole, Boro thrusting himself through with sheer strength, and Rini slithering like a snake. They looked around as best they could with the flickering light of their lantern.
Walls of rough stone blocks supported a ceiling of rotting wooden planks, with crumbling rock sometimes sifting down onto their heads. The squeaking of
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rats echoed from somewhere in the distance.
“Down is completely blocked with rubble only about ten feet from here,”
Boro reported, poking his head back through the hole. “Up looks free, but we’ll have to go slow with all the junk on the steps.”
“Looks like we must go up. Any other thoughts?”
“I think we should poke at the rubble down there with the shovel, just to see if it’s solid,” Kibi suggested.
“Good idea. Miko, when you get through, you and Boro try that.”
Several anxious minutes passed while Mati struggled to navigate the hole.
Toli, waiting behind her, opened his mouth to say something, then shut it when he saw her silent tears and clenched teeth. The rest had little trouble after passing their bedrolls and saddlebags through.
Ilika and most of the others busied themselves scraping rocks off the steps so they could all sit down. Miko went with Boro to look at the rubble.
“It’s solid,” Miko announced. “Clearing it would take as long as it takes Kibi’s hair to dry.”
Kibi laughed. Miko and Boro took seats others had cleared for them.
“Adventure, phase one, completed,” Ilika announced.
Buna snorted. “Our adventure started the day the guard told us someone wanted to test us for work as porters on a long voyage. We knew something was weird because they were calling out girls, and skinny boys, and Mati.”
Ilika smiled. “I guess my adventure began when my teachers told me I had to find and train my own crew, and I had to do it in a city I’d never been to, in a far-away land, speaking a language I’d never heard before. That was more than a year ago.”
“Did it take you that long to sail here?” Kibi asked.
“No, it took me most of that time to learn your language.”
Boro yawned. “I think we should keep moving so we don’t fall asleep.”
“Yeah . . .” Sata said, unable to hold in her own yawn.
“The danger now is this loose stuff on the steps,” Ilika pointed out. “Same order, staying close together so we can support each other if someone slips.
Find a solid place for each footstep before you take the next.”
The passage barely allowed two to walk side by side. Boro and Rini began slowly working their way up the ancient stairway, making sure they didn’t get
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too far ahead of Mati and Sata. Each step seemed to take half a minute or more. Clearing a place for a foothold was easy. Doing it without tumbling rocks down onto everyone else was nearly impossible. Curses were heard below, apologies above. Water trickled down the slimy walls onto the steps, adding to the danger.
After many long minutes of climbing, Ilika heard the lead pair talking.
“Let’s keep the lantern away from it,” Rini said.
“What do we have, Boro?” Ilika asked from below.
“Small window on the city side, about a foot square. Looks like we’re almost above the rooftops. Steps end, level passage ahead. Lots of junk, old crates and barrels and stuff.”
“We’ll rest at the window,” Ilika said.
They gathered at the top of the steps, and each person wanted to take a peek out the window, set deeply in the thick stone wall. They could make out the shapes of a few rooftops and chimneys, but little else in the darkness.
Buna clapped her hands together when she looked out. “This is so wonderful! I’ve never been this high up before!”
Ilika almost choked on some private thought, but managed to hide it.
“I think we’re right over the old Peasant’s Gate,” Miko said excitedly. “I’ve worked near here.”
Mati’s eyes were wide. “I always thought these walls were solid rock. I never dreamed I’d be creeping around inside them.”
“I just hope it goes all the way through,” Toli mumbled with concern.
“The sage said he’d been through,” Neti pointed out.
“I believe him,” Ilika said, “but I also worry that things may have changed since then.”
Deep Learning Notes
The group found themselves in what is sometimes called a “zero-tolerance environment,” a situation in which ANY mistake can be dangerous. This is in contrast to a “social” situation that has many buffers (or “safety nets”) against
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hard, cold reality. Although it is probably too soon to pass judgment, the reader can begin to keep an eye on the characters (just as Ilika did) to see who can handle such zero-tolerance environments, and who can’t. Do you have any opinions at this point? How are YOU in such situations?
Ilika suggested that their adventure could someday be written down and become a story book. What change in perspective, in at least one student, did this idea make possible?
In a sense, both Ilika and Boro were leading, one from the back of the group, one from the front. What was the difference in the leadership jobs they were doing?
Miko refers to the “old” Peasant’s Gate, and the city map also shows an “old”
Noble’s Gate. What does this say about the history of the city? Could it have anything to do with the tunnels that have been (mostly) sealed up?