Ten slices of fruitcake quickly disappeared as the nine students and their teacher discovered how hungry they could become while having adventures in forgotten dark tunnels.
When they again had their saddlebags on and their bedrolls in hand, Boro carefully led them along the level passage littered with the remains of the smuggling trade. Boxes and bags once contained food, but rarely did they see any trace of the original contents. Everything edible had been replaced by bugs, bug droppings, bug webs, and the husks of old, dried bugs.
Even unbroken jugs and bottles had been violated as insects ate through the corks. Rini found one bottle that still contained liquid, but it had separated into a cloudy murk and a scum sticking to one side of the glass. No one was tempted to open it.
For many minutes they moved slowly along the stone corridor, talking about the crates, barrels, jugs, and bottles, and what they may have once contained.
“Ohhhhhhh, shit!” came Boro’s voice from the front of the line.
“Everybody stay back! Let Ilika through.”
“What do we have?”
“Hole in the floor. Bigger than I can jump. Couple of old timbers.”
Ilika arrived at the edge. The floor was completely broken in from wall to wall, the opening a good six feet across. Two rough timbers, less than a foot wide, showed several long cracks and numerous rotten places.
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“Everybody have a seat,” Ilika said. “We’ll lower a lamp and see what we can see.”
“I can jump that!” Miko said suddenly, getting ready to make a running start.
Neti closed her eyes tightly.
“Whoa!” Ilika yelled, blocking his path. “Have you looked at the ceiling, Miko?”
Miko shrugged. “Um . . . no.”
Neti opened her eyes and breathed again.
“Most of us could jump that,” Ilika explained, “if the ceiling was higher.
But jumping requires some vertical space for an elliptical trajectory. Your head is almost touching the ceiling now, Miko. If you tried to jump across, you’d hit your head about half-way across and fall down, down, down . . .”
Miko, rapidly turning red, sat down beside Neti and tried to hide his face.
“What’s an ellip . . . tical . . . something?” Sata asked.
“We’ll get to that in geometry lessons, I promise. Rope?”
Toli came forward.
“Kibi, pass your lantern up,” Ilika said. “We need to keep one near the edge so we don’t forget where it is.”
Boro tied the end of the rope to the handle of his lantern.
“Try to keep it from swinging and hitting the walls,” Ilika counseled, crouching beside Boro at the edge.
Boro carefully lowered the lantern. His frown grew as the light passed ten feet and continued to descend. Old ropes and rusty chains dangled from spikes driven into the stonework. As the lantern passed twenty feet, the bottom remained hidden in darkness.
“How long is the rope?” Rini asked from somewhere behind them.
“I haven’t measured it, but it looks like about a hundred feet,” Ilika said.
Finally, more than forty feet down, the lantern made a slight clink as it touched a rock. Boro pulled back up slightly to keep it level.
Ilika and Boro beheld jagged rocks, broken crates, and shattered human bones. Dark stains splattered the rocks near the bones. Something small scurried out of sight.
Boro gazed at the scene with round eyes. “I don’t see any doors or holes.
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No way out of that pit.” He turned to Ilika with a grin. “It’s a dead-end.”
Ilika grinned back. “I think the bones agree. Okay, come and look, one at a time, Rini first.”
Rini took in the sight calmly, as did all the other former slaves. Sata, however, shriveled her face at what she saw. Buna noticed and put her arm around the innkeeper’s daughter.
“Everyone get settled,” Ilika said as Boro pulled up the lantern. “We have two old timbers to work with, and a rope. As you all saw, lowering ourselves into the hole wouldn’t accomplish anything.”
“But the healer said not to use old timbers!” Toli reminded everyone with a shaking voice.
“We have to cross,” Boro said firmly, “and if they’ll hold me, they’ll hold any of us.”
“Maybe so,” Ilika began, “but I don’t want to lose you that easily. You’ll be on a safety rope.”
“A loop under my arms?” Boro suggested.
“It’s too easy for a single loop to tear your arms off, or crush your ribs.”
“Ouch!” Boro said, his face scrunched in pain just thinking about it.
Ilika sat down and worked with the middle of the rope, making two leg loops, then a chest loop a little farther up. Everyone watched as best they could in the dim light and cramped quarters. “Now the leg loops will take most of your weight. If you fall, hitting the wall could knock the wind out of you, but that would be nothing compared to plunging to the bottom.”
Boro nodded and Ilika helped him put it on.
“Yeah, this is good. I’ll sort of be sitting in it if I fall,” Boro said as he examined his make-shift harness. “My arms won’t get torn off.”
“I like you better with arms,” Sata said with a worried look.
Boro smiled at her, then coiled one end of the rope and tossed it across.
“Now we need to arrange our anchors. We don’t have anything to tie onto, so first me, then Miko, then Toli, then Sata are your anchors. Each of us must have some cloth to protect our hands.”
All four dug out hats or tunics.
“The anchors all sit down,” Ilika said while demonstrating. “The rope goes around our backs, is held in front with the cloth-protected hand, then goes to
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the next anchor. Boots are wedged against the walls as best we can. Boro pulls the rope through freely, but we watch him like a hawk, ready to stop the rope if he falls.”
The anchor people cleared the floor of junk and got into position.
Everyone else moved back behind them. Miko had recovered from his embarrassment, and Sata beamed with pride as one of the anchors.
Boro adjusted the placement of the timber that looked strongest, then turned to see if everyone was ready.
Ilika glanced at the other anchors and nodded.
Boro stepped onto the timber, keeping one hand on the wall for balance, and began inching across.
When he arrived at about the middle, suddenly a cracking sound filled the air, Boro went down, and both halves of the timber plunged into the abyss.
“No!”
Sata
screamed.
Ilika clamped the rope tightly with his cloth-covered hand, and the others did the same. Seconds ticked by, but no one felt any weight on the rope. They all strained to see in the dim light, eyes wide with fear for their friend.
Eventually they saw Boro’s hands clinging to the other timber. A moment later, he began to slowly pull himself onto it.
“Anchors, stay where you are,” Ilika commanded, “and slowly take up the slack. Kibi, move the lanterns out of Boro’s way, but don’t try to help him.
He’s safe while roped. You’re not.”
Kibi squeezed by and cleared the way for Boro.
“Ilika,” Boro said, finding his breath and swinging a leg onto the timber, “I think . . . I figured out . . . which timber . . . is good.”
No one could keep a straight face, and several chuckled. Even Sata smiled through tears of worry.
“But you know,” Boro continued, straddling the timber, “since I’m half-way across, I think I should go on over. We need someone on the other side to anchor the rope for other people, don’t we?”
Ilika thought for a moment. “How are your hands and arms?”
“A little scraped, but I’m okay.”
“Okay. Anchors, play out slowly.”
Boro scooted the rest of the way across, taking his time. Finally he reached
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the far edge and took a deep breath.
“Hurray for Boro!” everyone cheered.
The large lad breathed deeply for a minute, hands on his knees, then climbed out of the harness.
“Can you see anything over there?” Ilika asked.
“Just more broken stuff. Some old rotten rope . . . I can tear it with my hands.”
“Mati, come up here. Let’s talk.”
With Sata’s help, Mati joined Ilika at the edge.
“We can put the timber however you want, but I think it’ll be safest if you go alone.”
Mati swallowed her fear as she gazed across the black hole. “The timber is near the wrong wall. My left hand will be free. Will I . . . have the rope thing on?”
“Yes, and there will be anchors on both ends, so if you fall, you won’t even hit the side.”
“I think I can do it. We know the timber is strong enough to hold Boro. I
. . . I have to do it,” she said with a shaking voice, looking into Ilika’s eyes with a mixture of desperation and trust.
“Let’s start by getting Rini and Toli across. Then we’ll have plenty of people on each side.”
Ilika pulled the harness back over while Boro held one end of the rope.
Rini smiled slightly as he got into the harness, then pranced effortlessly across the timber.
Next came Toli, obviously holding his breath and shaking, but he managed to cross without needing the services of his anchors.
Ilika and Boro then moved the timber for Mati.
“Hey!” Kibi said with a burst of inspiration. “We should tie a short rope to the crutch so it can’t fall into the pit.”
Ilika
nodded.
Miko found the knife in his saddlebags and cut a length from the far end of the rope.
The anchors on both sides got into position. Mati stepped up to the timber
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and took a moment to figure out where to place her crutch. Those watching were not sure she was breathing, and they knew for a fact they weren’t.
Mati looked across at her destination. Rini was the second anchor on that side, his bright eyes and contented smile waiting for her. She stepped onto the timber.
“The weird part is, I have to put my crutch in front of me, instead of on the side.”
“Take as long as you need,” Ilika said in a reassuring voice.
Angled nearly sideways, she took several small steps, slowly and carefully, and then another, arriving at the mid-point. She glanced at Rini again, patiently taking in the rope. Another few steps.
No one else made a sound.
Another step. The far side was getting very close. Two more steps. With her entire body trembling, Mati stepped off the timber onto solid stone.
The nearly forgotten tunnel, somewhere inside the old city wall, echoed with clapping and cheering until they saw Ilika holding up his arms for quiet.
Buna, Neti, Kibi, and Sata crossed without incident. Ilika and Miko worked together to rope across the saddlebags, and toss the bedrolls over one at a time.
When Miko crossed, Ilika was his only anchor on that side, but he too was sure-footed.
Ilika looked around for anything they had left, and found someone’s hat.
He coiled his end of the rope and put it over his head, took up the lantern, and worked his way carefully across.
Kibi’s embrace helped him release all the fear and tension he had been feeling ever since they first looked into the gaping black pit with its silent bones.
Deep Learning Notes
Ilika generally avoided using big words without explaining them, but in the heat of the moment, Miko got a couple thrown at him. The students will, of
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course, learn about “elliptical trajectories” in Book Two.
Why would Sata be the only one to have an emotional reaction to the bones and blood?
Only certain parts of the human body can support the body’s weight, especially if it is in motion (such as falling) when stopped by a safety device. A harness places the weight on the upper legs, which can usually handle it. A similar problem is attempting to pull someone up. A hand-to-hand grip will almost always fail, as we often see in stories. We rarely see what will work: both people must grab the INSIDE of the other’s wrist. Even if the rescuer grabs the outside of the other’s wrist, the person being pulled up can’t reach the rescuer’s wrist, and the hold will probably fail.
The “anchors” Ilika arranged are a basic mountain climbing method of arresting the fall of a climber “on belay” (on anchor). Normally, the anchor-person would be secured to a physical anchor, such as a piton (spike) driven into rock, or a tree. Since no physical anchor was available, Ilika used the sheer weight and friction of three or four people in a row. A successful arrest on belay requires the moving rope to first go around each person’s BACK, then be held IN FRONT (in their lap) with a protected hand (leather gloves are best).
Ilika’s order to Kibi to NOT try to help Boro is a hard concept for many people to understand. Boro, on the safety rope, was in little danger. If Kibi had tried to help him, a slight stumble by Boro could have knocked her into the pit, while he would remain safe. Ambulance drivers have a similar task: get to the scene quickly, but don’t get injured or killed in the process. Exchanging one life for another is not helpful, and usually the original victim would remain in peril without the ambulance.
Kibi’s safety line for the crutch is another concept from mountain climbing.
Every tool has to be secured on the climber, even if he is shaken up and down and tossed around, unless it is actually in use, and then a wrist-strap is used
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whenever possible. If something falls, it is usually gone for good, and that mistake could be fatal.
Did Ilika possibly have a reason for picking Miko to be the last student to cross?
In what ways was this chapter an example of a “zero-tolerance environment”?