Tik only slept a couple of hours, then woke to find the other three eating mushrooms and looking at the Map. The injured female deer, lying in the sand next to the male, became excited and tried to stand when she saw Tik get up, but only cried in pain.
“You have an admirer!” Jin teased.
“After what I put her through in that crawl-hole, I’m surprised.”
Tir smiled and Dem chuckled.
“If you’re done napping,” Dem began, glancing at the tall boy stretching himself awake, “we need to go that way,” he continued, pointing, “and look for a ledge on the right side.”
Tik looked. The tunnel, only two or three strides across, sloped downward slightly in that direction. The walls, as far as he could see, continued to be the same smooth, pale rock he had slid down earlier, with sand covering the floor.
“What’s in the other direction?”
“Just sand,” Jin revealed, “until it ends in a vertical shaft that goes up, unclimbable, not too far from here.”
“Mushroom?” Tir offered.
Dem was convinced that the Map was not to scale, but even so, he explained, it appeared that the sandy tunnel was quite long.
No one minded, although Tir pointed out that their food supply would only last another day, two if they skimped. All four travelers knew they were
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walking away from the only known mushroom patch and into the unknown, but couldn’t think of any good alternative.
The little female was content as long as she was being carried. The male was happy walking close beside Tik.
The minutes stretch into hours. The tunnel, clearly once an underground river, coursed almost perfectly straight, and always slightly downhill. The wanderers took turns leading, and both Dem and Tir carried the little injured deer for a time to let Tik stretch his arms.
Jin was leading when several things happened at once.
The tunnel began to slope down much more steeply, so steeply that the bare smooth rock on the floor was exposed.
Dem was carrying the little deer, and hadn’t been thinking about the ledge they needed to find.
Tir was walking on Dem’s right, chatting about funny things that used to happen in the mushroom-growing caves.
The male deer walked along between them.
Tik came last, trying to shake the kinks out of his sore arms.
Suddenly the little male animal felt the bare rock under his hooves, stopped in his tracks, and made an urgent sound that got everyone’s attention.
Dem stopped only a pace farther along and glimpsed the ledge on the right wall of the cave. “I think this is where we turn off!”
Jin, several paces ahead, swiveled to see what was happening, but with smooth rock sloping down, and a little dry sand to lubricate it, her shoes keep moving forward. “I . . . I can’t . . . I can’t stop!”
She flopped to her belly to use her hands, but they found little more traction than her feet.
Tir managed to stop as she too spotted the ledge and realized what was happening to Jin.
Tik felt mortal fear and dread rise up inside him. He watched helplessly from behind the group as Jin disappeared down the smooth rock slope into the darkness below.
For several endless seconds, silence filled the tunnel.
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Dem had to swallow several times before he could make any sound. “J . . .
Jin?”
From the darkness ahead came a voice. “I’m okay. It’s just a pit . . . maybe
. . . fifteen feet deep, and the floor is soft sand.”
Those above breathed deep sighs of relief.
“No one go any closer to the slippery slope!” Dem ordered. “We’ll use the ledge to see Jin.”
All three, and the little male deer, carefully backed up until they were once again on sand that stayed in place. Tir held her glow-stone up to examine the ledge. “Not too hard.”
“I can’t see you!” Jin’s voice said from the dark pit with a hint of anxiety.
“What’re you guys doing?”
“Checking out the ledge!” Dem called down. “Looks like we can cross it, and once we’re part-way across, we’ll be able to see you and figure out how to get you out!”
“I have small but easy tunnels going off in two directions!” Jin called up in a more relaxed tone. “No idea where they go.”
“I don’t think they’re on the Map!” Dem said from memory, handing the little female to Tik. “I’m starting across!”
Dem took the crossing of the ledge slowly, had little trouble, and was soon able to see Jin in the pit below. He could also see one of the smaller tunnels she had mentioned. He frowned when he got far enough to realize that all the walls of Jin’s pit were the same smooth rock. He forced himself to look at something else. “Just one little place on the ledge, Tir and Tik, where it’s narrow and you have to be super-careful.”
“We see it,” Tir assured him. “Tik’s starting across with the little one. I wonder if I should carry . . .”
Her thought was cut off as the male deer leapt onto the ledge and easily stayed right at Tik’s heels.
“Never mind,” Tir said with a smile.
Everyone was soon past the narrow place on the ledge. They all noticed that their tunnel, on the far side, also sloped down into the pit, and once there, they would again be unable to see their friend in the pit below.
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“Hi, up there!” Jin called.
“Hi, down there!” Tir responded, smiling.
“Any cracks in the rock you can use to climb up?” Dem asked.
“Not yet . . . still looking,” she relied, holding her glow-stone high as she examined the walls.
As soon as Tik made the injured female comfortable in the sand on the far side, and the male planted himself beside her, the three friends returned to the ledge. Near the middle, they sat down to consider the situation.
“Do NOT jump or slide into the pit, any of you!” Jin commanded. “You know me, I don’t need much to call it a handhold or foothold. But . . . I’m not finding any. You sure this lower level isn’t on the Map, Dem?”
He pulled it out to check his memory. “The pit and ledge are — the pit’s just a dark circle, not labeled — but no hint of your lower tunnels. We’re supposed to keep going on this level after crossing the ledge.”
Jin
sighed.
“Don’t worry, Jin, we’re not leaving you behind!” Tir asserted.
Jin sighed again. “You might have to,” she said softly.
For the next three hours, Jin made every possible effort to climb the walls of her prison — and some efforts that could only be called super-human.
During the fourth hour, she attempted to pile up sand to make herself a ramp. She was small, but her weight caused the loose, dry sand to flatten back out, save for an inch or two for her hour of work.
They had no rope, and were well-aware that probably none, of sufficient strength, remained in the world after so many centuries.
During the fifth hour, Tir demanded all three coats from those on the ledge, and tied the arms together. On the eighth try, Jin was able to run and leap high enough to catch the end of the make-shift rope, but Dem’s coat tore right in half, and the other two showed signs that they would have, if Dem’s hadn’t.
After pulling up the remaining two and a half coats, Tir gave hers to Dem, then started crying.
Tik, who had helped with everything they tried, had remained completely
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silent during the entire six-hour ordeal. Finally, he went to check on the deer.
By this time, Jin had become completely silent also, sifting sand through her fingers where she sat in the middle of her pit-prison.
Soon Tik returned to the ledge. “Both deer are getting very hungry.”
“We all are,” Dem assured him. “I’ll give them something from my bag in a minute.”
Tik nodded. “I’ve been thinking, and now I’ve decided, so don’t try to stop me. I’ve fathered three children with girls I didn’t even like so this pathetic little dying civilization of ours could go on a little longer.”
Tir looked at him with wide eyes from where she perched on the ledge.
“Now, I actually like a girl,” Tik went on, “and I’m NOT going to leave her to die alone in some strange tunnels she can’t get out of.”
Dem swallowed, guessing what Tik was about to do. He wished he could think of a good reason to talk his friend out of it, but none came to mind.
“You guys have all the mushrooms that are . . . you know . . . on this level,”
Tik continued in a soft voice. “Please take care of the little ones for me.”
Having spoken, Tik stepped over Dem and Tir, crept along the ledge back to the main tunnel, then slid down the same smooth rock slope that Jin had slid down six hours before.