Rumi's Riddle

by Eliot Schrefer

  Three pathways lead from the bottom of the cavern, far narrower than the tunnel with the rounded beasts. It feels a little like they’re back in the Cave of Riddles. Gogi leans into one tunnel, hands visoring his eyes as he squints. “Seems barely wide enough for Banu and me. I don’t love the idea of going down there, I have to say. Give me the tallest tree you can imagine, and I’m good. Tight underground quarters, no thanks.”

  Rumi glances at Sky. “We navigated a cave system once before, back when we were searching for the lens. Let us give this a shot. We’ll scout out, and report back.”

  “If you’re feeling that brave, be my guest,” Gogi says.

  Rumi hops between the three gaping passages, none more appealing than the others. “The question now is which one, I guess.”

  “Hmm,” Sky says, peering into each one with his wide pitch-black eyes. “I’d say that this one on the left is the most—wow, would you look at that?”

  Auriel had been motionless, staring at the companions as if waiting for them to notice him. Now he’s gone into motion, slithering into the middle passage.

  “I guess we have our choice?” Sky says.

  “So it would seem,” Rumi says, hopping after Auriel. “I’ll follow first and make sure that the way isn’t too narrow for any of you.”

  “I’ll be right behind you . . . with the air bubble,” Banu says.

  “Yes, right, thanks,” Rumi says. He slaps his palms, plucks up his courage, and then hops into the tunnel, keeping his focus on the yellow light blazing before him.

  The glow of Auriel’s tail highlights shiny stretches in the rock, sharp outcroppings that Rumi’s able to avoid. If he were as big as his friends, though . . . “Watch your heads,” he calls back to the others. “There are plenty of ways to cut yourselves along here.”

  The ground slopes. With fingers as sticky as Rumi’s, it’s easy to keep his footing, but he’s not sure how his friends will get by. It’s hard to imagine Sky’s claws, especially, gaining any purchase along the smooth black stone of the tunnel. “Hold on, guys!” Rumi calls up. “It’s getting slippery along here.”

  “Thanks for the warning, buddy,” comes Gogi’s voice from up above, over the sound of Sky’s clattering claws. “You’re right about these outcroppings, by the way. Ouch!”

  Rumi taps his fingers on the stone. It’s getting more slippery and it’s also getting . . . hotter?

  Auriel never flags as he slithers along the smooth rock floor. Rumi falls farther and farther behind as he hops along. All the facts and figures in the world won’t help him pick the right course here, but he can trust his heart instead and choose to follow Auriel, and let the snake’s intuition guide the day. Maybe something about his resurrection as an Elemental of Light has given Auriel an intuitive connection to the earth itself. Stranger things have happened.

  “Hold up, Auriel,” Rumi calls. “I’m right behind you, but I won’t be for long if you go too fast—oh no!” Auriel has sped up more and more, until he’s shooting into an open shaft in the stone, free-falling down a chasm. Rumi sees it happen, but all his scrambling doesn’t slow him enough. He’s tumbling free, until he splooshes through Banu’s membrane into deep, dark ocean water.

  He chooses a direction at random and swims. The moment he has his wits about him, he looks for Auriel’s yellow glow. He spies it far below, and heads toward it. Auriel’s swimming too, not wasting any time waiting for Rumi to catch up. The little frog can keep the glow in sight, but only when he strokes as fast as he can.

  He hopes his friends heeded his warning to wait—if they followed down this chasm without Banu, they’d be doomed. None of them can survive as long underwater as he can. It’s not like Rumi can spend too long underwater, now that he’s past his tadpole phase, but he can make it a few hours without breathing air. Normally he can breathe through his skin, but down here—he can’t feel the usual ripples of fresh oxygen, and there’s the sting of the salt. He needs to get back to air, or at least freshwater, as soon as he can.

  Auriel’s glow leads him farther and farther through the depths of the watery cave, until the yellow light pauses, increasing in intensity as Rumi approaches it—Auriel must have been stopped by something. Rumi catches up to him, clutching the scales at the boa constrictor’s side as he works his way along his long body. Once he’s on top of Auriel’s head, Rumi can see what’s caught his attention.

  At the bottom of a chasm, great swirls of glowing red liquid bloom from the earth. Where they strike the water, the swirls turn black. As more and more of the red magma spews out, its level rises, passing higher and higher up the walls of the chasm.

  The water’s so hot here. Rumi’s eyes sting, and his skin feels like it’s crawling and crinkling. All the same, he can’t look away. This is the origin of it all. This is the source of the looming destruction of Caldera, the magma that was once held at bay by the magic of the two-legs, that has been freed through the plotting of the now-dead Ant Queen.

  He’s witnessing the coming of the end of the world.

  NOTHING RUMI’S SEEN before could compare to this. The heat and the chill, the darkness and the light, all combining into a roiling mass . . . it’s something that should exist in some other time, in some other world, but it is right in front of him. Rumi’s undone, his mind whirring as he watches.

  Auriel isn’t undone, though. He looks down placidly, then looks back at Rumi. He really sees Rumi, and the tree frog realizes it’s for the first time. Until this moment, Auriel has treated the shadowwalkers like inanimate objects, like moving trees or grasses. But now the enormous yellow snake seems to be trying to communicate something.

  “What do you need me to do?” Rumi asks. Even at a whisper, his words boom in the water.

  Auriel shakes his head. Nothing. Then he looks down toward the roiling mass of magma and dark water. He looks back at Rumi.

  “What are you thinking?” Rumi asks. His skin is already crawling from the heat and salt, but also, now, from an extra source of tension: What is Auriel planning?

  Auriel flicks his tongue up in the direction they came. Go back.

  He wants Rumi to leave?

  Rumi shakes his head. Retreat before they’ve accomplished their goal? No way. His lungs feel empty, like his front ribs are pulling against his backbone, but he’s got some time left down here yet before he starts really suffocating.

  Auriel turns his attention to the steamy cauldron down below. He flicks his tongue out, tasting the hot salty water, laced with ash and bits of rock, so far below the surface of Caldera.

  Then Auriel moves.

  His thick, glowing body ripples through the water as it descends toward the surging magma and water.

  “Auriel!” Rumi calls. But there’s no chance Auriel could hear him over the boiling turmoil below. Rumi can only watch as the bright yellow beams cast shadows over the undersea cavern, lighting mysterious glints of this innermost cavity beneath their rainforest home. Auriel’s powerful coils propel him down, down, until he’s nearly at the source of the magma itself, at the red-and-black boil that is the center of the plumes of ashy water.

  Auriel swims right in.

  The moment his head touches the magma, there’s an explosion of light, light that is also liquid as it blooms from the boa constrictor’s body. Then the body itself bursts and explodes, all the light that it contained blasting out into the water.

  Auriel is gone.

  Rumi’s dazzled by the sudden illumination, is still reeling from the brightness of it when the first shock wave reaches him. As it does, his eardrums fill with a booming noise, and the force of the water surge knocks him against the cavern wall. His bones creak, and he tastes blood in his mouth. As he kicks out in the darkness, the stones around him rumble and shatter, deafening him and buffeting his body with powerful currents. It’s impossible to know which way to go, how to avoid being pushed farther below to drown, how to avoid the invisible shivering boulders plummeting all around.

  As Rumi flail
s in the water, he glimpses an orange-yellow light. His impulse is to head toward it, toward sunshine. As he makes his first stroke in its direction, though, he realizes that it’s not daylight he’s seeing; it’s the last of Auriel’s explosion. It’s exactly where he should not be going. He reverses course.

  New waves of hot ashy water push against Rumi, searing his skin even as they fill his senses with rocks and soil. At least these painful currents are pushing him away from the blast. He rockets along the passageway that he used to reach the underground cavern, right up the chasm and through the next passageway, pinging off the walls and ceiling, trying to stay alert and conscious despite the many blows to his head.

  Rumi’s world is only dark roaring, and he loses all orientation. He rockets down a side passage that narrows suddenly, until—thup!—Rumi is wedged tight. He struggles to free himself, but there isn’t enough strength in his tiny arms and legs. More hot water from the explosion pushes against his legs, scalding them. The pressure is greater and greater, the agony making Rumi cry out into the dark water of the ocean depths. It’s not just his flaying skin; his muscles and bones are squeezed by the pressure . . . until suddenly Rumi shoots free, zooming forward. There’s no directing where he goes, not at this speed. He scrunches his eyes shut, puts his arms over his head, and hopes he doesn’t wind up splattered against a rock wall or impaled on a sharp outcropping.

  Instead, he can feel the current slowing, the water around him chilling. Rumi opens his eyes again, and reaches out his arms and legs, trying to feel what’s nearby, where he might be in the system of caves.

  It’s impossible. He’s not in a cave. He’s swimming in wide-open pitch-black water.

  Rumi shivers uncontrollably. Is this the end? There’s no point swimming in any one direction, not when he might be bringing himself even farther from safety.

  “Hello?” he croaks in the water, using his air magic to amplify the sound. “Hello?”

  Only darkness and silence in reply.

  “Hello?” he tries again.

  A shift in the black. It ripples.

  Rumi squints.

  In the center of the ripple, an arrow of flame holds steady in the dark.

  Gogi! The air bubble must be back.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” Rumi chirps as he strokes his cramping legs through the water.

  The orange arrow nears and nears until . . . plop. Rumi passes through the membrane of the air bubble, bouncing twice on the ground before he comes to rest on his back, gasping for air.

  Three beautiful faces above him: a monkey, a sloth, a macaw. “Oh my gosh,” Rumi manages to say. He wants to make words, but can’t get his brain to form them. I am so glad to see you three. I was worried I wouldn’t, that I wouldn’t be able to say good-bye.

  “We’re glad to see you too!” Gogi says, as if reading his thoughts. “When we heard you slipping down, and then Auriel disappeared, we had no idea if you were okay, or if you were even still alive.” Tears run down his furry cheeks, already wet with seawater.

  Rumi manages to get his muscles to coordinate well enough to sit himself up. “Auriel!” he gasps.

  “What about Auriel?” Sky asks.

  “Sacrifice . . . boom,” Rumi sputters, for once at a loss for any big words.

  “Um . . . guys?” Banu says.

  “Auriel is dead?” Sky asks, feathers drooping.

  “Yes,” Rumi says.

  Sky blinks his eyes heavily, the feathers on top of his head going flat.

  “Sacrificed himself . . . saved us . . . made explosion . . . against magma,” Rumi manages.

  “Guys,” Banu presses.

  “Oh my gosh,” Gogi says to Rumi, rocking on his heels. “Auriel has been trying to get to this moment, fought to rush us underwater, all because he meant to sacrifice himself. I think this was his plan all along.”

  “Guys!” Banu says, raising his voice for the first time Rumi has ever heard. “Would you take a look at that?”

  Rumi follows Banu’s gaze. Through the expanse of black water, he spies a chaotic jumble of stone and boiling water, all backlit by the orange lava beyond. “That’s where Auriel plugged the magma flow,” Rumi says.

  “Yes . . . but look what’s . . . happening to it.”

  Now Rumi sees what’s gotten Banu’s attention. The magma is mounting up behind the blockade.

  Auriel’s fix won’t last for long.

  “One implosion isn’t enough to stop the force of all that magma,” Sky says. “We shouldn’t have gotten our hopes up. The pressure has to be even higher than ever.”

  “Maybe we should make a run for it,” Gogi says, his voice squeaking off at the end.

  “More pressure than ever,” Rumi says, tapping his lips. “More pressure than ever.”

  “Yes. So let’s make a run for it,” Banu says.

  “Hold on,” Sky says. “What are you thinking, Rumi? Hurry! We only have a few seconds.”

  “More pressure than ever . . .” Rumi repeats.

  His mind goes to the fish egg he saw in the pictures back in the Cave of Riddles. How it bulged out everywhere, until the two-legs lanced it.

  Back then, it had seemed like a portrait of cruelty. But maybe, maybe—

  “It was a message!” Rumi shrieks.

  “Okay, super, you can tell us all about it later,” Gogi says.

  “Auriel plugged the one hole that was right under Caldera. But that’s only the first step,” Rumi says quickly.

  Sky swings his head back and lets out a loud caw. “We have to release the magma a safe distance away from the rainforest, before it comes back out here!” he exclaims.

  “The place marked with the X on the tunnel map,” Rumi says.

  “Can you lead us there?” Sky asks.

  Rumi nods. “It was one and a half frog-lengths into the tunnel on the map, which could calibrate to maybe a thousand frog-lengths back along the real live tunnel.”

  “Enough talking, more doing!” Gogi says frantically, his eyes on the intensifying magma glow.

  “Hold on!” Rumi cries. He chirps for joy. Finally he doesn’t have to think about what’s the right course. He just knows it, feels it deep in his bones.

  Rumi opens his mouth.

  He lets out the biggest stream of wind he’s ever made.

  RUMI PROJECTILES RIGHT into Banu, pushing the sloth back down the tunnel. Sky and Gogi—and the protective bubble—tumble along with them. As they hurtle along, Rumi does quick calculations in his mind, using proportions and his memory of the two-legs’ carving to decide where there will still be volcanic magma below them, but only open water above instead of rainforest.

  The orange glow of Auriel’s blockage is too far away to see now. He’ll have to imagine what’s happening, whether the pressure of the magma has already become enough to burst through. A little more, a little more, Rumi thinks. Then he shuts his mouth, so they slow to a stop.

  This should be about right.

  “Okay,” Rumi says. “Here we go.”

  “Here we go what?” Gogi asks, holding his belly. All this jet travel must be giving him motion sickness.

  Sky’s a step ahead, though. “A little fire-wind-water flurry?” he asks, looking downward.

  “You got it!” Rumi says. “I’ll lead with the air. Banu and Gogi, add your elements once you can. As much as possible, so we can drill down deep. Once we hit magma, we need to get out of here as quickly as possible.” Even their fastest might not be fast enough, not once the ocean water surrounding them boils.

  He can’t give them any more warnings, though, because his mouth is needed for other things. Planting himself firmly in Gogi’s armpit, Rumi directs a needle-thin blast of air into the rock floor of the tunnel. He rises—and Gogi with him. Rumi can hear wing beats as Sky hops to Gogi’s head and flaps, forcing the monkey to stay on the ground.

  “Oh . . .” Banu says. “I get what we’re doing now.” He adds water to Rumi’s air drill.

  “Ooh, pretty,”
Gogi says, the water sizzling into steam as he mixes in his fire. The drill of water and air lights up in yellows, then reds, then—with a grunt of exertion from Gogi—blues. Outside of the hottest core of the drill, all is steam and bits of rock shrapnel.

  “I think it’s working!” Sky caws from above.

  Rumi can’t afford to say anything in response, not if he wants to keep up the drill’s stream. He listens to the surging ocean all around him, the whine of splintering rock, the roar of water turning to steam. Waves of hot water wash against him; bits of disintegrated stone abrade his skin.

  “Oh, I see it, I see it!” Sky says. “Stop the drill!”

  Rumi shuts his mouth and looks down to witness a wall of frothy boiling seawater bearing up on them, lit in orange from the lava released beneath. “Oh no,” is all he manages to say before the wall of water strikes.

  It’s upon them. Banu’s sphere of air vanishes. Rumi loses track of his friends as he rolls and tumbles, the water scalding him then freezing him then scalding him again as he bashes against rocks and sand and shells. There’s something sharp against his chin, and at first he assumes he’s hit a spike of rock or shell. But then the sharp thing vanishes, and the water turns warm and almost sweet. He realizes that he’s been plucked out of the ocean by Sky. That he’s inside Sky’s mouth.

  Eww? Mostly phew.

  Rumi grips the macaw’s rough black tongue. Sure, maybe it would be a little gross under any other circumstance, but right now being inside Sky’s mouth is saving Rumi’s life, so it’s A-okay by him.

  They roll and pitch, Rumi flying around Sky’s mouth while the explosion’s watery blasts buffet him. Keeping his arms around Sky’s tongue, the tree frog presses his feet against the roof of Sky’s mouth, in case his friend swallows by accident.

  Sky must have hit a current, as Rumi’s pushed flat against the back of the macaw’s throat. He can only imagine what the blasts are doing to his friends, without a bird skull around them for protection. It’s impossible to know what’s happening on the outside of Sky. It’s impossible to know whether the macaw is still alive, Rumi is startled to realize.