“I’m sorry,” he whispered as the hall began to shake, and dirt sifted through the air. The tunnels that had housed them for Itckrelle’s reign were rebelling. The gnome might die in the sunlight, but neither of them would make it if they stayed below ground.
Trulle had read about earthquakes in his history books and was well aware of what could happen.
A couple of Obawok ran through the room and hurried up a ramp on the far side, and Trulle stood to run after them just as another quake rocked through the underground and knocked him back onto the bench. For a second, he thought about leaving the gnome on that bench and saving himself, but the voice of his father haunted him.
Leave him, what’s he worth anyway? What’s he worth compared to you, compared to the new President?
He clenched his jaw and stood up, the ground was still shaking, but it wasn’t as powerful as it had been moments before and he was able to get his footing relatively easily. As he ran the tendons stood out on his neck and shoulders and sweat ran down his back in small streams, but he kept running, the gnome still clutched in his arms.
The small tunnel he was running through began to slope upwards at a steep angle. His breath quickened and his muscles clenched even tighter with each step. In the back of his mind he was vaguely aware that his grip on the gnome had gotten almost unbearably tight, but he didn’t dare let up.
You don’t have to if you put down the gnome. It’d be easy if you weren’t carrying him.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop the voice from taunting him. It didn’t matter that the real puppet master was already dead, his dust mingling with dirt in a chamber that was behind of him.
His legs continued pumping up and down as fast as he could force them when he turned a corner and ran into a herd of bodies. He fell forward and soon found himself on the ground, the gnome still clutched in his hands. There were so many Obawok clustered around him that he found it hard to get up, there was hardly enough room to breathe, let alone move.
“Help!” Trulle yelled into the anonymous crowd, but no one responded. No one even noticed that he was there. In their own panic they kicked at him, their dirty feet leaving sandy imprints on his sweaty chest.
He lay there curled into a ball around the gnome, determined to protect that one survivor of his father’s rage as the hall echoed with a hundred voices. Obawok crowded them from behind, while the Obawok up front were pushing away from the closed door in desperation, afraid they might get squashed. Noise and fragments of conversation shot through the air and ricocheted through the hall.
“Where are the gnomes?” “I don’t know, don’t they…?” “No, they can’t open this door, the sun…”
And everywhere there was an almost chant like quality of the screams for someone to open the door and let them out. They rose and rose, extending towards the low ceiling before bouncing back and reverberating through his skull, making his teeth sore. The room was filled with fear, and it had a sharp metallic taste.
He wanted to give up, to lie there and let them trample him and the poor gnome, but he remembered Del and a renewed energy surged through him. He reached out and grasped the battered flesh of a lifeless Obawok lying next to him.
He shifted the gnome until he was slung over Trulle’s shoulder like a knapsack as he pulled himself onto his knees. His grip moved from the dead Obawok to the waist of a living one, using the bodies around him like the rungs of a ladder. The gnome was beginning to slip off his shoulder just as Trulle was trying to get off his knees. He reached up to try and get a better hold on the gnome’s legs when he felt the slick contact of sweaty flesh against sweaty flesh, and he lost whatever small ground he had gained and they plummeted back to the floor.
Even though he’d lived in tunnels all his life, he’d never felt claustrophobic. It had never occurred to him that they might crumble and fall on top of them. He lay back on the floor and tried to slow his breathing, but the walls continued to move even closer to him.
The despair crushed in around him for the second time when he felt a pair of soft hands pushing into his back, urging him up and on as the doors were finally flung open and harsh orange light filled the chamber. He clambered through the wave of Obawok that poured out of the tunnels and onto the hot dry land. There was an unexpected pressure on his eyes, and Trulle’s free hand flung to his eyes only to find that they now had a scaly coating. It took him a second to realize that these were his secondary eyelids.
He trudged through the crowd until he broke free and fell to his knees, placing the gnome on the bare spot of land. The gnome’s face and body were badly injured, purple blood leaking form his wounds and coating both their bodies, but Trulle could see that some of the sores were already starting to heal themselves.
The gnome opened his eyes and stared at the sky. For a moment, Trulle was sure that he’d die under the sun’s harsh glare, but then he spoke. “The others, they not know.”
“They don’t know what?” Trulle asked, leaning even closer to the gnome to try and hear him over the excited voices of the other Obawok that had begun to crowd around them.
“Not know yellow sun gone.” He stopped for a moment to catch his breath as a thin line of blood coated drool slipped from between his lips. “Must tell them, they too afraid to leave yellow palace, but sun no here.”
Trulle looked up in the sky and saw that the gnome was right. The yellow sun was not in the sky. “Okay, I’ll tell them.” He turned back to the entryway and saw a younger Obawok standing behind him. “Stay here with this gnome. I’ll be back.”
As he started to leave he felt the gnome’s hand lay across his foot.
“Don’t forget the women. They can no leave,” he managed to say before once again closing his eyes.
The younger Obawok looked up at Trulle, his eyes glossy with fear. “Just stay with him.”
Trulle ran back into the cave. Bodies of fallen Obawok littered the tunnel, and still a multitude of them bore down on Trulle as they raced for the exit.
They pressed against him the whole way, but unlike before, they held him up as they walked. When he finally made his way into Granffa’s Court, he managed to grab one of the passing Obawok by the arm. The Obawok had a shock of brilliantly blue hair that marked him as one of the council members, his cloak and clothing was in terrible disarray and he was snorting through his thick nose in short, terrible gasps. Each time the air went in and out of his face his jowls giggled.
“Which way to the Yellow Palace?”
“What should I care? I’m getting out of here.” The Obawok pushed into Trulle and tried to continue on his pilgrimage to the outside world.
“Not without answering my question, you’re not.” Trulle replied, squeezing his fingers into the plump Obawok’s arm.
The Obawok looked up at him, his violet eyes shinning with violence, but Trulle didn’t tremble. He squeezed down harder.
“Ow! Alright, fine…It’s down that hall.” He started to turn away and Trulle squeezed down one more time.
“Where are the mistress pits?” he asked.
Dirt shifted down between them as the ground beneath their feet rocked again.
“That hall over there!” the Obawok pointed to a hall on the opposite side of the corridor, his voice screeching in terror as his eyes stared up at the ceiling.
“Thank you ever so much,” Trulle said as he released the frightened Obawok and watched his fat body sway back and forth as he jogged for the tunnel that would take him out.
Trulle wasn’t sure how he was supposed to liberate both groups when they resided at separate ends of the tunnels, and he made a split second decision as he turned to the hall that led to the Yellow Palace. It was no doubt that while some of the women might find the courage to liberate themselves, if the gnomes didn’t know that the yellow sun was no longer a danger, they wouldn’t go anywhere near the surface.
The walls raced past him, the candles slowly dying out until Trulle was racing through ebony nothing. The
claustrophobia he’d felt earlier returned and threatened to cut off his air, but he kept running.
He rounded a corner and was stunned by the sudden brightness. Ahead of him was a portion of the tunnel bathed in a yellow light so brilliant it radiated from the inside. Hundreds of gnomes were standing just outside of this odd gateway, staring at him as he approached.
“Are there any translator gnomes present?” Trulle asked as he sucked great wheezing breaths through his mouth. The cool air mixed with his overheated lungs, causing him to begin coughing as the muscles in his chest seized up.
When he stopped coughing there was a deep silence as the gnomes collectively stared at him, their eyes boring through his skin.
“I need a translator gnome.” Trulle said as he stood up to his full height, but there was still no movement from the horde of gnomes. Even as the tunnels shook around them, their calm eyes continued to regard him. “I am Trulle, the son of Itckrelle, and I command a translator gnome be brought before me.”
A gnome stepped forward as he said this. “I am what you seek.”
“Good,” Trulle said, “tell them that the surface is safe, the yellow sun has left the horizon.”
The gnome stared at him, his eyes widening. “The yellow sun is no more?”
“It is gone.” Trulle repeated, his patience beginning to wear thin.
The gnome nodded and turned back to the others. His voice rose to a high chitter as he used a series of clicks and hand gestures. The others nodded, and one gnome responded to the translator who then turned back to look at Trulle. “May we leave then?”
“They can go, but I need you to help me release the women.” Trulle replied.
The translator gnome paused then nodded again. “When this is done, my service to Itckrelle will be complete?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” The gnome said as he turned to the others. After the others had been allowed to head to the surface, the two of them ran back into the darkness toward the pits.
As they were running, the gnome did an unprecedented thing: he reached out in the inky air and grabbed Trulle’s hand.
“Shorter.”
Trulle didn’t respond but followed his small guide’s lead through a smaller opening. After a few stumbling moments in the dark they found themselves in a chamber with only a desk in the middle of the room. As with the gnomes, several women stood around the desk, their faces covered in flickering shadows from the candles they had lined up on the desktop.
They looked up at Trulle and the gnome expectantly as several guards stood between them, presumably to keep them from escaping the pits.
“It’s okay, you’re all free to go,” Trulle declared as he approached. One of the larger guards moved to intercept them.
“My orders are to make sure they stay here,” he said, crossing his arms and planting his feet shoulder width apart. Not even his defiant stance could hold up as a particularly violent spasm rocketed its way through the tunnels, sending a fresh wave of dirt and rock pouring down on them.
“Look at what you’re bullheadedness is doing. I said to release these women and empty the nurseries so we can survive. Or have you forgotten that if they die, the Obawok race dies with them?”
The guard looked stricken, but he didn’t budge. “I cannot allow them to leave or my own life will be at stake.”
Trulle sighed, “No, it won’t. The President is dead. I’m Trulle, his son, and I’m demanding that you let them go.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You’re welcome to stay here and die if you don’t believe me, but I’m taking these women and babies out. If I’m lying, that makes my life even more at risk than yours.”
The guard didn’t look convinced, but before he could mount another excuse, the Obawok women surged from behind him, easily overtaking the guards and running through the tunnels. Trulle saw that many of them were carrying baby Obawok. After a few seconds, the guards also gave in and started to follow the women. When Trulle was sure that they had all escaped, he turned to leave. It was then that he heard the sharp squeal of a child.
He ran turned back and ran down the hall, looking in doors as he passed. At the end of the corridor, he found what he was looking for. A small baby girl had been left alone on a bed. Trulle scooped her up and ran back down the hall.
He stopped in his tracks as he rounded the desk. He’d expected to be on his own for finding his way back to the surface, but the gnome was still there, waiting for him.
Once again it held out its hand. Trulle took it, and they soon found themselves plummeting back through the darkness. The ground shook under them and several pieces of debris fell around them. Trulle forced himself to keep running, forced his weary body to climb through the tunnels and up through Granffa’s Court.
Trulle stumbled into the sunlight just as a final quake rocked the ground and the tunnel’s entrance behind them collapsed. He looked back at the rock-filled hole and thought about how much his life had changed in only one day.
He turned back to the scattered clusters of Obawok and gnomes, took a deep breath, and began to fill his role as their new leader.
“But this should be as simple as pass or fail,” Roger told Adenitril as the last image of the young Obawok faded from his view. “Did I pass the second trial or not? You don’t need them to tell you that much, do you?”
“No, we don’t, but it isn’t as simple as you make it sound. It is the matter of your third trial that concerns us. We’re unsure of which method they wanted to use. Since no other human has made it as far as you without being deemed unworthy or dying, we were waiting on the President’s order before the final trial’s administration.”
“Shit.” Roger began to pace on the slick floor. “So I’m stuck here because they decided to kill each other?”
“Not necessarily.”
Roger found himself trying to remember what Firturro had told him about the third trail. “They didn’t mention what would happen in the event of some…some giant snowball of death?” Roger didn’t care if he spent the rest of his days in a sunny white sanitarium muttering that he was King Kong as he thumped up and down in hallway in a pair of old, dirty house shoes. It was being stuck here, an artifact in his own head, that truly terrified him.
Adenitril nodded his head slowly and appeared to be lost in thought. Roger looked back to the screen but was greeted only by darkness. The picture may have been gone, but it didn’t help to end Roger’s sadness.
“What’s going to happen to Obawok now?”
“We don’t know.” Adenitril’s dispassionate voice resonated in the ebony corridor as a second Obawok appeared beside him, walking out of the air like a hologram. Roger now found himself face to face with a slightly older, more weathered, and definitely healthier version of Firturro. Where Firturro had a round, smooth potbelly and slightly fatty jowls, this one had a slimmer, more athletic look to him.
“Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing just popping in and out of my head as you please?” he asked, “It’s still my head, goddamnit!” Roger was tired and confused.
“My name’s Idrian, and I’ll be handling the third part of the Mezoglike.”
“So, you guys are just going to decide what to do with me on your own? That doesn’t sound likely.”
“These are unlikely times,” Adenitril told him.
Three unconnected doors had also grown out of the darkness next to Idrian. Roger turned around and saw that he and Trey’s bodies lay together in the sand. When he turned back to Idrian, the sand stretched up to the three doors, surrounding them in a thick crescent was a giant glossy black abyss.
“It’s almost over, Roger. You just have to pick one of these doors to walk through, and you’ll find yourself in one of three realities. The one that you pick right now is the one you’re going to be stuck with permanently. Do you understand?” His voice was rhythmic, almost soothing.
“Vaguely. I gather we’re doing the Let’s Make A Deal thing,
right?”
“What?” they both asked together, their heads tilted in confusion.
“Nothing.” Roger looked over at the doors. There was something nagging him about the way they stood side by side with nothing to differentiate one of them from the others. He’d watched reruns of Let’s Make a Deal during the long and monotonous days when he’d been waiting for his mother to die, and he’d always wondered if the same thing was behind all three doors. Then, when the contests picked one, the people behind the scenes would organize the other two a second later. He’d always pretended that they had, that life wasn’t fair and that his mother’s cancer was nothing more than someone switching a door on them at the last minute.
“What’s out there? What happens if I choose to keep the money?” Roger didn’t want to stay, didn’t want to pass up the chance to go home, but he did want to make sure that he knew what all of his options were.
“I’m not sure what you mean when you say ‘keep the money,’ but there is nothing out there. It’s just these doors.”
It seemed like such a silly way to end things. All he had to do was walk through a door and that’s it, boom, you’re future’s decided for you. There was nothing he had to actively do except make a choice. What about their big thing about problem solving and doing the right thing?
Then again, this world was full of idiosyncrasies, from Rubik’s Cubes being a matter of life and death to engraved plastic holding the answers. As Roger thought about the whistle Firturro had given him, it materialized in his hand. He ran his finger over the rough engraving. A child’s reality is all that matters.
“Can I still call on someone to help me?” He asked as he turned the whistle over and over in his hands.
Remember my name….
“I guess, but it was my understanding that everyone you had could call on is now dead.”
“They are.”
Idrian nodded his head. He may not have understood what Roger was trying to do, but he wasn’t going trying to stop him.
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