Aarvord seemed right at home. Occasionally the bobbing light tickled his nose and he slapped it aside, sending weird shadows dancing over the tunnel walls.
“I hear these tunnels were built by humans,” said Copernicus, his small voice amplified in the space. “Some of them fled here when the Great Cataclysm came, but it couldn’t save them. None of their hidey-holes did.”
“Humans! I’m sure they found it cozy and lovely,” said Tully, shivering. “How do you know that humans built this place, anyway? You don’t know a thing about them.”
“My father told me,” said Copernicus. “He knew things, he did. He knew about humans and cats and elephants and books and other things. Humans didn’t leave much behind thems, though.” Coper had a snakelike way of introducing an “s” when none was needed, a habit which irritated Aarvord to no end.
“Them, them. Them!” Aarvord shouted. His voice boomed down the tunnel and echoed back at them.
“Don’t you think we should be quieter?” asked Tully. “Who knows what’s down here?”
By Aarvord’s light, they saw that they were entering a cavernous space; the light seemed wan in the spacious darkness.
“Do you know where we are, yes?” said Copernicus, who had explored the tunnels before. “Is this the great room beneath the Mayhew Crossings?”
“There is only one Crossing,” snapped Aarvord. “But this doesn’t look right. It’s possible we took a wrong turn.”
Suddenly a great chittering, clacking noise began to fill the space, coming from what seemed like all directions. Copernicus wrapped himself in an instant around Tully’s ankle. Aarvord’s light winked out.
“Bonedogs….” sniffed Copernicus. “That sound is Bonedogs. And the smell.”
“Light!” squeaked Tully. “They don’t like light.”
Aarvord brightened the lobe of phosphorescence that protruded from his skull until it became a fierce spotlight. Under the light were what seemed like hundreds of Bonedogs, feeding on mushrooms and other detritus that lined the cavern floors. More were crawling out of tunnels with their wings folded tight against their carapaces, claws clacking, maws opening toothlessly. They were shaped like large, flat crabs, with domed blackish-green shells and beaks with two curving mandibles that met in the center. Their shells were covered with mottled oily-looking patches that met in a diamond-shaped pattern.
Tully had been warned from a very young age to avoid these rapacious creatures. He knew well how cruel they could be. Skakell, the Eft who had once raised him, had fought and killed a Bonedog during the outset of the Small War, twelve years ago almost to the day. Just before Skakell drove the killing blow, however, the thing had latched on and bitten him deeply on the arm, searing the flesh with its acidic mandibles.
Depending on the creature’s particular brand of poison, the bite of a Bonedog was mild at first, but the poison would spread and multiply in the blood until, months or even years later, the victim would grow suddenly weak and susceptible to the slightest touch. Even a drop of rain on the skin would become exquisitely painful. Skakell had not been able to hold his young Eft near the end, for Tully’s exuberant kicks and hugs were unbearable. Skakell could barely sleep, or eat, or endure a stiff breeze.
In the end, Skakell and Desidere, his tiny Ell companion, had flown away in a small craft to search for a cure, when Tully was not yet two years old. They had never returned. Tully sometimes imagined that Skakell had been made well and that he and Desidere lived on the far side of the world, and that one day they would find their way back to him. But Kellen had always told him not to hope for foolish things.
As Tully watched these Bonedogs in the Underbelly he realized very quickly that these were not like the others that Kellen had told such dour stories of around the fireside. They seemed not to see the trio at all.
“They’ve lost their eyes,” whispered Aarvord, for once appropriately quiet. “They’re blind as bats. The light doesn’t hurt them.”
All Bonedogs were blind by nature, but for thousands of years most had developed a symbiotic relationship with a breed of emerald beetle. The beetles clustered on their shells in thick rows, and used their multifaceted eyes to see for the creatures. These Bonedogs had lost their clever little eyes, and were as blind as nature had made them.
But Aarvord’s whisper stopped the creatures in their tracks, and they all as one ceased their eating and wiggled their antennae in the air. Tully’s own antennae twitched in sympathetic repulsion. The three travelers stood silent, pressed against the cavern wall. They waited, while the crab-things twitched. Then, one by one, the Bonedogs returned to their feasting.
Copernicus shot up Tully’s leg and up his body and whispered in his ear, as silent as only a snake could be. “This way,” he said, flicking his tongue toward a nearby tunnel that was, as yet, uninhabited by Bonedogs. They moved, step by step, while watching the creatures, which seemed too intent on their task to note the subtle sounds they made.
Down the next tunnel they went, into deeper shadow unlit by the shaft of light that had illuminated the Bonedogs’ cavern. Aarvord’s little glow light swung down and switched on. Tully had often wanted to ask him how he managed to command it in that way. It would be like asking one’s hair or scales to grow an inch, he thought. But now was not the time to ask. It seemed that they were lost.
“By the time we get there,” Tully complained, “there’ll be no sign of the Wents at all. Why couldn’t we just travel on the streets?”
“If you’re looking for someone to blame,” huffed Aarvord. “Don’t blame me. It was the worm’s idea.”
“Not a worm!” shrieked Copernicus. “I is a snakessss.”
“Am! Am, am, am!” bellowed Aarvord.
“Please stop,” begged Tully, who had begun to feel dizzy. He regretted coming on this adventure at all. He wanted to be back in bed. “I just want to find a way out of here, please. I want to get Hindrance back.” He clutched the little sphere of metal that dangled from his neck.
The tunnel seemed much narrower; in fact, it was getting narrower. Aarvord, in the lead, suddenly found himself at a standstill. He could wedge his bulk no farther.
“I can fit!” said Copernicus, and slithered up the rock face into the narrow space, which sloped upward.
“Very good for you, but what about the rest of us?” snorted Aarvord.
“Some light?” asked Copernicus.
“As you wish,” said Aarvord, and extended his wand of light out as far as it could stretch. He brightened the light, too, and Tully could hear him huffing with the effort. The light craned into the narrow hole, and Copernicus followed the beam. His tail whipped out of sight, and Tully and Aarvord waited. Copernicus was gone for a full five minutes. The gloom seemed to settle on them like dust while the light craned up the hole to guide Copernicus’ way. Suddenly, they heard a low hiss, and Aarvord retracted his light and held it over the now wet, shivering snake. Copernicus twisted himself up on the stone floor and wrung out the water.
“Never been so soaked in my life, yes!” he said.
“I thought water ran off a snake’s back!” said Aarvord.
“Scratchling’s back,” corrected Tully.
“There’s enough water through there to drown a snake, or either of you,” snorted Copernicus, sneezing out a great cloud of spray.
They listened while he told them of his discoveries, punctuated by little sneezing fits and coughs and exclamations of “yes!” peppered throughout. It seemed that, after a brief and narrow gap, the tunnel opened out into a great underground river that was flowing past with a rapid current. Copernicus had tried to battle his way upstream to gain some sense of where they might be, but he was almost swept away in the water. He had only narrowly managed to fling himself up to the crack and retreat to tell them his story.
“Nonsense!” snapped Aarvord. “There’s no underground river here. Hen-Hen would know about it. He knows everything.”
“Ah, but there issss,” said Copernicus.
“There is.”
“You smell odd,” said Tully, suddenly. “Not like water at all. Like something else.” Aarvord plunked a flat paw into the puddle left by Copernicus, and licked a finger carefully. “Tastes normal enough,” he muttered.
“I swallowed some of it,” said Copernicus, “and I feel right fine.” But Copernicus suddenly felt a little thread of cold sadness steal into his blood, and he wondered why. He shook it off with the remaining water droplets.
Tully knew, though, that there were things Efts could sense that others couldn’t. Just like Aarvord had his tools and Coper had his smallness and deftness, Tully had his water sense. And water had moods. This water held a great sadness. Tully began to shiver.
“We have to go back,” said Tully suddenly. “Hindrance always said that if something went wrong I should wait at home for them. I should wait until they come back.”
“No,” argued Copernicus. “They won’t be returning. You heard what the little Ell said.”
“It is true,” agreed Aarvord. “They will not be coming back. Unless we go and find them.”
“They would never have left you if not for a reason,” hissed Copernicus.
“Something terrible has happened,” said Tully quietly, and to his great shame he felt his eyes prick and blur with tears, and he knelt down on the rough stone floor of the tunnel. He was cold. He felt Aarvord’s paw heavy on his shoulder.
When Tully finally raised his head he heard Copernicus and Aarvord still arguing as if he wasn’t there at all.
“Still, Mr. Water Snake,” said Aarvord, “You haven’t managed to get us out of this fix.”
“Yes,” agreed Copernicus.
“So we’ll have to retrace our steps,” said Aarvord. “We’ll have to head back toward the Bonedogs.” Even in the dim light, Tully could see the horror on the snake’s little face.
“Do you have a better idea?” Aarvord challenged, and Tully shook his head. Copernicus shook his entire length.
“But maybe there’s another way,” offered Tully, gesturing toward the tunnel. He saw that his hand trembled, so he clasped it tightly with the opposite hand to still it. “Maybe there’s a side tunnel we haven’t tried.”
“A tunnel filled with badness!” squeaked Copernicus.
“I remember a way,” mulled Aarvord. “When my sister and I used to play down here, we found a small passageway that came up under the Windermere.”
“You had a sister?” said Copernicus. “You have never told usss of a sister.”
“And you used to play down here?” said Tully.
“I had a sister, yes,” said Aarvord, hesitantly. “A great beauty. Her name was Justice.”
Tully somehow doubted that anyone related to Aarvord could be termed “a great beauty,” but he let that pass in light of the fact that Aarvord had referred to her in the past tense.
“She’s…gone?” he asked instead. “Dead?”
“She might as well be,” said Aarvord. “Oh, she may be alive. But we don’t know. She went away.”
As if to shut the conversation down at once, Aarvord turned and extended his light down the tunnel from which they had come and he lumped off. Tully shrugged at Copernicus and they followed. He was troubled by the mention of a mysterious sister. He had been friends with Aarvord for some years now and had known only that both the Grout’s parents had died of fever within a year of each other. But then again, Aarvord had been alive longer than Tully had. Aarvord had lived for almost sixteen summers, and Tully only twelve. Tully wondered what other secrets the Grout might have.
*
Aarvord was true to his memory this time. Like a blind-walker—one of the Walking Sticks who helped guide those who had lost their vision—he made his way through tunnels, left and right, right and left, until the floor began to slope upward gently. They emerged through some low-hanging fronds of Sassafras root beyond the Windermere—the lake that lay between the city and the far-off mountains. Tully was so glad to see the fresh light again that he felt he could drink it. Or perhaps it was the sight of the placid Windermere, where he and his Wents had spent many happy afternoons in picnics and boating outings.
A small craft was out on the water now, tacking upwind. Small figures—two young Efts and an Ell, he thought—worked the sails and the tiller. Tully had swum in this lake and had seen young Efts beneath the water, in their Sea Change, gazing up at him through the gloom. He would enter his Sea Change as well, in a few years. It was then that he would spend more of his time within the water than without. He did not look forward to it, as it meant that he would have to make new friends. Most of them would be Efts.
“It’s only a short walk from here to Hen-Hen’s,” said Aarvord gruffly. “We’ve saved a great deal of time.”
Copernicus wriggled himself into the shape of a question mark, out of Aarvord’s view, and Tully nearly laughed out loud. They had been in the Underbelly for hours, he guessed, and the fat orange sun was glowering in the western sky.
In the cool of the afternoon the constant cloud of insects had fled and settled, so that there were only a few annoying Skimmers and Hairstreaks flicking here and there—these few apparently enjoyed the crisper air, but the larger swarms preferred the midday heat. Tully liked the cooler air. He could breathe deeply without getting a gnat up his nose.
They reached the Mayhew Crossing, where four great roads came together, just as the sun was setting. There seemed to be no sign of anyone about, except a worried-looking UnderGrout headed home with a bundle of goods. At the Center Pavilion, where speakers often took to the stage to shout about the perils of Dualing-Triling interaction, there was an ominous sign. A black circle was painted in a broad stroke across the boards and the notices.
“What’s that?” breathed Tully. “What does it mean?”
“It’s some kind of sign,” said Copernicus.
“But it doesn’t tell us anything,” said Tully. “It’s just a circle.”
All the same, the circle did not look friendly. It looked as if it had been put there to frighten him. And it did.
“I do not know what this means,” said Aarvord. “But Hen-Hen may.”
Hen-Hen’s home was at the western corner of the Mayhew Crossing. It was built on a small rise—a hill that had once been the site of a great battle twelve years prior, during the Small War. A terraced garden, filled with fruited trees and strange, hanging plants, covered the hillside. Above were several stone houses with high peaks and slits for windows. Aarvord led the way to one gate, which bore no mark to indicate that it was Hen-Hen’s home.
An arched doorway, opening up to a long stone staircase within a courtyard, was studded with several glittering red stones that caught Tully’s eye. He moved closer and peered into one of the stones, then reeled back, startled. In the stone’s eye he had clearly seen the face of Hindrance, just as she had appeared to him that morning. But she could not seem to see him. She was like a very faint, moving picture. Then she faded away completely and the stone’s bright face was unreadable.
“Why, what is…?” he started.
“Peepstones,” hissed Copernicus, snaking up the stone and peering into one. Nothing was reflected but his forked tongue. Snakes were hard to read, even for stones such as these. Snakes could keep their minds hidden.
“Hen-Hen keeps them here to test the thoughts of visitors,” explained Aarvord. “The stones read what is in your innermost mind—what you value most dear. It keeps out the unwanted. They are like a doorbell that rings a message unique to you.”
“But there are no gates, no locks,” said Tully. “How does he keep out unwanted visitors?”
“Just wait,” said Aarvord. “We will be called in.”
Aarvord himself peered into a stone, low down on the doorway, and seemed surprised at what he saw. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow and he wiped it clean with a quick and nervous gesture. Tully thought that what Aarvord held most dear was likely his own reflection, but he kept that thought to himself. Whatever Aarv
ord had seen, he wasn’t sharing it. The Grout had seemed uncommonly not himself ever since he had revealed the existence of his sister.
Three UnderGrouts appeared, as if waiting in the hanging gardens and shrubbery for just the right moment. They were small and stout, and looked to be miniature and dullard versions of Aarvord. They beckoned silently, and the trio passed under the arched doorway and began to ascend the steps, each partnered with an UnderGrout as if in a formal procession.
The scents within the garden were miraculous and rich, and Tully breathed them in in the darkness that was now settling. He was terribly hungry, he realized, and fruits such as this were hard to come by except for the very well-off. Casting a glance at the UnderGrout with whom he was linked, he tugged a Starfruit off a hanging vine and plunked it into his bucket. The UnderGrouts plodded upward silently, the steps becoming steeper as they went. Then they were at the door to Hen-Hen’s home. The door was made of glass, but such that those on the outside could not see in. Tully got the strong sense that someone within was looking out at them. Then the door was flung open and he saw Hen-Hen.
Not in anyone’s wildest dreams was Hen-Hen related to Aarvord. The Frothsome Grout was near ten feet tall, with eyes that glowed as red as the peepstones on his gate. And he had a living, writhing beard of Boring Bees adorning the entire lower half of his face. He was wrinkled on every limb, which made him look as aged as a stout tree. The only resemblance, perhaps, was in the pudgy, greenish paw that he extended to welcome his cousin.
The Hundred: Fall of the Wents Page 3