Page 35 of The Goblin and The Dancer
The floor beneath them was changing. Grik paused to dive into a corner, scrabbling at some rubble to confirm his sudden suspicion.
“What is it?” Rosanna asked, her voice catching.
“Old bricks!” Grik said exultantly. It was a sign of industry, a sign of the world above. “Come on!”He led them onward and then turned right into a chamber.
They were no longer in a natural tunnel, but in a ruined and sunken room of some long-ago town that had been largely destroyed.
Grik’s heart was beating fast. They were close. Above their heads were the basements and cellars of the city, or at least some suburb. There were only two levels of buildings between them and the world now.
“This is it! Look for a lever!”
They attacked the walls, dragging their hands through muck and webs and shoving aside refuse.
“I found it!” Rosanna gasped, and as Grik and Paul whirled to her, she pulled it.
Part of the wall slid away, slowly, with a low grinding of gears and a shower of earth. Grik hurried forward and wedged the door open as far as he could when it caught halfway, and he stuck first his glow stick and then his nose into the tunnel.
It wasn’t an entry hatch, which was just as well, because Rosanna and Grik would have never fit into the tube, and they would have had to somehow dismantle it to crawl past it and into the tunnel. No, they were lucky. They had found one of the midway access hatches. Grik turned his head one way and then another, but there was nothing but empty tunnel in either direction.
Beaming, Grik pulled his head free and looked at the others.“This is it! This is a goblinway! We found it—we can go home!”
The three of them surged together, laughing for joy, throwing their arms around one another in a group hug.
Grik, half-squished between Rosanna and Paul, felt a sense of happiness that he had never felt before.
He had done it.
Chapter Nine
Grik took another look at the tunnel before entering, sniffing carefully, and feeling an uneasy stirring inside his mind as he cast worried glances in either direction, peering into the musty shadows. This goblinway was quite old, so old that Grik suspected it might have been one of the first goblinways ever built, more than likely a passage built to ferry goblins from the seaside beaches of Auverne to the capital of La Caen. It had obviously been largely abandoned. Hopefully, it would be safe. Besides, they didn’t have a choice.
Rosanna and Paul were shoving in to get a look, pushing eagerly at Grik, but the goblin felt them slump against him a moment later as they got their first look at the tunnel.
The tunnels were built for a pneumatic tube—which was only slightly bigger than a goblin. The five-foot elves would have difficulty moving through the narrow space.
“We have to crawl . . . through there?” Rosanna whispered.
Paul didn’t say anything, but Grik saw him turn pale. He looked like one of the sculptures of ancient soldiers that ringed La Caen’s city park—as if he had been turned to stone.
“It will be all right,” Grik assured them. “This is our only way.”
Rosanna and Paul exchanged glances. They didn’t look certain.
Grik went in first and then turned to help Paul get Rosanna into the tunnel. Paul clambered in awkwardly after her.
Rosanna’s breath was coming in little panicked pants, and even Grik was feeling hot and crushed. He felt terrible for the elves. For him, it was nothing more than a tight fit, but helping his friends into the tunnel felt like loading them into their coffins.
He was a little worried about Paul bringing up the rear. He guessed instinctively why the elf had chosen to be in the back and not to lead, and it made his heart sink.
Paul was afraid he couldn’t keep up, he was afraid he wouldn’t make it, and he didn’t want to hold Grik and Rosanna back.
“All right?” Grik asked softly.
They weren’t of course, but Rosanna and Paul murmured strained affirmations.
They began to crawl, and Grik had never moved so slowly in his life. He was afraid of the tunnel caving in or of running into rubble that would block their way and cause them to be irrevocably stuck. He was unreasonably afraid his glow stick would fail and leave them in total darkness. The fear felt like a physical part of the walls, pressing in on them, smothering them with its power.
They crawled on and on, using their elbows and hands to drag themselves forward. Pebbles clawed at their bellies. Thin trickles of dirt cascaded from the earth above them in sibilant whispers that made them freeze every few feet, worried that the tunnel was going to cave in. Rosanna had begun to cry and was obviously trying to muffle it, but Grik’s keen ears had caught the sound.
