Chapter 15 #2
“Whew.” Thomasin’s shoulders dropped with a relieved sigh after she managed to right herself.
“What is it?” Edith asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. She couldn’t quite see what the rose had revealed from her angle on the ground.
Thomasin ducked her head under the rose. “It’s a tunnel,” she laughed. “It’s an actual tunnel.”
“A tunnel?” Edith echoed back at her. “Can you see where it leads?” She pushed up on her tiptoes, straining to see into the shadowed passage, while Thomasin leaned to the side, her weight precariously balancing on just the ball of one foot.
Her fingers curled around the bottom edge of the newly revealed tunnel.
“It’s too dark to make anything out. It looks like it goes down, though.”
“No time to waste then,” Edith said, tightening the strap of her satchel around her body. “We just have to figure out how to get me up there.”
After the logistics were hammered out, and with an awkward maneuver, Thomasin managed to get herself not only in the tunnel but turned around so that her arms hung down.
“Take my hands!” she told Edith, who was currently wobbling from where she was perched unsteadily on Jay’s shoulders.
His hands were locked around her shins, and he stood as solid as a pillar, but it had still taken a good five minutes, and much coaxing, to get Edith to actually stand on his shoulders in the first place.
Edith grasped for Thomasin, and the other woman’s hands closed around hers with an iron grip. Her shoulder twinged at the movement, the damaged skin tugging painfully.
“Okay, I’ve got you,” Thomasin said with an authoritative tone that Edith had become familiar with. The one that always seemed to work a little too well on her. “Now you just need to find a foothold that’s a little farther up.”
Edith forced her leg to obey, knee bending and foot lifting from Jay’s shoulder. Her balance careened sideways, but when her panicked gaze swung upward, Thomasin’s own eyes were calm, and her hold on Edith was steady.
Keeping her eyes locked on Thomasin, Edith searched for purchase with her foot. Her boot scratched along the stone until the tip of her foot wedged into a gap between the stones. “Okay, on the count of three, I’ll push off, and then you can pull me up!”
“This is going to kill your shoulder,” Thomasin objected, just as she had when Edith first told them her plan.
“There’s no other way to get me in that tunnel, and I’m damn well not waiting out here,” Edith said quickly. The longer her arm was stretched upward like this, the more it hurt. She was keen to get the worst part out of the way.
Thomasin sighed, seemingly coming to the correct conclusion that there was nothing she could do to dissuade Edith from her current course of action. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”
Edith counted to three and then threw all her weight onto the foot she had propped against the wall. She launched herself with every ounce of strength she possessed at the same moment that Thomasin hauled her upward.
With great effort and clumsy movement, Edith ended up with her torso in the tunnel and her legs dangling out. Her knees were raw from where they had scraped against the stone, and her half-healed shoulder wound was screaming at her, but she was in the tunnel and that was all that mattered.
“Are you okay?” Thomasin was shoved flat against the wall of the tunnel, her body tilted sideways to make room for Edith.
Though she was completely squished, Edith felt Thomasin’s hand pull aside the material of her tunic to check her wound.
Edith doubted she could even see anything in this light, or from that angle.
“I’m fine.” Edith tried to meet her eyes, but she couldn’t quite make her neck turn that far.
Thomasin’s elbow knocked into her hip, and then the woman’s knee came dangerously close to her face. When Edith made a noise in protest, Thomasin’s body went slack. “You’ll need to go first. I won’t be able to turn around until you’re farther in.”
Edith dug her elbows into the dirt-packed floor of the tunnel and dragged herself forward until her legs made it into the passage.
Thomasin’s order sounded behind her. “You two keep watch, we’ll be back soon.”
The tunnel was just tall enough for them to crawl on their hands and knees, and although Edith’s knees complained, it was far preferable than inch-worming her way down into the darkness.
She shuddered to think how dirty her top must already be after lying in the dirt.
The last thing she needed was to rake herself through it.
Too soon in their descent, the light faded completely, and they had no choice but to crawl deeper into the tunnel completely blind.
“Another underground passageway,” Thomasin whispered from behind her. “Why does it always have to be underground?”
“Where else would you keep something hidden for this long?” Edith whispered back. The situation seemed to call for it, and their hushed voices bounced between them in an eerie echo.
Whatever comeback Thomasin no doubt had ready was lost when the tunnel suddenly opened up into a larger chamber. It was still pitch-black. The only way she could tell they were in a larger space was the sudden feeling of airy emptiness, the walls of the tunnel no longer pressing in around her.
They mapped their way around the room with hesitant footsteps and hands tracing along the wall.
Unlike the grand decor of the underground chamber under Arthur’s Stone, this room was completely bare.
Both the walls and floor were dirt, as if the earth had just been scooped out to create this vaguely rectangular nook of space beneath the surface.
The way forward seemed to be a narrow passageway across the room from where the tunnel had let out. This one was tall enough for them to stand, but only about two feet wide. With nothing to do but press on, Thomasin interlaced her fingers with Edith’s and led her into the passageway.
A sick, trapped feeling rose in Edith’s throat.
This was somehow worse than the tunnel. The walls pressed into her sides from shoulder to thigh.
It was barely wide enough for her to walk through, and her hip bones jutted into the walls with every step.
The ceiling wasn’t much better. Thomasin had her head ducked, shoulders hunched, and Edith could feel the crown of her head skimming the top.
They trudged forward for an interminable amount of time, and just when Edith thought it couldn’t get any worse, she felt something skitter across the bare skin of her forearm. Something huge, and fast, and many-legged.
Edith screamed.