“First we have to leave something here we can find to mark the entrance.” Cora was talking slow and clear. “Alex, do you have anything we could feel?”
“Um, I have some stuff. It’s all very valuable, nothing I would leave behind.” Alexander sounded hesitant.
Riley barked, “Why don’t you give us a list.”
“Pliers, nails, sandpaper, compass, washers, zip ties, hammer and chisel—” Alexander was cut off.
Cora shouted, “If we can use the hammer and chisel, we won’t have to leave anything behind.”
Lissie felt everyone leave her grasp but Niko.
There was the faint sound of Alexander feeling his way through his packs. “Right here. Hammer. Chisel.”
“Great!” Cora sounded excited. “Can you make a mark deep enough we could feel it with our feet?”
Ting.
Alexander said, “I can’t really swing very hard, I can’t see the chisel…”
Niko’s hand released and left Lissie all alone in the dark. “I am not afraid of hitting my hand.”
Lissie strained to hear the sound of movement. The air smelled different.
Smokey?
Ting! Ting! Ting!
The skittering sound came louder now, from all around them.
“I don’t think they liked that.” Lissie’s throat was tight as she shouted.
“I don’t care what they like.” Riley flickered red again.
Niko asked, “Can you feel this with your foot. I can. But I do not wear shoes.”
Shuffling. Lissie waited. Cora spoke first, “I can feel it. We have found a way to mark in the dark.”
It was slow work. Nikolai chiseled marks in a straight line until they found a curved wall. Lissie followed, the marks feeling like faint echoes of him through her soles.
“Do I keep marking as we go around?” Niko asked.
“No, now we have the wall to follow. Everyone keep your left arm on the wall.” Cora sounded even more excited. “When we find the marks again, we can find our way back to the entrance!”
Lissie tried touching the wall with her cast, but her arm ached. She brushed her left shoulder against it. She was at the back of the group, following Alexander. Every once in a while Ruskin would whimper.
She realized she should have been counting her steps after they had been creeping along for too long for it to matter. Lissie listened in the darkness, letting herself drift along the wall. The wall seemed to hum. It wasn’t constant, the longer she walked, the more it sounded like music.
“There’s an opening up here!” Cora called back. “One thousand, nine hundred and twelve steps.”
Lissie stepped on Alexander’s shoe as he stopped short in front of her. He yelped and jumped, turning around and pawing at her.
“It’s me! Alexander, it’s Lissie!” She tried to cover her face, but he whacked her cast.
“I thought I was in the back! Oh, sweet Lissie, we should sing!” Alexander was talking fast again. “Why are we being so quiet? I’m a bard, I know songs…” He started into the Mariner’s Delight. “There was a beautiful lady known as the sea.”
The darkness swallowed his tenor. It did not echo. The words faded into nothing.
Did he stop singing, or was he stopped from singing?
“Are you guys coming?” Riley called back, “Cora said there’s an opening.”
Lissie moved and stepped into Alexander, who felt like a statue. She reached out her hand, and he said, “They don’t like our songs.”
They have their own music, don’t they?
She felt him turn around. She kept a hand on his pack, and followed him forward.
The opening was narrow. She felt her friends crowded around it.
Cora’s voice. “I’ve gone down two steps!”
Steps? I thought this was a cave?
“Roll call before we go!” Riley called out.
Cora sounded disappointed. “We aren’t going to finish exploring the room?”
“If there is a different place, I want to be in it!” Alexander brokered no argument.
Lissie said, “We are looking for a cave, steps mean this doesn’t go into a cavern.”
There was a pregnant pause while they waited. Riley asked, “That just leaves Niko?”
“I am still here. I did not know I was voting,” Nikolai answered.
Riley said, “I asked for a roll call.”
“I did not know what a roll call was,” Nikolai said.
If he was working without choice, no one was calling on him. Lissie felt for him in the darkness.
“So we are going down the stairs?” Cora was still raising her voice to speak, but Lissie could hear the pout.