Part 24

I study the miniature version of us for what feels like an hour while Mary taps her foot.

“What are we waiting-“ She begins to ask, but I grab ahold of both her and Benny’s arms and yank on them, dragging them with me through the moving rocks, not stopping once until a curved wall stands before us, despite Freak Bean’s high pitched scream.  Hugging this outer wall, I glare at Benny, who shrugs in apology. 

I look to the left and then to the right but do not see an opening leading out of the chamber.  “So, which way?”  I turn my head toward Mary and ask. 

 “Are you crazy?”  Benny finally shouts, drowning out Mary’s response.

I look over Mary’s shoulder to where he now stands, huddled tightly against the wall, and say, “We were safe,” and it is my turn to shrug. 

“But how did you…?”

“If you would like to go back, I can show you,”  I offer but he shakes his head slightly.

“Didn’t think so.  Ok, which way?”

Mary looks in both directions and then points over my shoulder.

I pull a red marker from my pocket and try to make a mark upon the dark wall, but the color is not visible against the almost black concrete. 

“Here,” Benny says, reaching into a pocket and producing a white piece of chalk. As he extends his arm out to me, it comes in line with one of the passing rocks and gets clipped, the chalk launching from his grasp and curses flying from his mouth. 

I take a deep breath and jump around Mary after the car sized rock passes us by again.  “That’s going to be a nasty bruise,”  I say, looking at his elbow which has already begun to swell.  “I don’t think it’s broken though,”  I say, trying to be reassuring.

He cradles his arm against his chest, but moves closer as Mary crowds in behind me and hands me the chalk that she has managed to retrieve.

I use it to draw an arrow in the direction we are heading on the wall and then, waiting again for the massive rock to pass by, I resume my position in the lead and start along, keeping the wall at my right.  The car sized rock passes by us twice more, and we flatten ourselves against the wall each time it approaches, before we find an opening.

“This has to be the tunnel we came in,”  Benny says as I approach it.  I poke my head into the hole and have to agree. 

“This looks exactly the same,”  I say, watching the pebbles bounce across the floor.  I use the chalk and write the word ‘entrance’ beside the opening.  “You want to lead or do we need to swap?”  I ask Benny as we suck in our stomachs again to avoid the passing stone. 

“I’ll go first,”  He offers and begins to scoot along the wall, wincing every time his hurt arm brushes the concrete. 

One.  Two.  Three times I count the rock pass us before we get to the point where our arrow is drawn on the wall.  Benny waits for the large stone to pass us again and then turns to face us.

“What now?”  He asks and Mary answers before I can.

“Keep going, and mind the big rocks.”

Benny does just this and the rock passes us another four times.  I start to count the time between its passes when Mary blurts out “There,” and points at an opening a little further around the bend of the circular room. 

We continue our shuffle and, by the shaking of Freak Bean’s head, I know what I’m looking at before
I am even standing in the opening.  ‘Entrance,’ in my handwriting, is written in the same spot I had written it.

“Okay,”  Benny starts, and Mary cuts him off.

“I know, I know.  What now?”  She says with a hint of sarcasm before turning to me.  “What are we looking for next?”

I recite the lines in my head, but there is nothing beyond ‘through the walking rocks’ that I can recall about this part of the ordeal.  I begin to look around the small tunnel we are in, holding my sphere aloft as I get to its opposite end.  I inspect the wall closer, rubbing it with a corner of my long coat. 

“What is it?”  Mary asks, approaching.

“It says ‘Exit,”  I say, pointing to the familiar looking word.  I am pulling the chalk from my pocket when Benny draws the connection for me.

“That looks like-“  He runs back to where I had marked the passage earlier and calls back, “Yeah, did you write that?”

“Don’t think so,”  I say, but I go ahead and spell the word out below the original.

“You sure?”  Mary asks, looking at the two identical markings on the wall.

“I swear.”

Mary nods, “I believe you.  This has been weird enough already though.  What’s through there?”  She points past me.

I shrug, and pocket the chalk, peering past the illumination from my sphere, but seeing nothing, not even outlines in the dark beyond.  I extend my arm further, trying to force the shadows to retreat but am blinded by a bright flash of light.  I am still rubbing my eyes when I hear Benny.

“What was that?  Oh.  Oh, um guys?”

“What’s going on Benny,”  Mary asks from somewhere to my left.

“Did you guys see that?”  I ask as I finally am able to make out shapes again.

“Look out,”  Mary yells as she yanks me back into hallway, the Volkswagon sized rock careening through the space I had moments before occupied.

I stare blankly at the walking rocks, the word ‘Entrance’ written in chalk at my left.  “Benny, please tell me the word exit is down there now.”

“How’d you know?”  He asks, still standing where I had previously written the word ‘Entrance’ upon the wall.  “Um guys?”

Mary and I begin to prompt him for more information but the cavern beyond him has begun to glow red, casting a fire-like glow upon him, and everything else.

“The devil’s rib cage?”  Mary asks.

I shrug, “Only one way to find out.”

Part 23

I can feel the rumble in my teeth as we get close to where the hall should be.  It is obvious to me by the way they are rubbing their jaws that Benny and Mary feel it too. 

“What is that?”  Mary asks.

“Probably some processing plant or something,”  Benny says.

We round the final corner that the map says is between us and the Walking Rocks and I laugh.  The rumbling is causing pebbles to bounce across the floor.  I bend down and catch a few in my palm, where they sit, either well behaved, or completely inert.  I look around, we are in what may have been an old service corridor, there is a small branch off of the main tracks that ends not fifty feet from the junction. 

“Well, that was a bit anti-climactic,”  Mary says.

I dump the rocks back on the floor.  “Through the Walking Rocks it says,”  I recite what I had been told so long ago again.  “Well, here it goes.”  I walk through the room, feeling the rocks as they bounced against the side of my boots.  I make it to the other side of the tunnel, to where the tracks continue into a smaller tunnel.  The rumble gets stronger as I get closer to the smaller opening.  I hold my sphere aloft and immediately have to jump back, as a rock the size of a Volkswagen passes not five feet from me.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Mary says, stepping on many of the pebbles in her haste to join me. 

I look over my shoulder and watch Freak Beans eye the pebbles cautiously, walking across the room as if he was on a balance beam, cringing every time one of them touched his shoes.

The three of us stood on the brink of the real hall of Walking Rocks, our lights shining in and illuminating their sliding movements, the friction against the floor not seeming to slow them down. 

“That must be what’s causing the rumbling,”  Mary said, and then she holds her breath as two of the massive stones narrowly avoided colliding with each other.  They pass by each other, and I hear the scratching as their edges barely touch but it does not seem to effect their direction. 

We stand there, silently watching the rocks moving, trying to establish a pattern that will allow us to pass through the room. 

“Can you see the other side?” I ask, and Freak Beans shakes his head no.  “So this could be twenty feet or two hundred.”

“Is there a pattern?  I mean, are we just going to play Frogger?”  Mary asks and I can’t help but laugh at the apt comparison.

“I guess so, but there are no retries if we get eaten by the alligators.”  I say, winking at her.

“Or the piranha,” Freak Beans adds, scowling at me behind Mary’s back.

“Ok, I’ll go first,” I volunteer.

“No, we go all at once.”  Mary says.

“Fine,” I say rather than arguing.  “Next time this one passes,”  I say as the Beetle-sized rock scoots by again.  We wait a minute before the rock shoots back by us and we cautiously walk behind it, looking both directions as if we were crossing a street above. 

“This is surreal,”  Benny says, reaching out and touching a passing stone.  “They’re cold,”  He adds.

We make it passed two more without a problem before we come to a spot where, not only do the rocks seem to be moving faster, but there seems to be more of them.  I see a gap coming that I think we can rush through, like dodging traffic on a city street, but it brings the rock we are in the path of awfully close to where we stand.  I point it out to my companions, and they nod, although the looks on their faces show me they are having the same doubts. 

“One, two three…”

We dart out behind the next rock, and I feel the rock we had just dodged brush my coat.  We have to pull up short as the next one speeds past.  We charge through the opening in its wake and I look back over my shoulder.  I can see the hallway we came through in between speeding boulders, but looking forward I still cannot see another opening.

Mary pulls Benny and myself past the next rock and then the next, tugging us to follow her as she jumps in the space left by a third passing stone. 

I stop short, even as Freak Beans follows her, and have to jump to avoid a small watermelon sized rock that nearly takes my feet out from under me.  Once my feet are back on solid ground, I step forward, joining my two companions.

“It’s calm here, “Mary says, and I have to concur.  We appear to be at the eye of the spinning vortex of rocks, our entrance is now no longer visible, but neither is out destination. 

“Let’s catch our breath,” I say and sit down on the floor.  “Um, look at this,” I say, pointing at a circle of small moving rocks near my right foot. 

“Is that?”  Freak Beans says, watching a number of small rocks spin around three tiny pieces of wood.

“Only one way to find out,” I say as I stand up, my eyes still on the wood, and take a few steps forward, watching the larger rocks out of the corner of my eye.

“Yep,”  Mary says, as I nod, watching one of the pieces of wood shift in the same direction I just had.

“And we just came from over there,” I say, walking towards the way we had come in.

“And this must be the tunnel we came in through,” Mary says, pointing at a scratch in the ground.  It looks to be in roughly in the same spot I suspect our tunnel was, so I agree and begin searching for a similar scratch somewhere on the other side.

“I don’t see anything,” I say.

“Ok, so whats next then?”  Benny asks.

“Well, I guess we go out that way,” I say pointing toward the far wall, “And hope we find an exit.”

“And if we don’t?”

“We can always go back the way we came.”

Part 22

We have made it past the first three turns according to the map, and its accuracy of our path seems to still be holding up, although there are definitely more branches in the tunnels than it shows.

We enter into another long abandoned train station.  Abandoned except for the group with the large television cameras.

“Perfect,” I hear a female voice exclaim as I extinguish my orb and pocket it and pull my coat tight, concealing my blade. 

“Um, excuse me,” the female voice says.  It belongs to a rather obese woman in a fancy pants suit, far too high dollar to be crawling around in the dregs with us.

I glare at her, but she ignores it.  “Can we talk to you for a minute, you know on camera?”

Mary looks at the woman and tells her “No.”  Keeps walking.

“We’re doing a piece on the street people that live down here.”

“Street people?”  Mary asked, her nostrils flailing.  “What makes you better than me?”

I tug at her sleeve.  We have all been in her position and I try to stop the fury that is welling up from within.

“Come on,”  Benny whispers, tugging on her other arm. 

“I will not come on.  Just because you have a fancy suit and happened to know who’s ass to kiss and when to do it does not make you better than me.  Does not make you better than any of us.  I’ve made more real friends, people who have risked their necks for me, in the month I have been down here than I had my entire adult life.  These ‘street people’ as you call them are better than you.”

“Close your eyes,”  I hear Benny whisper, and I watch as his hand slips inside his coat.  I squeeze my eyes shut and slap a hand, a little harder than I had intended to, over Mary’s.

“Come on,”  Benny says again a moment later and I pull my hand from Mary’s face and open my eyes. 

Amidst the swears of the camera men, I run, pulling Mary along with me.  She allows herself to be dragged, although protesting loudly.

I finally convince her to be quiet, although I can hear the news crew coming behind us, there vision finally having cleared.  We take four quick turns, two rights and two lefts, in that order, before we are certain that they are not pursuing us any longer.

“What the-“ Mary begins.

I raise my eyebrows and place a finger before my lips.

She begins again, whispering.  “What was that?”

“I dialed it to eleven,”  Freak Beans says, taking out his sphere, which begins to emit an almost white light, slightly tinged yellow, like a piece of aging newspaper. 

“Do we know where we are?”  I ask, pulling the map from my pocket and peering at it.  I find the old station we had just left and begin to trace the path we took, but of course the turn off is not shown. 

“We’re somewhere over here,”  Benny says with a smile, pointing to a blank spot on the map.

“Thanks,” I say.  “So do we double back and hope we make the right turns, or do we see where this leads?”  I ask, pointing further along the tunnel we are in. 

Benny begins to make a small pile out of trash he find lying about the tunnel.  “Let’s continue on for a little bit.  We can always come back here,” he indicates the marker he has just made, “If we decide it’s not going well.”

“Sure,”  I say.

Mary is still mumbling under her breath.  I catch ‘Who did she think she was?’ and tell her to let it go. 

“But-“ She begins, but I cut her off.

“You are about to become a Princess.  The first Underground Princess at that.  Let them have their ‘street people’ if that’s what allows them to sleep at night.”  I wish I had more cigarettes, but I am trying to save the few I do.

“You’re right,” she says, and goes to stand by Benny.  “Let’s get going.”

Benny and I both hold our spheres, him in front and me bringing up the rear.  “This looks like an old barber pole,” I say, stopping at something jutting up from the ground.  I wipe some of the dirt and grime from it and smile.  “I’ll be, it is!”  I shine my light upon the wall, illuminating a tarnished brass sign for the Barber shop screwed into the white tile wall.  A rotting news stand sits beside it, amidst a pile of broken tiles.  “All that’s missing is a shoe shine box.”

Benny clears his throat from a few feet away, where he has shifted a pile of debris, mostly rotting cardboard.  “It’s right here.” 

I put my pack down, undo the top, and dig around for a minute until I pull out a red chisel tip marker.

“What’re you doing?”  Mary asks.

I ignore her as I hold my Sigil Sphere aloft, peering through it at the wall, where I begin to draw my own symbol, one box atop another, slightly skewed, an S in the top and a C in the bottom on an unbroken ceramic tile.

I walk around the corner and test my handiwork, appearing back where I had just been standing.

“Oh!”  Mary says, realizing what I have just done.  “Is that all it takes?”

I sag, catching myself on the news stand with an outstretched arm.

Benny rushes over and helps me to the floor.  “Yes, that is all he had to do, but it takes a lot out of us to do it.”  He scowls at me, “Do you really think now is the time for this?”  He waves his right hand at my handiwork.

“Just in case we need to come back this way for anything.”  I close my eyes for a moment and then struggle to my feet.  “Lets get going,”  I say, taking the lead.  We go another two hundred feet before we come to an intersection.  “Right or left?”  I ask.

“If it goes through, left will take us back to the tracks.”  Freak Beans says.

“Left it is,” I say and head down that corridor.  A large cat, black of course, scurries out of our way, a recently killed rat the size of my calf muscle, hanging from its mouth. 

“Careful, kitty,” Mary says, adding “I hear there are alligators down here somewhere.”

“Alligators?”  I say over my shoulder.  “Doubt it, but there’s piranha if you know where to look.”  Walking in front of her, she can’t see my smile.

Part 21

“Just about,” I say as I skirt around the pile of boxes and out the door again, heading for my own room and, more importantly, my cart.  I empty the cart out, looking for a box buried beneath it all.  Clothes, a sleeping bag, three blankets, a few useless trinkets.  A dog-eared engineering book.  Finally, I find what I am looking for.  I lift the long, rectangular box out of the cart and rip at the tape holding it shut.  Small, white balls of styrofoam fall out as I open it and reach inside.  The metal handle inside feels cold in my hand as I pull it out.  The blade, all two feet of it, is spotted with rust.  I reach back into the box and pull out a worn leather sheath.  I slip it onto my belt and slide the blade in.  The weight feels unfamiliar at my hip.  I look at myself in the broken mirror, the worn fedora atop my head, the brown trench coat, dry for now, hanging loosely from my shoulders, the sleeves hanging to the middle of my long fingers.  I could use a shave, a haircut, and a sandwich or two, but this will have to do I decide.

I bend over and begin to throw my pile of belongings back into the cart and think better of it, stuffing a change of clothes into my backpack and tying a blanket to its top with some cord that I find on one of my shelves.  I finish replacing my stuff in the cart and grab another blanket, heading back to rejoin Mary and Benny, locking the door behind me. 
“Here,” I toss the extra blanket to Mary, and hand her some more string.  “Just in case.  I’m ready when you are.”

“Ok, where do we start?”  Benny asks.  In addition to his cane, he’s added some tan fingerless gloves and a backpack of his own, a blanket hanging below.

I pull the map back out from its envelope, lay it on a crate, and locate the spot noted “Walking Rocks.”  Tracing it back with my finger, I look for somewhere I know but come up with nothing.
“Ok, let me try this,”  I reach down and pick up a small rock from the ground and place it where we want to go and then search for a place I recognize on the map.  “It’s been so long since I’ve looked at this…”

“Let me give it a shot,” Benny says, elbowing me out of the way.  “So this is where we want to go?”  He asks pointing to the pebble.

“Yeah,” I say through clenched teeth.

“And we are… Here,”  He says stabbing the paper with his finger.

I look over his shoulder, “Yeah.”

“Ok, so if we go out of here and left,” he traces the map with his finger, like a child doing a maze on a restaurant menu.  He has to backtrack a few times, but eventually he makes his way from where we are to the Walking Rocks.

“All right, can you do it again?”  I ask, wanting to make sure we do not make the same wrong turns he just did.  Fingertip to paper, he traces the route perfectly. 

“Yeah, we go out the door,”  He peers at the paper again, “Just to be certain,” he winks at Mary, “And head left.” 

Mary catches sight of the blade I am wearing and eyes it suspiciously.

“Just in case,” I say, followed by, “Follow me!”  I pull my Sphere from its pocket and hold it aloft, casting the blue glow out the doorway.  I take a deep breath, “Here it goes,” I say as I exit the room, bring the soft blue light with me.

We hear rats and other creatures scurrying from the light, and the going is easy.  We make it about five hundred feet, our starting point lost in the distant gloom behind us before I manage to trip on something.  My sphere goes flying out of my hand, landing a few feet away amongst the muck.  I get to my knees with the help of Benny and am looking for a surface to wipe my hands on, when I see Mary bend over to scoop up my sphere.

“No!”  Benny and I shout at the same time, but it is too late.  I do not have enough time to cover my eyes and am blinded by the flash of light.  Rubbing them, I stumble over to where Mary now lays, unconscious.  I check her pulse to make sure that is all, and smile weakly when I feel the beat of her heart. 

“Benny, help me,” I say, grabbing her arms.  He grabs her feet, and we half carry, half drag her to the wall, where we prop her up into a sitting position.  While we are waiting, I retrieve my sphere and use my handkerchief to wipe it down.  Half an hour passes while Benny and I make small talk, mostly trying to figure out if we really think that what we are doing is a fool’s errand or not. 

Finally, Mary begins to stir.  Holding her head, she asks “What happened?”

“Well, I guess I should have explained that before.”  I tell her.  “No one can touch a sigil sphere without the Prince handing it to them.  It’s a protection built in to keep the people from trying to take them by force.”

“I see,” She said as she began to brush herself off.  “Anything else I need to know about the spheres, you know, before I have one of my own?”  She looks from me to Benny, and I silently shake my head at him while she is not looking at me.

“There is a kind of, I don’t know getting to know the sphere, process,”  He says and I sigh.

“Attunement.”  I tell her and she turns to face me.  “We’ll discuss it if we find one for you.”

“When!  When we find me a sphere.”