Tunnels

Every afternoon, after Will had swabbed the dirt and sweat off himself using the basic facilities in the so-called bathroom of the Jerome house, Cal would watch as he sat on his bed and jotted down meticulous notes, adding the occasional sketch where he felt it was warranted. Perhaps it would be of children working at one of the garage dumps. It was quite a scene; these tiny Colonists, little more than toddlers, so adept at scavenging the huge mounds of litter and taking so much care to sort everything into hoppers for processing.

"Nothing goes to waste," Cal had told him. "I should know, I used to do it!"

Or it might be a picture of the stark fortress in the farthermost corner of the South Cavern where the Styx lived, which had a huge iron stockade enclosing it. This drawing had been by far the greatest challenge for Will because he hadn't had an opportunity to get very close. With sentries patrolling the neighboring streets, it wouldn't do to be caught showing too much interest in it.

Cal was at a loss to understand why Will took such great pains to write in his journal. He persistently badgered Will, asking him what the point of it all was. Will had replied that it was something his father had taught him to do whenever they found anything during their excavations.

And there it was again, his father. Dr. Burrows was still his father as far as he was concerned, and Mr. Jerome, even if he was Will's real father — though he still wasn't wholly convinced of that — came a poor second in Will's estimation. And his deranged Topsoil mother, and his sister, Rebecca, still felt like family. Yet he felt such affection for Cal, Uncle Tam, and Grandma Macaulay that sometimes his loyalties churned in his head with the ferocity of a stoppered tornado.

As he put the finishing touches on a sketch of a Colony house, his mind wandered and he began to daydream again about his father's journey into the Deeps. Will was eager to discover what lay down there and knew that one day soon he would follow. However, every time he tried to imagine what the future might hold for him, he was brought back to bitter reality with a bump, to the plight of his friend Chester, still confined in that abysmal Hold.

Will stopped drawing and rubbed the peeling calluses on the palms of his hands together.

"Sore?" Cal asked.

"Not as bad as they were," Will replied. His mind flashed back to the work detail earlier that day: clearing stone cha

"Black Wind!" Cal jumped off the bed and rushed over to close the window. Will joined him and saw people in the street below ru

"Here it comes!" He tugged at his brother's sleeve. "I love this."

But nothing seemed to be happening. The siren's haunting wail continued as Will, not knowing what to look for, sca

"There! There!" Cal shouted, peering farther down into the cavern. Will followed his gaze, trying to make out just what it was, but it seemed as though something was wrong with his vision. It was as if his eyes weren't focusing properly.

Then he saw why.

A solid cloud billowed up the street like ink diffusing through water, rolling and churning and obscuring everything in its wake. As Will looked down form the window he could see the streetlights bravely trying to burn even more brightly as the sooty fog almost blotted them out. It was as if nocturnal waves were closing over the submerged lights of a doomed ocean liner.

"What is it?" Will asked, enthralled. He pressed his nose against the windowpane to get a better view of the dark fog spreading quickly along the rest of the street.

"It's a sort of backwash from the Interior," Cal told him. "It's called a Levant Wind. It rises from the lower Deeps — a bit like a burp." He giggled.

"Is it dangerous?"

"No, just dust and stuff, but people think it's bad luck to breathe it. They say it carries germules." He laughed and then adopted a mock Styx monotone. "Pernicious to those that it encounters, it sears the flesh." He giggled again. "It's great, though, isn't it?"

Will stared, transfixed. As the street below was obliterated from view, the window turned black, and he felt an uncomfortable pressure in his ears. His flesh seemed to be buzzing and all his hairs were standing on end. For several minutes, the dark cloud billowed by, filling their bedroom with the smell of burned ozone and a deadening silence. Eventually it began to thin out, the street lamps flickering through the swirling dust like the sun breaking through clouds, and then it was gone, leaving just a few diffuse gray smudges hanging n the air, as if the scene had been swept by a watercolorist's brush.

"Now watch this?"

"Sparklers?" Will asked, not believing what he was seeing.

"It's a static storm. They always follow a Levant," Cal said, quivering with sheer excitement. "They give you one heck of a belt if you get in the way."

Will watched in astounded silence as a host of fireballs spun out of the dispersing clouds all along the street. Some were the size of te

The two boys stood mesmerized as, right in front of them, a fireball as large as a melon, its vibrant light illuminating their young faces and reflecting in their wide eyes, abruptly went into a downward spiral, around and around, casting off sparks as it plummeted toward the ground, shrinking to the size of an egg. As it hovered just above the cobblestones, the dying fireball seemed to flicker that much more intensely before, in the blink of an eye, it sputtered out.

Will and Cal were unable to tear themselves away from where it had been, the traces of its last seconds still imprinted on their retinas in little ecstatic tracks, like optical pins and needles.

27

Far below the streets and houses of the Colony, a lone figure stirred.

The wind had been a gentle breeze at first but rapidly built to a terrifying gale that spat grit in his face with all the ferocity of a sandstorm. He'd wound his spare shirt around his face and mouth as it grew even more intense, threatening to knock him off his feet. And the dust had been so dense and impenetrable that he hadn't been able to see his hands in front of him.

There was nothing else to do but wait until it passed. He'd dropped to the ground and curled up into a ball, his eyes clogged and burning with the fine black dust. There he had remained, the wailing howl blasting out his thoughts until, frail from hunger, he fell into a half-sleeping, half-waking torpor.

Sometime later, he shuddered awake and, not knowing how long he'd been curled up on the floor of the tu

Then, on all fours, Dr. Burrows crawled around, scrabbling about in the dry grit, using the light of a luminescent orb to find the little pile of organic matter that he'd gathered for kindling before the dust storm had hit. Eventually locating it, he picked out something that resembled a curling fern leaf. He squinted at it curiously — he had no idea what it was. Like everything in the last five miles of tu