Circles

Salvi lit a candle and then, with a last look at the sky, she stepped through the door. She followed the dusty tunnel downward into air that had a different, fetid staleness. She held her candle high to illuminate the tunnel. To her right was darkness. To her left, far ahead, she could see daylight filtering down. A shallow gully cut down the center of the passage, with bits of rotting detritus that she surmised had been washed there by the last rain. She left her first chalk mark at the base of the ramp: an arrow that pointed the way she was going.

Silence settled into her ears, nudged only by her own soft footfalls. The passage was nothing like the old mine routes she’d traveled with Noah, but she hoped those were ahead. As she came to the patch of daylight, she looked up several meters through a storm grid to a square of early morning sky. Faint voices and a rumbling of cartwheels sifted down.

Another patch of light shone farther along the tunnel, and when she looked up through that opening, the top of a tree was just visible. A pile of incongruously fresh-looking wooden boxes blocked much of the passage, as if someone had recently stored something there, but she was able to squeeze past to where the darkness was complete again. She lifted her candle to see glimmering spiderwebs and pushed on.

When a scurrying passed over her shoe, she jumped. The hairless tale of a rat disappeared before her. The tunnel branched, and Salvi made another arrow mark at eye level on a stone that bulged out into the tunnel. She went only a little farther before she realized that finding Noah was going to be nearly impossible.

She didn’t know which way he’d gone.

Or the tunnels themselves.

She should go back.

Salvi knew this, but when she thought of returning home and doing nothing while he could be down here somewhere, hurt and needing her, she couldn’t give up.

“Noah?” she said. Her voice sounded muffled and foreign.

A new passage on her right narrowed and descended into black granite, but the walls ahead were cut into a creamier stone, more like sandstone, so on instinct she went straight, hoping to find the tunnels Noah had once shown her. Every time she came to a turn, she marked an arrow at eye level, and lifted the candle toward it to check that it shone. She lost her inner sense of direction, and she couldn’t help thinking again that this might be a mistake. But the tunnels had to lead somewhere, and she kept hoping she’d recognize some landmark from her earlier time there.

She stopped often to call Noah’s name and listen. A mine shaft opened up, wide and low-ceilinged, with cooler air, and she followed that. When she came to another fork and began to write her arrow, she saw a glimmering of pale white on the adjacent wall.

She stepped nearer, staring.

It was one of her own marks.

It could mean only one thing: she’d gone in a circle.

She stopped, feeling the sweat along her neck, while her mind rapidly grappled with the significance of the circling.

“Stupid,” she said.

Before she could get confused, she deliberately made another mark with a 2 under it in the place where she’d just discovered the doubling.

Her heart kicked in hard. Just how much danger she truly was in became suddenly, painfully obvious. This was no longer about Noah. If she lost track of her back trail, if she became lost, there’d be no way to get out. She needed to head back directly.

She realized suddenly how thirsty she was, but because she’d arrogantly assumed she would only be down for an hour or so, she hadn’t thought to bring anything to drink. Unbelievable, she thought. How stupid could she get? Had she learned nothing about preparation or caution her entire life?

She struck back along the path she’d taken, crossing off each mark as she retraced her steps. She went carefully, deliberately taking the time at each intersection to check each tunnel for faint white marks to be certain she wasn’t missing any.

When the 2 appeared before her again, she became seriously scared. She did not understand, logically, how she could be making loops back to the same mark. She had to be missing some faint trace that was supposed to guide her to the original path, but she’d checked carefully at each branching of tunnels and didn’t understand how she could have missed it.

“How am I supposed to get out?” she exclaimed.

She forced herself to stop and rest, trying to clear her mind of panic. She listened to the complete stillness until it became an oppressive presence in her ears, and she had to rub her fingers together just to hear anything and know she hadn’t gone deaf. She lifted the candle, her second of five, to watch the flame. If the flame would waver even the least bit, she would know some movement of the air existed, promising an exit.

It did not flicker. The steady yellow flame cast echoing images of blindness on the walls when she blinked away from it.

She checked her locket watch, dismayed to find that more than four hours had passed. It must be close to noon outside. Noah could have traveled back through the tunnels and left by now.

Smugglers have died down there, someone had told her once.

It could happen to her. She was seriously lost now. She closed her eyes and touched a hand to her cheek, finding tear tracks.

The prospect of death brought biting clarity: she wanted to follow her passions in life and cherish her loved ones. Period. The rest of it, all the stress, immorality, and frustration of life was completely secondary. Her secret pride and her materialism meant nothing.

Salvi gazed wearily at the candle flame again. Like it or not, she was trapped down here. She had to get herself out of here and find Noah. Despair was a luxury she could not afford. She set her hand on her knee and hauled herself up again. If she couldn’t find her old way out, she would find a new one.

Many hours later, Salvi stopped at of the opening of another passage, checking the flame of her fourth and last candle to see it flicker slightly. She turned her face, concentrating, and thought she felt the faintest hint of moving air trace her left cheek.

The passage aimed downward, defying her instinct to go upward, but she tried it anyway and eventually the tunnel leveled out and began to rise, lifting her hopes with it. Please, she thought. Let this be a way out. In the silence, she heard a distant cough, then nothing. She headed onward, her ears aching for another sign of life, until the tunnel turned a sharp bend.

A naturally hollow, open space, five meters high and twice as long, had been outfitted as a shelter. A basket of knitting rested beside a rocker, and an unlit globe lamp was centered on a small table. Blankets were heaped on a cot, and Salvi was wondering how anyone could have brought a bed this far through the tunnels when she saw a door. Salvi gave a whoop of happiness, and then a sob of gratitude. Although she was curious why someone would want to live in these tunnels and where they currently were, most of her thoughts were exalted to have finally found an exit. With a last look behind her, she rushed to the door and pushed it open.

Diffused sunlight dropped down a deep shaft from high above. A ladder embedded in the stone wall led to the top. All the exhaustion from hours of walking melted away. Salvi’s strength was renewed as she climbed the ladder, knowing this was a final trek that led back to society. After her hours in the tunnels, her first breath of outside air was unbelievably sweet and fresh. As she reached the top of the shaft, the warm sunlight flooded her body. She had forgotten how the sunlight seemed to have a weight on your skin that felt comfortingly heavy.

As happy as she was to have not died in those tunnels, she was also frustrated by how much time she’d lost: practically an entire day. She needed to continue her search for Noah. Should she try the tunnels again or search for him elsewhere? Her relief of escaping mixed with her worry for Noah, and overwhelmed, all she could do was stand and take in the sensations around her.