by Lyn Gardner
‘Let me help you take the strain, my dear,’ he said smoothly, and with a diabolical smile. Aurora saw the diamond flash of a knife in the air, and a blade sliced through the rope like butter. She watched aghast as the rope flew through the air and vanished down the mineshaft like the tail of a disappearing cat. She looked down stupidly at her hands, which still clasped the frayed end of the cut rope. At that moment, the wind paused for breath and from far away there was a cry followed by a splash. She looked speechlessly into Dr DeWilde’s cold eyes, and her lips formed a single word. ‘Murderer.’
Dr DeWilde shot her a callous look. ‘Come, come, my dear. Don’t be so emotional. You’ve still got one sister. That would be quite enough for most people. I suppose you would like to see little Any? What a dear she is. I do so love children – especially when they cry. This way.’
He took the shocked Aurora by the arm and guided her towards Piper’s Peak with the wolves following slavishly in his wake. The boy, his shoulders hunched, turned to follow, but Dr DeWilde stopped him.
‘No, pup, you stay. Follow my instructions to the letter, or it will be the worse for you.’
Storm’s body hit the water, cut the inky surface and dropped like a stone. Panic rose as she sank. She was going to drown. She opened her eyes underwater. She could faintly make out the brick walls of the mineshaft through the murk. She felt her feet touch the bottom of the shaft. She pushed hard against the floor with bended knees and propelled herself upwards. Her lungs felt as if they were going to explode. She thought she was never going to reach the surface in time. Her head was full of stars and white flashes; snapshots of Aurora, Any, her dead mother and Eden End pulsed inside her brain like the click, click, click of a camera shutter. Her chest felt as if it was being squeezed by twenty-five full-grown boa constrictors. Then her head bobbed above the water and Storm took a great gulp of air before sinking helplessly again. She thrashed about, and one of her hands closed over a rung of the ladder on the wall. She pulled herself upwards and clung to it, taking enormous, shuddering gulps of air into her bruised lungs.
The rope was dangling above her. Warily she gave it a little tug. It was slack and several coils came tumbling towards her. She climbed upwards, testing each untrustworthy rung carefully, until she came to the place where the ladder had broken away to leave several metres of unscaleable wall. She peered upwards and saw, with a gasp, that the end of the rope was snagged around a rung, high above.
She couldn’t understand it. Aurora couldn’t have just let go – the rope had been tied securely around her waist. It could only have fallen if she had. Storm tugged hard until the rope unsnagged. As it fell she caught the end in her hand. She stared at it with mounting shock. She felt sick and shaky. The rope had been deliberately cut! She clung to the ladder to stop herself plunging once more into the water below. She was certain that her sister would never have cut the rope. But then an image of Aurora’s white, panicky face flashed across her mind. Alone and frightened in the dark, Storm suddenly felt less certain. She replayed their last fraught exchange in her head and regretted her unkindness. Perhaps she shouldn’t have left Aurora at the top of the mineshaft when she was in such a nervous state. But would she have been scared enough to cut herself free? Aurora must have known that cutting the rope would almost certainly have been her sister’s death warrant. She would never have done it.
From a distance she suddenly heard a soft voice calling ‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ she yelled back excitedly. ‘Down here! I need help.’
‘I’ll help you,’ returned the voice from the top of the mineshaft. She knew that she had heard that voice somewhere before but in her panic she couldn’t place it.
‘Have you got a rope?’ called Storm.
‘No,’ returned the voice.
‘Is my sister there?’ Storm asked urgently.
‘There’s no one here but me,’ returned the voice. ‘But I think I may have met your sister on my way up here. She was going round the mountainside. She had a knife in her hand. I called out to her, but she didn’t stop. She seemed to be in rather a hurry, as if she wanted to get away from somewhere as quickly as possible.’
Storm’s insides turned to water and she felt sick. So it was true! Aurora had cut the rope! Exhaustion, hopelessness and fear swept through Storm, and disbelief turned to boiling anger that lodged in her stomach – a red-hot burning coal of bitter resentment. Aurora must have been so scared that she had cut the rope without thinking of the consequences. She would never have done that to Aurora. It was one thing for a rope to snap accidentally, like on the ice-field. It was something else to deliberately cut it – to purposefully abandon a sister in trouble. Storm would never have just tried to save her own skin. But Aurora had. She must have thought she was going to be pulled into the mineshaft and had cut the rope to save herself. Storm felt utterly betrayed. Tears of corroding self-pity poured off her cheeks. ‘Together and for ever,’ she muttered to herself with a bitter little laugh. ‘Hah!’ Then, craning her neck upwards, she yelled, ‘Do you think you could find a rope to lower down?’
‘I can try,’ said the puzzlingly familiar voice.
‘Please,’ said Storm.
‘I’ll do my best to help you, but it may take time.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Storm said dryly. ‘I’ll be here.’
At the head of the mineshaft, Kit turned and headed in the direction taken by Dr DeWilde. As he walked across the inhospitable terrain, his ice-blue eye glittered with excitement but his emerald-coloured one was wet with tears.
Left alone in the cold, dank hole once more, Storm’s feelings of betrayal overtook her. How could Aurora have deserted her? How could she have been so selfish? Well – Storm scowled – I’m not finished yet! If Aurora doesn’t need me, I certainly don’t need her!
The red-hot coal glowed viciously inside of her. She was better off without her sister anyway! Aurora didn’t have a chance of surviving out there without her, but she could do anything without her silly, stupid, cowardly sister. The nugget of rage in the pit of her stomach flared and burned itself out, leaving her charred and empty. And so very, very alone. She had never felt so bereft. Not even when her mother had died.
‘Aurora,’ she sobbed in the gloom. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you run away? Why did you abandon me?’
She clung precariously to the ladder, weeping for her loss. Eventually her sobs turned to dry hiccups. She looked at the severed end of the rope in her hand. A thought grew in her mind. Maybe she wouldn’t have to wait for help to come. Perhaps she could throw the rope high enough to get it over one of the rungs of the ladder and pull herself up. It was a long shot, but better than just hanging there. She untied the rope from around her waist and pulled the other end up from under the water. She tossed the rope upwards. It didn’t get near the bottom rungs of the ladder. Muttering angrily to herself, she threw the rope again and this time it sailed over the nearest rung. Carefully she fed the rope upwards, threading it through her hands. The other end slowly descended towards her.
Storm was thrilled. She had never hoped it would be so easy. She grabbed the swinging end, trying not to look at the cut marks that showed Aurora’s betrayal, and tied it to form a long loop. She looked up. It was a long way to shin up to the first rung, but she was confident she could do it. Just so long as the rung held. She tugged hard on the rope before she began her climb, just to be sure. It felt fine. She swung out and heaved herself upwards. Still the rung held. She heaved again and used her feet to scramble closer. One more monkey-like shimmy and she would be there. The rung creaked suddenly. Storm made a desperate lunge just as it gave way, plunging her once again into the dark water below.
Storm bobbed up, spluttering, and clung to the ladder. The rope was now submerged at the bottom of the shaft. She tried to squash the growing feeling of despair in her heart. She would just have to be patient until help came.
She waited
And waited.
She
didn’t know how long it was she stayed there, hanging just above the waterline, the cold and wet chilling her to the bone. It seemed like hours, but she knew from past experience, particularly during long, boring arithmetic lessons with Aurora, that although time is supposed to pass at exactly the same rate, it doesn’t. Sometimes it passes very slowly – mostly during maths and spelling tests – and sometimes it whizzes by. So she tried to remain patient, even though she was shivering uncontrollably. Several times she called up the mineshaft, but only silence answered. She began to feel doubly abandoned and certain that she was doomed to die in this cold, twilight world. Eventually, she knew, she would lose consciousness and slide into the water for the very last time.
Finally she lost all hope that the owner of the disembodied voice would ever return to help her. She would just have to try to help herself.
If she couldn’t go up, Storm decided, she would try going down. She knew from her double dunking that the bottom of the shaft was no more than a few metres beneath her. Perhaps she could dive down and find the entrance to the tunnel. Even if it was flooded here, she was pretty sure it couldn’t be flooded all the way up into Piper’s Peak. Perhaps she could swim through it until it climbed above the waterline! She had nothing to lose. If she stayed where she was, she would certainly die. If she could find the entrance to the tunnel, she might survive. Storm took a deep breath, put her head under the water, and began her descent.
The Piper Under the Mountain
Storm hauled herself above the water’s edge and lay gasping for air, the water still lapping over her ankles. Exhaustion spread like a bruise through every limb of her body. Ahead she could just make out the sides of the tunnel. She was afraid of the smothering darkness, but she had no choice but to go on. She certainly wasn’t going back. She had easily found the entrance to the tunnel lurking below the surface of the water. But swimming through had been nightmarish, her body pushed to its limits and her mind full of terror as the waterlogged passageway seemed to stretch endlessly onwards. She had begun to fear that she had been wrong about it sloping upwards, and that she would drown and lie in a watery tomb for ever. But just when she had thought she could go no further, she sensed that the tunnel was rising and had managed to propel herself forward to dry land.
As her breathing evened, Storm became aware of a curious booming sound from far away. It sounded like thunder coming right from the very heart of the mountain. She struggled wearily to her feet and set off up the tunnel, feeling her way carefully along the knobbly walls, and leaving a diminishing trail of puddles in her wake.
In the thick darkness she edged her way along, occasionally stumbling on the uneven floor, but always keeping a picture of Any in her head to give her the courage to keep going. Whenever she thought of Aurora, the uncomfortable burning coal settled miserably in her stomach again, so she simply banished her sister from her mind.
After a while Storm saw a glow in the far distance, at first just a pinprick. She paused and listened. She could hear nothing except the distant booming and a strange tinkling sound like a mobile in child’s nursery. At last the light grew stronger and the tunnel opened out into a vast cavern, its ceiling covered in hundreds and thousands of tiny stars. Entranced, and quite forgetting any thought of her safety, Storm wandered into the middle of the cavern staring upwards. She had never seen anything so beautiful. It was then she realized that it was alive. She was not seeing stars, but hundreds of thousands of tiny glow-worms whose bodies were emitting a beautiful, ghostly light.
Dragging her eyes away from the astonishing sight, Storm looked for a way out of the cavern. Tucked away in one of the darker recesses was a small wooden door with a tiny golden keyhole. Storm put her eye to the keyhole. She could see nothing, but the booming noise was louder than ever. She felt for the key Mother Collops had given her. For a dreadful moment she thought she had lost it but, after a panicky search, she located it at the bottom of her left pocket. It was under two empty toffee wrappers, the phial of magic potion from the Ginger House, the metal file, a twist of gunpowder, a large quantity of fluff and the sodden box of matches given to her by Any so long ago in the forest. Scraping the sticky remains of a peppermint toffee from the key, she put it in the lock and turned it. Carefully she opened the door and slipped through.
She was right in the heart of Piper’s Peak, and a terrible sight met her eyes. In a massive cavern, taller than several large cathedrals and lit with the eerie luminous light of more glow-worms, were thousands of toiling men, women and children. All were as pale as ghosts, and thin as paper, and all scrabbled in the dirt as if they were searching feverishly for something precious they had lost. Standing guard were several packs of huge wolves.
Occasionally a worker would delve into the dirt and triumphantly hold something bright and glittering up to the light. Immediately a wolf would bound over, open its jaw wide, and extend its long pink tongue, and the man, woman or child would drop the object onto the wolf’s tongue. At first Storm thought that the workers were giving the wolves brightly coloured sweets, but then she realized that they were not extracting candy from the earth, but precious gemstones – rubies, amethysts, sapphires, diamonds and emeralds.
Storm watched as a little girl, only just older than Any, found a ruby in the dirt. She clearly thought it was a fruit gum because she put it in her own mouth. Immediately a wolf bounded up to the child, growling menacingly. With a look of fear, a female worker bent over the child and coaxed her to give the crimson gemstone up to the wolf’s massive jaws. They closed over the jewel with a snap that only narrowly missed the child’s fingers. The wolf took the ruby to a table where other workers were counting the gems and tipping them into small pouches.
Storm watched, appalled, peeping out from behind a huge boulder, as the people went about their work, their bodies cowed, their eyes clouded with fear. Those who were not looking for the precious stones were bearing huge loads of earth and trying to avoid the attention of the wolves. A young woman, her ringlets stuck damply to her pale, sweaty face, struggled with a huge sack on her back, stumbling as she tried to stay upright. Another woman, with faded cornflower eyes, was desperately pulling a heavy load of stones and rubble on a sled. Storm saw that the woman would once have been pretty, but now she was pale and sickly. It was as if all the colour had been washed out of her. Like those of the other workers, her mouth sagged and her eyes were dull from working in the semi-darkness for many years.
The booming noise that Storm had heard was produced by massive excavation machines, driven by huge wheels suspended high above the floor of the cavern. Each wheel was powered by at least a hundred people, crammed forlornly onto steps that had been carved inside. As the people marched on the spot, the steps moved beneath them, making the vast wheels turn and powering great drills that tore lumps of rock from the cavern walls. The marchers looked exhausted, but they dared not slow down – any that stumbled risked falling to a horrible end on the rocks below.
Storm watched, horrified, as an elderly silverhaired man with a small goatee beard tumbled from his place high on the steps. She saw his mouth open in a scream, and then he hit the floor below with a terrible thwack. None of the other workers missed a beat; none of them even looked in the direction of the old man; they simply powered onwards, their eyes cold and dead.
Storm wanted to cry out, implore the workers to stop and help the fallen man, but she had already seen enough to know that to do so would be to invite the unwelcome attention of the wolves. Two had already ambled up to the prone man, sniffed him and were beginning to drag him away by the scruff of his neck.
A long howl from the pack leader cut through the booming din. The workers stopped. Leatherskinned bottles were passed down the lines. Those in the giant wheels began to clamber exhaustedly down a series of rickety ladders. No sooner were they all down than a fresh team of forced labourers scrambled up to replace them. Then the lead wolf howled again and the backbreaking work resumed.
Storm cautiously thre
aded her way through the boulders towards a long table where gems were being sorted into pouches. A dark-haired woman, her fingers permanently atremble, was counting emeralds. Her hands were shaking so badly that she knocked several pouches over and their contents skittered across the floor. A wolf gave a little snarl of irritation and two children hurried to pick up the gemstones. With a jolt Storm recognized them as the plump little twins from the orphanage, Arwen and Aisling. Only they were no longer plump. Their skin had turned grey and they were so thin that they looked more like wizened old ladies than nine-year-olds. She called out to them as loudly as she dared. ‘Arwen! Aisling!’ The children looked around suspiciously. Storm put a finger to her lips. The taller twin edged towards Storm’s hiding place, looking anxiously around.
‘My sister?’ whispered Storm desperately. ‘Have you seen Any?’
Arwen nodded imperceptibly. ‘She’s in Dr DeWilde’s parlour. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.’ She pointed towards a tapestry hanging at the far end of the vast hall, depicting a jolly Pied Piper leading a throng of laughing children towards an open crack in a mountain. ‘Wait until the end of the day and fall in with the column,’ she whispered. ‘It passes right by the tapestry.’ Then she melted back into the crowd.
The pack leader howled again and Storm scurried back to her hiding place. She watched the labourers from the wheels climb wearily down and crawl away to fall in exhausted, sweaty heaps. But the wolves refused to let them rest, harrying them to replace the sorters, who in turn were sent to the far side of the cavern to join hundreds more people piling earth into large sacks. Others carried the sacks away, bent double under their heavy loads.
A new crowd of workers were forced up the ladders to the wheels by the wolves. Many looked so thin and pitiful that they hardly seemed capable of walking, let alone powering the giant machines. Storm realized then why Dr DeWilde needed an endless stream of plump new workers – he had to have a constant supply of replacements for those whose bodies were broken by this horrendous work.
