Chapter 71

Several harrowing seconds later, Katherine landed in chest-high water.  She quickly found her footing and scrambled to her feet.  Drex’s light found Lillian quickly, and pulled her up, too.  Katherine heard Evan’s slide approaching the tunnel’s mouth and stepped away just before he landed hard on his backside.  They had made it, soaked to the bone, but alive.

Drex did a quick once-over on Lillian.  She was conscious and smiling but not able to carry her weight.  Drex laid her arm over his shoulder to bear her up.

“Where to?” Evan looked at Drex.

Drex swung his lantern around the tunnel.  Katherine saw that the water was colored a greenish murk and the tunnel’s walls were slick with growth and humidity.  The air inside was still and the smell was not putrid like she expected.  Instead, its odor brought back a memory of fishing at her grandfather’s pond.  The pond was not fed by a stream or creek, but was instead a large depression in the ground that her grandfather filled through some creative irrigation plumbing from a nearby well and from time to time had it stocked with local fish.  In certain corners of the pond where the fish liked to feed on the vegetation that thrived at the water’s edge, algae, dragonflies, and mosquitoes also liked to flourish.  This mix of natural life gave off an odor that was certainly not fresh but nonetheless was not unpleasant to Katherine.  With the memory, she gathered that wherever this water came from, it was not Merlian wastewater and that was some relief.

However, the kind of water led her to wonder where the water went and where the tunnels led.  Downhill was the word that first came to Katherine’s mind, and she hoped it was not a metaphor of this part of whatever journey she was on.  By Drex’s light, she could see there was only one answer to Evan’s question.  Drex quickly pointed in that direction, and the quartet (two rugged men, an invalid princess, and a woman trying to keep her fear at bay) started moving.

The water soon became a different kind of problem.  At shin height to the men and thigh-high to the women, it did not take long before everyone’s legs burned with exhaustion.  Katherine bit the inside of her lip and did her best to muscle through the discomfort.  She had seen the look in Evan’s eyes when she praised him before sliding down the chute.  Lillian’s words of wisdom had been accurate.  Katherine saw a flash of both confusion and energy in his face at her words.  She assumed the confusion was from her lack of compliments over the years, which jarred her.  Mean was never an attribute she gave herself, but as she thought over her most intense conversations with Evan, she could see that her words often had knives attached to them.  Knives that cut at his ability to please her, to be a success in her eyes, to, she supposed, be a man.

She liked his look of energy, like a dog who is overjoyed at the simplest show of affection.  His look warmed her heart.  She wanted to see that energy more.  So, though she felt her legs were about to give out, she determined that whoever was going to ask for a rest first would not be her.  Even if her legs gave out and she fell face-first into the questionable water, she would no longer be the weak link of this team.

Katherine reminded herself that she was terrible a guaging distances.  Still, she was certain they had travelled over a mile trudging through the water – probably uphill – with no stopping in sight.  All of her experiences in Merlain had given no appriciation for its sprawl and one could cross the longest dimention of Athens, Kansas on foot in an hour.  The pain in her thighs was only slightly overcome by Katherine’s unschooled attempts at mind-over-matter exercises.  She tried to imagine the living room back home and how quaint it was.  Not the one she left, but the one she would have one day.  She mentally placed slimline sectional in the far corner next to the upright piano.  In front of the sofa was an oval oaken coffee table with a spread of current magazines and a potted vine.  In her mind, Katherine filled each nook and cranny with something modern and sleek, yet warm and cozy.  Yet, all she wanted to do was flop onto the sofa and armchairs becasue the walk across the room took so much effort with all the water in the way.

She was just about at her wit’s end and ready to break her promise to herself when Drex held up his hand and stopped the human caravan.  He pointed to a sign on the tunnel wall.  Katherine placed her hands on her thighs to catch her breath, but the extra pressure threatened their collapse so she stood back up and started to sway on her legs to give them a little relief.

“I know where we are,” Drex said.  “We are headed in the right direction, but there are two problems.”

“What?” Evan panted.

“One, the water will continue to slow us down.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but its been rising a little.  If that continued, our progress will tome to a crawl.  The other is that.”  He pointed and swung his light in front of them.  It was only then that Katherine realized that her mental games had her looking down instead of ahead.  It was faint, but she could see in the distance another tunnel.  Was it smaller?

“That will not let us through,” Drex said.  “Our choices are to go back, which seems like a death sentence.  Assuming the house was not destroyed, we know the place is being watched.  Or we go up.”  This time he focused his light above, showing a hatch door and a collapsable ladder.  All eyes turned to Evan.  

After looking at all the faces of exhaustion before him, Evan asked Drex, “Where will we be?”

“Without drawing a very bad map, we would still have a bit of a journey ahead of us.”

“But it would be faster,” Evan said.

“Should be,” Drex replied.

“But we are well outside of the area we scouted, so there’s no way to know what Merlain or Coellum traps or skirmish we might walk into.”

“That’s true.”

Evan once again checked his surroundings.  “Can you carry the princess?” he asked Drex.

Drex turned to Lillian, “Can you hold tight to my shoulders on the way up and not let go?”

“There’s only one way to know,” Lillian said with a weak smile.

“How are you doing?” Evan looked at Katherine.

“Anything you can do,” she said with a wink at her husband.  He smiled back.  “You’ve led us this far.  We aren’t dead.  I trust whatever decision you make.”

Katherine recognized her voice but not the words.  Moreover, as she replayed the words in her mind they filled her with fear and confidence.  Did she trust him?  She said she did, so she must.  Is this how trust worked?  Someone takes risks and succeeds, and that leads to trust?  And then there was that look again, that golden retriever look.  Only more so.  Even though Katherine doubted her own words and thought about taking them back, she knew she couldn’t.  The warmth in her heart toward her husband and the look of love and confidence on his face was something so fragile, so delicate.  She knew she could break it with a breath, but she wanted it to live, to take root, and to grow. 

“Up it is,” Evan said, not breaking eye contact with Katherine.  “I’ll poke my head out first and see what we’re getting into.”  He found a foothold in the tunnel wall that gave him enough reach to extend the ladder down to them.  As he climbed, it was also clear that his legs must have been as depleted as Katherine’s, as each step looked like it took active coordination between his mind, his will, his muscles, and his knees.  Evan made it to the top and, by Drex’s lantern light, was able to crack the hatch’s seal and open it slightly.  After scanning for a few seconds, he called down, “Looks like the coast is clear.  Let’s go.  Be careful on the steps; they’re slick.

Katherine watched as Drex carried Lillian slowly and deliberately up the ladder.  Once his feet cleared her head, Katherine began her ascent.  She didn’t know what would happen if Lillian lost her hold on Drex, but she wanted to be in a position to at least break her fall back into the water.  Evan pushed the hatch open once Drex was close to him.  Daylight streamed into the tunnel, causing Katherine’s eyes to squeeze tight and her feet to stop moving.  She thought she heard the sound of her pupils slamming shut.  Katherine caught her composure and squinted her way to the top of the ladder.  She felt a strong hand grab under her arm as her body was bathed in the warmth of the star’s light.