Seaward by Susan Cooper Page B

only of the reassuring grip of his hand. Blackness was all around them; she stared into it, eyes wide, and saw only blank dark. It seemed to fill all the world, all her senses. Down they went, further and further. Uneasiness curled round her mind—and then suddenly there was no room for it, or for anything.
    The dark exploded around them. Above their heads, somewhere, there came a dreadful roar as if the world were splitting apart; a long terrible thunder, bursting in great booming crashes that made them flinch down against the stairs. They felt the stone shaking beneath their feet, and heard rocks and stones rattling down the steps towards them. Together they waited, paralysed, caught in the fear of the tunneled stairway crashing down onto their heads.
    After a long time, the uproar began to die away, andthrough the singing in their ears they could hear only an occasional muffled thud above, like the falling of a last loose stone. The air was filled with a strong smell of dust.
    Cally felt a tug at her hand; Westerly was crawling back up the stairs. She went with him; nothing on earth could have induced her to let go of his hand. They could tell when they had reached the dividing wall only when their heads hit the stone. There was no glimmer of light above. Reaching up her free hand to find the gap through which they had come, Cally could feel only solid irregular rock, and the dust in the air now was so thick that it made her choke.
    Westerly said hoarsely, “It’s blocked for good—down again, quick.”
    They slithered back down the stairway for more steps than she could count, until he paused.
    Cally said shakily, “The tower.”
    â€œYes. The People—just before the sun went down—”
    â€œWe’d be dead if it weren’t for you,” Cally said. “Buried. If you hadn’t made me come down here.”
    Westerly shifted his hand in hers; both were wet with sweat. “Maybe we are buried,” he said.
    â€œI don’t care,” Cally said. “From now on I’ll walk on the grass, whatever the sign says.”
    Westerly laughed weakly, and began feeling his way on down the steps in the darkness, leading her with him. They could hear nothing but the slow slither of their tentativefeet reaching out. The air was cool; the smell of dust grew fainter. Westerly tried to convince himself that this must mean there was air coming into the tunnel from somewhere far ahead; that they must be walking to something more than a dead end.
    â€œListen!” Cally said, stopping him.
    Very faintly, as if it were buried deep in the earth beneath them, they heard a slow muffled thumping, regular as breathing. As they listened, puzzled, the darkness began to give way, until they could see the dim outline of the walls on either side, glimmering with a faint luminosity of their own. Peering close, Westerly saw that there were tiny bright particles embedded all through the rock. They glowed more and more brightly as he watched, pulsating gently in time to the strange heartbeat sound. Cally rubbed her finger on the wall, and when she brought it away, the fingertip was faintly glowing.
    Then she stood still, lifting her head. Over the distant thumping, she began to hear new sounds.
    They were faint but all-pervading; they came into her mind like a dream, flowing in and out of one another, never definite. Music was there, but no clear voice or tune; she heard birds singing, the sounds of animals, a sighing that could have been the wind in the trees or the sound of the unknown sea. Then there were voices, murmuring, indistinct.
    She clutched Westerly’s arm, and knew that he could hear them too.
    â€œWhat is it?” she whispered.
    The wordless music drifted through the air, and with it muffled conversations they could not quite hear, broken often by laughter. Then for a moment two voices rose above the rest, though still faint and faraway: a man’s voice and then a