Beyond The Bridge [ONC 2023] // Longlisted

Chapter Eleven

Neither of us knows how long we sleep. When we wake, Levi first and me a little while later when he moves his shoulder, nothing in the tunnels has changed. The same darkness surrounds us, the same quiet suffocates us. We're still alone.

Levi stretches, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders that, like mine, are most likely stiff from sleeping sitting up. He stifles a yawn, the sound breaking through the silence. I stretch too, allowing my back to arch a little and loosen up from how I've been sleeping. My neck aches from sleeping on Levi's shoulders, but the exhaustion has lifted, albeit only a little.

Light spots once again dance in front of my eyes, but I blink them away and allow the darkness to return before me. The ground still feels like it's swaying beneath me, but the slight ache at the back of my head has faded and I feel like Levi and I can continue on.

"Here," Levi's hand finds mine, and he passes a quarter of a pork pie to me. "Before we get moving, we should get something in our stomach, even if it is something small."

"All you think about is your stomach." I roll my eyes but accept the quarter.

"At this point, that's all I have going for me. My leg doesn't hurt as much now, so we should get going soon."

"Alright, as long as you think you're ready."

"I am. How about you? Are you still feeling dizzy?"

"No," I lie. "I think I'm fine. Come on."

I stuff the quarter of pork pie into my mouth and stand up, stumbling a little, but it is too dark for Levi to notice the unsteadiness. From the ground, I take up the candle and relight it with a match that Levi hands me from his satchel. We'll have to change the candle soon. The small candle once again lights up the tunnel, but there is still too much darkness around us to know where we're going. I have to hope we can make decent headway before we stop again.

Levi manages to pull himself to his feet, shooting me one of his signature elfish grins, which looks a little sinister in the flickering candlelight. He takes a tentative step forward with his resting on the wall of the tunnel. Even though he winces, he keeps going with the satchel swinging from his shoulder. I follow him, stumbling over rocks.

The candle guides us, but the tunnel looks the same with no change in terrain except for the rocks jutting out of the ground or the walls. Every once in a while, Levi presses the palm of his hand against one of the rocks. Under my feet, the ground continues to move and I stumble over the rocks as I struggle to keep my footing. If Levi notices, he doesn't say anything.

We continue through the tunnel, Levi limping with the help of the wall, and me struggling to keep steady with my stomach churning and the pork pie threatening to make a reappearance. This tunnel appears to go on for far longer than the first tunnel we found ourselves in and I wonder if we are simply walking further into the ground than approaching the cave, which would be our escape.

"Someone must be out looking for us," Levi says, pausing for a moment to catch his breath.

"Maybe, but they won't know we're down here. They might not even know we're together."

"I think Mother will figure it out when she discovers that you're missing, too. She saw us on the bridge the other day and gave me quite an earful." He chuckles. "As for the other part, they might come across the cave and if they find the cave, they'll find the hole we fell through."

"That still doesn't mean they'll find us."

"It doesn't, but it helps."

He shrugs and continues forward. I follow, wishing I had his optimism and ability to see a way out of the tunnels and back to the surface. Although I wanted to hope that we would find our way back to the cave, we still have no idea if we are walking in the right direction or if the tunnel will lead us to the cave. No one will be coming to find us. We have to find our own way out, but that seems like a near-impossible task.

It would be a miracle if we manage to make it back to the cave, especially as we have no water and have been walking for ages. My mouth feels dry, and my lips are rough like sand after all the walking and sweating we've been doing without having any water to replace the lost liquid. I wonder if that's why I've been stumbling over the rocks so much and struggling to see straight as the ground moves beneath me. Mother had always made sure I drank enough, especially in the heat. Now I knew why.

The candle burns down until it is nothing more than a small stub; the flame diminishing with each step we take. We'll have to move on to our next candle if we want to continue moving. I wonder if we might be able to walk through the tunnels without the candle and simply hope our eyes adjust to the surrounding darkness. It might be dangerous as we won't be able to see the rocks under our feet, but it would help to ration our candles.

We walk for a little while longer until the candle flickers and the flame disappears, plunging us into darkness once more. I hear Levi stop and then listen to the sound of him rummaging through the wax paper packages in the satchel as he searches for one of the other candles he packed.

I place my hand on his arm to stop him. "Maybe we should go without for a little while, at least until we take another break. We'll run out of candles before long."

"Good idea." He pauses. "I hope we find some water soon. I'm so thirsty."

"Me too. Maybe we'll come across the stream, or at least water running down the walls of the tunnel. It will be better than nothing."

"I do enjoy the taste of sand water."

I laugh, tentatively reaching a foot out in front of me to check for any obstacles. I keep close to Levi as we continue on in the darkness, hoping against hope that we find a source of water soon.

~~~

Away to Realania by AJ_Ortega

A lonely boy named Angelio encounters a gateway in the forest to the enchanted world of Realania; there, he's promised a solution to his problem in the human world--but all is not what it seems.

First Published - March 11th, 2023