The Land of Miu (Land of Miu, #1, 2nd ed.)

Chapter 3

No light.

Kate waited for her eyes to adjust, but nothing happened. She looked up, but the circular entrance had disappeared. The early morning light had gone. She held the rope ladder until her fingers tingled and her legs wobbled.

“What’s going on?” She looked up again, then down into the darkness below. She climbed the ladder and reached up with an outstretched hand. Solid rock.

Kate groaned. Down was her only option.

Laughter.

“Emma?”

The laughter echoed off the walls, filtering up the well from far below, filling Kate with hope. Shaking, she gingerly lowered one foot until she felt support under her soft slipper. She lowered the other foot and moved down another rung. Moving slowly and carefully, she continued down, down, down.

***

Unaware of the passing of time, not knowing how far she had gone, Kate’s focus remained on the rope. She tried to ignore her sore hands and aching feet. Emma managed to move down the ladder and so would she.

How long had it been since she heard the laughter? There were no more sounds to guide her, to comfort her. Often Kate paused and looked up, but she couldn’t face the long climb back the way she had come. Besides, retracing her steps would only lead her back to a dead end. She needed to rest and, most of all, she needed to find Emma.

Her concentration lapsed and she slipped.

One hand left the rope, and her fingers scraped the stone wall. The unseen graze throbbed. Snatching her hand back, a light sticky substance covered her palm. Blood? No, it was something else. A cobweb. How big was the spider that made the web? Was it deadly? Kate pictured giant spiders as big as the tunnel she was in, with long hairy legs and a multitude of ugly black eyes. Her scream bounced off the walls and faded away. The rope shook violently.

“Don’t be silly. They don’t exist. Stay calm.” Kate cursed her vivid imagination. She had to remain rational.

“Kate?” called Emma from a distance. “Is that you?”

Relieved, Kate forced herself not to cry. She pushed the thought of man-eating spiders out of her mind. “Emma? I’m on the rope ladder. Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you.”

No reply.

With renewed energy, Kate continued her long descent, one rung at a time. Then, a dim light edged its way in. Her eyes finally picked out the shape of the rock walls and the ladder. Finally, her foot found solid ground. Terrified to let go of the life line to the world above, Kate held onto the rope firmly with one hand and turned around. Trembling, her legs weak, she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw solid light in the distance.

“Emma?”

The light flickered as someone moved about, then another light bounced towards her, growing bigger and bigger by the second. With it came the echo of running feet, and finally Emma’s smiling face as she came to a stop in front of Kate. One hand held a flaming torch above her head.

Horrified, Kate took the wooden torch from Emma’s grasp and looked at it for a second. “You could have burned yourself. Where’d you get this?”

Emma pointed to the distant light. “Over there,” she said, her breathe came in short gasps. “You took forever coming down here. Sophie said you would because you came the long way, but I didn’t believe her.”

“Emma, don’t start ...” Kate let the reprimand fade away as she looked down at Emma’s face.

Kate looked in the direction of the light, and then at the flaming torch in her hand. “Oh, I see. We must be in a mine shaft.” The tension in her aching joints dispersed. “The workers will get us out of here. We’ll be home in time for breakfast.”