Building Blocks (8 page)

Without light the room moved out around him again, but the dark got heavier, as if the earth above was pressing down on it. It was cool here, and dry. Brann gulped in air, suddenly worried that the air would run out, then reminded himself that he'd have to be a lot deeper, and sealed in somehow, before that could even begin to happen. But it felt like it could happen, with the light gone. It felt like it was happening.

His eyes tried to make out any shape, any shadow, but they couldn't see anything. He felt the dark air closing around his body. He could feel the hard, uneven rock against the soles of his feet. He could
hear—nothing, nothing but deep, muffled darkness. He knew you couldn't actually hear nothing, but the hollow soundlessness was so different from anything he had ever used his ears to hear, it really felt like hearing something. Then he thought he could hear his heart beating fast in his ears. It really was scary. Brann resisted the impulse to the free the light for another minute, to let the scariness soak in a little more. If you were lost in a cave, he thought to himself, saying the words out slowly, this is what it would feel like, the earth pressing in all around you, only a narrow belt of air holding it off. And what if there was an earthquake, right now? It wouldn't have to be an earthquake. Because of the way strata of rocks were connected underground, once one little thing shifted, rocks for hundreds of miles around would shift too, readjusting. Then the dark walls here would shift, grinding probably, closing of—

He freed the light and shone it around, grinning to himself. He started on his circuit around the room, moving always to the right, knowing that it closed off in basically a circular shape, so as long as he didn't move out of the circle he wouldn't get lost. By looking carefully, he could see occasional entrances off the room, but you had to really use the
light to find them, looking beyond and behind the rocks, up and down the walls of the room. He counted three, then up to seven, and then another three.

A lot of entrances for a space that wasn't in fact that big. The caves must spread out like a honeycomb network, like—what did they call the burial places in Rome—the catacombs? You'd really have to know your way around to move out of this room. A couple of the entrances were overhead, unreachable. A couple were like the one he'd used, ledges, and they were the hardest to pick out.

If you were a slave, escaping, you might use one of the entrances that came high up. You would fall down, into darkness. What an idea. And what would it have been like under the river, really deep down, probably with the rock slippery underfoot and the walls slimy, cold all year round, wet, and wondering if the river would make its way through and smash you against the rocks even though you were only an arm's length away from the walls—Brann shivered.

OK, that was enough, it was about time to get back to where Kevin waited. He moved to the right, along the wall, looking for the ledge. He came to it.
He didn't realize until he'd found it that he had, in fact, been afraid he wouldn't find it. He put his arm into it and shone the light down it. The beam, narrowed by the low ceiling, reflected off stone and shone back on itself, down an endless tunnel.

Brann's chest tightened, like an iron band had been drawn around it. He put his face into the opening. It wasn't an endless tunnel, he saw; it was a false tunnel, the roof gradually sliding down to meet the floor.

Don't panic, he muttered aloud. Slowly, move on, keep checking. He forced his memory to recreate the shape of the opening he was looking for and forced his muscles to keep slow.

And he couldn't find it.

He tried to remember just how many openings into the room there had been, but then he remembered that probably like a man lost in the woods he had been going in circles and circles, getting nowhere, without any sense of direction—

“Stop it!” he told himself. His voice echoed strangely. He had always moved to the right, there was nothing to do with direction in here. It was just recognition. But his memory was crowded with
undistinguishable shapes, all of them black and rocky—he couldn't recognize anything.

And the light was getting yellower, and that meant it was giving out, and he'd better find his opening, fast.

Brann's heart beat and his legs shook, partly with the effort required not to break into a run. His hands shook with fear. He gulped for air.

He made himself sit down, crouching with his knees up against his chest, his back against the rough wall. He counted to ten, then twenty. He said the alphabet backwards. He shone the light on his feet, to keep from seeing the stone underground room around him, just a few short feet, really, from the earth's surface—if only he could find it.

He had a couple of cuts on the heel of his right foot. He licked his fingers and wiped the blood off, then licked the blood off his own fingers.

His mind raced around the room banging up against the walls, trying to remember something, anything that would help. His body wanted to move the same way. What was he going to do? He had to do something; you couldn't just sit there and wait.

Because he was trapped—trapped in this circular
cave and he'd be really stupid to try any tunnel he wasn't sure of, because he could crawl deeper away until he died. Of hunger. Of exhaustion. And he'd thought there was some terrific special reason for him to have traveled back in time. Well, maybe this was it, and maybe later a later Brann would come and find his bones. . . . Except that couldn't be, because he was the later Brann. So he was trapped in a time circle, and he'd never even be able to warn that later Brann because he'd never get out, and the later Brann would never know until now, when he was trapped in the cave. That was fate with a vengeance.

Brann sat shaking, his teeth chattering, his unseeing eyes fixed on his ten toes coming out from his feet in two tidy rows. He felt like his brain was cracking in half. He had never thought about how you could go crazy from being afraid. He'd heard of it, of course, but those were just ghost stories. But he had to stop thinking or he would go crazy, he had to stop being afraid, or being this much afraid. But he couldn't.

All right, he said to himself, his chest so tight he had to push it out every time he wanted to take a breath, so what. It's fate. And you had to grab fate if you were worth anything. That's the hard truth, he
said to himself, you hear? If you have to grab fate then you grab it, like Arthur grabbed Excalibur to take the sword out of the stone. Because he must have grabbed Excalibur the same way, at the end, to throw it back into the water, the hilt hard and heavy in his hand, and both of them were fate.

The band around Brann's chest tightened and he started to cry—sniveling like a baby, whimpering, he thought in a back corner of his brain. And he couldn't stop, because after all he couldn't grab onto his fate. He pulled up his T-shirt to wipe his nose on, furious at himself.

“Oh God, what am I going to do?” he wondered, and heard his own terrified voice.

Another voice called his name: “Brann? Brann?”

Stupid chicken, Brann said to himself, sucking in air to clear his nose, rubbing the back of his left hand across his eyes to hide the marks of tears. If he'd only thought, Kevin was outside and he wasn't very far in—he'd panicked. He felt like a jerk, a real jerk. He hoped nothing showed.

“In here,” he said. “Can you see the light?”

“Brann?”

“Here,” Brann said. He moved out to the center
of the room so the light would shine as widely as possible. He turned toward the direction of the sound of a body scraping down a tunnel.

“Brann?”

“See the light?”

“Yes, OK.”

Brann shone the light toward the voice. But the echoes had deceived him and Kevin hurried toward him from the darkness behind him. Tripped, stumbled against him, and almost knocked the flashlight out of his hand. Brann wheeled around to shine it in the boy's face.

“I'm sorry,” Kevin said.

“No harm done,” Brann said, just glad to not be alone in there, glad to see another face. He put his hand on Kevin's shoulders, and relief made his knees weak. The narrow bones under his hand surprised him, they were so round and small. “Let's get going,” he said. “I'll tell you—” but he didn't finish the sentence.

Kevin stood aside, waiting for Brann to move. Brann waited for Kevin to move. They looked at one another, in their pale circle of light.

“You didn't mark where you came in?” Brann asked.

“I was worried about you—it was a long time. I'm sorry. Don't you know how to get out?”

“If I did I'd have been out long ago,” Brann snapped.

“I'm sorry.”

“What are we going to do?” Brann asked, after along time. “I couldn't' find it. I looked and looked and I could only find the wrong ones.”

Kevin didn't say anything.

“You should have marked where you came in. You should always do that, it's just common sense,” Brann told the boy.

“I'm sorry,” Kevin said.

Brann let out an angry breath of air—and heard himself do that, just like his mother did, and his grandmother too. He heard the way he had just been talking to the kid, hammering. His brain had split, he thought to himself, and new things were getting into it.

“No, I should have marked it too and I didn't,” he said. “Let's sit down.” Why had Kevin followed him in? As long as Kevin was outside to go for help, Brann was OK, he'd finally figured that out. For all the good that did now. Back to the beginning, that's where they'd got to. Trapped still, only Kevin didn't
have to worry because it was for sure that Kevin would get out. Maybe that was what Brann's fate was supposed to be, they'd sit and starve and he'd die first and Kevin would chew on his bones and that would save Kevin's life until he was rescued. Then Kevin would grow up and get married and have three children until one disappeared one day.

“Will we die?” Kevin asked him.

“It's no good asking that question,” Brann told him.

They sat shoulder to shoulder, and Brann played the flashlight around on the indecipherable walls of stone, not expecting see anything.

“I guess we could, even so close to the surface. We could, couldn't we. I'd rather the with someone I like, wouldn't you?”

Brann didn't answer. He was staring at Kevin. “Aren't you scared?”

“Sure,” Kevin said. “But if you think about it—I mean if it has to happen, if it's fate—I'd much rather with you than anyone else.”

Brann couldn't think of what to say. Either the kid was really stupid or he was incredibly brave.

“I mean, I don't know about you, about your
family, but if you've run away—and my family, well, they wouldn't care much. Do you think?”

“No,” Brann admitted. He was astounded by this kid. “Your mother would.”

“She might if she wasn't so busy, but she's too tired and busy. It's not her fault, she just has to be. So it would be OK. I mean”—Kevin smiled his odd, sad smile—“It's not OK at all, but I wouldn't mind that much. What about you, though?”

Where did the kid get that kind of courage? Brann was wondering. “I'm glad you're here, anyway,” he said. “I was getting hysterical.”

“I don't think so,” Kevin told him.

“Oh yeah? Crying like a baby. Cross my heart.” Brann crossed his heart.

“I'm sorry,” Kevin said.

“Oh Kevin,” Brann said. “Look, it's not your fault at all, it's my fault. You warned me.” He felt the boy's slight body beside him. “I feel terrible about this.” Boy was that inadequate. “I wish my father was here,” Brann said without thinking. Without even thinking why he would wish that even under ordinary circumstances.

“My mom says wishes aren't good for anything.
She says if wishes were horses beggars would ride.”

“Yeah,” Brann agreed. Then it struck him—his father
was
here, and that struck him as pretty funny. He began to laugh. “Well, maybe your mother doesn't know everything,” he sputtered out, before he began to laugh again.

The laughter restored some of the pride he'd lost, alone. Because if you could laugh then you weren't entirely beaten down. The laughing, while Kevin stared at him as if he was crazy, washed away some of the shame. “Anyway,” he said.

“What's your father like?” Kevin asked him. Brann was seized by another fit of laughter. He had to wait to catch his breath to answer.

“He's nothing special, really. He's a nice guy, not successful, nothing special. Except—”

“Yeah?”

“Except, down deep, he's got a way of telling the truth. And that makes him pretty special. I mean, take most people, take me; if I can make people think what I want to have be true about me, then I'm satisfied—whether it's really true or not.”

“I don't believe that,” Kevin said.

“But not him.” Brann grinned to himself, deciding
whether or not to say the next thing he thought of. He decided he would: “He's a lot like you.”

“Oh,” Kevin said. Then, “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not,” Brann answered, surprising himself. “But we've got this problem, we better get moving.”

“Moving?”

Brann answered sarcastically, “You want to sit here and die quietly?”

“I didn't mean that,” Kevin apologized. “It's just—when you make something, you have to make it piece by piece and slowly. Putting it together from the bottom up. Maybe I didn't understand what you meant by moving.”

But he had, Brann realized. And he was right, because he wasn't scared like Brann was. “OK,” he said. Then a question struck him, “Like with people too, relationships get made piece by piece, don't they, that's the way to make relationships.”

Kevin shook his head. “Your relatives are born with you, you don't get to do anything. I mean if we try to think about it first, about how we're going to find the way out.”