Undermajordomo Minor (22 page)

D
ue to the danger inherent in attempting escape, and because of his age and general decrepitude, Tomas was not enthusiastic about this idea at first glance. He became sullen in the afternoon, and it seemed that a rift was afoot, but by the time evening rolled around he had found some deeper reserve of spirit and proclaimed, more loudly than was necessary, that he would join the expedition.

Surely there was a connection between his change of heart and news of Mewe, just as Mr. Broom's decision to leave was informed by the knowledge that the Baroness had returned to the castle. Lucy, for his part, had made up his mind to leave before Mr. Broom had brought it up, even; and he would have gone on his own if need be, for his thoughts were of Klara alone, and his desire to win her back superseded all other concerns. Regarding preparations, there were none to speak of, other than for the men to come to an agreement about the specifics of the method of departure and escape. This was discussed at length, and resulted in disagreement but thankfully not division.

Mr. Broom was for action. He wished to lead the three, for he was, he said, the strongest of the group, a truth which neither Tomas nor Lucy could dispute, though they were the both of them left wondering just what Mr. Broom's strength would avail anyone other than Broom himself. Beyond his physical capabilities Mr. Broom claimed, with an amount of humility or reluctance, to be in
possession of second sight. He often felt its influence, he said, and believed that if he were to focus intently and utilize this gift to its utmost, then he would guide the group to freedom.

Tomas sat awhile, blinking. “This is news to me, my friend.”

“It's not something one goes about boasting of.”

“And why not? Here we've been discussing topics such as our favorite numerals.” Tomas closed his eyes. “Tell me, please: what am I thinking about now?”

Mr. Broom shook his head. “It doesn't work like that.”

Tomas stuck a hand behind his back. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“It doesn't work like
that
.”

“How does it work?”

“I believe I can find the way out of here,” Mr. Broom said.

“And yet you didn't on any of our prior expeditions. And why not? Sheer modesty, I wouldn't wonder.”

Mr. Broom had gone red in the face. “Perhaps you have a plan of your own.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“Do you or don't you?”

Tomas drew himself up. “If anyone is to lead the expedition,” he said, “I believe that should be me.”

“Oh?” said Mr. Broom. “And why is that, can you tell me?”

“Because I am the eldest, and so I have the wisdom of time on my side.”

“The wisdom of time?” said Mr. Broom. Apparently he found the phrase humorous.

“That's what I said,” Tomas answered sternly.

“Does one always accompany the other?”

“In my case I believe it does. Beyond that, and this is inarguable, I have journeyed upriver far more often than you have, and so am more familiar with the terrain.”

“That's one way to put it. Another way might be to say that you are more familiar with failing to surpass the terrain.”

Tomas leveled a finger at Broom. “I saw the sun set thousands of times before you drew your first breath.”

“And so?”

“I was entering women when you were still soiling your short pants.”

“And so?”

“I slit a man's throat before you could milk a cow.”

“I still can't milk a cow. But I think your plan is pure foolishness.”

“It's no more foolish than yours.”

“Yes, but my plan is mine, and so I prefer it.”

“And just as naturally, I do mine.”

Arriving thus at stalemate, the pair lured Lucy into the fray, asking which plan he himself thought best. Believing each one to be equally poor, Lucy admitted to having no preference at all, a statement which effectively offended both men, who together began to chastise him, for here they were busily concocting schemes while he sat by, marking time, contributing nothing whatsoever.

All this to say there was strife among them, and confidence was ebbing with each passing minute. In the end, Lucy did come up with a plan of his own, and as it happened, this was the idea they could all three of them agree on.

L
ucy hadn't eaten in nearly three days by this point. Tomas and Mr. Broom found this alarming in that it had potential to upset their escape, and so they brought him another fish and sat before him; and whereas earlier they were disinterested in whether or not he chose to eat, now they were all the more keen, so that Lucy felt a pressure to please them. His hunger was startlingly vivid; it stabbed and pinwheeled in his stomach and seemed at times to possess the attributes of color. And yet he felt he simply could not perform the action of severing the metallic scales with his teeth, and he told his comrades he wouldn't do it.

“It will give you pluck, and so you must,” said Tomas.

“If we're leaving in the morning, as Mr. Broom says, then I can do without.”

Mr. Broom shook his head. “We'll be days in the darkness, and it will take our every bit of strength to see this through, if it's even possible to see it through. I'm sorry, Lucy, but we really must insist that you eat.”

Lucy glared at the fish, knowing that he would consume the thing but hating it, and unsure just how to start. Tomas touched the tip of his finger to the fish's belly. “Here,” he said. “Just shred it away.” At last Lucy drew the fish to his face and bit into its flesh; and at the same moment he did this, the fish fairly exploded, shooting out a clammy glut of roe, for it was a female, and had been on its way to the spawning ground when captured in the stone corral.
Lucy was incredulous, and he sat very still, roe clinging to his cheek and chin. When Mr. Broom and Tomas ceased laughing, they took the fish away and fetched him another, a male. Lucy did not dawdle with this, but consumed it with a certain violence or anger. Soon the fish was but a head, tail, and skeleton; and as Lucy felt his body accepting the much-needed nourishment, then did his mood lighten. He lay back on the sand, watching the distant purple circle which was the shading sky framed by the mouth of the Very Large Hole. His stomach squirmed loudly, relentlessly; he was listening to this with dispassionate amusement when a consequential thought, like a bird flown through an open window, came into his mind and perched there. He sat up alertly, looking across at Tomas and Mr. Broom, both of whom had also eaten and were ruminating upon their own concerns.

“The fish head upriver when they spawn, do they not?” said Lucy.

“They do,” said Tomas.

“How far upriver do they travel?”

“I don't rightly know. Do you, Mr. Broom?”

“A good long while, anyway,” Mr. Broom answered. “Why do you want to know?”

“Well,” said Lucy, “if we were to follow one, mightn't she lead us to freedom?”

When he said this, Mr. Broom, too, sat up. Tomas wore a skeptical expression; and yet there was a stiffness or seriousness to him as well. He asked, “And how might one do such a thing, even if we weren't making the journey in total darkness?”

Lucy was staring at the woman's boot, situated once again in the center of their circle. He believed he knew the answer to Tomas's question but he didn't respond right away, forcing himself to act with calm. He took the boot up and poured out the water. Removing the lace, he laid this in a straight line before him, watching it awhile before unlacing his own boots, and tying each of these to the first, tripling its length. Mr. Broom drew his fingers to his
mouth in a gesture of surprise and recognition; now he also began unlacing his boots. Tomas didn't understand what was happening, and had to be enlightened; once this was done, he still didn't want to give up his laces. But Lucy and Mr. Broom entreated him, and though Tomas thought it far-fetched, neither did he want to spoil their fun, and so he handed over his laces as well, and these were tied to the rest, so that there was now a single lace of goodly length laid out between them. They studied this for a long while, and with reverence, representative as it was of their last chance for escape. Later, and the men slept, dreaming their dreams of vainglory, the tongues of their boots lolling in the sand as if exhausted.

T
he idea, of course, was to tie the string of laces to the tail of a fish on its way to the spawning ground and, as one walking a dog on a lead, follow the fish to the river's wellspring. It was, Lucy thought, not just a good idea, but the only idea—the only logical method other than blind luck or brute force which might see them home again. He was prouder, perhaps, than he'd ever been in his life, and it was difficult not to discuss and rediscuss the idea's inception and canny brilliance with the others, neither of whom was, Lucy felt, appropriately enthusiastic or complimentary about it. Mr. Broom seemed to think it almost a shared notion, or one which was so obvious that he would have come to it himself in the blue-skied by and by.

They selected the fish from the corrals, a moderately sized female who had been caught only the morning prior, and so, they hoped, had not had time to become idle. Tomas held her still while Lucy attached the bootlace to her tail. While this was happening she was full of fight, but once transferred to the river she merely floated in place, and the three men stood and stared, waiting. Lucy gave a tug on the bootlace but nothing happened. He gave a second tug, less gentle this time—still nothing. He hadn't considered the possibility of failure, somehow; and in the face of it, he felt a gross despair gathering about his heart. But now, and with no small amount of relief, he saw the bootlace was growing taut, and that the fish was pulling toward the mouth of the cave. She had
been temporarily demoralized by her capture and imprisonment, or else was flummoxed by the fact of her tail being fettered and had needed a moment to gather her wits, but the spawning instinct had returned, and she would see the impulse through to its natural conclusion.

Lucy, Mr. Broom, and Tomas, led by the increasingly impatient fish, stepped headlong into the roar of the cavern.

T
here is darkness and there is darkness,
thought Lucy.
This is darkness.

At the start of the journey they had called to one another, called out their best wishes, laughing at the oddity of their lives, elated by their adventure. But then Tomas's chatter fell away, and after that Lucy's, and lastly Mr. Broom's, and now did the trial of their escape truly begin, and they set to work with wholehearted diligence.

The water was never any more than waist-deep, and the current was not particularly strong, but the fact of their constantly battling against it was enough to wear them down, and they soon found themselves humbled, woefully fatigued, each of them sheltering in his heart a fear of death which was acute, and acutely real. Later their flesh went numb, which on the one hand dimmed their pain, but also made them clumsy, so that they tripped over unseen rocks and boulders and were dunked frequently; each would lurch up from the water with a great, heaving inhalation of sheer discomfort.

Time and again they arrived at a fork in the river, identified by the bisection of sound before them, and time and again the fish performed without hesitation, yanking agitatedly on the lace, which Lucy had tied to his finger. There was no telling if it were day or night but the men walked on just as far as they could, until on the verge of collapse, when they located by touch an outcropping of
sand and rock; they crawled onto this and laid their weary bodies down. The fish had no desire for relaxation, and the lace quivered with a relentless pressure Lucy found maddening. Lest he not sleep at all, he tied it to a rock. When they awoke they couldn't guess at how long they had rested, only that they hadn't rested enough. In spite of this they stood, and stretched their aching muscles, resuming the trek upriver, for they knew their time was limited. They could be injured; they could starve; their will might give out; they might freeze—it was paramount to move while they still had their strength, and the unspoken fact was that the chances of survival were shrinking away with each moment gone by. The darkness was so complete that when Lucy blinked his eyes there was no discernible visual difference, which struck him as fantastical or impossible, as one clapping his hands together and finding that this action produced no sound.

Save for sleeping, they paused only to eat; they had two fish apiece on their persons, one in each trouser pocket. After these were consumed, then did their mood grow all the more peculiar. As is typical of long journeys, they lost their desire to communicate with one another, and lapsed into silence; they were as good as alone now, and each found his thoughts more inclined to wander abstractly. This brought about periods of peaceful calm in Lucy, moments where he forgot his hunger and miserable cold, moments when the fish, as though likewise dazed, did not yank on the lace but moved more slowly, so that Lucy could forget the fact of its existence and purpose, as well as his own. These transient instances were merciful but fleeting; soon enough, Lucy's woes would return, announcing themselves cruelly, loudly, inarguably.

Days came and went when finally Lucy crossed some nameless threshold, and began to find everything about his situation very funny indeed. He supposed this was the signal that the end was near, a notion which was of no great concern. When it occurred to him he hadn't felt any tension in the lace for a while, he drew his hand back, and now he discovered it was no longer attached
to his finger. This sobered him temporarily, and he called out to Mr. Broom and Tomas, but heard no answer. He ceased walking and waited, thinking they would soon catch up with him, but they never did. The swirling sound of the river encircled him, and confused his equilibrium. He had the sensation he was standing on a steep incline, though he knew this wasn't so; when he closed his eyes it felt as though he were sleeping standing up. What if he were to simply fall away, into the water, to be led back to the safety of the sandy island? But if he were to do this, mightn't he die, his skull dashed on some jagged rock?
No matter,
he thought, and his body was tilting backward when he realized that when he'd closed his eyes, it had become ever so slightly darker. He opened and shut his eyes several times to make sure this was an actuality; and finding it so, he located a hoard of resolve from the innermost region of himself. He took a moment to regroup, and continued apace. The light was increasing.