At this particular juncture, however, Ornery hated Oram along with everyone else, so she did not take him with her. Besides, he was bossy and wouldn’t let her go where she wanted to, and today she intended to do precisely what she wanted to and nothing else because that’s what Pearla was doing, so it was only fair.
Ornery rose before the family wakened, filled her pockets with apples, a chunk of bread, a bit of cheese, and went out into the early morning. Not far from the farm was the beginning of a southerly-tending valley, from which she climbed over a ridge to a narrow canyon, and from the end of that into a lava tube that had only bits of its roof left, here and there. Far along this tube, among areas of tumbled stones, was a pit into a lower tube, one that could be climbed down into by way of shattered ledges, and then there was a long walk down that tube, lit only by occasional gleams from cracks above, to a darker pit, one leading to a tube three layers down. Easing the descent was a rather short rope, which was all Oram and Ornery had been able to get away with. Rope was valuable, even short bits of it that could be made into bridles or gate ties or whatever.
Ornery lowered herself onto a steep pile of stone that had fallen from the pit opening, a pile which made descent possible as otherwise the rope would have been far too short. Lying against the rockpile were the torches Ornery and Oram had fashioned the last time they had come here, and at the edge of the dim light that came through the pit opening was the cairn of rocks they had piled to distinguish one direction in the tunnel from the other. Both ways looked the same, dark holes leading endlessly into the black, and since the rope often twisted and turned during the climb down, it was difficult to tell one direction from the other. It was probable, Oram had claimed, that monsters lived down there. There were many stories of such. Big wriggly things that set up stones called Joggiwagga, and huge four-eyed flyers called Eigers. So far as Ornery knew, they were only stories told to the twins by someone she couldn’t remember.
On a conveniently located smooth stone beside the pile, Ornery sat down to take her breakfast. After eating, she would light the torch and go some way in the direction marked by the cairn, not that she expected to find much. She and Oram had already explored the other way to the limit of their light, finding nothing but rock and more pits and the bones of various things that had maybe fallen in and couldn’t get out again, all of them too small to be monsters.
She had finished her bread and cheese and had just set her teeth into an apple when the rock beneath her shivered. At first all her rumination about Wilderneers and monsters came flooding back and she figured something huge was coming down the tunnel. She dropped her lunch forthwith and started up the rope, only to be shaken off, tumbled down the stone pile, and left bruised and battered on the floor of the tunnel while the world went crazy around her. Stone cracked. Rocks fell. The pit opening seemed to jitter in midair, like an eye blinking against a glare. There was a sound from inside, outside, somewhere, that went past the limits of noise into something heard with the skin and the bones, a sound so huge she could not exist inside it.
So, for a time, she stopped existing. When she came to herself again, the world was quiet, the pit opening was gray with dusk, and from it the rope hung like a worm on a web, twisting gently in a hot little wind that came from down the tunnel. Windward, far along the tube, shone a fiery light. Something had fallen, letting the outside in, or something inside was burning. She thought of going to see, but she ached so that she could not make herself go an inch farther than necessary, and she was, besides, overcome with a feeling of such grief and horror she could not move. In her dazed condition she seemed to hear a gigantic voice calling to her, though it wasn’t her name it called, which made no sense at all.