****
A wizened old man sat in a wooden chair leaning forward on gnarly cane. His sharp eyes peered intently at the four standing in front of him with the disturbing intensity of a python staring down some piglets. “Okay, her story held up. Farbar also cleared her of being a spy or plant. However, since she knows about the camp now, she must learn the rules. We don’t need a loose cannon leading the guard down here,” old man Dawson said to Rava, Boden, Sanda and Traise. “Since you four brought her in, I am placing her education with you. That is all.”
The four left without a word. However, once they were clear and the old man couldn’t hear them anymore, Sanda voiced his utter disgust.
“Enough Sanda,” Rava snapped eventually. “You scared her and paid the price. Next time, don’t be so arrogant. It was your own fault she landed that blow, and you know it. However,” she continued, suddenly grinning, “when I’m done with her, she’ll be able to land it at will.”
Sanda groaned.
“Teach her properly,” Boden admonished the reluctant man. He locked eyes with Sanda for a moment, but Sanda looked away.
“What about you, Boden?” The disgruntled man said, pouting.
“I too,” the man of few words replied. There was a small smirk on his face as he glanced at Sand for a moment, but then he looked away. The smirk stayed though.
***
Sammy sat on a cot in a large tent, her right foot propped on a pillow. The tent was one of a number set up in a large open area somewhere in the sewers. An empty plate void of even crumbs sat next to her. In her lap, a pair of vermin hunting lepta pups lazed basking in her attention.
“Well, you seem to be in better shape,” Rava said, passing through the tent flaps. “Those two seem to have taken a liking to you, huh?”
Sammy’s face lit up on seeing Rava. “Yes ma’am. I like them lots. They’re so adorable.”
“Figures the little monsters would take naturally to a little monster,” Sanda said, entering after Rava. Sammy and her two companions glared at him, the two pups beginning to growl.
Traise entered next and chuckled. “Looks like she’s gaining allies left and right. Better watch out, Sanda.” He winked at Sammy. “Sanda and all manner of animals don’t get along.”
Sammy hesitated. Was it possible that this man was actually okay? Nice even? “So . . . So, if I were to tell their mother to sick him, she would?”
“Hey! Don’t go giving her any ideas,” Sanda cried out, more distressed about the idea than he would ever admit.
“You shouldn’t do it. She would probably kill the idiot,” Rava said. “That would cause you problems.”
Sammy looked disappointed, but nodded. “Okay.”
“She was really planning to do it,” Sanda said under his breath.
Boden had stepped into the tent sometime during this interaction and now stood a little to the side of the entrance.
Rava said, “Sammy, now that you know about the Camp, we have to teach you a few things. We cannot risk having the wrong people coming here. Thus, the four of us will be your teachers.”
Sammy glanced at Sanda and then pointed, “Even him?”
Rava grinned. “Yes, even Sanda. He knows some things you need to learn, despite everything.”
“Hey!” Sanda protested.
“If you say so,” Sammy said at the same time, her tone completely unconvinced. Boden touched his nose with his index finger, his hand covering his mouth. He clearly thought the interaction between the girl and Sanda hilarious.
And so the four began to mentor the lost waif, teaching her how to survive in the underworld community known as the Camp, how to navigate the streets, how to interact in general with society, and most importantly as far as Sammy was concerned, about glyphs. Of course that last only came about when they recognized that not doing so might actually be quite dangerous. Because they found out fairly soon, Sammy was someone who lost all sorts of common-sense battles to her curiosity.
Chapter Break
Three years and some months of intense training ended for the homeless waif when her three friends and mentors, plus one, suddenly vanished from the Camp. With their disappearance, her somewhat protected status in the underworld community also vanished. Being so young, the sharks began targeting her in short order.
“Rappa, Tambor, I think I need to find someplace safer than the Camp,” Sammy declared one day after escaping from a couple older boys stalking her on the streets. She had recognized them as members of one of the gangs that came to the Camp once in a while, but couldn’t remember which gang no matter how hard she tried.
Sammy scratched the ears of the two hounds. Neither would fit in her lap now, in fact each weighing more than she did dripping wet. “I don’t think I’ll be able to take you guys.” They whined at her, not sure exactly what she meant, but not liking the feelings she projected.
“Anyway, I’m going exploring today. Want to come with me while we still can?” They both barked once. “Good boys,” she enthused, scratching behind their ears vigorously and hugging them. She felt much safer having them with her, all things considered. Each lepta hound weighed over a hundred pounds and could rip apart opponents weighing three times that. The breed was something of a cross between a wolf and a panther, with all the ferocity and intelligence of both, thrice over.
In actuality, they were highly regulated animals and their presence in the Camp was surely illegal. Not that the Camp or Sammy worried about that sort of thing. All she knew was that Rappa and Tambor, shoot, all the other animals in the Camp too, were her friends.
This particular outing had a special purpose for Sammy. While Rava and the others had been teaching her how to live in the Camp and on the streets above, Sammy had grilled, er, carefully questioned them about the glyphs in the sewer tunnels. It seemed that the ancient sections had all sorts of magic embedded into their walls. Some for lighting, some to keep the air fresh, others to keep the water ways from blocking.
Boden had known the most about glyphs, but trying to pull information from him amounted to pulling information from a dead weasel. The information might be there, but getting information out of a dead weasel was pretty darn impossible.
Unfortunately, Sanda had known a lot about glyph magic too, but . . . . In the end, Sammy had been forced to get what information she could from Sanda, no matter how much she detested it. Dead weasels being, well, dead. He had not liked the process either and had resorted to giving her basic primers on the subject. From that fortuitous solution, Sammy found out about the existence of other, more advanced books which she planned to get her hands on eventually. Well, over three years had passed without managing that, but it was still one of her primary goals.
Still, with the help of the primers that jerk Sanda had provided, Sammy thought for sure she could figure out how the glyphs in the ancient sewers worked. She loved those older regions too. All of the passageways contained ornamental carvings, complex patterns that hid who knew how many glyphs. Still, sometimes Sammy wondered if the Ancients had spent more time on things other than making their ornate sewers that they might still be around.
Setting that aside, Sammy followed the sewers with her faithful friends to a section she knew few ever came too. It involved crawling through some narrow pipes that the hounds barely managed, but ensured no one would bother her while she experimented.
Arriving at her chosen location, she told the two lepta pups to stay in one of the tunnels. They plopped down to lounge obediently. Snorting at their attitude, Sammy entered a moderately sized juncture of eight waterways. Here the pooled runoff from seven tunnels emptied into a large pool of water. The pool then emptied down the eighth, much larger waterway. The eight-sided juncture had the normal stone walkways around the edge, but two stone paths crossed over the middle, meeting on a small, metal grated circle. Chains attached to the ceiling supported the stone paths and center circle both.
The pool of water covered the entire juncture and appeared to be very deep. None of the tributaries had more than a minor flow of water at the moment and the pool was mostly calm. Several shallow ledges submerged in the water had steps going down deeper into the water and others that went up to the main level, a safety measure in case someone fell into the pool most likely.
All this, and several of the more common glyphs found in the ancient sewers lay engraved on that center circle too. “Hehe, this is so perfect,” Sammy laughed as she marched across the closest stone path to the center area. Grinning to herself, the eleven-year-old began skipping, pulling out the notebook she had obtained for this little project. She planned to make copies of all the glyphs first, then she would figure out other things to do with them.
Deciding one of the light producing glyphs the best first victim, Sammy sat on the center grating and began tracing it out, having already studied it for many, many hours. She grinned full of mischief because Sanda always made such a big stink about not doing anything with glyphs unless he or Boden was present. Well, they had gone up and disappeared on her, so that pest Sanda could not say anything to her about it. Still, the cautions in the primers made her a little nervous. Not enough to stop her, or even slow her down, but still a little nervous.
Connecting the last line for the glyph in her notebook, Sammy let out a relieved breath. Nothing had happened. Obviously everyone had been over-exaggerating.
“Holy frijole,” Sammy squeaked, throwing the notebook across the center island, and scrambling to her feet. Light blazed from the notebook, too bright to look at. Sammy ran to the entrance where Rapa and Tambor watched and quickly placed a wall between herself and the notebook.
Crouching next to the two lepta pups, she hugged them tight, to keep them safe of course. However, when nothing catastrophic happened after a few minutes, Sammy peeked around the corner. The whole juncture looked stark in the intense light blazing from the open notebook.
Sammy crossed over the closest stone bridge and then snuck up to the notebook, as if it might attack her if it noticed her approach. Grabbing the open book and slamming it shut in one quick motion, she sealed the glyph away.
Sammy turned and found herself face to face with the two hounds, who had followed her since she forgot to tell them to stay put this time. “Urp,” she grunted, but then declared to them boldly, “Well then, I shall call this a one hundred percent success, yep.” Laughing and hugging the book for a moment, she sighed. “Well, I suppose I cannot have a glowing book. If Sanda saw it, I would be in a lot of trouble.”
Hesitating, but then acting quickly, she yanked the book open and tore out the page. It blazed with light, not the least bit deterred by being removed from the notebook proper. Sammy proceeded to tear up the paper, but it would not actually tear where the glyph itself blazed. She only managed to tear all the edges off, so she had to hold the paper with her fingers on the drawn glyph itself.
Getting a little scared, the girl glanced around sure her nemesis would suddenly appear. Desperate and panicking, she pulled out her lighter and lit the edge of the paper. It did not take for almost a full minute, but Sammy persisted, straining her will, focus, concentration and muttering diligently on the desired effect. “Light, light, burn you crazy glyph, dad-burn-it all, burn!”
The paper caught. At first, just the edge, but then a line of the glyph caught as well. A high-pitched wailing noise, accented by a low crackling roar sent Tambor and Rappa fleeing from the juncture. Sammy snatched her hand from the paper as the fire raced along the glyph lines, as if they were made of gunpowder. Sparks flew from both sides of the paper while it fluttered and danced in the air, refusing to fall or rise.
Heat washed over Sammy’s face and her hair curled from the heat, her skin dried out and her clothes began to smolder. The terrified girl let out a very unlady-like curse, turned and fled. Flames began to dance around the glyph paper, enveloping the air in a foot diameter ball of writhing fire.
Glancing back, Sammy saw the ball and screamed, “Stop it!” as she dove into the water. The surface of the rippling water blazed for a moment, but then dark stillness descended. Sammy swam deeper, though backwards so she could look up at the surface. She stayed submerged as long as possible but then burst upwards, gasping for breath.
Warm air filled her starving lungs, but nothing burned. Sammy tread water for a minute, but then swam to one of the step egresses and climbed out of the water. The stone warmed her hands, but otherwise felt normal.
Not normal, however, were the glowing glyphs covering the walls and ceiling. The affect dimmed even as Sammy climbed dripping wet from the pool with an eye to investigate. Looking over at the center island, the metal of the grating still glowed hot, as did all the chain supports holding it up.
“Well.” Sammy ran a hand through her heat damaged hair, her fingers catching on melted strands. “Well, I won’t being doing that again any time soon. Note to self: do not burn glyph paper without adequate protection.”
She sat down against a warm wall and put her head between her knees. Scary, scary, scary, she thought over and over and over again, for a very, very long time.
A week later, Sammy set out on her plundering rounds Boden had taught her about with a specific goal in mind. For three whole days she pillaged fire station trash. On the third day she hit gold - a cast off fire retardant coat and hood, gloves, mask and boots. They weren’t exactly in the trash, but they were unsupervised, so it amounted to the same thing in Sammy’s needy opinion.
With such valuable armor, Sammy once more ventured into the ancient sewers, back to the fire juncture. Donning her new fire protection, she took the time to roll the oversized sleeves and stuff the super long pants into the seven sizes too big boots. The young adventurer then set her new notebook and one of her primers down on the pitted grating. She knelt next to the light glyph inscribed in the platform, the very one from her first attempt, and began work.
She spent several hours comparing the glyph to the descriptions in the primer. To her delight, she thought she could identify four foundational patterns within the complex light glyph - Fire, Containment, Gentleness and Diffusion. At least, according to her best guess. The primary did not even try to provide an example of the glyphs, just describing them, and that in a rather round-about way.
A couple of runes rounded out the light glyph’s components.
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Sammy sighed to herself. The light glyph was somewhat complicated after all. Thus she came to an obviously natural decision, in her opinion. She would just have to separate the component glyphs from their mother.
First she concentrated on Gentleness since it seemed the least dangerous. A diamond frame surrounding a small circle, several curves, some separate, others intersecting, some points and marks. With the glyph’s completion, Sammy felt a peaceful calm wash over her. She touched the paper and smiled. What a wonderful feeling, she thought. Though she had planned to destroy the glyph as soon as she finished to keep it from Sanda, she just could not bring herself to rip the paper free of the notebook.
Deciding to leave it in place, she chose to copy Containment next. Her pen moved over the page with a fluid motion Sammy found entrancing. None of her normal jerky, awkward motions whenever she tried to write. She seriously found it mesmerizing.
A feeling of constricting resistance pressed in upon her as she neared completion of the glyph. For a moment she could not move, but when she concentrated and forced herself, she moved in slow, fluid motions. It dawned on her that both glyphs were affecting her now.
“Maybe I should stop for the day,” Sammy said aloud, feeling rather exhausted as she finally finished the containment glyph. She closed the notebook. The air gelled in the juncture for a breathtaking moment and then a weird rushing of presence and pressure washed over Sammy and imploded into the notebook. It jumped out of her hands and fell to the grating.
Sammy stared at it, disoriented. The feeling of calm vanished, but so too the pressure restraining her movements. She picked up the notebook, except her hand did not touch the book. There appeared to be a soft force field surrounding it and no matter how much Sammy tried, she could not break that field to open the notebook.
“Okay, note to self number two: Gentleness and Containment make a great protective lock. Note secondary, don’t get caught inside such a locking field. Note to self three: new policy, one glyph per notebook.”
Laying back on one of the stone bridges, Sammy stared up at the ceiling. “This is kinda fun,” she mused. “But, holey buckets, I’m going to need lots and lots of notebooks if I can only write one glyph in each.”
She sat up full of energy. “Anyway! I’m in this getup for a reason.” She laughed like a maniac, “Mwahahahaha, let’s try that Fiery glyph.”
Taking her second, and only remaining notebook, she once more studied the light glyph with the primer as a key. Once she determined all the parts she thought made up the dangerous glyph, she carefully copied it into the notebook.
“Ha, I bet you thought I wouldn’t learn from my past mistakes, but you are wrong,” she declared to no one in particular, though she thought maybe somebody like Sanda was watching over her shoulder. “Wrong, I say, completely and utterly wrong. I just don’t have to write the whole glyph out, right? Hah, see, I learn.”
She drew nine-tenths of the Fiery glyph on the first page of the notebook and the remaining part of the glyph to a larger scale on the back page. If they are different sizes, they won’t mesh together properly, and the primer says that glyphs are persnickety. Perfect plan, she thought.
Looking at her handiwork, she grinned happily. It really did work, as evidenced by the fact nothing bad had happened this time. She smacked the book closed with a feeling of contentment.
Fire enveloped both the notebook and Sammy’s fireman’s suit in an instant. Of course, Sammy was inside said outfit. With a panicked scream, the once again terrified girl released the ball of flame, took one running step and flew over the pool of water as the flames from the notebook roared around her. She hit the water and swam as deep as she could, but the heat from the raging fire above seemed to chase her even through the water.
After a full minute under the water, the raging light above the pool dimmed and then went out completely. Sammy managed to stay submerged for over two minutes due to raw terror, but finally had to emerge. Gasping for breath, the air seared her mouth and throat despite the covering mask. Gagging in pain, she could not help taking another searing breath. But the air did not seem to be replenishing her oxygen reserves. Barely making it to one of the shallow egress areas, she lay face up and passed out vaguely aware of blazing glyphs on the walls and ceiling of the juncture.
Waking some indeterminate time later, Sammy lay in the lapping water thinking she should be hurting a lot more than she was. She looked around, but everything looked warped and strange.
“Mask,” she said, needing to verbalize her thoughts to capture them. “Mask, I should take the fireman’s mask off.” As she spoke, she put thought and word to action. It took her longer than she thought it should, but finally the mask came off. She stared at it in her hands, a feeling of awe washing over her, for it had warped and twisted into something that would never serve as a mask again.
It dawned on her as through a foggy vale - the gloves did not look right either. In fact, all of her fireman’s armor had melted and looked like sappy wood, little beads of something all over them.
From this slow realization, Sammy began to notice other things. The stone bridges had fallen into the pool, and slagged anchoring chains had become solid bars of metal dripping into the pool. The center island either resided upon the bottom of the pool or simply did not exist anymore. Sammy could not be sure which, but she thought the latter might be more possible than she wanted to admit. Certainly she could not see anything in the pool that might have been said grating and did not remember something that large dropping in while she was down there.
Sammy squirmed out of the melted and stiffened fireman’s armor and scrambled over the soot blackened stone to place her back against the blackened walls. With head between her knees, she thought Scary, scary, scary, over and over again, for a very long time.
“Ah!” She exclaimed, her head jerking up. “The primer.” Staring out over the destruction in the pool, her stomach dropped. “I hope Sanda doesn’t want it back. Arghh!” She threw her hands into the air. “How am I supposed to get another one?”
Fiery’s inferno instilled fear of glyph experimentation into Sammy’s heart. This fear managed complete victory over her curiosity for five whole weeks. During that time she went on her normal pillaging routes, but had to change up her hunting grounds as she noticed certain types of people starting to hang around more and more.
Still, despite, or maybe because of those suspicious people, her curiosity wormed its way upwards and overcame her reluctance. Thoughts of how to avoid future disasters danced once more in her thoughts and dreams and soon plans began to form on how to avoid catastrophe a third time.
However, pillaging another set of fireman’s armor took her several additional weeks and many trips to other districts of the city. For some reason, the security at the fire stations in her district had noticeably increased. Thus, who could complain that she took three whole sets this time, with spare part?
Finally ready with five notebooks, a suit of fireman’s armor, a pen and a plan, Sammy plied the ancient sewers to a second remote juncture. It had five tributaries larger than the previous one, but two outgoing slews. Unfortunately, the water in this pool contained far more gunk than her previous choice, and patches of mold grew on walls here and there. A thin layer of slime even covered the waters in the pool. And it smelled bad too, brackish.
This time Sammy drew parts of the Fiery glyph into three separate notebooks. To her intense relief, destruction did not descend upon her. However, she carefully secured the notebooks separately as an extra precaution, one in a satchel bag on her right hip, one on her left hip and one in a backpack as she finished each section. In this manner she managed to copy all the glyphs, one section for each glyph in each of the five notebooks.
“Yippy!” She shouted once they were all copied and safely stored in their respective containers. “I did it. I really, really did it.” She giggled and hugged one of the satchels to herself. To her surprise, she felt the satchel tug in her arms. At the same time something pushed at her back and the free satchel became light at her hip.
A brief episode of struggling panic ensued, but Sammy managed to keep the three containers from coming together. Sitting on the satchel from her right hip, the one from her left held firmly in her arms, and the backpack still strapped to her back, the glyph writer began to laugh in relief. She refused to think about what would have happened if the glyph parts had all come together.
“Except,” she said aloud, realization of a predicament not considered dawning. “How do I get home like this? Oh!” Her eyes widened. It just dawned on her that she could not store the notebooks in the Camp no matter what, especially if the glyphs kept trying to come together. Way too many busybodies there, even without the undue attention she was receiving of late. Plus, Sanda might show up. It would be just like him to even come back from the dead to pester her. “Dang, I need to think of stuff like this earlier,” she muttered.
Taking one of the satchels, she tied it to the bottom of the grating in the current junction, in a shadowy spot not easily seen. Holding the second satchel with both hands, she headed to the destroyed Fiery Juncture, as she had named it. There, she tied the second satchel to part of the destroyed bridges.
Tired of being in the sewers for so long, Sammy climbed out a manhole in a clean back alley between a two story and three-story building. Never having seen such a clean alley, caution flags raised in her mind. As she hesitated, several empowered carts drove past in each direction at both exits. Clean, well maintained vehicles at that.
Sammy wondered just what part of the city she had emerged in. People passed the alley, all dressed in nice clothes. Sammy brushed her own rather ragged and sewer-stained clothes with a self-conscious hand. She thought she should go back down into the sewers and head back to a section of the city she knew.
“One quick look won’t hurt,” she said to herself and crept to one end of the alley. She could hear the casual, good natured talk of pedestrians, uninterrupted by car horns or boisterous street vendors.
Men and women dressed in a variety of ways, some in smart looking business suits or dresses, some in casual jeans and shirts. But all clean and well kept. Even those that looked ragged at first glance were clean, apparently designed to imitate being ragged and ill kept.
A couple of women walked past the alley and the pleasant smell of wildflowers and summer breezes tickled Sammy’s nose. Sammy’s eyes grew wide and she followed the ladies for a half block before realizing it.
Suddenly aware of the cautious looks being cast her way, Sammy remembered her lessons from Boden. She straightened her slightly slouched shoulders and smiled directly at a man staring at her. Shifting her eyes away from him, she continued to walk, but now with the confidence to take on the world. The man looked away and hurried on his personal errands.
Sammy stopped following the nice smelling ladies by stopping in front of a large window displaying three mannequins in long dresses and pointy shoes. Keenly interested in the new clothes, Sammy forgot where she was for a few minutes.
Coming back to herself, the ladies were long gone, but another woman stood next to her looking at the display. Sammy spared the lady a glance, but then continued in the direction she had been walking previously. She could feel the new lady’s eyes following her. Sammy fought the urge to scrunch her shoulder or to run for it. Both actions would be the worse things she could do in this situation.
Leaving the shopping district, she came to a park with a lookout point overseeing the Damsy River, which pretty much split the city in two. Sammy stopped at the lookout, glad no one was following her.
“Great thunderclouds,” she exclaimed, staring across the river. She recognized that waterfront. The waterfront on the other side of the river, that is. “I’m in the upper city.” She turned her back to the river and leaned against the restraining wall. The park lay before her in pristine condition, and beyond that well-kept buildings and streets spread out, all rising up the Central Hill. And at the top of that hill, Baron Rastan Motra’s mansion-castle stood in all its glory.
“I really should explore this part of the city.” Sammy laughed. “Sanda would throw a fit, I’m sure.” She sighed and looked upriver and then down. The old Foghorn Bridge lay upriver. Sammy knew the newer Jor Bridge lay out of sight and much further away down river.
“I’m not scared of ghosts, not really,” she muttered, “but the Jor bridge is much sturdier than that old haunted, rickety Foghorn Bridge.” She hesitated, glancing toward the sun. It would set long before she could get to the Jor Bridge. Hugging herself, she decided to use the Foghorn bridge after all. She should be okay if she ran across, right? The ghosts wouldn’t bother a little girl if she ran really fast, right?
An hour’s walk later, Sammy stood at one end of the bridge. The shadows had become long on the ground, the sun only half visible on the horizon. Sammy looked across the ancient suspension bridge, square pillars and wires changing shapes as she watched. A flock of crows cawed and burst from one of the heavy cables and flew out over the river. Billowing fog rose from the river, hiding the water and the under part of the bridge from sight.
Sammy began having doubts about crossing. “Where did that fog come from?” she whispered. She crept to the edge of the bridge. An old truck turned onto the bridge from the other side, its headlights floating towards her as the fog overtook the top of the road. For a moment the lights disappeared. Sammy waited for a heartbeat, then two . . . then three. The lights appeared, tendrils of fog clinging to the truck as it drove past.
“This is really a bad idea,” Sammy declared in an almost audible voice. Taking a first step from the sidewalk to the bridge’s pedestrian path, Sammy swore she felt a chilly touch run up her spine. She spun around, but no one was there.
I have to run really fast. REALLY, really fast, she thought desperately, but her feet refused to go faster than a hesitating step each eternity. The fog rolled up and the bridge around her disappeared. Sammy stopped, frozen in place.
HONK.
Sammy jumped out of her skin, staggering against the safety railing and activating stapha throughout her body. Scrambling over the side, she landed on one of the boulders making the bridge’s supporting slope. Sammy scrambled under the bridge, her heart beating in her mouth, unable to hear for the roar of it.
The terrified child could swear something hung in the air just above the river, a light looking right at her. She scrambled up the underside support slope and onto some large pipes that ran along the underside of the bridge.
A wailing scream pierced the fog. Sammy swore it came from right behind her. Not stopping to look, she crawled across the pipes as fast as she could. “Don’t come, don’t come, don’t come. My soul wouldn’t taste good,” she said, tears running down her cheeks, obscuring her sight.
The fog closed around her, little fingers tickling her imagination. She ran headfirst into something, jarring herself numb for a moment. A sharp pain in the base of her neck made her shudder. But then she became aware of a familiar tingling in her right hand, which was on the wall in front of her for some reason.
Under her hand, a glyph glowed. Sammy hesitated, curiosity warring with fear. She glanced behind her. No ghosts there, yet. She decided a few seconds wouldn’t hurt.
She moved in close to the glyph and peered at it carefully. She tapped it. Nothing happened. Frowning because the other glyphs all glowed when she tapped them, she concentrated and willed the stupid, stubborn, irresponsible glyph to obey and light up.
It stayed dark. Sammy glared at it and tapped it repeatedly, in ever more fierce motions. Her finger began to hurt.
“You were glowing just a crummy minute ago, you stupid glyph. What is wrong with you now?” Sammy punched the glyph. “Ouch,” she muttered, rubbing her knuckles.
The glyph flashed and an outline appeared in the wall. In utter silence intensified by the fog, a section of the wall billowed like smoke, which pulled away to form a tunnel just big enough for Sammy to crawl through.
Sammy stared at the passage and thought, Do the ghosts think I’m stupid enough to fall for a trap this obvious? She inched forward and peered into the darkness. She glanced behind her. “Well, a little peek won’t hurt,” she said.
Crawling into the tunnel, the absence of the oppressive fog brought immediate relief. Feeling much better and more adventurous, Sammy moved further down the tunnel. The tunnel walls disappeared, as did the pressure of the ceiling. Sammy stopped and sat up. “What?”
At her word, light blazed around her, revealing a large room. Sammy blinked, frozen in surprise and expecting something to attack her. Stillness pervaded all.
Standing, the bewildered girl looked around, her mouth hanging open. Though not very high, the ceiling had a shallow arch to it with rafter beams running across that domed space. Several beds were shoved against a wall, all made neatly. Chairs and desks and empty bookshelves, drawing tables with tilted planes, a number of dressers and armoires, all neat and clean of clutter. Sammy moved around the large room in a daze, wondering how it could be so neat, though the dust lay thick on all surfaces.
“Well, I think I’ve found my new home,” she declared, face breaking grin spreading wide. Exhausted, she flopped onto one of the beds. A cloud of dust billowed up around her. Sneezing and coughing she ran to the far side of the room, glaring reproachfully at the bed.
However, from this side of the room, she noticed another hitherto unnoticed passageway. Sneaking down that short hall, she came to a door in the right-hand wall, while the passage continued several more feet into what appeared to be another room. Sammy hesitated at the door, but decided she should investigate it first lest something attack her from behind.
The door opened easily into a bathroom replete with shower, toilet and a large, deep, almost-swimming-pool sized bath. Well, wading pool sized. She sighed and decided to call it a big bathtub, for all it was sunken and built directly into the stone of the floor.
Turning the water on, a thrill shivered up her spine, the tingle of glyph magic on her fingers. The water ran sluggish for a moment, but then cleared. The water began flowing hot.
Sammy stopped up the tub and set it to fill.
Running out of the bathroom and down the last few feet of passage, the happy adventurer stuck her head into a small circle of a room with three passages leading from it. Running back to the bathroom, skidding on the stone floor at the doorway, she stopped the flow of water and ran back to the small room.
She snuck down each of the passages, but each came to a door leading into different sewer tunnels. Each door had a spy glass next to it that let her see what lay on the far side, and a locking bar sealing the door shut.
Satisfied no one was hiding in her new home, Sammy ran back to the first room. Taking a minute to catch her breath, she leaned over with her hands on her knees. Grinning none stop, she straightened smartly and threw her hands in the air. “Yippee!” she yelled, her voice giving a slight echo back from the stone around her. She waited. Nothing happened. No one materialized, not even the ghosts.
Putting her backpack onto one of the desks, she gathered all the bedding save one set and threw them into the bath water. Stripping to her skivvies, she proceeded to wash that bedding, and then the whole room, using the wet bedding to mop up the dust-become-mud. The one set of dry bedding she shook out in the circle entrance juncture.
A lot of work and a sore back later, Sammy sat in the bathtub soaking in clean hot water. If I make something to keep them from wiggling their way to each other, I can use the bookcases to store my notebooks, she thought. I better not let anyone in the Camp know about this. Ha! It can be my refuge. Shoot, I may not even need to go back at all, right? She liked that idea and slept sound in her new bed, curled up under a dusty blanket.