Chloe walked into the tunnel. She no longer looked back. The cave was set into the white mountain rock, big enough to stand up in. Light shone in from behind her, illuminating the rounded, rocky walls. Soon the passageway shrank so that she had to duck, then crouch, then get down on her palms and knees to crawl along it. After a while the light faded, then it disappeared altogether, and she knew that she was crawling deep underground. The ground was cold and firm underneath her. She remembered crawling in the opposite direction with Hannah, what seemed like an age ago. She had been terribly afraid then. She was still scared now, but much less so, only a little. Mostly she just thought of getting back to her own world and of Hannah remaining in this one.

The tunnel became smaller and smaller until Chloe had to crawl along on her stomach, her head bowed down to fit into the space between the rock above and below it. She knew that she had to keep going, to push herself to get through. She felt as though she was being squeezed in a vice. She felt as though she might burst from the pressure. But she kept going.

Eventually she found that she could not go any further. Not because she had no strength left to crawl, but because she reached a dead end, banging her face against the rock in front of her.

“Ow!” she said. She rubbed her nose and tasted a trickle of blood. Just a nosebleed, she thought.

She wondered what to do. Why had the tunnel come to an end? Wasn’t this meant to lead her back into her own world? Maybe she had missed a turning earlier. But Katey and Hotzeh hadn’t said anything about a turning.

She tried to shuffle backwards, but then found that the path behind her was blocked. Her feet only struck against more immovable rock.

That was when Chloe started to panic. She was trapped. She was stuck in the tunnel. How was she going to get out? What was she going to do?

She took a few deep breaths and tried to remember her Larakian training. Relax. Trust. See.

She lay there encased in a cocoon of rock, waiting for the world to give birth to her again, breathing slowly and trying to use her gift of sight by looking with the eyes of her imagination at whatever the One True King had to show her.

On this occasion, she didn’t see anything. But becoming still did allow her to hear something.

She heard muffled voices. They sounded like they could be very far away, or very close but obstructed by lots of thick material. Like earth and rock.

She couldn’t make out any words, but one sounded like a man’s voice, a deeper, purposeful rumble, and the other like the voice of a woman, higher, sweeter, but more concerned.

Who could it be? Maybe Hotzeh and Katey had realised what had happened and come to get her out!

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Hey!” Chloe shouted, just being able to move her chest enough in the enclosed space to make the sound. “I’m in here! Help! I’m stuck and I can’t get out!”

She banged on the stone in front of her to try to make more of a noise.

The voices fell quiet all of a sudden. Then they started speaking again, more urgently. Chloe realised that they seemed to be coming from in front of her, beyond the blockage. That was strange, she thought. If Katey and Hotzeh were coming to get her surely she would be able to hear them from behind her?

She continued to call out and bang on the rock.

She heard a loud scraping and dragging sound somewhere in the earth. It bounced around inside her head, grating horribly. But then she heard the voices again, more clearly.

“—think it came from over here,” said the man’s voice.

“Yes, they must be somewhere in here!” said the woman’s voice.

Chloe wasted no time. “That’s right! I’m in here!” she yelled. “Please, come and let me out!”

“Hannah? Chloe? Is that you?” said the woman’s voice.

“Yes!”

“Hold on! We’re coming!”

“OK! No rush or anything!”

Chloe did hold on, gritting her teeth and bracing herself in the darkness as she heard the sound of more earth and rock being shifted.

Then, wonderfully, something in front of her moved. The blockage that had stopped her suddenly all went up as a piece of debris was lifted into the air. Light flooded her vision, temporarily blinding her, making her eyes water and blink.

A hand reached down and grabbed her, pulling her up and onto her feet.

“Oh my goodness, Hannah, it is you! Thank God you’re safe!” said the woman.

She felt herself being embraced, but she was too shell-shocked to respond. As her vision returned, she realised that she was being hugged by Mrs Jones, her schoolteacher. She had never been hugged by a schoolteacher before. It was extremely weird. But lots of weird things had happened to her in the last few months and this wasn’t the weirdest.

Mrs Jones let go of her, and Chloe realised that she was standing in the collapsed remains of the Gladstone Link tunnel in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England. The place where she had entered into Mashal all those months ago. Her Larakian robe had miraculously disappeared, at least on the outside, and she was back in her school uniform, ripped and covered in mud and dust. The male voice, she now saw, belonged to one of several firemen who were excavating the collapsed tunnel, lifting pieces of rubble and dirt and carrying them up and out of the steps. There were some paramedics too, who rushed towards Chloe.

“I’m so glad you’re alive, Hannah,” said Mrs Jones as the paramedics reached them. She looked exhausted and dishevelled, like she’d just given birth. Chloe wondered how long she had been here. Time certainly didn’t seem to pass in Mashal in the same way that it passed here on Earth. A torrent of words came out of her mouth. “How are you feeling? These people need to take a look at you. Don’t be frightened. Everything is going to be alright. We’ve got you back now. Your parents are on their way. Oh, the University is going to be in so much trouble for this! Have you seen your sister? Were you near to her when the tunnel collapsed? We’re still looking for her.”

Through tears, Chloe said “You won’t find her, Mrs Jones. She’s gone.”