Chapter 34. The Lantern
The Stranger stood near the mouth of the tunnel hesitantly and peered at its fearsome arches.
“The fear of death,” he told himself. “When will I get rid of it? How long will it follow me? Where is my belief? I cannot die until my mission is completed. I should see it as a game: it’s hard, it’s scary, but nothing can harm. It’s important to understand the rules, options and the system of the game. But how am I to go through the tunnel? The Wind is not supposed to search the mines. Should I search by the feeling of danger? But the fear gives too much of false references, I will be all mussed up. Why the Soldier got scared, though his gift destined for such situations? The reality doesn’t fall into our pattern, does it? You think you’ve understood and got the point but it appears that your conclusions were wrong; you didn’t take into account all nuances. Could the Seer go through the tunnel? Perhaps, he could, but no, he’s got bad leg… What if there are taut wires? He would need to crawl or jump. He is incapable. Why didn’t the Soldier go? Why? Could this be connected with the prophecy? The Soldier cannot be the messenger. His hands are covered with blood, a bad example for the followers. The Soldier doesn’t believe that the Prince was the chosen one, how can he be his messenger? But on the other hand, the warriors of the desert worship the Prince, but what is the good of it? However, they worship the other Prince, created by their sick perverted imagination. They would have killed the true one. And who am I?”
The Stranger heard: “Shield and sword”.
“Whom am I to protect? Show me these people. Are they the warriors of the desert? But it is me who needs protection against them,” the man standing near the entrance to the death tunnel thought with sad irony.
He heard the metallic clangs of the bolts and turned back. Joy crashed on his heart like a wave; he recognized the tall figure of the Hermit and the slender silhouette of his new friend. “Why did he take her with him?”
The old man approached him, holding the girl’s hand and paying no attention to the noise and shouts. The bandits seemed to recognize him and made a lane for him respectfully.
The elder one came up to the Stranger.
“Will the Hermit go with you?”
The Stranger smiled but said nothing. He shook the Hermit’s hand and kissed the girl. The Bird ran into his arms willingly and squeezed him. They stepped aside from the gunmen.
“Are you better now?” he patted the girl’s rough hair and turned to his friend. “I hope you are here not to talk me out of going there?”
“I brought your things. I questioned,” the old man answered serenely.
“And..?” the Stranger tightened.
The Hermit kept silent.
“Shall we go together?” the Stranger asked eagerly.
The old man shook his head.
“Shall I go alone?” the Stranger peered into the Hermit’s face. “No. What then?”
“Just don’t get nervous. I will go with you,” the Bird nipped in.
“What? Are you joking?”
“She is not joking. I know all your objections, but that’s the way you should do.”
The Stranger looked at the Bird helplessly.
“Do you realize what sort of place it is?”
“No,” she answered simply.
“I can explain. The tunnel is mined. Nobody knows where the mines are, we don’t have the detector. We have a lamp, but I’m not sure if we will be permitted to use it. Anyway, there is little hope for the lamp. Mines are of on and off type. You press the detonator, and blast.”
“You talk my ears off,” the Bird said gently. “The mine of the off type is it kind of dangerous too?”
He smiled.
“The mine blows when you step off it. You hear the click and you can’t move, because it will explode. Aren’t you scared?” looking at the girl’s happy face he wanted to laugh, he scarcely kept from laughing.
“All of my life I was scared and felt bad. And now, I’m not scared and I feel good. I am different now. I’m happy. I will go with you.”
The Stranger looked at the Hermit.
“We will meet in the Town,” the old man said confidently.
“How will I go through the tunnel? What am I to orient to? What feelings?” now the Stranger was worried only about the girl, risking her life recklessly.
“Listen to the Voice, only the Voice and don’t be afraid,” the Hermit answered. “The God is with you.”
“Think again, please,” the Stranger stared at the girl, but she shook her head.
“I will go with this woman,” he said to the elder.
“There is nothing said in the prophecy about the woman,” the elder said perplexedly: he looked as if this proposal took him by surprise.
“But this doesn’t mean she cannot be near the man,” the Stranger insisted.
“Good,” the elder gave in rather quickly. “We will pray for both of you.”
“Remember about the promise: you will lay down arms, if I go through the tunnel.”
“We are the keepers of the tunnel. If there is nothing to keep, we will need no guns. By the way, you don’t need the lamp, because you’ll find a good lantern inside. Sorry for having checked the contents of your bag.”
The Stranger pulled the lamp out of the bag, threw it aside and offered hand to the elder man who took it with both palms and shook passionately…
A chill crept from the tunnel stones. The darkness deepened. They made a few steps forward. The Stranger said to the girl quietly:
“You must do everything as I do. If I say, lift your leg and step over, you do what I say. If I say crawl, you must crawl. And don’t even try to bicker.”
What a strange place this tunnel is: the walls and the ceiling are perfectly surfaced, as if they were handmade. The air must be delivered via the special ventilating ducts. The ceiling is really high, about three meters; the width of the passage is one and half meters. Why did the ancients take so many pains for such a pointless exercise? It would have been enough to make the ceiling man’s height. No vertical shaft at all. What did the workers orient to? They worked without the light, dug almost ten kilometers in the hard rock. Judging by the height and the width of the tunnel, only two people could work simultaneously. How many years did it take, if using the primitive technology they could dig in the rock about five centimeters per day? A job for several generations, even if they dug the tunnel from the both sides simultaneously. Another enigma...
The Stranger thought about it and felt his fear was leaving him gradually. Soon he saw something on the ground. He approached and wanted to pick it up, but heard the voice stinging like a lash: “No!” This thing smelled death.
The Stranger noticed the changes in him. It seemed that the Source of Information had opened for him and he could get the answers to all questions. “Such a shame,” he thought, “it’s a great chance to learn the secrets I’ve been trying to discover all my life, but now only one question of greatest importance for me is survival”. He subdued the surge of anger.
“How long should we walk forward?” the Stranger asked in his mind. He made twelve steps serenely and steady, there appeared confidence in the invisible guide. He stopped, listened to his senses. “Jump”, he asked and claimed at the same time and he heard the answer: “Yes”. The Bird kept back, holding him by the jacket.
“We must jump as far as possible,” the Stranger said. “I jump first, you follow me. Jump right from this spot.”
“Ok.”
The heart of the Stranger gave a thump: he felt her fear. He took a deep breath, got down and jumped. The Bird rushed after him without hesitation. She landed straight on him. The Stranger sat down on his knee but managed to base himself upon hand. The girl held his back with her arms and cuddled behind.
“May I have hold of you?” she faltered.
“Sure,” the Stranger said, turned to her and thought, “She thinks I’m a saint”.
“I’m ready to embrace you forever,” she whispered.
> “We have to go,” he said quietly.
“One more minute,” the girl asked, embracing him even stronger. “You must be thinking I was a prostitute?”
“It’s not what I’m thinking about now,” the Stranger resented. “You were born anew, you were forgiven. Don’t turn back to your past. Walk the road of the truth, have hope and belief.”
“I earned money by trapping the clients,” the girl didn’t let him go. “I didn’t sleep with them, Bumblebee and his guys dealt with the dupes then, but they never killed or crippled anyone.”
“Dupes? It’s better to be cheated, than a cheater,” the Stranger answered with a snarl. “No time to relax, danger is ahead.”
He kept going forward slowly. “Don’t think, don’t think about anything. Throw all thoughts out, clear your mind for the Voice,” he talked to himself and asked, “what am I to do? How long do we have to keep going?” But there was no answer. The Stranger sat on the ground. It seemed to him that he had lost the signal tuned into the Source of Knowledge.
“Is something wrong?” the girl asked.
“Nothing. I need to sit a little,” he answered a bit crossly.
The Stranger started to lose his nerve as he hadn’t got any answer to his questions. The fear was coming back slowly.
“You don’t know how to go on further, do you?” the Bird asked serenely.
“No, I don’t,” he answered harshly.
“Do you believe it’s better to sit down and do nothing?”
“Yes. It’s better to do nothing than to make a mistake.”
“They say, only he, who does nothing never errs.”
“In this very case, if we err we will definitely do nothing anymore.”
“How long are we going to sit?”
“Until I feel it’s time to stand up. I’m tired; I need to sleep a little. Perhaps, this is why it’s difficult to hear. Don’t bother me.”
He closed his eyes, snuggled against the wall, it was not smooth: peaks, grains, asperities…
The Stranger’s sleep was short and nervous; he talked to somebody in a dream. Someone explained him how he should go. When he woke up, he could not remember anything. He opened his eyes and looked at the girl.
“Why did you go with me?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to be with you,” the Bird answered fondling his hand.
“It’s not a perfect place for dating,” he said somberly.
“Why? It’s quiet here and nobody bothers,” the girl squeezed his palm with her hands.
“We should go,” the Stranger gasped. He wanted to hear the Voice but not her hot thrilling breath.
After a while, he felt fear again, even more, he was terrified. They cannot go further.
There were a lot of voices inside his head, but they were his convoluted thinking, fears, illusions, and he could not hear the Voice. “If we can’t go forward, we can go backward,” he felt better, after this thought had come.
“Let’s go back, near the walls. I’ll take the left, you take the right. We need to touch the stones,” the Stranger said to the girl. It seemed to him that the insanity was overwhelming, but he remembered that heard this very phrase in his tumultuous dream. “If you discover anything, tell me right away.”
They went backward, touching the walls of the tunnel; in a few minutes, the Bird cried:
“Come here! Here’s some cavity.”
“Step aside, please, let me see.”
The Stranger didn’t feel anything dangerous; he stretched his arm, found something inside the cavity and pulled it out.
“Do you have a lighter?”
The Bird delved in the pockets and took out the lighter. The thing they found was a lantern, with a plastic bag attached and two batteries inside.
“Good girl. You’ve found it,” the Stranger turned the lantern on, a ray of bright blue light flashed.
“Will the lantern help us?” she asked happily.
“I believe it is the only thing that can help us.”
They walked for about half an hour. The Stranger inspected the floor of the tunnel. He saw the taut wire, warned the Bird and after twenty more steps he found another one strained unusually high, they had to crawl under it. It repeated three times: every twenty steps he found the traps. He noticed this regularity and started to count the steps. Suddenly the light went off. The Stranger clicked the switch a few times and put the lantern inside the bag.
“Will we find the next wire in the twenty steps? Or is it a trap? You get over the system, make the next twenty steps but the taut wire is located in ten or thirty steps: broken rhythm.”
The Stranger sat down again, held the Bird and felt that she was shivering.
“Are you fine?” he asked, cuddling her.
“How are we to go on without the light?” she asked scarcely keeping back tears.
“If you want to cry, just cry. The tears will wash away fear, pain and hurt. The torch helped us: thanks to its light, we cheated death several times. And we noticed the relevance: there is taut wire every twenty steps. There is a good chance that it is the same all the way.”
“Let’s burn the lighter after the next twenty steps, there’s not much gas in it, but it can last for a while,” the Bird proposed.
“It won’t help us; the lantern light was blue for a reason. I think it’s done on purpose to see the wire.”
“What are we to do?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s difficult for me to tune in.”
“How are we to go on?”
“Let’s sit with eyes closed for a while. Let’s take some rest. The help will come.”