Tunnels 01, Tunnels

day soon he would follow. However, every time he tried to imagine what the future might hold for him, he was brought back to bitter reality with a bump, to the plight of his friend Chester, still confined in that abysmal Hold.
    Will stopped drawing and rubbed the peeling calluses on the palms of his hands together.
    "Sore?" Cal asked.
    "Not as bad as they were," Will replied. His mind flashed back to the work detail earlier that day: clearing stone channels in advance of draining a huge communal cesspit. He shuddered. It had been the worst task he'd been designated so far. With aching arms he resumed his notes, but then his concentration was broken by the urgent wailing of a siren, the hollow and eerie sound filling the entire house. Will stood up, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from.
    "Black Wind!" Cal jumped off the bed and rushed over to close the window. Will joined him and saw people in the street below running pell-mell in all directions, until it was completely deserted. Cal pointed excitedly, then drew back his hand, looking at the hairs rising on his forearm from the rapid buildup of static in the air.
    "Here it comes!" He tugged at his brother's sleeve. "I love this."
    But nothing seemed to be happening. The siren's haunting wail continued as Will, not knowing what to look for, scanned the empty street for anything out of the ordinary.
    "There! There!" Cal shouted, peering farther down into the cavern. Will followed his gaze, trying to make out just what it was, but it seemed as though something was wrong with his vision. It was as if his eyes weren't focusing properly.
    Then he saw why.
    A solid cloud billowed up the street like ink diffusing through water, rolling and churning and obscuring everything in its wake. As Will looked down form the window he could see the streetlights bravely trying to burn even more brightly as the sooty fog almost blotted them out. It was as if nocturnal waves were closing over the submerged lights of a doomed ocean liner.
    "What is it?" Will asked, enthralled. He pressed his nose against the windowpane to get a better view of the dark fog spreading quickly along the rest of the street.
    "It's a sort of backwash from the Interior," Cal told him. "It's called a Levant Wind. It rises from the lower Deeps -- a bit like a burp." He giggled.
    "Is it dangerous?"
    "No, just dust and stuff, but people think it's bad luck to breathe it. They say it carries germules." He laughed and then adopted a mock Styx monotone. "Pernicious to those that it encounters, it sears the flesh." He giggled again. "It's great, though, isn't it?"
    Will stared, transfixed. As the street below was obliterated from view, the window turned black, and he felt an uncomfortable pressure in his ears. His flesh seemed to be buzzing and all his hairs were standing on end. For several minutes, the dark cloud billowed by, filling their bedroom with the smell of burned ozone and a deadening silence. Eventually it began to thin out, the street lamps flickering through the swirling dust like the sun breaking through clouds, and then it was gone, leaving just a few diffuse gray smudges hanging n the air, as if the scene had been swept by a watercolorist's brush.
    "Now watch this?"
    "Sparklers?" Will asked, not believing what he was seeing.
    "It's a static storm. They always follow a Levant," Cal said, quivering with sheer excitement. "They give you one heck of a belt if you get in the way."
    Will watched in astounded silence as a host of fireballs spun out of the dispersing clouds all along the street. Some were the size of tennis balls, while others were as large as beach balls, all fizzing fiercely as bright sparks sprayed from their edges, as if a gang of delinquent pinwheels had gone on a flaming rampage.
    The two boys stood mesmerized as, right in front of them, a fireball as large as a melon, its vibrant light illuminating their young faces and reflecting in their wide eyes, abruptly went into a downward spiral, around and around, casting off sparks as it plummeted toward the ground, shrinking to the size of an egg. As it hovered just above the cobblestones, the dying fireball seemed to flicker that much more intensely before, in the blink of an eye, it sputtered out.
    Will and Cal were unable to tear themselves away from where it had been, the traces of its last seconds still imprinted on their retinas in little ecstatic tracks, like optical pins and needles.

     

27

    Far below the streets and houses of