Tunnels 04, Closer

our bit of the jungle, have we?"
    She didn't answer, her body tense as her senses strained. "It's nothing," she said finally, setting off again.
    A little further on, Will heard a distant rumble. He kept checking the sky to see of one of the sudden and tumultuous rainstorms was about to descend on them. But although the sky was its usual transparent white and there wasn't a cloud in sight, the sound grew louder. And it was continuous, telling Will that it couldn't be peals of thunder, as he'd first assumed. The sound was only explained when the rounded a bend in the river and a high escarpment came into view, torrents of white water tumbling over it and plummeting into a foam-topped lagoon below.
    "Now that's what I call a real waterfall," Will said, peering up to the top of the two- or three-hundred-meter escarpment. He noted that two rivers branched off from the lagoon: the one that had brought them there, and a second that led off on the far side.
    As Will and Elliott advanced toward the lagoon, they emerged from the thick copse of gymnosperms and onto a stretch of trampled mud. Will realized that the ground must be so churned up because the lagoon was a watering hole for the local wildlife. He began to search for interesting tracks, but Elliott kept up the pace, leading them straight toward the side of the waterfall. Will couldn't work out where she was going until he saw her step up onto a rocky ledge that seemed to extend behind the waterfall itself. They trod carefully along this ledge, the sheet of water to one side of them, and a vertical rock face to the other. Within seconds they had entered a large cavern completely hidden behind the waterfall, where the profuse spray misted the air.
    "This is so cool!" Will yelled, spellbound by the endless cascade of water. Sunlight intermittently penetrated the waterfall, dappling him in ever-shifting patterns. If it hadn't been for the thunderous noise, the effect would have been hypnotic. "How do you find these places?" Will shouted as he mopped the spray from his face. Moving his gaze from the waterfall, he saw that Elliott was at the far end of the cavern, where she was poised at the start of a flight of steps hewn out of the rock.
    Seized with curiosity, he went over to her. As his sight adjusted to the gloom, he made out the arch above the steps. Then he saw that carved into the keystone at the apex of the arch was a symbol of three bars radiating slightly outwards. It was the same symbol as the one on the pendant Uncle Tam had given him, and which was around his neck at that very moment. And this symbol was the mark left by the Ancients, as his father referred to them, the people who had first made a pilgrimage from the Deeps to this inner world.
    Filled with excitement, he slid off his Bergen and extricated his Styx lantern. As he and Elliott mounted the steps and went into the passage beyond, he shone the lantern around them, inspecting the rock, which showed unmistakable signs that it had been worked by hand. As they progressed further down the passage, the noise of the water diminished so that they were able to talk without raising their voices. "Then the Rebeccas came this way?" Will asked.
    Elliott nodded. "They must have located the other end of this tunnel after they left the submarine. It brought them here without all that--" She interrupted herself to wave her arms in the air. "Without all that floatey floatey stuff we had to do."
    " Floatey stuff?" Will repeated, but his mind was racing with the implications of her discovery. "So this is the way home," he said. "But how did you find it? We're miles from the pyramid."
    "I followed the Styx's tracks back here after we ambushed them. I wouldn't have been doing my job if I hadn't checked where they'd come from."
    Will was still frowning. "So you've known about this for weeks, but you didn't mention it to me?"
    Her voice was barely audible as she swung about and began to retrace her steps to the arch. "I was scared," she said.
    "What did you say? You were scared? " Will asked as he went after her. "Why?"
    She came to a halt. "I thought if I told you and your father, you might decide to go home. And I don't want to leave this world -- I don't have anywhere else to go. Besides, I love it here with..." Her voice petered out as the beam of Will's lantern flicked over the ground beside her feet.
    "Back here! Shine it back here!" she ordered him urgently as she squatted down on her thighs. "Hurry up!" she