FIRST EARTH
This is your hotel!” I shouted. How do we get out of here? There must be some kind of emergency way to let people know we’re in here.”
Gunny looked around the fancy living room, then shook his head. “Not if the telephone’s out.”
This was insane. The world was about to collapse and we were locked in a dumb hotel room.
“I got it!” I shouted. “We can start a fire. It’ll set off the smoke detectors.”
Gunny gave me a strange look. “What’s a smoke detector?”
Oh yeah. 1937. Ilooked around the room, then ran out on the balcony. Looking over the edge, I hoped to see Saint Dane’s smashed body lying on the pavement below. It wasn’t. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t surprised. I thought about that big raven. How weird was that? But I couldn’t obsess about it. We had to get out of there.
I looked down to see if there was a ledge we could crawl out on. But the closest foothold was thirty floors down. On the sidewalk. I looked up, thinking we might be able to climb onto the roof. No go. It was out of reach. We really were trapped.
I have to admit, I even stood there for a second and tried to change myself into a raven. What the heck? If Saint Dane was a Traveler and he could do it, maybe I could too.
I couldn’t. But just the fact that I tried showed how desperate I was.
I ran back into the room to see that Gunny had come up with a brilliant plan. A dangerous plan, but a brilliant one. He was pulling down the drapes that hung on either side of the balcony doors. With his pocketknife he cut a small tear on one end to get started, then ripped off a long strip of fabric. I knew instantly what he wanted to do. We were going to make a lifeline.
“You keep cutting strips,” he ordered. “I’ll tie the knots.”
I set to work with his knife, tearing off long strips of fabric. Gunny expertly knotted the ends together.
“There’s another balcony below us, about thirty feet down,” Gunny explained. He then pulled on the fabric, testing its strength. “I’ll tie one end onto the railing up here, then lower myself down.”
This was a plan. As good as any. But as I cut the pieces of fabric, I knew there was only one thing wrong with it.
“This is gonna work, Gunny,” I said. “But you’re too heavy. This won’t hold you.”
“It’ll have to,” Gunny said quickly. “Because I’m not sending you over the side.”
We continued working for a few minutes, until Gunny had fashioned a rope that looked plenty long enough. I tugged on it. It was strong, but still had a little play. Gunny was six foot four and probably weighed 220 pounds. I was five foot five and weighed half that much.
“Gunny, if you go, this’lltear,” I said.
Gunny tested the rope himself. I could tell by his expression he didn’t think it would hold his weight either.
“I’m light,” I added. “It’ll hold me.”
I didn’t wait for his response. I started tying one end around my chest and under my arms. I had to do it fast, not because I thought Gunny would stop me, but because I was afraid I’d chicken out if I thought too much about it. We were thirty floors up. My mind flashed on the horrible sight of Mr. Nasty Gangster falling through the air.
Note to self: Stop thinking.
“No, Pendragon, I can’t let you-“
“We don’t have a whole lot of choices,” I interrupted. “Either I go, or we hang out here until the housekeeping staff finds us tomorrow morning.”
Gunny looked at the floor. If there were any other way around this, he would have taken it. But he knew I was right.
“Let’s do it,” I said, and carried the makeshift rope out on the balcony.
Gunny tied the loose end securely around the balcony railing. He knew what he was doing. Maybe it was his army training. I trusted that his knots would hold. It was the drape material I wasn’t so sure about.
“You’re in control,” he instructed. “Grab on to the rope near the railing, face the building, keep your feet against the wall and walk backwards. Let the rope move through your hands as you go down. I’ll handle the slack.”
“I’ve done this,” I said. “It’s sort of like rappelling.”
Uncle Press had taught me how to rock climb. It seemed like things kept popping up that Uncle Press had prepared me for. I always thought he took me on those great adventures because he was a fun uncle. I had no idea he was training me for life as a Traveler. Because we had gone on a rock-climbing trip when I was twelve, I knew how to rappel down the side of a sheer rock face. The only difference here was, I wasn’t secured by a solid climber’s rope. I was trusting my life to a raggy piece of drapery. Gulp.
I sat up on the railing and swung my legs over. I made sure not to look down. I didn’t need to see how far I would fall if things went south, so to speak. So while pretending I was only a few feet up in the air, I carefully turned around. I stood with my toes on the balcony, holding on to the rail, looking back at Gunny. It all seemed so natural, except that he was standing on the safe side of the railing and my butt was dangling over midtown Manhattan.
“Can of corn,” he said reassuringly. But his eyes gave him away. He was scared. Probably not as much as I was, though.
Gunny then threaded the slack rope through the railing and pulled my end tight. As I lowered myself down, he would play out my end of the rope, keeping pressure off the railing knot. It was like being double-secured. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I tested the strength of the cloth rope, nodded, and stepped down off the balcony. With my feet firmly planted on the wall, I began to walk down backward.
I flashed on the oldBatmanTV show where those guys used to walk up the sides of buildings with their Bat ropes. That was idiotic. But not as idiotic as what I was doing now. I held the cloth rope tightly, and slowly slid my hands down it as I moved. The only tricky part came when I got to one of Gunny’s knots. They were too big to slip through my clenched hands, so I had to let go with one hand at a time and cross over below it. That was scary.
I could hear the cloth rope straining under my weight. Obviously, this material wasn’t made to hold so much weight, because I kept hearing tiny little tearing sounds. They were faint, but they might as well have been exploding cherry bombs. If enough of those little tears got together, they’d make one big rip and, well, look out below.
Just to make me even more nervous, I looked up to see that Gunny didn’t have enough drape left to hold on to. I wasn’t double-secured anymore.
The whole trip only took a couple of minutes, though it felt like I was dangling from that building for a week. Finally I slid my right foot down another few inches and felt air. I had made it to the ceiling of the balcony below! I couldn’t see the balcony because it was cutinto the building, but I knew it was there. My foot told me so. I was almost home.
That’s when the bad news came.
No, the rope didn’t break. It wasn’t that bad. But it was close. I had another six feet to go before my feet would touch the railing of the balcony below, when I realized the worst: I had run out of rope. We made it too short! I dangled there, twenty-nine stories high over pavement, with the wind blowing and drops of rain beginning to fall…with nowhere to go.
“It’s too short!” I called up to Gunny. “I can’t go any lower.”
Gunny winced. “You sure?”
“Uh, yeah.” It didn’t take a genius to figure this one out.
“You’re going to have to climb back up,” Gunny called down.
This was a disaster. We blew it. How could we have made such a simple mistake? I had to climb back up and figure out a Plan B. But as soon as I reached my hand farther up the rope, I felt it tear again. It wasn’t a little tear either. I must have jolted down an inch. The rope was going to go! If I tried to climb back up, I wouldn’t make it very far. I was trapped. There was no place to go but down. Way down.
I then realized that I had one chance. It was horrifying to think of, but it was the only way. Without stopping
