He’s going to lead us out of here.”
“We’ll see,” Kim said. “All right, you little pipsqueak. Get us out of here.”
A howl ululated down the corridor followed closely by a shrieking, mirthless laugh. It sounded much closer than before. Brendan’s blood froze. Skreet raised an eyebrow. “Hmmm. The plot thickens. Hounds upon thy tail. Speed is of the essence, I assume?”
“Now!” Kim demanded.
Skreet sneered at her and then waved to Brendan with a little bow in mid-air that turned into a somersault. “This way, Boon Companion. 66 This way.”
He set off up the corridor down which they had come. Brendan jogged after him with Kim bringing up the rear.
Brendan tried to keep Skreet in sight but the little Faerie was very quick. Brendan began to panic when his guide turned the corner and disappeared from view. Rushing around the bend, he breathed a sigh of relief to find Skreet holding station in front of a side corridor.
“Come along, Boon Companion. Don’t dilly-dally.” Skreet darted into the opening. Another howl raised the hair on Brendan’s arms. The sound was very close and seemed to be coming from the corridor directly ahead, the one they’d come down in the first place.
“Move.” Kim shoved him from behind into the side corridor. She hauled out her field hockey stick and followed him.
Skreet led them on a winding path through the darkness. He would speed ahead, leaving them in fear that he had run off but when they rounded the next bend, he was always there, waiting impatiently. They traversed natural caverns with oozing walls furred with mould. At one point, they entered a brick-lined tunnel, ancient and crumbling, with foul-smelling water sluicing down its centre. Always the howls came behind them. Every so often, the sound would fade as though the pack had lost the scent but soon they would find the trail again, drawing closer once more.
Brendan couldn’t tell how long they’d been moving. Time disappeared in the darkness of the Undertown. He was exhausted, cold, and shivering. His shoes squelched with water and his trousers were thoroughly soaked. He had begun to doubt whether Skreet actually had any idea where they were going. The only thing that kept him going forward was the thought of the Kobolds catching up to him. The sound of their howling was terrifying enough without having to see them in the flesh.
At last, he saw a light up ahead. The light was steady and strong and could only come from good old electric light bulbs. His heart lifted. Maybe they were going to escape after all. He rushed forward and burst into an open space.
They were in a chamber that looked like a recent construction. The walls were of poured concrete painted a utilitarian grey. Conduits holding wires and pipes ran along the walls. The light came from banks of fluorescent lights high in a ceiling forested with pipes and ducting. Two huge steel pipes ran diagonally from the upper right wall down through the lower left wall. The sound of surging water and the labouring of pumps was deafening. Affixed to the pipes in the middle of the room was a platform accessible via a short flight of metal steps. The platform was taken up by a square metal box about the size of a portable toilet with a man-sized metal hatch. The hatch had a wheel lock in the centre.
“Skreet has brought you to the way out!” Skreet shouted proudly, landing on the metal wheel. “A way out, by water. As you instructed.”
“This is the way out?” Brendan said skeptically. “How are we supposed to get out of here? What is this place?”
“It is a construction of the People of Metal!” Skreet hopped up and pointed at the wheel. “Spin this! Open the door. Close door. Let the metal box fill with water. Open the inner hatch and jump in the pipe. Zip along like a salmon in a stream! Boon Companion pops out into the lake like a cork from a bottle, like an arrow from a bow. Like an egg from a chicken! Pop. Gaaaah!”
Kim swung the field hockey stick, barely missing the little Faerie. “You little sneak. Sure we’ll be shot out into the middle of Lake Ontario! Two hundred metres under the surface!”
“Skreet was never asked to make sure you’d be alive!” Skreet wailed. “Boon Companion! Don’t let her kill me! I did as you asked.” Skreet flitted up in the air out of reach of Kim’s stick.
Brendan’s heart froze as he suddenly realized where they were. In the last couple of years, the city had initiated a deep-water cooling system for office buildings in downtown Toronto. These pipes were part of that system. One went up from the lake, the other back. Now he understood why Kim was so furious and why she’d been so paranoid about bargaining with the little Faerie in the first place. Brendan had not been specific enough. Kim raised the field hockey stick for another swipe.
“Kim!” Brendan shouted. “Stop!”
Kim paused and looked at Brendan. “Why should I?”
Brendan looked up at terrified little Skreet, clinging to a pipe above them. He knew what it was like to be small and helpless. In his mind’s eye, he saw Chester Dallaire poised to smack him with the Murderball, the bully’s eyes filled with triumph. He shook his head.
“It isn’t his fault. He just did what I asked. It’s my fault. You warned me to be specific and I wasn’t.”
“I admire your empathy.” Kim looked at him thoughtfully for a moment then she frowned and lowered the club. “I still think he deserves a kicking.”
Skreet cautiously flitted within range, his eyes suspicious. When he saw that no one was going to hit him, he cocked his head and looked at Brendan in open curiosity. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to get angry. Curse me to the Seven Pits and the four Fiery Infernos and the Endless Voids.”
“I’m too tired,” Brendan said.
Skreet darted over and tugged at Brendan’s soiled lapel. “Thank you, good sir, kind Friend, Noble Bargainer. You are truly a good-hearted soul.”
“And you are not,” Brendan said fiercely. “You’ve led us to a dead end. You’ve led us to our deaths. Thanks for nothing. Here’s your payment.” He held out a single white morsel of gum.
“Whhhhaaaaat! You said the whole pack!”
“No,” Brendan said smugly. “I said gum. Never how much gum, only gum. Be happy I don’t give you half a piece.”
Skreet frowned but he nodded. “Fair is fair.” He snatched the piece of gum from Brendan’s fingers. “Oooo, you are shrewd. Shrewd, I say, and no mistake. Still! You are kind. Skreet will not forget, Brendan, Boon Companion.” With a final circuit of Brendan’s head, Skreet sped away between the narrow bars of a ventilation grating.
Brendan wished he could escape the same way when the howl sounded in his ears. It was loud even over the sound of the machinery. Alas, the vent shaft was far too small to admit him or Kim. The howling increased in volume and ferocity.
“They’re almost here! What are we going to do?” Brendan shouted. Kim held her field hockey stick out in front of her in both hands, ready to defend the entrance. Brendan searched through the chamber for another way out. He spotted a set of metal doors. He ran across the room, ducking under the massive pipes, and threw himself against the doors. They didn’t budge. He grabbed the metal handle and tried to turn it. It was locked tight.
“Come on, Kim! Help me!” The howling was dangerously close now. He grabbed the door handle and heaved with all his might. The handle came off and he fell hard on his butt. He scrambled to his feet. “Use your magic hockey stick, why don’t you?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not? Grow one of those thorny hedges. Slow them down.”
Kim shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way. I can only manipulate green things that already exist. I can’t create them out of thin air.”
Brendan thought back to the encounter in the parking lot. All of the briars had grown out of that one slip of a plant in the pavement crack.
“So what now?”
She dropped her knapsack to the floor, straightened her kilt, and spat in her hands.
“What are we going to do?” Brendan cried to Kim as he rejoined her in front of the dark mouth of the corridor.
