I looked at the opening. It was barely wider than my shoulders. Darkness yawned beneath it as the daylight was quickly swallowed by the oppressive darkness that always lingered in tight, confined places. No adult had a chance of fitting through the gap. Only a child could fit inside…or perhaps averysmall woman.
“I’ll go.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Everyone turned to look at me. “What did you say?” Lochlan asked.
I squared my shoulders. “I said I’ll go.” I remembered how desperately I wished someone had been there to save me all those years ago. The world had not been kind to me, but perhaps this little girl could have a better outcome.
The mother turned her tear-stricken face to me. “Please,” she whispered. “Please save my little girl if you can.”
I clenched my abdomen and curled my hands into fists at my sides, fighting the panic swelling inside me. The drain pipe had to be similarly sized to me now as that the trunk had been to me as a child. The idea of being lowered into that damp, airless tunnel where the walls would crush me and I wouldn’t even be able to stretch… I didn’t like thinking about it. My palms becameslick with sweat. Could I do it? What if I got stuck just like the little girl had?
The girl’s cries had stopped. Did she have enough air down there? When I had been in that trunk for hours, the air slowly betrayed me over time, becoming less and less breathable until I thought I was going to pass out.
No one had come to rescue me then.
I could still feel the way I’d trembled inside that trunk, waiting for the help that never came. My voice scraped the inside of my throat as I turned to the people clustered around the pipe. “Get the rope,” I told them.
The mother’s hands were clasped in prayer and she rocked back and forth, tears streaming from her eyes as one of the Nightsworn appraised me. “I think the boy will fit. He’s just skinny enough.”
Lochlan looked at me. “Are you absolutely sure?”
No, I wasn’t sure, but I nodded anyway. I wouldn’t let another child sit in the dark and believe she’d been abandoned, even if it meant reliving my most terrifying memory and facing my worst fear. I might be alone in the world, but this girl still had a family, and she deserved to be reunited with them.
I tucked my shirt into my breeches and cinched my belt extra tight as Lochlan approached with rope, but I insisted on tying everything myself. I had no intention of learning how good anyone else’s knot-tying abilities were when it was my own safety on the line.
“You’ll have to go headfirst,” Lochlan warned me. “You won’t have room to turn around, so go down, grab the girl, and don’t let go of her, no matter what.”
I stepped toward the edge. I had to go now, before my courage failed me. “Lower me down.”
Cold air wafted up from the pipe’s depths, damp and metallic. I was lowered slowly, inch by inch, the rough stonebrushing against my back, shoulders, and knees. The space narrowed quickly. Blood rushed to my head as my arms, stretched out in front of me, groped blindly through the darkness. The rough walls scraped against my shoulders and pebbles dislodged from the wall, plummeting down to splash through the grate into the aqueduct below, where the rushing, roaring water flowing through the pipes sounded ten times louder as they echoed up to me.
“Faster!” I shouted. I was going to pass out from being upside down for so long if they didn’t hurry.
They increased the speed. Some sort of bulge in the piping squeezed me and, just like the platforms and chairs they’d tried to lower before, I got stuck. My breath caught.
Oh, shoals.
I didn’t have enough room.
I wouldn’t have enough air.
The walls were closing in, just like before. My pulse roared in my ears, even louder than the aqueduct’s contents below, and panic flooded my senses.
I couldn’t get out.
Everything was too close.
It was too tight; I was going to suffocate.
This was how I would die. I pressed against the sides of the pipe with my hands, wishing desperately that I could push them out and make more room. There wasn’t enough air.
My chest heaved, and the rope around my ribs cut tighter with every shallow breath.
I can’t do this. I’m never going to get out.
I wanted to scream and beg them to pull me back up. I wanted to claw my way up to fresh air and never leave it again. But through the panic, I heard that thin, trembling voice.
