Treasure of the World Tara Sullivan (inspirational books for women TXT) 📖

the hole in the ceiling that leads to zone five and the way out. I stand up and take a step in the direction I think may be right when a horrifying thought occurs to me. What if there are openings in the floor of this tunnel too?

In a heartbeat, I’m on my hands and knees again. If I stumbled into a floor-access tunnel, they’d find my broken body at the bottom of it. I don’t want to die. I scoot along the tunnel floor like a three-legged cat, holding my injured knee out stiffly as I climb over the rubble-strewn surface. I reach out a hand to trace along the wall and find nothing but open space.

There should be a wall there.

I’m sweating heavily and the suit sticks to my body, peeling off and slapping against me like terrible, slow applause as I crawl desperately around in the dark.

I reach up and touch the lighter again.

I need to know where I am.

Vaporized.

I let go and keep crawling.

I don’t know how much later it is when I finally give in to temptation and light the lighter. I bury my face in my knees and hold the lighter high above my head. One, two, three! I tell myself, and hold my breath as I flick the wheel.

When I’m not instantly exploded into a million pieces, I lift my face.

I notice two things almost simultaneously.

First, the flame is a strange, unnatural color, which tells me that, though the air might not have vaporized me, it’s not so great for me to be breathing it and it’s probably not a safe place to have an open flame either.

Second, the rock formations I can now see around me are completely strange. I’m at an intersection of four tunnels with no rubble on the ground. This isn’t a part of the mountain I’ve ever been in before. There is no hole in the roof as far as the eye can see.

I let go of the little wheel. The flame snuffs out.

I drink half my bottle of water, put fresh coca leaves in my mouth, and try not to cry.

I’m lost.

I stumble in the direction I think I came, risking a flame periodically. When I’m convinced I’ve gone the wrong way, I retrace my steps. But that route dead ends in a wide, sheer chimney with no ladder or rope. Turning again, I find myself crawling up an incline I don’t remember going down.

My lighter is running low on fluid.

My bottle is running low on water.

I’m hungry.

I’m thirsty.

I’m tired.

I’m scared.

My knee hurts.

When I can no longer stand being awake, I sleep.

When I can no longer stand my dreams, I wake.

How long have I been down here? Has it been a day? More than a day?

I puff my breath against the tunnel wall and try to lick the moisture off, but all I get is a mouthful of rock dust. I know better than to drink from the stagnant orange puddles, but the sound of my feet splashing through them is the worst of taunts. When I finish my water bottle, I do cry.

My lips crack and bleed.

I sleep.

I wake.

I wander.

I do it all again.

And again.

Eventually, I give up.

In my head I say my last goodbye to Daniel, wherever he is, and whisper an apology to Mami, who will now have lost all of us to the Mountain That Eats Men. I apologize to Abuelita that she will never know my story. I lean my head against the rough stone wall of the tunnel and pray to God that death will not be as terrible as living has become.

“Please,” I whisper through split lips to the glowing stars above me, “please.” I don’t even know what I’m asking for anymore.

The stars twinkle and I close my eyes, satisfied that it’s time for me to die.

The stars are so beautiful, I think sleepily.

Stars?

My eyes snap open.

I crane my head backward and stare up again. Sure enough, there, far above me, through a narrow shaft in the rock, is the sky.

I’ve found a way out of the mine.

Muscles shaking, I drag my body around until I’m standing, belly pressed to the wall, never letting the stars out of my sight, terrified that they’ll vanish like a hallucination if I close my eyes even for a moment. But they don’t, twinkling on high above me.

So high above me.

I reach and grab the rough edge of the steep shaft and start to pull myself toward the stars. It’s hard going. This is a natural vent in the mountain, not a man-made tunnel, and it wasn’t designed to allow people through. At times the shaft narrows so that I’m scraping my shoulders and hips to wedge through; other times it hollows out so I have no way to find purchase between the two walls and have to crawl up like a spider, taking my weight on my fingertips and toes, risking a broken neck if my aching knee or shaking arms give out.

But for all that, centimeter after painful centimeter, the stars are getting closer. I’m only three or four body lengths away from the opening, close enough to feel the cool waft of fresh air against my face and hear the otherworldly whistling of the wind across the entrance, when I find I can climb no farther. The space opens out around me, into a dome, the sides unscalable, the stars unreachable. I collapse on the floor of the cave under the opening and sob great dry sobs. I’m too dehydrated for real crying.

Only a few hours ago, when I was wandering in the dark, I would have been content if you told me I could die under the stars instead of in darkness, but hope is a subtle poison. To be so close and not make it out lights a fury in me unlike any I’ve ever known. I shriek at the roof of the cave, shouting every curse word I know, screaming at