10.

The rock dust settled slowly like a light snow falling on a still winter day.

Gradually, their hearts stopped pounding so hard in their chests, and the thumping of his pulse no longer filled Nowar's ears like a drum solo.

The creature with tentacles instead of arms and legs looked up at them. "You... are from... Above?"

Nowar and Luz nodded dumbly. Luz was the first to find her voice. "We came down here, and we got lost and we don't know how to get back."

The creature flexed and extended it's wounded tentacle experimentally. "I... can help... I take you there."

"What is your name?" asked Nowar, "What are you?"

"I am Ooru. I am... the last."

"I'm Nowar, and this is my friend Luz. We're humans."

"I never met a ... hu-man before," Ooru said. "Come, you follow me."

The little creature scuttled off at a brisk walking pace, and Luz and Nowar followed along behind him, hurrying as fast as they were able. Occasionally, Ooru paused to let the children catch up with him and rest. "Must hurry," he said anxiously, "Stone Eaters are on the move."

They followed Ooru through a maze of tall buildings and narrow streets. Both Nowar and Luz quickly lost any sense of direction. There were no landmarks that they could pick out in the dim canyons of the city, and the little square with the water fountain was now far behind them. They were tired now, hungry and thirsty. Always there was the insistent rumble beneath them, sometimes stronger, sometimes quieter, but never quite going away.

Finally Nowar spoke up. "Ooru, could we stop and rest for a minute? And have a snack?"

"You have... food?" The little creature froze in it's tracks and looked up at him, small eyes wide.

"Yes," said Nowar, "Do you want to share our lunch?"

"Ooru hasn't eaten hu-man food in many orbits of the sun. Nothing but mushrooms and fungus. Ooru would be honored to share your food-stuff."

The three travelers sat down the bottom step of a stairway leading up into ziggurat-like building. Nowar opened his backpack and took out the sandwiches, chips, and fruit that his Daddy had packed for him so long ago, early that morning. The three sat and ate, and drank juice. Ooru seemed to savor every single bite, greedily devouring the half of a turkey-and-cheese sandwich he was offered, and daintily plucking barbecue potato chips out of the bag with his tentacles, careful not to eat more than his fair share.

"Come," he said when they had eaten about half the food in Nowar's pack. The rumbling sound, still fairly quiet, had slowly grown louder while they were sitting. "You come. We are close now."

Indeed, the streets and buildings now seemed to look almost familiar to Luz and Nowar, though they still wouldn't have been able to say where the tunnel to Budsurry was, they were almost certain that this was the part of the city that they had first seen.

They rounded a corner, following a broad avenue that seemed to have fewer and smaller buildings lining either side. There was rubble in the road, chunks of broken, shattered rock. There was more and more of this as they went on. At last the way became impassable, a tumbled rubble field of broken stone. There was no more road, no way forward.

"The tunnel to above..." rasped Ooru, "It is gone."

9.

The vibrations surged again, shaking the ground under Nowar's feet. Then they suddenly ceased, or rather, they lapsed down to a nearly imperceptible hum. There was a sudden rumbling CRASH from not too far away, the sound of a huge amount of rock shifting, falling, smashing into smithereens against other rock. The two children grabbed each other, hearts pounding. Then there was nothing but oppressive, eerie silence.

 Miles away, and many thousands of feet up above them, where the sun shone and a light wind rustled leaves in trees, in quiet rural Bone Bridge, the ground trembled slightly. In a house, a window slammed shut, though no-one was at home. A few stones tumbled out of an old stone wall in a field and rolled onto the ground, startling a passing woodchuck.

Deep underground, Luz tugged at Nowar's arm. "We've got to get out of here!" she said, "It's not safe!"

"Let me grab my backpack!" Nowar said. His backpack now lay on the ground near the tentacled creature, who was straining to escape from under the rubble. "It has my lunch and everything inside it."

Hurriedly, before any more aftershocks could tumble a building down on top of them, Nowar ran to grab his backpack. The tentacled creature looked up at him imploringly with strange deep-set little eyes.

"Hurry up Nowar, we really have to go!" Luz called from nearby.

The creature made a small rasping, groaning noise as it strained to pull it's tentacle out from underneath the chunk of rubble that pinned it down.

Nowar made a decision. It might have been the first time in his life that he consciously chose to do something Brave. Putting his backpack down, he tried to life the piece of rubble off the little creature's trapped tentacle. It was far too heavy, and the rock wouldn't budge.

"Luz, help me!"

The chunk of fallen stone was massive, far too heavy for the two children to lift. But working together, rocking it back and forth and straining hard, they were able to shift it enough for the odd little creature to free it's trapped tentacle. It scuttled out from under the broken piece of bridge.

"Run!" it squawked in an odd, dry, raspy voice; and run they did. Nowar grabbed his backpack and he and Luz followed the scuttling little creature out of the street, toward the park and the fountain where no tall unstable buildings loomed.

Not a moment too soon. As they ran, a large section of what was left of the high bridge, hanging on like a dead branch, suddenly became detached and fell, shattering on the street in the exact spot they had been. The fleeing figures were briefly enveloped in a billowing cloud of pulverized rock dust.

They stopped just past the fountain, where cold clear water still gurgled up as if nothing untoward had happened. They all three stood, panting, the small greyish tentacled creature's breath coming in rapid high-pitched wheezes.

When they had gotten their breath back, the creature looked up and with some effort, as of someone who is speaking a foreign language in which they are not conversant, "Tha-- Thank You.

8.

They wandered, small and lost, through the strange stone city.

"I'm thirsty," Luz said. Nowar realized that he was thirsty too, his mouth was as dry as dust. "I know where we can get a drink of water," Luz continued. "Follow me."

She led Nowar around a corner, and down a long narrow street, past a row of tall, blank, faceless buildings that looked sort of like office towers. "It's just past this bridge." Luz said. A dizzying arch spanning the street high above them joined two buildings on opposite sides of the street. Just past the bridge, the street did in fact open up into a square, almost a small park, with low benches and cobblestones, and a little well with a bucket and rope at it's center.

The water was clear, sweet, quenching, and impossibly cold. They drank until their heads hurt from the cold, and then they paused and drank some more. Nowar hadn't realized just how thirsty he was. Finally, they both had enough.

"What's that?!" Luz exclaimed. Nowar looked in the direction she was pointing. He saw a flash of movement in the entryway to one of the tall, narrow building on the edge of the square; a glimpse of something red: his very own backpack.

The deep-down throbbing rumble had been building in intensity while they sat and drank. It suddenly surged, booming so loud that it shook Nowar's teeth and made his eyes hurt and his ears feel thick and tender. He felt the mechanical vibrations all the way through his bones. Then there was a different noise, crashing sound and the sudden acrid smell like fireworks, and a large section of the high bridge fell off, exploding when it hit the street, raising an enormous cloud of dust and pulverized rock.

When the dust had mostly cleared, Nowar saw a small creature pinned under a large piece of rubble in the street. It was a little smaller than a human child, but it was clearly not human. It had short stalks on it's head holding big eyes, grey rubbery skin, and long flexible tentacles where a human's arms and legs would have been. A heavy stone was pressed down on one tentacle, keeping it from escaping. Nearby, on the street, was Nowar's red backpack.

7.

As Nowar stood, hesitating in front of the partially open door, he heard the sound again, a low wet, croaking, noise, almost like someone stifling tears. Nowar took a deep breath, counted to three, and pushed the stone door all the way open, stepping into the shadowy room within.

The place might once of been a restaurant or a meeting hall. There were a number of low, round tables, carved out of what looked like smooth white marble, scattered throughout the room. Stone vessels, cups or vases or goblets, stood on some of the tables. There were no chairs.

A small figure, a human figure, cowered under one of the tables. The child, because it was a small child, small than Nowar, crouched under a table near the center of the room, it's face covered with it's small hands, shoulders quivering.

"Luz?" Nowar recognized the little person. Luz was one of the few kids at Budsurry School who was both younger and smaller than Nowar. She looked up, brown eyes wide and red from crying. Tears had left salty tracks down her flushed cheeks.

"Nowar?" she asked, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. Her face brightened visibly. "I came down here, and then I couldn't find the tunnel back up, and I got scared, and I'm really hungry." Luz came out from under the table and gave Nowar a big hug. Her cheeks felt wet against his shirt.

"Do you have any food?" Luz asked.

"Something stole my backback that had my lunch inside."

Luz nodded understanding, but Nowar could tell that she was really disappointed. He reach into his pocket and pulled out the ziplock baggy with the three slightly smooshed fig bars inside.

"Here you go," he said, handing the bag to Luz. Her eyes lit up, and a big smile appeared on her face. She hopped happily atop a nearby table and set about cramming fig bars into her mouth.

"Thank you!" Luz finally exclaimed , wiping crumbs from her lips. "Thank you so much Nowar! You're my best friend!"

Nowar felt good. He'd never been anyone's best friend before. But his stomach was still empty, and he wondered where they would find something to eat and to drink, and where the tunnel back up to the surface was.

6.

Suddenly Nowar felt very alone and very hungry and a little bit afraid. Before, he had just been contemplating a snack, but now that his backpack was gone, he found that he was ravenous. He hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, how long ago? Hours and hours surely.

Nowar wondered if he should just quit this adventure, go back up the tunnel to Budsurry School. He glanced over the parapet down the sheer drop to the grey stone street below. He was just in time to see a small figure carrying his backpack scuttle off into the shadows. It seemed to walk on two legs, it was about the size of a child, but something about the way it moved gave Nowar the distinct impression that it was not human.

Down the long spiral staircase he ran, round and round, as fast as he dared. Hunger was, for now, forgotten. Finally, he was off the stairs, breathing hard, into the dim, empty street. Nowar paused, dizzy and out of breath. Deep, deep in the rock below him, he felt a surge of rumbling from the hidden machinery.

Nowar set off in the direction he'd last seen the small thing, the furtive figure carrying his backpack. Tall grey buildings loomed on either side, and now they felt grim and somehow menacing. Nowar's stomach rumbled: after the initial burst of excitement and curiosity from seeing the strange thieving creature, he was fiercely hungry again. He felt in his pocket and --what luck!-- found a ziplock bag with a few semi-crushed fig newtons inside it. Suddenly he no longer felt quite so small, and the city didn't seem nearly as threatening. Somehow, he felt much braver too.

It was a big strange city too, and it wasn't laid out in a nice orderly grid like Manhattan: it was all twisty and turny, intersecting grey streets that all looked pretty much the same, and tall buildings mostly without feature of distinction. Nowar realized that he might be a little bit lost. He was no longer entirely sure in what direction the road back up to the surface lay.

Then he heard a noise, a small furtive noise from inside a nearby building, otherwise unremarkable, except for the door, which was ajar.

5.

Silence. All around him, the great city was still and silent, looming over Nowar like a deep stone forest. Nowar felt very small and very alone as he explored the strange, silent city. Silent. And yet not precisely silent, not exactly. Deep and low sometimes softer, sometimes a little more intense, Nowar feel, at the bottoms of his feet and in his stomach, he felt rather than heart the thrum and rumble of powerful but distant machinery.

The underground city seemed to be empty. There was no sign of any habitation --and what sort of people would have lived her, so deep in the under dark? There was no sign of life --the everyday things you normally see but don't notice, which tell you that people are around. No cars, no bicycles, no garbage, no posters on the walls, no advertisements, no decoration of any kind, just smooth grey, softly glowing stone. Doors and been left ajar, windows gaped open, and here and there the buildings had cracks running up them, or the facades were starting to crumble.

Nowar went into one building that looked structurally intact. It was an old clock tower, with hand on a large light-grey face pointing to symbols (maybe numbers?) that Nowar didn't recognize. It was the tallest building in the immediate neighborhood, it's parapets loomed above the rest of the city.

Nowar climbed the staircase that spiraled up the inside of the tower, climbed until he was dizzy. The handrail on the stairs was too short for comfort, and the higher he climbed, the further and more deadly the drop on his right side became.

He passed through a room full of machinery, giant cogwheels and shafts and pendulums all still and silent as if they had never ever moved, as if they had been carved in place. It felt like the whole underground world was holding it's breath. Finally, the narrow stone stairs opened up onto the roof of the tower, a small bare square space about the size of Nowar's own living room, protected from the sheer drop by a low, crenellated parapet, too low for Nowar's liking. It wold be only too easy to stumble over the low wall and fall --how far? Hundreds of feet-- onto the smooth stone street below. It wold not be a fall that one would survive. Nowar stayed well away from the edge.

He looked out over the skyline. From here Nowar could see that it was not a large city, not in terms of area. It was just densely packed, like a miniature underground Manhattan crammed into a huge cave.

Every now and then, at home in Bone Bridge, a squirrel or chipmunk would find it's way into the attic of Nowar's house, and make a frenzied rustling sound up above the ceilings. It was a sound like this that Nowar heard all of a sudden and close behind him, the first real sound he'd heard other than his own footsteps since he'd gone down the secret tunnel in the Budsurry playground.

Nowar spun around. He thought he might have seen a flash of furtive movement in the corner of his eye, but there was nothing there now. Silence, except for the constant deep low mechanical throb.

Nothing. Nothing was there on the clocktower rooftop. His backpack, with his lunch and all his supplies was gone. Nowar had set it down on the stone floor, intending to eat a sandwich, for he was getting quite hungry. Now the backpack was gone, with no sign that it had ever been there at all.

4.

Down, down, down, and down. Nowar felt like he was on a journey to the very center of the earth. The passage dove down steeply at first, almost as steep as a ladder, hewn stone steps so steep that Nowar had to use both hands and feet to keep from tumbling head-over-heels down them. But after a while, the slope lessened, and the steps gave way to a smooth stone passageway that wound it's way into the earth, gradually but inexorably down.

At first, sunlight had streamed in through the secret hole behind Nowar, lighting his way and casting a long wavering shadow. Soon though, the light faded and became dim, and before long, the bright morning sunlight that washed over Budsurry School was just a faded memory.

Nowar had, of course, brought a flashlight, and he was just about to take it out of his backpack and turn it on when he noticed a strange thing: down here, the rock softly glowed. The stone seemed to be covered in a kind of phosphorescent powder or mold that emitted a soft, greenish light. Nowar could actually see quite well; it was like outside at night under a full moon.

At the beginning, the passageway had been quite narrow, almost claustrophobically tight, even for a boy Nowar's size, but gradually it had opened up. Now Nowar found he was walking (still downward mind you) along an underground highway the size of a subway tunnel. The floor and walls were nearly as smooth as glass. There was no mark or decoration, and still the road (for Nowar was sure now that it was some kind of road) led down, deeper and yet deeper still.

Then, without warning, the passage opened up, and the walls and ceiling disappeared. Nowar found himself in a strange, silent, monochromatic city. There were buildings, tall and short; huts, towers,, and arches; high bridges and open squares, spires and domes, all carved from the same cool, grey, glowing rock, all still and silent, a great abandoned subterranean city, a mile or more beneath Budsurry school.