The Sword in the Grotto (4 page)

N
ot long after we had got past Edmund, we noticed that the air was different—it felt cold and damp and it smelled of earth. The walls of the secret tunnel changed too—now they were roughly cut rock. The light from my flashlight shone off the damp rocks and we knew that we were no longer inside the house. We were under the ground—this was the real thing.

The tunnel was quite wide, and Wanda and I walked along side by side. After a while Wanda whispered, “How far down do you think we are?”

“I don't know,” I whispered back. And then I whispered, “Why are we whispering?”

“Because it's scary,” whispered Wanda.

“No it's not,” I said really loudly, and my voice sounded hollow like Edmund's. Well, maybe it was a
bit
scary.

Wanda was good with the string. She kept unwinding it as we went, and when I looked back, I could see it stretching along the tunnel. It was nice to think that the end of the string was still there, tied to the secret door under the attic stairs.

We had walked for about half an hour, and I reckoned we were probably almost underneath the mushroom farm, when we went around a corner and Wanda suddenly said, “Which way do we go
now
?”

In front of us, the secret tunnel split off into two smaller tunnels. They both
looked narrow and they both looked dark. I didn't like the look of either of them.

“I don't know,” I said. “Do you want some chips?”

Cheese and onion potato chips help you think. I am sure of that, because after we had finished them, we knew what we had to do.

“Right,” I said.

“Left,” said Wanda.

So we did rock, paper, scissors—best of three—and Wanda won. Then we did best of five and I won. So we went right.

Big mistake.

 

It was okay to begin with. Kind of. The tunnel I had chosen smelled funny. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't think what. And just as I was about to remember what it
smelled of, Wanda said, “
Now
which way?” as if it was
my
fault that the tunnel had split up again—this time into three ways.

“Middle one,” I said.

“Why?” asked Wanda.

“Why not?” I said. “It doesn't matter if it's not right. We can always find our way back along the string and try the other one.”

Wanda wasn't happy. “We could be here for days doing that,” she said. “And we haven't got much more string left.”

We set off down the middle tunnel, which was an okay tunnel, as tunnels go, but still smelled funny—and then suddenly Wanda screamed.

“Arrgh!”

I dropped my flashlight.

“Oh, yuck. Oh,
errgh
.” Wanda was hopping
about like something had bitten her.

“Wh-what is it?”

“I–I stepped on a
dead body
….” Wanda squeaked. “I-it was all squashy a-and horrible. My foot went right through it.” She shivered and grabbed hold of me. “I want to go home,” she whispered.

Well, that made two of us.

I went to pick up my flashlight, and Wanda screamed again.

“Everything's turned white,” she yelled.
“Look….”

I didn't want to look, but I did. The flashlight shone along the ground, lighting up the floor of the tunnel. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen—a kind of knobbly white carpet stretched out in front of us.

“Mushrooms. You only stepped on a
mushroom
,” I told Wanda, annoyed.

Wanda looked down at her feet. “Oh,” she said. Then she said, “Well, it was a giant mushroom, actually, Araminta. Look—they're huge. You try stepping on a whole heap of monster mushrooms in a horrible, dark, smelly tunnel and see what
you
feel like.”

“I just did,” I told Wanda, “and I felt fine. And I didn't go screaming in someone's ear, nearly making them deaf, either.”

Wanda didn't reply. I thought maybe I should try to cheer her up a bit, so I said, “Well, at least we know where we are now.”

“No we don't,” said Wanda gloomily.

“Yes we do. These mushrooms must have escaped from the mushroom farm. I bet we
are underneath it right now. Which means we are nearly there. Come
on
, Wanda. It will all be worth it when we find the sword.”

“
If
we find the sword,” Wanda muttered.

We didn't say much after that except for, “left,” “right,” “left—no, right,” and “oh, I don't care, you choose.” The trouble was, the tunnel just kept splitting off into different directions, and we had no idea which one would take us to the cave. It was like being in a maze—a horrible mushroom maze, as the whole time we were stepping on mushrooms. At first I felt sorry for them getting squashed, but after a while they just got annoying. They were really slippery, too.

We kept on hoping that any minute we would find the grotto with the sword in it. But we didn't. All we kept finding was the
green string, so we knew we were back to where we had been before. Again.

After a while Wanda said, “It's no good. We're just going around in circles.”

For once she was right.

W
anda was not good at going around in circles. She did not take it well.

“All right, Wanda,” I said. “If we haven't found the sword in five minutes' time, we'll go home.”

“Promise?” asked Wanda.

“Promise,” I said. I knew we'd have to go home soon anyway, since our string was nearly finished.

Wanda spent the next four minutes and forty seconds staring at her watch and counting the seconds in a loud voice. It was very annoying, especially as I still really wanted to find the sword and give it to Sir Horace for his birthday.

We were walking down a steep slope. The mushrooms had disappeared, and I knew we had not been here before. Wanda was so busy staring at her watch that she did not notice when suddenly we turned a corner and there it was—the little round grotto with the sandy floor and the sword lying there in the middle of it, just waiting for us, like I had known it would be.

Incredible!

“Wanda,” I said, “look!”

But Wanda was still droning on, “Two
hundred and seventy-eight seconds…two hundred and seventy-nine seconds…two hundred and—”

“Wan-
da
,” I yelled. “We've
found
it!”

At last Wanda stopped counting and looked up. “Wow…” She whistled under her breath. Wanda was about to rush in when suddenly I remembered what it said in my
Secret Tunnel Handy Hint Handbook
.

“Stop!” I yelled to Wanda—and just in time. Because right above our heads, where the secret tunnel went into the cave, I could see five horrible metal spikes pointing down at us.

Wanda stopped dead in her tracks. “What are you shouting about now?” she asked grumpily. “I thought you wanted to get the sword. It's stupid to stop now when all we have to do is just—”

“Wan-daaa.” I sighed very patiently. “Just look up, will you?”

Wanda looked up. “Oh,” she said. “What is it?”

“It's a trap,” I told her. “A horrible trap.”

Wanda stared at the spikes for a bit, then she said, “No it's not. It's a portcullis.” Miss Know-it-all Wanda Wizzard folded her
arms and looked smug.

“I know that,” I said. “I didn't say it
wasn't
a portcullis. I just said it was a trap. Obviously it is a portcullis trap.”

“Obviously,” said Miss Smug Pants.

“What we have to do,” I told her, “is make sure there aren't any trip wires.”

Wanda looked worried. “Why?” she asked.

“Because if there is a trip wire and we trip over it, then the portcullis will come crashing down on top of our heads, that's why.”

Wanda shuddered. “That's
horrible
,” she said.

I shrugged. “Stuff like that happens all the time in secret tunnels.”

“Well, you never told me that when you were trying to get me to come with you,” said
Wanda, staring up at the sharp spikes.

“You never asked,” I told her. I crouched down and shone my flashlight along the ground, which was covered in thick sand.

“It's okay,” I said. “I can't see a trip wire or anything, so I guess we're safe.”

I don't think Wanda believed me. She got down on her hands and knees and had a real good look too. “I guess it's okay….” she muttered.

“Do you want to go first?” I offered. I was being polite, as Aunt Tabby is always telling me not to rush in front of people.

Wanda gave me a funny look and said, “No thank you, Araminta. We'll go together.” She grabbed hold of my hand and yelled, “One…two…three…Go!”

So we went. We shot under the portcullis like a couple of bats out of a sack and
nothing happened
. The horrible spikes stayed just where they were, and there we were—in the grotto at last.

“Yes!” I grinned at Wanda. “We did it!”

Wanda ran around the cave, kicking up the sand and jumping about, yelling, “We did it, we did it. Yaay!” I think she was pleased too.

And then there was a horrible clang and a huge thud. The grotto shook like an earthquake had struck. But it was a whole heap worse than an earthquake.

It was the portcullis trap—it had come crashing down. Now a massive iron grille barred our way home.

Wanda and I stared at it. Even Wanda didn't say anything for a while. And then, when she
did say something, her voice sounded all squeaky and trembling.

“We're
trapped
,” she said.

Wanda was right.

Again.