Larkspur Mittel: The Lark & Owl Trilogy

25 - The Marshlands

The children scaled the narrow passage following a weak stream of light that grew wider as they climbed. The grate at the top was already open, and they didn't pause to wonder why. The blue sky and sunlight above were hard to resist after their near drowning and suffocation among the horrid sysipals. And so they emerged from the ground quickly, eager for the warmth of the sun on their faces.

The air felt clean and fresh and they breathed deeply, exhausted after their ordeal. They closed the grate behind them and stood dripping wet in a shallow depression of earth.

"Where do you think we are?" Adelmus asked, shielding his eyes from the bright sun overhead.

They were surrounded on all sides by tall yellow grasses that swayed in a soft breeze. The land rose up gently around them, and the earth was dry, cracked mud. A few small beetles scuttled, though one or two lingered near Aggie's feet, as though unsure of whether to greet her before disappearing into some self-made holes.

Hero noticed a barely discernible footpath from the grate that led up to the left.

"I'm not sure," she said, leading them uphill.

Just over the ridge they saw in the distance their high city wall as a tiny, dark line below the horizon. The grassland marsh where they stood spread out in every direction as far as they could see. To their right the Ru River made its slow course from the city, twisting around a bend just below them and out of sight.

"Larks alive! We're much further away than I thought," Adelmus exclaimed.

"We're in the Marshlands," Ivan replied. He rubbed his skin from the sting of the sharp grasses on his arms and legs.

Hero was surprised they'd gone so far. She thought of her view from the top of the minaret and her notebook sketch of the city and its environs. Boer Mam had often told them stories of the Marshlands when they were small. She told them of the rainy season and the mud pits that swallowed both men and deguls alike and then of the buried, sleeping creatures that woke up angry if disturbed during the dry season.

Evidently, from the look of the parched, cracked earth, it was the dry season now, and so she stepped carefully.

"Ogdin told us to come this way," Adelmus noted, "along the old silver route."

"There," Ivan pointed towards the river, "the silver route used to go through the Marshlands on the river."

Aggie waited beside Ivan and said nothing. She looked but a sad, rag doll in her dripping grey dress, and wet hair. The sun would burn her pale skin soon if they didn't find some shelter, thought Hero.

"We'd better keep moving," she urged them on.

They were turning to follow the footpath towards the river, when a thin whistle pierced the air.

"Look-y! A bunch o' wet rats ye got!" A scrawny boy was pointing at them and jumping up and down excitedly. He was about fifty paces away, on a hill on the other side of the hollow.

"Come on!" Ivan had already started to run down through the waist high grass towards the river, and pulled Aggie along behind him. Hero and Adelmus ran after them.

Just as they rounded the bend, they saw another few boys. Ivan stopped short and quickly turned to follow Hero who was already fleeing and leading them back up over the hill and into the hollow once more.

The ragtag group of five or six boys had suddenly doubled in size. They formed a loose circle around Hero and her friends and were closing in, pushing them down into the middle of the hollow where they had come out from the tunnel. Hero looked for the grate, but it was gone.