The Land of Broken Roads

“I wonder how we can find out what’s down there,” said Dirt. “Do you think you could lift up the big square stone the statue was on?”

-No. Well, maybe later. Right now I am tired. I had to lift it with my muscles.-

“I thought you lifted it with your mind.”

-I did, but the weight had to go somewhere and the only place was into me. There might be a way to do it better. I can ask Mother, or even Father, since he will be pleased with me. Or maybe I just need practice.-

“I’m pretty sure I couldn’t lift up a rock as big as me. No wonder you need a rest. What about… looking with that gray sight thing you did? The thing that I couldn’t handle. Ghost sight.”

-Mother hasn’t taught me to look under the ground with ghost sight yet. Probably because there’s never anything down there, except for right now. Or maybe because it’s not possible. I don’t know.-

“Oh.” Dirt crawled over to the paving stones around the platform and put his ear against them, seeing if he could hear anything with his human ears. He couldn’t, but his hearing was still melded with Socks’, and the scratching continued. “I guess the first question we should ask, is do we really want to find out what’s doing it? What if it’s something like that tentacle monster?”

-It doesn’t sound big. I am not afraid of whatever it is.-

“I’m not either. Not yet, at least. And honestly, I want to find out. I just like to be cautious sometimes, because look at me,” thought Dirt. He put his legs in the same pose as the statue’s, puffed out his chest, and flexed, grinning all the while.

Socks huffed in amusement, his eyes getting a bit more life in them. He even spared a bit of energy to start flicking the end of his tail. Lifting that statue really had worn him out.

“You can rest and I’ll look around. If that scratching is in a tunnel or a chamber down there, maybe I can find a way in.”

-All the buildings here fell down long ago. Why not all the tunnels and chambers?-

“If there was a room underground and it collapsed, then there’d be a big hole in the ground here, so it must not have. But maybe it’s just a little box, not a big room. Maybe I won’t find anything, but I still want to look. And actually, here, let’s meld our sight, too.”

With their sight shared across the mental connection, Socks closed his eyes to rest and watch what Dirt was doing. Which was good, because seeing from two perspectives at once made Dirt’s body dizzy, and that had been when they were laying down in the den.

Dirt climbed back up onto the platform and looked anew at the area. The statue’s plinth, worn down as it was, still had two lumps where the feet must have gone once. In fact, the bigger one might have been a foot, with a lumpy shape next to it that was lost to time.

There was a wide circle of nothing around the statue, wide enough for Socks to be laying down without touching the ring of stone around it. This must have been grass or dirt all along, or something like that, lined with a little wall to look nice.

Or maybe water, not grass. Humans liked to have water around, judging from the two other human places he’d seen. This was right in the middle of the city, so maybe they put water here for everyone who came to look at the statue.

The paving stones beyond the circle had nothing growing on them for a dozen paces or more in every direction, exposing the remains of a large plaza right in the center of the city. From here, roads broke off in various directions, including the main one that went down to the plains below.

Dirt hopped off the plinth and went to look at the deep indentation in the ground where the statue had been. The soil there was compacted and hard, much harder than the grasses to either side. He pulled up a flat rock about the size of his fist and hammered it down to loosen up the dirt, then dug to see if there was more stone underneath. There probably was, but after a few inches he decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

He stepped out onto the plaza, noticing how warm the stones were getting under his feet, and how comfortable it made them feel to walk on. What was he looking for, anyway? Some way to get down underneath, but what would that be? A hole? A door that opened downward? Some other opening that was all filled in now?

Dirt considered the closest street, covered by six or more inches of soil and grass. Would a person walk down the middle, or the sides? Probably both. But if the entrance to the underground was in the middle of the road, anyone going past would have to go around it, and that didn’t seem convenient.

He figured if a road was wider than others, that meant it was used more. Or it was for bigger guests, like Father. Maybe wolves came to visit sometimes, so they built a nice big road for them to go to the right places. But either way, he picked the widest road and started walking down it, keeping to the edge instead of the middle, and looked for clues.

After about thirty steps, Dirt shrieked in sudden terror when the ground beneath him collapsed, plunging him downward. His feet hit a lip of stone a couple feet down, then bounced to a lower one before his flailing arms caught hold of the grass and stopped his fall.

Socks severed the partial mind meld and bolted over. Before Dirt had even fully understood what just happened, Socks’ closed his mouth over his head and lifted him out, fangs under his armpits, and badly scraped Dirt’s leg along one of the sides of the hole.

The pup deposited him a good distance away then stood protectively between him and the hole, ears flat and hackles raised. -Are you okay?-

Dirt’s heart beat hard enough to thump its way right out of his chest. “I think I’m fine. Thanks for saving me. That was scary! I’m still scared. Oh, wow.” He gave a nervous little laugh.

-I was too slow. If it was deep, you would be gone.-

“No, you could just come lift me out with your mind.”

-I don’t like it anyway.-

“Well, me neither, but I’m glad you came to get me so fast. Oh! Uh oh. That’s bleeding a lot,” Dirt said, noticing for the first time how bad his scraped leg really was. A gash, still painless, had opened up all the way down his thigh.

Socks didn’t need to be told and immediately bent down to lick the wound closed. Dirt turned on his side to make it easier, squirming as Socks made sure to get in nice and deep to clean it out properly.

The bleeding stopped quickly, and even though it still stung, Dirt stood and patted Socks on the nose. “Thanks. I’m really glad you know how to do that. It seems like I get cut on everything, all the time. I need fur or something. But now I really want to see what’s down there. Should I go take a look? If I step over there, will you listen and see if the floor sounds like it’s breaking?”

-No. Stay here.-

Socks stepped heavily over toward the hole, bouncing his body to put extra weight into his steps just to make sure. He got all the way to it without the ground budging, and when he got to the hole, he gave it a good sniff. His hackles were still raised, but he was calming down.

“What do you smell in there?”

-I don’t know. It’s strange because there’s not much to smell. But I think the floor was metal here, and now it is rust. The air inside isn’t moving.-

“Maybe it’s been closed so long all the smells went away.”

-I can smell the rust and metal, but not much else.-

“Can I come look?”

-Yes, but not too close. Stay behind my front paws,- said Socks. A chunk of earth about the size of Dirt’s torso came free with a snap and floated upward, then flew to the side. Then another, with no snap this time. From there, Socks cleared away all the soil to expose a pitted, dingy orange surface that was neither stone nor dirt. It ran flat on along the ground, and toward one end was the hole Dirt had fallen through. A long split ran down the middle.

“Doors! That’s a door! Or two doors. They’re all rust now. But look, they open up and then you can go inside! We found it! Can you lift them open?”

-No, I don’t think I can. They’re nothing but crumbly rust now. But I can break them.-

It took almost no effort. Socks placed a front paw on the corner of one door and pushed, and the whole thing collapsed into a thousand pieces and fell inward. Then he stepped around and did the same to the other door.

-Okay, now you can come look in. But be careful because it might still be sharp.-

“I know,” said Dirt.

The large rectangular opening was wide enough that with his arms outstretched, Dirt couldn’t touch both sides at once. Beneath the doors was a staircase of polished and unweathered stone, flat and shiny in the sunlight where the rust hadn’t fallen.

Dirt said, “That’s stairs. You open the doors and then you can go down.”

-Why make little steps instead of just a slope?-

“I don’t really know. I’ll have to think about that. But first… what do you think?”

At the bottom of the staircase was an arched doorway, empty this time, leading into a hallway that Dirt couldn’t see far into from here. The doorway was too small for Socks to go in, which meant Dirt would have to go alone.