Barbara Siegel - Tanis the shadow years

"Nice people," Brandella said under her breath. She and Tanis backed up, stepping off the trail and into the high grass in the direction of the nearby stream.

"It beats!" sang the boy.

"It beats!" echoed the old woman.

The sun poured over Tanis and the weaver, who repeatedly wiped their sleeves across their eyes. Brandella faltered. "We can't just keep on walking backward," she said. With their next footfall, Tanis and Brandella left the tall grass and stepped on a thin layer of leaves and sticks. In that moment, the ground beneath their feet broke apart with a splintering crack. They scrambled to keep their footing, kicking over a pile of small stones, but their momentum sent them falling into a fifteen-foot- deep pit in the earth.

Neither was badly hurt; the soft, damp soil had cushioned the worst of their fall. They scrambled to a crouch as two bloodless faces with blue-flame eyes appeared at the edge above them. "It worked, grandma I" the lad said to the harridan.

"But why?" Tanis asked Brandella quietly. And then he stood up and asked that same question of those above. "What do you want of us?"

"Your beating hearts!" cried the old woman, shaking the trowel. "To hold the beating heart of a living person in your hands is to leave Death and return to Life. We've waited at this crossroads three thousand eight hundred and eighty one years, hoping this day would come." She clapped her hands. "Our patience has been rewarded."

"Not yet, it hasn't," Tanis challenged. 'You don't know for certain that that tale is true. We were told that the path out of Death is to be found on the other side of Fis- tandantilus's mountain. And we were told this by none other than Huma of the Lance!"

"Who?" asked the old woman.

Tanis cast the hag a stunned look. "Why, the most famous hero in all of Krynn," he shouted.

She appeared to consider, then shook her head. "Must have been after my time. Never heard of him," she said with a shrug.

Tanis was beside himself with frustration. "Even if our beating hearts were your way out of Death, you can't get at them from where you stand, anymore than we can escape you from inside this pit."

"Wrong!" the little blond boy chirped. "You'll grow weak from hunger. You need to eat." He nodded wisely. "I used to eat. Food was good. I liked soup. Didn't I, Grandma?" he asked, tugging at the woman's blue skirts.

"Yes," she said, patting the boy on the head. "He was fond of my fish soup," she told her victims proudly.

"You will go to sleep before you die," the little boy continued. "Then we'll climb down and cut you open with grandma's shovel. Hold your hearts in our hands, go back to Life, and eat soup. Right, Grandma?"

She smiled and nodded, the movement loosening the knot of gray hair at the nape of her neck. "You can see why I'm so proud of him, can't you?"

Tanis sat on the soft earth, ignoring the gloating dead ones above, and tried to think.

Brandella plopped down with a sigh. "I know this isn't the time to mention it," she said, "but I'm getting hungry. And I'm awfully thirsty, too." She sighed again and picked at a thread hanging from her soft leather slippers.

"It'll pass," said Tanis.

"Yes, and so will we, and we're already in our grave."

They sat silently for a few moments, contemplating the truth of her words, until Brandella angrily banged her fist against the side of the pit. A large clump of dirt fell to the ground. Looking at the small hole she had made in the wall of their tomb, she lifted her head, saying, "That's it!"

Tanis just peered at her. "What?"

She scrabbled toward the half-elf, ignoring the dirt she was grinding into the knees of her woven trousers. 'The stream bends right behind this pit. That's probably why the ground is so soft and damp. Don't you see?" she exclaimed, her voice rising, "I think I know how we can get-"

Tanis clamped his hand over her mouth. "Softly," he said in her ear. "They're listening." Chastened, she nodded her head, and Tanis removed his hand from her mouth, leaving a dirty smudge on her cheek. She leaned close to the half-elf and in a low voice said, "The ground is so soft that we can dig our way out of here. The two up there won't have any idea where we're coming up." "It could take more time than we have left to live," he warned her. "How long will we live if we don't try it?" she asked, a crease between her exasperated eyes. "Do you have a better idea, Half-Elven?" Tanis pursed his lips and thought. Then he said, "Let's start digging." Tanis dug at the earth with his sword, which no longer glowed red, and Brandella used both hands to pull the loose dirt he broke from the wall out of their way. "What are you doing down there?" demanded the old woman, peering into the pit. Tanis and Brandella paid her no mind; they kept on digging at a ferocious pace. "What are they doing?" the old woman asked her grandson. "Digging a tunnel," guessed the little boy. With a self-satisfied grin, the boy's grandmother said, "They'll be dead long before they ever dig their way to the top. Foolish creatures." Sweat poured from their bodies as Tanis and Brandella clawed and scraped at the earth, flinging big clumps of wet dirt through their legs like dogs digging a hole for a bone. The harder they worked, the more they sweated, and the more they sweated, the drier became their throats. "How far are we from the pit?" panted Brandella after several hours of hard labor. A layer of soil had been added to the smudge Tanis had left on her cheek. "About six feet, I'd say." The damp walls of the tunnel made his voice seem dead, and the weaver shivered. She paused, a handful of dirt dropping from suddenly listless fingers. "We aren't going to make it, are we?" she asked. "Don't know," Tanis said. "Just keep digging." Every muscle in Tanis's body cried out from the work he was doing in such cramped quarters. Brandella fared no better with fingernails that were broken and bloody. Dirt caked their clothes, inside and out, and generous helpings of earth crept into their eyes, ears, and mouths. "I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," she said wearily. "Do you have a better idea?" Tanis gently mocked, echoing her earlier question. He couldn't tell if she gave a short laugh or a sob, but she kept on digging.

"There's water trickling in!" Brandella cnied fearfully. "I can hear it dripping!" From inside the pit, they couldn't tell in which direction they were digging. Obviously, they'd headed toward the stream. A mud puddle quickly formed at the base of the tunnel, and a short while later the water flow grew from a trickle into a thin but steady stream. Soon, the whole bottom of the gently sloping tunnel turned into a muddy mess, making it difficult for the two to work; they kept slipping and sliding as they tried to dig. Tanis was in front, stretched out with his head and arms at the location where the water was coming into the tunnel. Brandella was behind him, reaching forward to get at the dirt that Tanis pushed back in her direction. It was her job to take that dirt and move it still farther back into the tunnel.

The last thing she expected at that moment was to feel something tickling her ankle and feet; she'd long since lost her shoes. She screamed, kicking her feet.

Tanis squirmed to one side; she could barely see his mud-striped face in the gloom. "What is it7" he asked.

"I… don't know," she said, fearing that the little blond boy had climbed down after them. In the positions they were in, barely able to move, even a child could easily get at them from behind.

The tickling continued despite her thrashing. Then it stopped. Started. Stopped.

Tanis, frantic to try to help her, turned on his side; making a desperate attempt to slide backward and squeeze next to her.

But the tickling feeling had come from dirt beginning to fall on her legs from the roof of their tunnel. She knew what it was when the entire tunnel began collapsing on her feet…