The Sword in the Grotto (5 page)

W
anda did not take too well to being trapped in the grotto, either. In fact, she took it even worse than she'd taken going around in circles. I told her that it was no good jumping up and down and yelling; we had to try and get out.

First we tried to lift up the portcullis, but it weighed a ton. It didn't budge one little bit. We kept on trying, but I could tell there
was no way we could move it in a million years.

“And there's no point shouting ‘One, two, three…
heave
' in my ear over and over again,” I told Wanda. “It's not going to help if I go deaf as well.”

After that we tried to dig down below the portcullis. The sand was soft, and I thought that maybe we could squeeze out underneath, but it was no good. There was rock below the sand, and also a thick metal plate, which I guessed was part of the portcullis trap.

“Come on, Wanda,” I said. “We've
got
to lift up that portcullis.”

But it wouldn't shift. Then we tried stupid things that we knew wouldn't work, but we had to do them just in case. We tried to
squeeze underneath, but we couldn't fit. Wanda tried wriggling through the gaps between the bars, as she is smaller than I am, but she nearly got her head stuck. We even used the sword to try to lever up the metal plate under the sand. But the portcullis stayed right where it was, blocking our way home.

Wanda acted a bit strange after that. She started shaking the bars and yelling for help. I didn't see the point, so I went and sat down beside the sword and tried to think. But however hard I tried, I couldn't think of anything. And soon all I could think was, “I wish Wanda would stop
yelling
.”

“Shut up, Wanda,” I said.

“Shut up yourself,” said Wanda. She sounded really annoyed, but underneath I could tell
she was as scared as I was. When I'm scared I get very quiet, but when Wanda is scared she just goes bananas.

“Do you want a cheese and onion chip?” I asked.

“No. I'm not hungry,” she said. But she stopped yelling and came and sat down beside me.

I felt much better after I had eaten my potato chips. I decided I might as well have a look at the sword, seeing as we had come all this way to find it. You could tell that it had once been a really great sword. The handle had some nice patterns on it, and there were some lumpy bits under all the dirt and rust flakes that looked like they might be jewels. But I had to admit that my first impression of it had been better, because in fact it now
looked like a piece of old junk. It was the kind of thing that Aunt Tabby would bring back from a garage sale and Uncle Drac would sigh and ask why on earth did we need
more
garbage. But I still knew it was the perfect birthday present for Sir Horace.

“It's great, isn't it?” I said. “Sir Horace is going to love this; I know he will.”

“If he ever gets to see it,” muttered Wanda,
“which he won't. Because tomorrow on his birthday, we'll still be stuck here. And the next day. And the day after that. We're
always
going to be stuck here. I'm never going to see Mom and Dad again, and you're never going to see your aunt Tabby or uncle Drac again—never mind Sir Stupid Horace.”

“Stop it, Wanda,” I said. “Just stop it
right now
. We are going to get out of here. There is always more than one way out of a secret tunnel.”

“There used to be,” said Wanda, pointing to the pile of rocks that blocked off the grotto from the cave outside, “but there isn't anymore.”

We went over to the rock pile anyway. I shone the flashlight everywhere, hoping to see a gap that we could squeeze through, but
there was nothing. Nothing but horrible, heavy rocks.

Wanda peered through a tiny gap between two rocks. “This is where I looked through from the other side,” she said. “Maybe if we shine the flashlight through here, some people on the beach might see it. Or there might be someone in the cave exploring.”

Well, it was worth a try. I didn't mention the fact that you can't see the end of the cave from the beach, or that it must be getting late by now and everyone would be going home. I just gave Wanda the flashlight.

She shone it through the gap. “Coo-
eee
,” she called out, sounding just like Brenda does when she calls her cat. “Is anybody there?” Wanda put her ear to the gap and listened hard.

“Can you hear something?” I whispered.

“Shh…yes…yes I can.”

I felt really excited. How lucky was
that
, someone being in the cave just at that moment? “What—
what
can you hear, Wanda?” I asked. “Tell me!”

Wanda stood up and gave me back the flashlight. She had a
really weird look on her face. “I can hear the sea,” she said. “It's inside the cave.”

I didn't believe Wanda at first. I thought she was just doing another Wanda windup. But this time she was dead calm.

“What do you mean, it's inside the cave?” I asked. “The sea doesn't come inside the cave. You saw where it was this morning. It was miles away. I've never seen it so far away.”

“Then it was low tide,” muttered Wanda. “Now it's high tide.”

“So?” I asked. I wasn't really sure what Wanda meant, as I hadn't been to the beach very much. Aunt Tabby doesn't like the way the sand gets inside her shoes, and Uncle Drac won't go out in the sun. In fact, until Wanda came to live with us I had never been to the beach.

“So—the sea was really far out this morning, wasn't it?” said Wanda. I nodded. “And when it goes far out, that means it's a really
low
tide. Okay? But it also means that when it comes in, like it's doing now, it will be a really
high
tide.”

I didn't like the sound of this. “How high?” I asked.

“I don't know,” said Wanda. “But it's not high tide until seven o'clock. That's when Mom was going down for her swim.”

I looked at my watch. It said half past five. One and a half hours still to go.

“Give me the flashlight,” I said. “I want to see the water inside the cave.”

I found the gap in the rocks and shone the flashlight through. At first I couldn't see anything at all, but I kept the flashlight very still
and stared until my eyes got used to it.

“Can you see anything?” Wanda asked in a hoarse whisper.

“There's something moving…the light…it's reflecting off something….”

“Water,” said Wanda glumly.

“Yes,” I said. “Waves.”

“Waves,” Wanda repeated in a flat voice.

“Only little waves,” I said, trying to cheer her up.

Wanda didn't say anything.

I didn't see the point of just staring at the water, waiting for it to come closer. It was still quite a few feet away, and I didn't totally believe what Wanda had said about high tide—Wanda can get a bit worked up about things. So I sat down on the sand to think.

“That's why the sand is damp,” Wanda said, throwing herself down beside me.

“What's why the sand is damp?”

Wanda laughed in a funny way that I didn't like. “Because at the last high tide, the sea came in here.”

“You don't know that,” I told her. She grabbed the flashlight and shone it around the walls of the grotto like she was looking for something. And then she found it.

“Seaweed,” she said, waving the light over a piece of shiny green stuff stuck on the ceiling. “And it's still wet.”

I tried to remember what Uncle Drac always says about not panicking, but I couldn't. Even Uncle Drac might panic a bit just now.

I didn't say anything for a while, and then
Wanda—being her usual cheery self—said, “Araminta…”

“What?”

“Can you swim?”

“No. Can you?”

“Yes…with arm floats.”

“Don't suppose you brought them with you?” “No…”

There didn't seem much else to talk about after that.

T
he sea kept on coming, and the sound of the waves washing against the walls of the cave outside got louder. Soon I could smell the sea in the air.

I looked at the green string, which had ended just as we reached the grotto. It lay on the sand beside my backpack, and I thought of the other end tied to the secret door underneath the attic stairs. More than anything I
wished I was at
that
end of the string. And then—

I saw it
move
.

I didn't believe it. And then it moved again.

Wanda saw it too. “Something's eating the string,” she whispered. “And soon it will come and eat
us
.”

“Don't be silly, Wanda. How will it get through the portcullis?”

“It probably set the portcullis trap in the
first place,” said Wanda. “It will just press a button or something and—”

“Stop it, Wanda!” I put my fingers in my ears.

Suddenly there was a huge tug on the string, and it jumped underneath the portcullis.

“Get it, get it!” yelled Wanda. I dived to grab it, but it was too late—the end was just out of reach. Wanda and I watched the green string move jerkily along the tunnel until it
disappeared around the corner.

“Now we'll never find our way home,” I mumbled, “even if we do get through the portcullis trap.”

“Which we won't,” said Wanda.

We could hear the sea getting even closer. There was a kind of swishing sound as the water gushed into the narrow cave outside and swirled around the rocks, and then a sucking sound as the water washed out again, and then another
swishhhh
…and then it happened.

The sea poured in. It came in through the tiny gaps in the pile of rocks like water through a cheese grater. At first all it did was sink into the sand and disappear, but it was not long before there was a pool of water in the sand that didn't go away. And every time
a wave threw itself against the rocks, more water poured in and the pool got deeper. The noise was horrible too. Now I knew how Brenda's cat, Pusskins, must have felt the day Aunt Tabby ran the rinse cycle while it was asleep in the washing machine. I decided I would never, ever laugh at Brenda's cat again. If I ever
saw
Brenda's cat again…

The rinse cycle in the grotto just carried on. More and more water was coming in and, although Wanda and I were on the high bit of sand by the portcullis, we knew that it would not be long before the water reached us, too—and then kept going right up to that piece of seaweed way above our heads.

Suddenly there was a massive
thud
against the rocks. A wave of water streamed in and splashed up at us. Wanda screamed and
dropped the flashlight. It rolled down the sand toward the water.

“Get it!” I yelled. “Quick!”

We both dived after it. I crashed into Wanda and fell into the water. Wanda yelled and missed the flashlight, which rolled into the pool.

Any other time I would have thought how pretty it looked. It lit up the water as it sank, and the whole grotto turned a bluey-green. We watched as the light dropped slowly down and came to rest on the sand at the bottom of the pool.

And then it went out. And everything went black.

Wanda grabbed hold of me so hard that it hurt. “It's dark,” she whispered. “I—I don't like the dark.”

It wasn't the dark I minded; it was the water. But I didn't say that. I just said, “I-it's okay. I've got my key ring flashlight.” I pulled it out of my pocket and pressed the button. But it didn't work. It was wet.

“Where's yours?” I asked Wanda.

She fumbled through her pockets for ages, and then she said, “It's not here. I think I left it in the cave….”

“Never mind,” I said. “There must be some light getting in through the gaps in the rocks. Just wait until your eyes get used to it.”

But our eyes didn't get used to it.

 

It was horrible being in the dark. Really horrible. We couldn't see the water anymore, so we didn't know how fast it was coming up toward us, and I kept thinking we were about
to get drowned. I opened my eyes so wide that they felt cold around the edges, but it made no difference. I could see nothing at all. It was completely, totally dark.

Another rush of water poured between the rocks, and I felt the spray in my face as it splashed in.

“At least Pusskins could
see
something,” I said to Wanda. “Aunt Tabby always leaves the light on in the laundry room.”

“What are you talking about?” gasped Wanda.

“Nothing,” I said. “Move back a bit, Wanda, my feet are in the water.”

“I can't,” she said. “There's no room. I'm stuck right against the portcullis already.”

“Well, start climbing it then,” I told her. “My feet are soaked. I hate having wet socks.”

The portcullis was quite easy to climb, even in the dark. I hung the sword onto one of the bars and followed Wanda up until we both were as high as we could get. The metal was cold and sharp, but I didn't care. At least we were out of the water. But for how long?

We didn't say much after that. The waves
kept on pounding outside on the rocks, then pouring into the grotto. The water was right up to our knees and there was no way we could climb any higher when suddenly Wanda said, “A light! I can see a light in the tunnel. Look,
look
!”

I nearly fell off the portcullis. Wanda was right. At the far end of the mushroom tunnel was a very faint greenish glow.
And it was coming toward us.