"Alright, this is the farthest I made it before I turned back," I say to Angel, still keeping the secret of the Shadelites to myself. "Well then, let's move forward. Maybe there's something up ahead." So, we continue walking, following the seemingly never-ending minecart track. But after a while, exhaustion sets in, and we decide to sit and rest.
"How much longer do you think this is going to go on for? It feels like we've been walking for hours," Angel exclaims.
I sink down the wall to sit beside her. "Yeah, it does feel like we've been walking a while. Do you want to give up and go back to the others?"
"Nah," she says, shaking her head. "Let's push on for another hour. I'm sure it has to end somewhere."
Before she gets up, though, I put my hand on her arm to stop her. "Wait a sec. There's something I want to talk about."
"What?" she asks, curious.
"That tattoo," I point to her arm. "How did you get it?"
"What are you talking about? I don't have any tattoos. Where would I get the money for a tattoo? I told you I was homeless." I grabbed her arm to show her, but it's gone, and there is no rainbow on it anymore.
"Huh? You know what? Just forget it. Let's go."
After another minute of resting, we get up and push on. But it still seems like we're getting nowhere. And after 30 minutes or so, I begin to suspect something is wrong. I decide to do a little experiment. Finding the sharpest chunk of rock I can, I go over and make a mark on the wall. Then I run to catch up with Angel, who didn't even notice that I had fallen behind.
My experiment proves everything I need to know when, after 20 more minutes, we come across the exact same spot that I had marked. This is when I stop Angel. "I know why we're not getting anywhere," I tell her, showing her the mark and explaining why I did it.
"So you're saying that for some reason, when we walk down this tunnel, we end up back where we started?"
"Yeah, somehow."
"What the flip is happening? Why are there suddenly all of these strange things happening?"
"I don't know. I'm just as confused as you are. I wish I'd never had that dream. Then we wouldn't be here."
"Well, what's done is done, and we can only move forward from here," she says, smiling. "Plus, it hasn't been all that bad. At least I got to meet you."
"Well, come on. The others are probably worried sick about us." I offer her my hand, and she takes it. Together, we walk back to where we fell down.
Shane and Sky were waiting for us, as we suspected, but they didn't seem that worried. In fact, they were talking and joking as if we didn't even exist. "Since when were you two getting so close?" I ask, alerting them to our presence.
"The same thing could be said about you two," answers Shane, gesturing to our joined hands. We quickly break them apart.
"So, where have you been anyway? We woke up an hour ago and haven't seen you since," Sky asks.
"We've been scouting out the area. It appears that we've fallen into an abandoned mineshaft. But we found out something else too. Upon exploring the tunnel, we discovered that for some reason, walking in the same direction just brings us backward, and you end up walking in a circle."
"So, basically," says Shane, "we're trapped."
"Well, I wouldn't put it that way, but yeah, we have nowhere to go from here."
"Well, there has to be somewhere. We can't give up hope. I really don't want to starve to death down here." I had forgotten about that. We would need food and water sooner rather than later. "Crud. Well, it looks as though we have no choice but to find a way to break the looping cycle, if there even is a way to."
And so, we spent the next few hours walking down the mine and always ending back at the beginning. But just as hunger and thirst were starting to kick in, I noticed something off about the wooden pillars holding up the tunnel. They were evenly spaced all throughout, except for this one spot where the space in between them seemed bigger. And I soon realized why—there was one missing.
"Hey, hold up," I say, stopping the others. "We need to search this wall. There is a pillar missing, and there has to be a reason, which means that there's something about this wall." Everyone bends down and starts searching the wall, but there's nothing there. It's just like all of the rest of the walls.
"But then why is there no pillar here if there isn't something?" I look to the other side, and sure enough, there's a pillar over there, but not on this side. Lost in thought, I wander over to the pillars that actually are there.
And that's when I notice it. On the pillar was that blasted eye, and it was on a raised surface like a button. It takes me about a minute to put two and two together—the space between the pillars and the button. It must open up something. Upon reaching this conclusion, I reach over and press the button. The reaction is immediate—a grinding sound starts up, faint at first, but slowly getting louder, and then a space starts to open up in the wall.
A smile lights up everyone else's faces. "Cole, what did you do?" Angel says.
"Well, after you guys started searching the wall, I wandered over to one of the non-missing pillars and noticed that there was a button. So I pressed it, and then the doorway started opening up."
"I expected them to be ecstatic, but Shane looked livid."
"Haven't you learned your lesson about doing things without thinking? That button would have triggered a trap and killed us all."
"But it didn't, did it? Instead, it opened up a way for us to move forward. But if you want to stay behind, more power to ya." I then push past him to go into the newly opened doorway and gasp with shock. It was exactly the same as in my dream, down to the last details, including the torches with that weird eye symbol.
"Just like in my dream, the tunnel goes on for a while before opening up into a forest of purple trees. And I'm in so much shock that I don't even realize Angel grabbed hold of my arm. 'Hey, I have something I want to show you,' she whispers in my ear. 'It's this place. I seem to remember it somehow, like I've been here before, but I know I haven't.' 'Well,' I answer, 'it's familiar to me too, but not in the same way.' I spread my arms wide and say, 'This is the place that you gave me the half-heart necklace in my dream.'"