Episode 4 - The Fourth Gate

Lois and Evelyn Arrive!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Chapter one The Mill Is Far The summer had a different feeling now. Pierce noticed it the way you notice a change in weather before it actually changes. Something in the air. Something in the quality of the light on the creek. Something in the way the three of them walked differently than they had in June. They were a month in. They had been underground twice, they had faced zombies and creepers and a four foot man in a toilet paper robe with arm cannons, and they had come out every time. And that changes you. Not in a dramatic way, just in the quiet way that experience changes people. You walk a little more, like you know where you're going. They had been planning the third gate trip for two weeks. Duane had three new pages of notes, two new trap designs that he admitted were probably unnecessary for an underground trust exercise, but felt better having, and a hand copied version of the stone map because he didn't want to risk losing the original. Bear had clocked his mile time twice and declared himself ready. Henry had acquired somehow a sixth sense for when adventure was coming, and had prepacked his bag the night before without being asked. The mill was an hour downstream. Pierce had scouted it once from the bank without going in. An old gray stone building half collapsed sitting where the creek widened before bending south. Ivy up the walls, windows long gone, a water wheel that hadn't turned in decades, frozen mid rotation draped in moss. The eye symbol on the map sat right next to it, and he didn't know what the eye meant. He'd thought about it every day for two weeks. Ready? he said at the kitchen door. Ready, said Duane. Obviously, said Bear. Henry held up his bag. It clinked with beef sticks. Born ready. Chapter two unexpected guests. They were twenty minutes downstream moving well when Pierce heard something behind them. He stopped. The others stopped. They listened. Footsteps small ones, fast ones. Coming around the bend in the creek bank at a pace that suggested running or possibly skipping, or the specific movement of a person who treats every horizontal surface as an opportunity. Lois came around the bend at full speed, arms out for balance on the narrow bank, her dirty blonde hair flying. She was seven years old, and she moved. Like gravity was a suggestion. She spotted them, grinned, and did not slow down. Found you she announced. Duane turned around. His expression cycled through several things surprise, confusion, recognition, and then the specific, exhausted acceptance of an older sibling. Lois. How did you I heard you were going on an adventure. I want to go too. She arrived, completely unbothered, and looked at the creek and the trees with bright, curious eyes. You're going to the old mill. I want to come. You can't come. I'm already here. Mom doesn't know where you are. Mom thinks I'm in the Kansas Lois. A second sound. Slower. Quieter. From around the same bend came a small figure four years old, dark haired, picking her way carefully along the creek bank with the focused concentration of someone navigating a very serious path. Evelyn reached the group, looked up at everyone with calm brown eyes, and said nothing. She found Duane's hand and held it. Duane looked at his little sisters. He looked at Pierce. Pierce looked at the sisters. He looked back at the path home. He looked at Duane. She followed me, Lois said with the tone of someone explaining a fact of nature. She always follows me. That's because you always go somewhere, Duane said. Evelyn tugged Duane's hand once gently. She looked up at him with complete trust and absolute calm, as if wherever he was going was fine with her. Pierce exhaled. Okay, they come. But Lois, you stay with the group. No running ahead. No treating the tree roots like monkey bars. Lois was already looking at the tree roots like monkey bars. Lois, I heard you, she said. I just didn't agree yet. Chapter 3. What Lois Can Do. By the time they reached the mill, Pierce had revised his concern about Lois from high to complicated. Complicated because on one hand she did not stay with the group in any conventional sense, and on the other hand, she was never actually in danger. She ran ahead, yes, but she always came back. She used the low hanging branch over the muddy stretch as a balance beam, walked it heel to toe without looking down, and jumped off the end onto a dry stone with perfect precision. She found a rope of ivy hanging from an old oak, swung on it once to test it, declared it good, and moved on. She climbed a six foot embankment that the others scrambled up on hands and knees by finding holes in the rock that none of them had seen. Bear watched her with the expression of a professional athlete recognizing a peer. She's fast, he said quietly to Pierce. And she has no fear, Pierce said. I have fear, Lois called back, from twenty feet ahead. I just don't let it drive. Duane, walking next to Evelyn at a pace calibrated to four year old legs, looked up. She heard that from Mom. It's still good, Pierce said. Evelyn walked the whole way without complaint, without asking to be carried, without rushing, and without falling behind. She held Duane's hand on the narrow parts and let go when it widened. She looked at everything, the water, the stones, a frog that sat on a rock and let them pass, a dragonfly above the current, with quiet, total attention. Like the creek was a book she was reading carefully. Henry had given her half a beef stick twenty minutes in. She had accepted it with a small serious nod, eaten it methodically, and then walked on without comment. After that, she stayed near Henry, which Henry seemed to find both flattering and slightly overwhelming. She's just walking next to me, Henry said to Pierce, a little uncertain. She likes you. How can you tell? She hasn't said anything. She gave you the look. What look? Pierce glanced at Evelyn, who was indeed looking at Henry with calm, warm, uncomplicated approval. The look that means you're okay, Pierce said. From Evelyn, that's basically a standing ovation. Chapter four The Mill and the Eye. The mill was older up close, that sounds obvious, but it was the right word. From a distance it looked like a ruin, romantic and mossy and photogenic. Up close it looked like time had simply been working on it for a very long while, patiently, the way a river works on a stone, not destroying it exactly, just reducing it to its most essential self. The walls that remained were thick and solid. The wooden parts were gone. The water wheel's stone axle still jutted from the wall above the creek, and the iron brackets that had held the paddles were still there, reaching into the air like the ribs of something ancient. The eye symbol was carved into the cornerstone. Not small, nearly a foot across precise and deep, clearly done deliberately and recently. Not centuries old. Decades maybe, maybe less. Below it, barely visible at ground level, set into the stone foundation where it met the creek bank. A door. This one was different from the others. It was iron, not wood. Black with age but solid, not rusted through, it had no visible lock. Instead, in the center of the door set into the iron, was a circular indentation in the exact shape of the iron key, not a keyhole. A key shape. The whole key. Pierce pulled it out. He held it up next to the indentation, perfect match, and not just the teeth, but the entire outline, the bow, the blade, even the small notch near the top that he'd always thought was just a manufacturing imperfection. It's not a lock, Duane said, leaning in. It's a seal. You press the key into it. Like a stamp, Bear said. Like a handshake, Pierce said. He pressed the key into the iron. It seated perfectly flush, like the two pieces had been made together. There was a sound from inside the door, not mechanical. Something older, like stone moving on stone. And then the iron door swung inward. The air that came out was warm. Not the cool stone smell of the other tunnels. Warm like a room that had been lived in. Lois was at Pierce's shoulder immediately. Are we going in? Yes, Pierce said. But together, all six of us. Nobody gets ahead. Lois looked at the dark doorway. She looked at Pierce. Together, she agreed. And for the first time since he'd met her, she waited. Chapter five. The Third Gate. The tunnel beyond the iron door was short, maybe thirty feet, and it ended in a room that was unlike anything they had seen in the underground before. It was lit not by torches, by dozens of small candles set into alcoves in the walls, warm and steady and casting no shadows. The walls were smooth and plastered, not raw stone. There was a wooden floor. There were shelves along one wall, filled with books, notebooks, jars of colored stones, rolled maps, and small carved figures that Pierce recognized immediately as Minecraft mobs, each one detailed and perfect. In the center of the room was a round table with six chairs. Six, not four, six. On the table, a single plaque, and next to it a candle. And next to that a small iron lantern unlit. Duane read the plaque. His voice was quiet. Welcome to the third gate. The first gate asked for courage. The second gate asked for patience. The third gate asks for trust. Here is the test. The lantern on this table is the only light that can open the door at the far end of this room. The door is in total darkness. One person must carry the lantern into that darkness alone, they will not be able to see. They will not know how far the door is, they will not know what is between them and it. They must go anyway, trusting that their crew is still here when they return. That is trust, not certainty, not proof. Just the decision to go forward because you believe in the people behind you. Light the lantern, choose your person. Begin. Silence in the warm room. Six chairs, six of them exactly. The table had been set for this group specifically. Six chairs, Lois said quietly. Someone knew we were coming. Bear said. With exactly us. Someone's been knowing, Henry said. He looked around the shelves at the books and notebooks and figures. Someone lives here. Chapter six Who Goes First Nobody spoke for a moment, then, without any discussion, without any vote, without any process at all, Pierce picked up the box of matches next to the lantern and lit it. The small flame caught. Warm light pulled across the table. It should be me, he said. Why you? Bear asked, not challenging, genuinely asking. Pierce thought about it. Because I'm the one who found the first door. I've been the one making the calls. If this gate asks for trust, it should cost me something. It should be the leader who goes into the dark. Not the fastest kid or the smartest kid. The leader. He looked around the table. Nobody argued. Lois looked at him with those bright, direct eyes. And you trust us to stay. Yeah. Pierce said. He looked at each of them. Duane with his notebook closed for once. Bear still for once. Henry holding a beef stick he wasn't eating. Lois, steady. Evelyn, who was looking at Pierce with the same calm total attention she gave everything, and who gave a single small nod. I trust you to stay, Pierce said. He picked up the lantern. The door at the far end of the room was visible, barely, a rectangle of deeper dark in the dark wall. Maybe twenty feet. Maybe more. He couldn't tell. He walked toward it. The candlelight from the room fell away behind him as he moved into the passage beyond the door. Within five steps the warm room was gone, and there was nothing but the small circle of lantern light moving with him, and beyond it absolute black. He could not see the floor. He could not see the walls. He could not see how far it went, or what was in it. He walked ten steps, twenty. He counted them, because counting was something to do, something to hold on to. The air was still and warm. Nothing moved, no sounds, no creatures, just darkness, and the lantern, and the decision to keep going. At step thirty one his hand found a wall, he felt across it, stone flat, and then an iron ring. He pulled it. The door opened. Light poured through, warm, golden from the other side. He turned around. Behind him, barely visible at the far end of the passage, the rectangle of the room glowed faintly. They were there. All five of them. Waiting. He exhaled something he hadn't known he was holding. Pierce Henry's voice echoing. Did you find it? Found it! he called back. We stayed. I know Henry. Bear wanted to follow you, but I sat on him. I did want to follow, Bear confirmed, at a distance. Pierce laughed, and the sound of it bounced off the stone walls of the passage, and for a second the darkness didn't feel like darkness at all. Chapter 7. The Room Beyond. Room beyond the dark passage was the most remarkable thing Pierce had seen underground. It was large with a vaulted ceiling like a small cathedral, and the walls were covered floor to ceiling in maps. Not just the creek, all of Bay Village rendered in extraordinary detail. Every street, every house, every tree line and park and shoreline of Lake Erie, with the creek running through it like a thread. And within the maps dozens of small symbols, eyes, keys, doors, and other marks he didn't recognize yet. Against one wall, a workbench covered in tools, notebooks, jars, components, against another a cot neatly made, a wood stove cold now, but with ash in it, and on the table in the center of the room, arranged precisely, six letters, each sealed with wax, each with a name on the front Pierce, Henry, Duane, Bear, Lois, Evelyn. He was still staring at Evelyn's name when the others arrived through the passage one by one, Lois doing a small cartwheel in the wider space of the room because she couldn't help it, Evelyn walking in last with Duane and looking up at the ceiling with her mouth slightly open. They found their letters. They looked at each other. Open them? Bear asked. Together, Pearce said. Six letters, opened at the same time. Each one was personal. Each one said something different, something that Pearce would later realize could only have been written by someone who had been watching them not to spy, but to know them. His letter said You lead well because you lead toward people, not away from them. Keep doing that. Bears said, You've been keeping score this whole time. The only record that matters is the one you can't write down. Henry said, You already know what I'd say. So does everyone who's ever been in a room with you. Duane said the notebook is good, but you already knew that the thing you can't plan for is the most important thing. Lois said, The best explorers know that going forward and staying connected are the same move. You know this already, in your body. Now know it in your mind. And Evelyn's in large simple letters said, You are exactly enough. You have always been exactly enough. Lois was the first to look up. Who wrote these? she said. The wood stove clicked. Once. Not from cooling metal. From behind it, from a door none of them had noticed, came a voice. I did, it said. I've been wanting to meet you for a while now. Chapter eight. A friend. She was old, not ancient, not fragile, but old in the way that certain trees are old, with a solidity to her, a density, like she had been standing in the same place long enough to put down deep roots. She was short, white haired, wearing what appeared to be a canvas work jacket covered in pockets, most of which had things in them. She wore boots. She had bright gray eyes behind wire rimmed glasses. She looked at the six of them with an expression that was warm and careful, and underneath both of those things, relieved. My name is Margaret Ellery, she said, I grew up in Bay Village. I built the underground. Not all of it, not the deep parts. Those were here long before me, but the doors, the rooms, the gates, the letters, the chests, the signs she paused. And Toilotron, which I remain proud of. Henry's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. You made Toiletron. I made Toilotron. He got us, Henry said. He got us really good. He's supposed to, Margaret said with satisfaction. He's gotten everyone really good. You're the first group to pass him. Duane pushed his glasses up. How did you know about us specifically? The chairs, the letters, our names. I've been watching the creek for a long time, Margaret said. I watch your parents. I watch their parents. When the right group of children find the first door, I start paying attention. She moved to the table, pulling out a chair with the ease of someone at home. Sit down. Explain everything, and then you can ask questions, and then I'll tell you about the fourth gate. They sat, all six, in the six chairs around the round table. Evelyn, seated next to Margaret, studied the old woman's face with the same quiet, total attention she gave everything. After a moment she reached out and patted Margaret's hand. Once gently. Margaret looked down at her. Something moved across her face. Not sadness, but the shape that lived next to sadness. Hello, little one, she said quietly. Evelyn nodded once, like something had been confirmed. Okay, Pierce said. Tell us everything. Chapter nine The Story of the Underground. Margaret Ellery had grown up three houses from the creek. She had found the first door when she was nine years old, not the same door, a different one, older, that had since collapsed. She had gone underground alone, which she described as both the bravest and most foolish thing she had ever done, and she had spent thirty years of her adult life mapping what she found, understanding it, and then building the gate system to make sure that whoever came next was ready. Ready for what? Pierce asked. Margaret was quiet for a moment. The underground is old. Much older than Bay Village, much older than Ohio, possibly much older than you can easily imagine. It has its own character, personality almost. It responds to who enters it. She looked at the map wall. The creatures you encountered, the zombies, the creepers, toiletron, those aren't the underground's real nature. Those are its tests. Its way of asking, are you curious? Are you patient? Are you brave? What is its real nature? Duane asked. That's what the fourth gate shows you, Margaret said. I've been to the fourth gate once. I was not ready. I was alone and I was in a hurry, and I failed. She said it plainly, without embarrassment. I spent the next forty years building the gates so that someone else could get there right. With a crew. Prepared. Patient. Trusting. You built all of this. Pierce said slowly, so that we could succeed where you didn't. Margaret looked at him. Not you specifically. I didn't know it would be you. But yes. I built it for whoever was ready. The bear had been quiet for several minutes, which was unusual enough that everyone noticed. The fourth gate, he said. What does it ask for? Margaret folded her hands on the table. The fourth gate asks for all of it, she said. Courage, patience, trust all at once. At the same time, together. And one more thing. What? said Lois. Margaret looked at the six of them, at Pierce and his steadiness, at Duane and his notebook, at Bear and his fire, at Henry and his absolute irreducible henriness, at Lois and her fearlessness, at Evelyn who was simply completely, quietly present. Joy, Margaret said. The fourth gate asks for joy. The underground wants to know if you actually love this. Not just if you're brave enough to do it, but if you love it. If it makes you glad to be alive. A long silence, Henry slowly raised his hand. I have a question. Yes? Is there food here? Because I have beef sticks, but I've been rationing. And I could really Margaret stood up, smiling, and went to the shelf. I have crackers, she said. And I believe in the back some kind of dried meat. Chapter ten. What Margaret Knows They stayed in Margaret's room for two hours. It was the kind of two hours that felt shorter and longer at the same time. She showed them the maps, explaining the symbols. Eyes meant observation points, places where the underground was paying attention. Keys meant passages not yet opened. The other symbols, the ones Pearce hadn't recognized, were things further in, deeper, that she had found, but not mapped fully. Duane filled twelve pages of his notebook. He asked questions with the focused efficiency of someone who understood that an information source this good might not last forever and should be used completely. Lois, after the first twenty minutes, had quietly explored every corner of the room, tested the structural integrity of Margaret's workbench solid, checked whether the maps could be read upside down, some of them, and determined that a particular shelf bracket near the ceiling could be reached from the floor in four moves step, jump, swing, pull. She had done this silently, and without breaking anything, which Pierce considered a major personal achievement. Evelyn had fallen asleep in her chair, tucked against Duane's arm, her small face completely at rest. Bear had been asking Margaret about her own underground runs, with the focused curiosity of an athlete studying a coach. How fast had she moved through the first tunnel? What was her route from the mill door to the pressure plate room? Had she ever been chased? Margaret answered patiently, and occasionally Bear wrote things in his field record with an expression of deep respect. Henry had eaten crackers. At some point Margaret set a hand drawn card on the table. It showed the path to the fourth gate, not far from where they were, a single passage going deeper, ending in a door that she had stood in front of once and not opened. I couldn't open it alone, she said. The door requires six hands on it at once, six people who have been through all three gates together. Pierce looked at the six chairs. You built the third gate for six people because the fourth gate needs six. I built everything for whoever showed up, Margaret said. It turned out to be six. She looked at Lois and Evelyn, including two I wasn't expecting. Lois sat up straight, unoffended. We're assets. You absolutely are, Margaret said. Lois, the fourth gate has a section that I believe, based on my mapping, requires someone who can move through a very tight elevated passage. I was never able to map what was beyond it because I couldn't fit. Lois looked at the card. She looked at the word tight. She looked at Margaret with pure, focused joy. When do we go. Chapter 11. The Fourth Gate. The passage to the Fourth Gate was behind the wood stove, through Margaret's private door, down a short flight of stone steps into a final tunnel that smelled like something Pierce had no word for. Clean and deep and old, like the smell of the first page of a book that has been closed for a hundred years. Margaret led them. She moved through the tunnel with the ease of someone who had walked it many times without going all the way, stopping at the final turn with the expression of someone standing at the edge of a long, unfinished thing. The door was enormous, twice the height of any door they'd seen, dark iron, with six recessed handprints in a row across its center panel. Three on each side. Symmetrical, sized for various hands, including two very small ones on the left end. Evelyn looked at the small handprints. She looked up at Duane, he nodded. Together, Pierce said on three. They lined up, all six. Pierce, Duane, Henry in the middle, Bear, Lois, Evelyn, each found their handprint. The iron was warm under Pierce's palms, warmer than stone should be. One, Pierce said. Two, said Duane. Three, said Henry, Bear, Lois, and Evelyn together. They pushed. The door opened. What was on the other side did not look like the underground. It looked like the creek, but perfect. Every color more vivid, the water more clear, the trees more themselves, the light, the quality of early morning in August, when everything is gold and nothing is hurrying anywhere. It was the world above, but seeing the way you see it in a dream when you suddenly realize the dream is actually real. And in it, scattered across the landscape, were things left from every adventure they'd ever had. A beef stick wrapper pressed in a frame, a page from Duane's notebook, the one with the first trap diagram. A photo of Bear mid sprint, motion blurred, arms pumping, a coil of fishing wire, a single marble, a folded piece of paper that Pierce recognized without being able to explain how as the first letter from a friend. It was a room made of their summer. They stood in the doorway and looked at it. Then Lois walked through. And then the rest of them followed her, one by one, into the light. Margaret stood at the threshold. She did not go in. But she put her hand on the door frame and closed her eyes, and the expression on her face was not regret. It was the expression of someone who had finally finished something they'd spent their whole life building. It was enough. Chapter 12. The Long Way Home. They came out the way they came in. Back through the mill door. Back into the Ohio afternoon. It was later than Pierce expected. The sun was low, the creek in shade, the air cooler. They'd been underground for most of the day, and the world had continued in their absence, patient and ordinary. Margaret came out last, pulling the iron door shut, and for a moment she just stood and looked at the creek with the same quiet attention that Evelyn gave everything. Will you come back? Pierce asked. I live down there half the time, she said. I'm not going anywhere. She looked at him. Will you? Yeah, Pierce said. We'll be back. They walked back upstream in a loose group, unhurried for the first time, the urgency of the adventure behind them. Duane walked with Evelyn, who had woken up refreshed, and was describing in her quiet few words what she had seen in the Fourth Gates room. Pretty, she said. And ours. Duane wrote both words in his notebook. Bear walked with Lois, and they were deep in a conversation about the fastest route between the mill and the creek mouth, which was technically a competitive question, but which they were treating as collaborative for once. Lois was using her hands to explain an elevated path through the bank trees. Bear was timing it in his head. Henry walked next to Pierce, and he was quiet in the comfortable way, the full way, the way that meant he didn't need to add anything because everything was already said. They were halfway home when Henry spoke. Margaret wrote in my letter that I already know what she'd say, and so does everyone in the room. Yeah, Pierce said. What do you think that means? Pierce looked at his brother. Eight years old, beef sticks in his bag, the laugh that could fill a stone cavern, the absolute bedrock certainty that the world was worth exploring, and the people next to you were worth trusting. I think it means you don't need to be told, Pierce said. Some people need to learn what you already know. You've always just known it. Henry thought about this for a long moment. That's pretty good for a guy who saved the whole thing with a fart, he said. Pierce laughed so hard he had to stop walking. Behind them the creek ran downstream toward the mill, and the mill sat quiet in the evening light. And below it, in the warm candlelit rooms of the underground, Margaret Ellery made herself a cup of tea and opened a new notebook to the first page and began writing. The fourth gate had been opened. There was still so much more to map. End of book four coming in book five. What the fourth gate revealed the deep underground and a new door, much older than all the others, that Margaret has never been able to find alone.