The rope hung down into the darkness of the rift, still and almost certainly not touching the bottom. Kay had tugged and swung it about, trying to sound the depths, but there seemed to be as little sound as light beyond that first metre of bare vertical stone.
As if the earth had been a hollow shell all along. Ell leaned over the edge as if to prove to it and her sister that she wasn’t afraid to be the first to descend.
The lamp hung on her hip scratched feebly at the dark. It might have been just the sunlight that made it seem so feeble, but Kay couldn’t extinguish the notion that it would go out as soon as it touched the dark proper, swallowed up along with Ell.
Her skin prickled, as if it, too, already felt the touch of the clammy depths. She had checked the rope so carefully.
The night before, then again that morning, before Ell had awoken. She had tied it fast to a nearby tree, an ancient grey oak that managed to look as if it had deep roots despite the nearby, horrible notion of the earth as a shell. A thin bit of pottery enclosing nothing at all.
Ell tugged her gloves tight, standing tall and heroic against the sunlight. Of course she would be the first to go. She only nodded to Kay as she did – saying anything with weight to it, anything that could mean goodbye, would have felt like inviting it to be.
Kay almost said something. Her heart lunged to the back of her mouth as her sister took hold of the rope, tugging it to test its grip on the tree, and walked matter-of-factly backwards into the rift.
Down that gap so narrow, her head almost brushed the far side as her steps tipped vertical. A tiny moan pressed itself to Kay’s lips; if she was going to say something, it had to be then, right at that moment, or never.
But what could she say? Let me check the rope again.
Let’s not do this. There’s nothing down there. Nothing worth this. There can’t be.
Come back.
But they had decided. She had decided. She dug her nails into her knees and watched as the lamp’s light swayed and sank down the sides of the rift. Until she couldn’t see it anymore – swallowed.
She waited. Ell would expect her to start down soon as well. Black gloves and a last look, perhaps, at the sun. Ell was always the one who had expected.
But not this. A sound from below – Ell’s voice, raised in something like annoyance, then something like fear. Made hollow and long and nothing more than a moan of the earth by the distance she had already descended.
Only two words reached the surface sounding like her – the rope.
Kay closed her eyes. She’d hoped she wouldn’t be able to hear. She’d wondered the night before, while fraying the rope so carefully, so that its weakness wouldn’t be visible at Ell’s glance, how far down the rift sound would be able to survive after all.
That far. That far, at least. A snap and shudder in the rope. A scream.
On and on. Down and down, sounding the depths of the rift better than the two of them ever could have.
It didn’t strike bottom. It faded, down and down, and Kay listened all the while, her eyes closed and nails sunk deep into her thighs. Only when she had heard nothing for a long time, silence on the surface of the earth’s shell, did she creep to the edge of the rift and pull up the frayed, shortened remains of the rope.
