turned to Lemonade:
“Kitty, dearest, please let’s find an exit, or else we’ll freeze to death here.”
Lemonade looked at the stuffed plush monkey dubiously, but didn’t argue. He turned his head this way and that way, sniffed the air and, telling them to wait for him right there, disappeared behind the closest ice pillar.
“What do you think would’ve happened to us if we’d gone further?” Allie asked the monkey.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened to me, but you probably would’ve ended up like me a while ago.”
“Lu, do you remember how it happened? How did they turn you into a toy? And why a toy?”
“No, I didn’t. But Lemonade’s story about what he heard from Corgy made me think. Remember, when she talked about your parents, she mentioned a shell and a ‘noose’ or something, if Lemonade told it right. And then, the way Corgy called me ‘transported’. So, I think I know what it’s about. Then it’s easy to explain my transformation…”
But then Lemonade appeared, and Lu stopped mid-sentence.
“Well, what did you find?” Lu and Allie exclaimed together.
“I think there’s a way out. Follow me.”
Lemonade led the girls down a path only he knew. For a few minutes it was easy to walk on the even floor of the cave. Then they had to climb over piles of rocks and go around huge boulders. But the hardest thing to do was to climb up a rock to a small crevice that opened up pretty high in the cave wall. The climb was steep, and the uneven surface of the rock was iced over. Lemonade flew up the wall easily. Lu, strangely enough, also turned out to be a nimble rock-climber. But Allie had a hard time. She had to plan out her steps very carefullyin order to avoid slipping and falling down. Several times her foot slipped on the icy rock. It seemed that she was close to falling, but then the girl would miraculously pull herself up and continue the climb. Finally she made it up to the crevice. It was completely dark, but now she knew that she could use the viamulator as a flashlight, and she didn’t hesitate to turn it on. The crevice was very narrow, too narrow for two people to pass by each other, and sometimes the walls were so close together that Allie had to squeeze through sideways.
“Lemonade,” Allie asked, feeling anxious, “are you sure that we are going the right way? Is there really a way out ahead?”
“There must be. I feel a stream of fresh air.”
That’s when Allie realized that she had been feeling a light cool breeze on her face for some time now. “So, I didn’t imagine it”, she thought with relief.
Meanwhile, the walls of the cave almost closed in, and the only way forward was to crawl on the floor through the hole that opened at the very bottom. Lemonade and Lu didn’t have to crawl, but Allie’s progress was slow. Fortunately, she didn’t have to crawl for a long time, otherwise she’d not only have torn her jeans, but also skinned her elbows and knees on the sharp rocks on the floor. The passage ended a few feet ahead, where a large boulder blocked the way. Its edges were not completely flush with the walls, and there were broad gaps on the sides. Gusts of cool air burst into the crevice through the gaps with a low humming sound. Sometimes the gusts were stronger, and the hum sounded more like whistling.
Allie put her hand on the boulder and felt it move slightly. She tried to push it, and it clearly made a little lunge forward.
“Well, guys, I think this is the exit,” Allie turned to Lu and Lemonade. “Let’s push.”
They leaned on the boulder together. It gave way and then suddenly lurched forward and downward. None of the three friends expected that, and they tumbled after the boulder into the dark.
***
There was a real storm outside: the wind was howling, the rain was beating down heavily, from time to time blinding flashes of lightning, orange and green, pierced the darkness, and then peals of thunder shook the sky and the ground. There was a burning smell in the air.
Allie had tumbled down a rather steep rocky slope and was now on the ground, clutching the branches of some kind of bush. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt by the fall – her Dad had trained her well for all kinds of emergencies, and, while falling, she’d been able to draw her knees up and roll into a ball. None the less, she still had a couple of bruises on her arms and legs.
But it wasn’t the bruises that troubled the girl at the moment. Lu and Lemonade were missing. Allie tried to call them, but her cries were drowned by the rain, wind and deafening thunder. The lightning strikes came with surprising regularity: first green, then orange, and then green and orange again. It looked as if someone had turned on a gigantic strobe light up in the sky that accompanied the violent melody of the storm.
Allie kept holding on to the bush with one hand and covered her face with the other, and then looked around. the flashes of lightning were brief, but she managed to see that she was lying at the foot of a mountain the top of which was covered in thick, low stormclouds. The slope was less steep towards the bottom, there were trees growing there, and further down she saw a real forest. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see Lu or Lemonade anywhere near, but she did notice something alarming: from time to time here and there rocks rolled down the hill. Most of them were small, but some were large enough to cause trouble. Allie realized that it was unsafe to stay there any longer. She let go of the bush and carefully climbed down to the trees. Catching her breath under one of them and trying to call the cat and the monkey, the girl made her way towards the forest. Lu and Lemonade might have taken cover there.
The forest was moaning in the wind, broken branches were snapping and crashing all around. But the peals of thunder seemed more muffled. Allie scrambled through the thick undergrowth and kept calling her friends. It was all in vain; the only answer was the howl of wind in the trees. Once the girl thought that somebody answered her calls. Allie froze and listened hard; indeed, there was something else out there besides the storm. It was a distant sound, powerful and measured, like the breath of a giant animal. But her friends were still not answering.
Allie didn’t know how long she’d been wandering around the forest. She was completely lost and stumbled along, almost completely exhausted. Finally she tripped over a tree root and fell down onto the wet grass. She was close to fainting. “I can’t go any further”, she thought. “Too bad, I’m gonna get an earache again.”
And then Allie felt the earth move under her. It seemed that its surface was rippled by waves like the sea, and the waves were growing with every second. Allie was scared and tried to get up, but then she felt the ground leap up beneath her. The girl was thrown into the air, and then she fainted.
6. ALLIE MEETS UNCLE ZAND
Allie opened her eyes and closed them again: the golden sun was shining straight in her face. Trying to hide from it, she sat up in bed. Yes, she was on a bed, or, rather, a small wooden settee with a nice carved back. It sat by a window in a spacious sunlit room with the same kind of carved wooden furniture. The window was cracked open, and the lacy curtain was moving slightly in the fresh morning breeze. The golden sunray broke through its delicate pattern and cheerfully danced on the pillow.
“That’s what woke me up”, Allie thought and smiled. She felt peaceful and rested. Looking around, she noticed that her clothes were clean, dry, and neatly folded on a chair near her bed. Allie
