He walked effortlessly ahead of the group, down that steep, twisting, treacherous path, without the benefit of anyone ahead to warn him of obstacles, as if it were a flat floodlit high road, never seeming to deviate from the line on which he walked. And not once did he slacken his pace, which had started at unreal and stayed there throughout the journey. It was as if the spurs, spikes and various impediments around vanished as he approached them, only to magically reappear behind him the moment he passed.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the passage began to straighten and widen, the protrusions from the wall thinned, and the walls smoothed out so that they were more earthen than rocky. Now they were going forwards rather than down. They entered a sort of large enclosed space, rather like a room, with walls all around and a large gaping hole in the far wall. Here Marcus stopped, and they pulled up behind him.

‘Rest here,’ he said, taking a few steps away from them and sitting down on the floor. ‘The way ahead is not as easy.’

Albert didn’t even want to deal with the emotions that sentence evoked. He walked around the room, still panting a little from his exertions, noticing the odd, clay-like texture of the walls and even the ground on which they stood. Behind him, June and Theo had collapsed to the floor, looking quite happy to not be moving. Some way off from them, towards the hole in the wall, Marcus sat alone, scratching something into the ground with a stone. Albert walked all the way up to the hole and peered through, but couldn’t see anything. He turned to rejoin June and Theo.

As he walked towards them, he passed Marcus, still gouging the earth with his stone—no, not scratching, more like drawing, a series of squiggly, interconnected lines. Albert paused next to him, looking down at the diagram with sudden interest.

Then he looked up and saw Marcus looking unblinkingly at him. The anger and resentment and sense of impending danger directed at him from those bottomless eyes chilled him to the bone, so his next sentence stuck in his throat.

Roughly, Marcus ran his hand over his handiwork, wiping it out, leaving only scuffed clay behind. He stood up wordlessly and, turning, walked through the hole in the wall. Albert stared after his retreating back for a moment, then down at the newly scuffed ground at his feet, feeling a curious mixture of relief and anger. Relief that he was still alive and unharmed, which had seemed doubtful for a moment when those frightening eyes had been staring at him like that, and anger at the way the man was continuing to treat him like he didn’t exist. Then he remembered he had far more important things to worry about, like continuing to stay alive.