Of course, if I went onto the street without Ella, I would have no help and no hiding place. I would be nearly as vulnerable and exposed as Mama had been. But I could not stay down here and wonder. I had to try.

I pushed on the heavy grate. It didn’t budge. I tried again. I was confused. It had opened just days earlier when I let Mama out. I wondered if someone had come and sealed it shut. There was a stone, I could see, that had somehow wedged into the narrow space by the edge of the grate, sealing it shut. A tiny stone, standing in the way of me getting out and finding my mother. It was all suddenly too much. My frustration rose to a boil, bubbled over. I rattled the grate noisily, pounded on it so loud that anyone passing by might have heard. But the grate remained stuck.

Defeated, I turned and started back through the tunnel. I could not get out, at least this way. The Dębniki grate, I remembered. That was how Ella and I had seen each other in the first place. As I started in that direction, my doubts bubbled anew: the grate was high up and just off a busy street. I didn’t know if I could reach it, and even if I did, I might be spotted. If I wanted to find Mama, though, it was my only hope. I had to try.

I retraced my steps, through the tunnels and past the chamber. At last I reached the other grate. I looked up, wishing I might see Ella’s face above as I so often had. Of course, the space was empty. She wasn’t expecting me here. I looked around dubiously. Then I noticed notched metal ledges along one of the walls. The workers must use those for climbing in and out of the sewer. I put my foot on the first one and reached up, but the walls were slimy and I struggled not to slip. I climbed slowly to the second ledge, then the third. Gingerly, so as not to fall, I reached up and pushed on the sewer grate, praying it would not be stuck shut as the other one had been.

The grate slid sideways. I peered above ground in both directions to make sure that no one was in the alley to see me. Then, using all my effort, I hoisted myself from the sewer and onto the street.

I was above ground once more. Only this time I was on my own.

19

Ella

Sadie had disappeared.

Or at least that was my fear as I made my way toward the river one warm morning in July. It had been two weeks since I had seen her. The previous Sunday, a week after we went in search of food together and she had returned underground, I went to the sewer grate by the river at our usual meeting time. When Sadie didn’t appear that day, I assumed that she had been delayed and waited as long as I could. The grate looked slightly ajar, as if someone had moved and replaced it. I wondered if I had left it that way the night I’d helped her return to the sewer. I remembered placing the grate squarely back atop the hole, though, and checking it to make sure it looked untouched so no one on the street would notice. No, it had been moved again. As I had straightened the grate, I prayed that someone from the street had not gone down below. There was simply no way to tell.