"What is it?" Prudence asked.
"It's a torch. Maybe we can light it and see where we're going." Samantha felt around until she found two rocks, each as big as her hands. She brought them together, but no sparks flew. She tried again and again with no results. With a last desperate scream she smashed the rocks into each other. Sparks flew in all directions, some falling onto the torch. A flame sputtered for a moment and then grew into a steady light.
Samantha raised the torch and waved it around her head. A narrow, fast-moving river flowed to their left, surrounded by high walls of granite. To the right, Samantha saw a passage carved between two walls. A rotting wooden door guarded the entrance to the passage. Samantha started to walk towards it, but Prudence held her back. "I don't want to go in there," she said. Her entire body quivered as she spoke.
"That might be the way out."
"No, there's nothing good back there. I can feel it."
"I won't let anything bad happen," Samantha said.
"I don't want to. Please don't make me."
"Prudence, whatever's down there is probably something Reverend Crane doesn't want anyone to find. It could be the secret to how he's poisoning the others. We have to find out."
"You go ahead, then. I'll stay here and wait for you." Samantha wanted to argue further, but could see from the way Prudence trembled she wouldn't go a step farther.
"All right, you stay here. I'll make sure it's safe and come back for you." Prudence curled up beside the doorway, rocking herself back and forth. Samantha hesitated a moment at the sight of her friend so distressed, but then slipped through the wrecked door.
The passage stretched as far as the torchlight allowed her to see with only two solid walls of granite on either side. She counted her steps as she went, getting up to a thousand before she glimpsed the end of the passageway. She looked back towards where Prudence waited and then pressed ahead.
At the end of the passage, she found a near-circular chamber. In the chamber, were the remains of a pallet lying to one side, the fragments of wood covered in moss. On the other side were rusted pots and pans and a table with only two legs. In the center was a round indentation lined with soot from numerous fires. She stretched her torch out to the farthest part of the chamber and saw a spinning wheel like the one in Prudence's workshop.
A bit of gray thread clung to the spinning wheel. The spindle on the wheel lay on the ground at Samantha's feet. When she reached down to pick it up, the torchlight caught an inscription carved into the rock.