The Tunnels Below by Nadine Wild-Palmer (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📕

a few members of station staff were milling around, chatting, smiling, pointing people in the right direction. Next to Cecilia in the ticket hall, standing there looking at a white board was an old man with a curly white afro. He was reading the quote of the day:

Some of the most beautiful things are born of mistakes

—A NON

Cecilia stared at it while the rest of her family faffed with Oyster cards and stubborn machines that will accept this and won’t accept that.

“What does it mean?” Cecilia said absent-mindedly in a voice just shy of a whisper.

The old man wiped his nose with a tired hanky. “That occasionally beauty happens by accident. What do you think?” he said, tucking his hanky in his pocket and slowly buttoning up his coat. Cecilia noticed he had a button missing at the very top.

“Well, if that were the case, wouldn’t that make just about everything beautiful?” Cecilia offered.

“It’s a nice way to look at things, don’t you think? Even the things that don’t happen on purpose bring colour and vibrancy to this funny old world!” The man looked at Cecilia with a pair of dark eyes that had been made cloudy around the edges by the passing of time. Then he picked up his plastic bag and left. “Goodbye,” he said sincerely.

Hester trotted over and started tugging at Cecilia’s coat.

“Err, why were you talking to that dusty old man?”

“Argh! You’re so rude, Hester. Imagine if you heard someone say that about Granny!”

“I was only asking,” said Hester sheepishly, feeling burned and a bit confused. She tried to defend herself. “You can’t help true facts, anyway, Cecilia, because he was old and I only wondered why you were talking to him. Simple as that.”

Hester and Cecilia rejoined their parents and they floated down the escalator to the tunnels below.

They waited on the edge of the platform for their train to arrive, mumbles of conversation echoing around the tunnels. Cecilia tiptoed to the edge, her feet poised just over the yellow line, staring into the black hole of the tunnel as the two tiny bright eyes of the Tube train grew bigger and bigger. Suddenly she felt a weight around her neck, as though the marble necklace was pulling her over the edge, choking her. She was whipped back hastily by her dad seizing her by the shoulders.

“Cecilia, what on earth are you doing? You’ll get your head knocked off!”

Cecilia wasn’t quite sure what had happened. She hadn’t even realised that she was in any sort of danger. But there in the headlights of the oncoming train, she had felt something stirring in the pit of her stomach and the weight of a world around her neck as she teetered on the edge. She shuddered and shook off a sinister feeling as she let out a deep breath.

“Please stand back behind the yellow line!” a monotone voice called as if mocking her from the loudspeaker.

“See,” said Hester. “You silly sausage!”

They boarded the train and rode a few stops, then got off to change trains. The sound of a trumpet danced on the ceilings of the tunnels and into the open ears of passers-by. The family wriggled their way through the crowd but Cecilia stopped to see where the sound was coming from. The atmosphere melted into a blur of colours and background noise as she stood there entranced. She looked down at the busker’s feet and where one would normally see a scattering of coins, there was a trumpet case bejewelled with gems and buttons. Cecilia was consumed by the music watching the busker’s dreadlocks swaying as she gently rocked from side to side. Cecilia smiled and reached into her pocket.

“Cecilia!” shouted her dad, who was getting cross now, “Don’t wander off like that! What has got into you all of a sudden?”

Cecilia broke out of her trance. “Sorry, Dad, it was just the music is really cool and the buttons… I was—”

“Yes, yes, come on, come on,” her dad said hurriedly.

As they turned to leave, Cecilia felt in her pocket again for some change to give the busker, but by the time she had finished fishing around, discovering only a ten-pence piece and an open packet of Cherry Drops, the busker seemed to have upped and left—rather hastily, Cecilia thought.

“Hester,” Cecilia called as she caught up with her sister. “I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to take the necklace off for a bit. It’s quite heavy and I’m not feeling so good.”

“Oh, OK,” said Hester. She looked a little bit upset. “I didn’t think of that. I know, I’ll make it into a ring when we get home instead!”

“Sure,” said Cecilia, hoping she would forget.

Cecilia paused a moment and undid the knot of string around her neck, sighing with relief as it came off. But as she held the marble in her hand a passer-by knocked it out of her grasp. The marble came loose from its wire setting and fell to the floor; she watched it bounce heavily along the ground, heading back towards the platform they’d come from. Cecilia hurried after it, trying to catch it as she went. It bounced and landed with a thud back on the empty train that was still waiting on the platform. Speeding towards the carriage, she saw a flash of bright light as she jumped across the yellow line and landed on board. Seizing the marble in her hand, she shoved it in her coat pocket and turned back to leave, but as she did so the doors beeped and slid shut and in an instant she was swallowed whole. In the distance she could see her family rushing towards her through the smudged glass as the train snaked away into the tunnel ahead.

Cecilia became aware very quickly that she was the only passenger on board. She began to panic when the train failed to stop at any of the stations that it passed, some with names she had never heard of before. It