Read Online Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 by Peggy Eddleman - Free Book Online Page B

Williams led us into the mining cave with Sandy at his side. The opening was tall enough that one of us could stand on someone else’s shoulders and still not hit our heads as we walked inside. The cave wasn’t new to me—Aaren and I had explored it a few times when we came to the lake to swim, but always after the people who had mining as a split had gone home.
    The first room was large enough that all eighteen members of my class, along with Mr. Williams, Sandy, and Mr. Allen, could fit without being squished. Mr. Williams toldus how they dug out the limestone and hauled it to the ball mill, which was like a big spinner with hard rocks inside, and it ground the limestone into a powder so they could make it into cement.
    Mr. Williams gestured to the cave. “The limestone seam goes right through the mountain. As we mined last month, we accidentally broke through to the river below because we didn’t anticipate such a large air bubble above the river. Come on. I’ll show you.”
    He grabbed a lantern and led us farther into the cave. Off the main room, a passageway with a slightly lower ceiling curved to the right. We followed the passage as it meandered deeper into the mountain, wide in some places, skinnier in others. Along the path, the walls were mostly limestone, with darker rocks showing through in places. As we rubbed against the walls in the skinnier hallways, a white powder covered our clothes. The narrowest hallway led into another cave room filled with sounds of the river.
    “Okay, everyone, gather round,” Mr. Williams said as he walked to a hole in the middle of the room. Sandy ran excitedly around the hole, then to the opening to hurry the rest of us along, then back to Mr. Williams’s side.
    The hole was bigger than I’d imagined. I thought it would be about the size of my fist, but it was probably three feet wide.
    “Come on in. Don’t be afraid,” said Mr. Williams.“This is the only place where the floor is thin, and we installed support beams below this whole area to make sure it wouldn’t break more. It’s safe to stand here.”
    We all formed a wide circle around the hole and leaned forward to see inside. It was completely dark until Mr. Williams tied his lantern to a rope and lowered it down the hole. The river rushed past only ten feet below the opening. There was an actual bank on one side of the river at least eight feet wide, but it narrowed both upstream and downstream to barely wider than the river itself. The ceiling got lower, too.
    “Have you gone down the river?” I asked.
    Mr. Williams shook his head. “When we set the support beams, we walked along the bank for a distance, but we turned back when it became too narrow and dangerous. We worried that in some places, the cave might only be as big as the river itself—no space above it, no space on the sides of it.”
    Everyone gasped as we collectively imagined being swept downstream underwater, unable to come up for a breath. He looked at us pointedly, to make sure we weren’t going to try it ourselves sometime when he wasn’t there. But really … even I didn’t take
that
big a risk.

I wove through the crowd of people who milled around the dozens of mismatched tables we’d used for last night’s Harvest Feast. The tables now sat under the shade tents, covered with all the inventions.
    Even though there was a big crowd here every year for the Harvest Festival, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the sight of so many people gathered in one place. Sure, town meetings were crowded, but everyone who wasn’t too sick to walk, crawl, or drag themselves came to the Harvest Festival. Plus, we’d welcomed nearly two hundred adults from Browning through the tunnel yesterday afternoon, so the group was massive.
    I wished kids from Browning came, too. They used to, just like kids from here used to go to the Spring Festivalevery year in Browning. But when I was three, bandits attacked our caravan on the way home from the