Under the City

Text 1: Under the City, by Mara Ellison

An original novel extract.

Arun went first. He did not hurry, although somewhere beyond the concrete walls a maintenance worker was waiting to be found. At every junction, he raised one gloved hand and consulted the map folded inside his head.

‘Twelve paces, then the blue pipe,’ he said. Twelve paces later, Mina’s torch found a pipe painted blue. ‘Left-hand channel. Mind the drop.’ The channel opened on their left, its black water sliding quietly below them. Mina placed each boot where Arun’s had been. His instructions were as neat and dependable as marks on a ruler.

The tunnel narrowed. Its ceiling pressed down until they had to bend their backs, but Arun continued to name what lay ahead: three iron bolts, a broken grille, a fork shaped like the letter Y. Each appeared obediently in the torchlight. Behind them, the city had become a distant trembling in the walls.

At the fork, Arun stopped.

A chalk arrow marked the concrete. It pointed towards them.

‘That’s ours, isn’t it?’ Mina asked.

‘No.’ The answer came too quickly. Arun rubbed the arrow with his thumb, but the chalk only blurred across his glove. ‘Someone else’s.’

He chose the left tunnel. After six steps, he turned back.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘It was right.’

The torch in his hand dipped, rose and dipped again. They returned to the fork, where the smeared arrow waited. Arun stared along one passage and then the other. For the first time, Mina could hear him breathing.

‘Arun?’

He lifted one hand for silence, but now it was not steady.

Somewhere in the darkness, water struck metal with a slow, hollow knock.

‘Which way did we come?’ he asked.

How does Mara Ellison shape the reader’s view of Arun through her choices of language and structure, first establishing confidence in him and then creating doubt?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.