She gave a windy exhalation.  Then, wincing in imagined and anticipated unpleasantness, cautiously examined the passage with her right hand, beginning where she could see then reaching as far back as she could.  Nothing nasty stung, grabbed, or scraped her arm, but she was still relieved to draw her hand out again.  There’s something very unsettling about putting one’s hand into an unseen, unknown space. 

No reason to put it off.  She wasn’t going to learn anything else about what might be waiting, and hanging from the rock wall letting her head fill with visions of snakes’ nests and mountain lions was not helping, not to mention sapping her already-strained strength. 

Jamming her left foot further into its hold to give herself a stable position from which to work, she began wriggling into the opening.  She reached through with her right arm first, groping for a hold on the other side to help pull herself along.  She found a protruding rock and grasped it, testing its solidity before trusting it. 

Exploring the unseen new path with her hand had been bad enough; putting her head into that shadowy passage was worse.  She eased the back of her head through first, keeping her eyes down for protection and inching along, not wanting to bash her head on the rock. 

So far, so good. 

It was an awkward posture but she paused to take a look around.  Not, perhaps, the best idea — she knew she was getting tired, and holding herself up and partway through was an effort.  But she couldn’t resist glancing up.  What if a mountain lion were crouched above, waiting? 

No mountain lion.  That much she could tell, straining her neck to take in as much of the new surroundings as possible.  She could see only a little further into the gloom than from outside, but she could definitely tell that the passage was shadowed by a large slab of overhanging rock about two feet above her head, blocking about three-quarters of the passage.  A mountain lion couldn’t fit through that!  She exhaled in relief, was flooded the next moment with embarrassment at that relief, and hurried to get the rest of the way through. 

As she started to ease her shoulders into the opening, she realized just how narrow it was.  She had to turn, finagling the right shoulder through first, then twisting as she pushed so that the left would follow. 

It was far too small for a full grown man.  Was this another of her forebears’ defenses, having the last stage of the path be too restricted for any but a very slender young man or a boy?  Bunch of clever bastards, her forebears. 

But of course if they had not been, Elbany would never have existed, nor would have survived to look upon the destruction of Otto Tyrannus.  She spat, as the Elbish always do, at his name, and let the strength of remembered courage fill her arms, drawing her body the rest of the way into the passage.