PIE TOWN.

The girl makes a note of this immediately in the decorative carving on the second newel post. She says that if we had a small portable library tied to us like the tail of a kite, we could carry information with us for whenever we need it. She wants an ephemeris, an atlas, a thesaurus and a bible to start. She also wants to hear what I know about PIE TOWN, what it means.
I tell her I know it’s a small place, a town in New Mexico. A friendly place. She asks if I think the words are a clue or a direction for us. I shrug. I say it hardly matters; I think we are meant to go there first and then find out what it brings to our journey.
An atlas would be good, she says.
We’ll have to rely on guesswork, I say.
Do you trust the words? she asks.
I trust everything, I say.

So as we carve and dig the staircase (it is bigger than we thought and has an impressive heft) we figure we will make an educated guess several miles down the right-hand secret corridor and head toward PIE TOWN. We’ll come up to the surface there and see what’s what. Then we’ll head back to the main tunnel and go back to digging straight through the middle and onward to China. We have a lot of diversions already, but I admit I can’t resist this one.

I slipped the words back into my pocket, too. I like them.
This is Day Fourteen.