"Down," Gavin said again, and this time they didn't just drop. They settled, waiting for the night to declare which way it wanted to bite.
The hedge breathed sap and dust into his nose. Chain-link cooled his shoulder through cotton. To the right, the road made a pale promise no one smart kept. To the left, masonry held its breath.
"Left," he whispered. "Wall run. Low."
Theo's reply came from the hedge at ear level, close enough that words felt like a hand on a shoulder. "You'll skin your palms and get nowhere."
Language is a net. Gavin put the saber crosswise and let the flat kiss stone so it wouldn't ring. He touched forward with his toes, found crumble, then real footing. "Inside of your feet," he told them. "Quiet ankles."
Madison's shoulder brushed his. The woman ghosted just ahead, counting under her breath like a metronome, two short, one long. The crouched man stayed left of them as ordered, palms up whenever they paused, as if truth had a shape you could show.
A small cylinder arced in, soft as a toss to a kid—no clatter, only a plastic breath when it landed. It woke with a dull green ooze and painted the gravel in syrupy light.
"Glow," Madison murmured.
Gavin slid a shoe under it and ninja-kicked it behind a hump of dead rosemary. The light went on painting, but the hedge took it like a blanket.
Theo tsked gently. "Clever isn't the same as safe."
"Safer than road," Gavin said, not loud.
They slid. The wall ran hip-high to chest-high, capped in wide stone made for parties and now for prints. The top gathered dew on dust; it wanted handprints. Don't leave maps. He kept elbows in.
The hedge seam appeared where two varieties had fought and both lost—a tunnel shoulder-wide, full of dead sticks, the smell of mice and last summer. Beyond: blocked night and the line of a low retaining wall.
"On all fours," he breathed. "Lead with your forearms, not your face. Don't stand; don't sprint."
The woman went first, small and precise. Branch tips drew white lines on her sleeves. The tunnel grabbed Gavin's shirt buttons and gnawed; he offered them instead of skin. Madison made himself a puzzle piece and slid; the hedge took tribute in cotton and a thread-long rasp of skin he swallowed.
Behind them, gravel ticked once—then silence that meant moving anyway.
The tunnel spat them onto a planter lip. The retaining wall ran shin-high; beyond it, a dark patch where bamboo had failed. The drop was nothing, then something when you didn't see it.
"Step down," Gavin said. "Heel feel."
They dropped into the planter and became small shadows under bigger ones. A slatted side gate yawned ten feet right; something oozed through it like a bad thought—forearms, shins, face last, lips working the idea of words and failing. It found the planter edge with both hands and hauled.
"Knees," Gavin said. He let the weight come; he wasn't a hero; he was a geometry teacher. The saber's flat stole the left shin; the right met stone and learned. The body folded into the planter and flopped, hands combing leaves instead of legs. It made a keening noise that sounded like a pipe cooling.
"Left," the crouched man whispered. "Dogleg between hedge and grill."
The dogleg was a squeeze beside a rusting gas grill half-off its wheels. Grease stink clung like old jokes. Beyond: the neighbor yard's narrow lawn, then a wooden gate with iron strap hinges and a warped heart.
"Gate," Madison said. "Hinged our side. Latch—"
"Inset," the woman said quickly. "Hook-and-capture."
Gavin palmed the saber to his left and found the latch with his right. Old iron. Cold. A simple catch that held too well when wood swelled. He tested up—no; down—no. Lift gate weight, then slide.
"On me," he said. Madison ghosted to the hinge, eased the sag with two fingers under the rail, as if lifting a barbell with manners. The wood spoke under breath.
Gravel to their rear hissed as someone just failed to hold quiet. Theo didn't fill it with talk this time. He let the yard make its own language—fence creaks, leaves, one small rock discovering gravity.
At the far fence, slats rattled twice—light, polite, testing—not where they were, but where they could go. Herder spacing.
"Eyes low," Gavin said. "Hands away from splinters."
The latch moved half a hair, then changed its mind. He exhaled. Don't fight the whole thing. Fight the bad millimeter. The saber's guard gave him a lever. He wedged the flat between strap and rail and took tension, not force.
"Thirty," Theo said from the other side of the fence in a voice you used to time sauce. Not a threat. A count you borrowed and never returned.
"Watch the tunnel," Gavin breathed.
"I've got it," the woman said, not looking back. She had the planter lip with her left hand and the dogleg seam with her right like a climber who knew about falling.
The body in the planter tried to stand on knees that weren't working. It scraped stone with teeth because stone had been a person five seconds ago, and habit is strong. Gavin put his boot to the shin once, clean, and the body relearned the floor.
From the lane side, something bumped the shrub tunnel entrance with lazy confidence. Leaves moved invisibly and then became a shoulder and then a face too close to the ground for normal. The face sniffed like a dog at a crack and saw smell.
"Hold," Gavin whispered, not yet, not yet.
The latch gave another hair. Madison breathed in his throat to keep it silent. The wood complained like old knees. The saber's guard pushed the last wrong angle into place.
"Now," Gavin said.
The latch slid. The gate pinched and then yielded, opening two inches and finding a flagstone it didn't want to clear. Madison moved a toe he couldn't see and convinced the stone to not exist. The gate moved to four inches.
A flashlight snapped on at ankle height on the far side—not up; low again, painting their feet. Theo's voice stayed pleasant. "Shoes tell stories, coach."
Gavin let the light happen and didn't let it pick the story. "Through," he said.
The woman turned sideways and poured herself into the gap, one shoulder skimming iron. Her braid stuck; she freed it with a small bright swear you only said when you still believed in words. She found ground, then space. The crouched man followed, weightless where weight mattered, a paper person until you needed him to pull.
"Go," Gavin told Madison.
Madison slid his bulk through the too-little that existed and made it enough. The strap hinge kissed his shirt and took a button away as payment. He became on the other side, large again and immediately small.
Gavin heard the shrub tunnel decided it had opinions. A body came into it flat and fast, elbows dragging like oars. Leaves shivered. The planter keened. The slat fence ahead rattled the way it did for men with timing.
"Through," he told himself.
He took the gap and felt the iron ask a question at his ribs. He answered with a twist, and the question gave up. His back pocket caught and died with a laugh of thread. The saber cleared last, flat as an apology.
Theo's beam advanced one polite yard. "Left still cold," he advised, friendly as a lifeguard pointing at calm water. "Right is road."
"Cold," Gavin said, and they went left—staying on stone, not grass; shadow, not open; hands on rough wall instead of the rail that would sing.
The yard beyond was tighter—herb beds gone feral, a coil of hose like a black snake. A plastic Adirondack lay on its face. The wall turned and offered a deeper pocket between a trash enclosure and the house.
"Pocket," Madison said, seeing the same map.
"We don't sit," Gavin said. "We bend the map and go through."
The pocket's far edge showed a wooden utility gate—the kind contractors hated—warped, low, slats missing near the bottom. The missing slats made a child-sized gap, not a mountain-sized one.
"Under," the woman said before he could.
"She's right," the crouched man whispered. "Loose soil."
The shrub tunnel behind them scraped again. The thing in it found a reason to hurry. Theo's light moved at an angle that said he'd already learned where the utility gate spat shadows.
"On your stomach," Gavin said. "Head left, hand first, pull with your fingers. Don't kick."
The woman went down and became linear. Soil gave like a secret. Her hands were quick and small and smart; she pulled and she was through, cough small and contained. The crouched man followed, shoulders compressing into a shape bones weren't designed to make. Madison tried to become a rope instead of a boulder and got stuck halfway, ribs complaining.
"Exhale," Gavin breathed. "You're too much man for the hole. Be less for one second."
Madison laughed without sound and flattened. Wood scraped shirt, then belly, then he was through, breath coming back like a swallowed sob.
Gavin slid last, saber along his forearm so the guard wouldn't dig. Dirt kissed his cheek. Ants he couldn't see complained in his ear. He moved. The gate belly tried to take the saber; he told it no with his wrist and got away with it by millimeters.
On the far side, a narrow service walk ran between fence and stucco toward the idea of another corner. Above, a small vent hummed—not generator; a house that still believed in refrigerators [CHECK: power state at neighboring house]. The walk smelled like wet paper and mulch.
"Up," Gavin said—the word a breath—and they rose as one, small and bent.
Behind them, the shrub tunnel exhaled a man into the planter who rolled and stood halfway and found he didn't know standing anymore. In the lane, Theo let the light rest on the utility gate and didn't bother to speak. His patience had a shape. It fit every door.
"Corner," the woman whispered.
"Last one," Gavin said, a lie he let them spend.
They turned it—and stopped. The service walk ended in another wooden gate, taller, tighter, with a proper hasp and a padlock that didn't belong to gardeners. The gap under it was three fingers, not a palm.
"Latch outside," Madison said. "We can't—"
"We can," Gavin said, and lay the saber's guard to the hinge pins. Old strap, exposed seam. Up, not out. He levered slow. The top pin rose a grain and stuck.
On the other side of the gate, Theo's voice placed itself with no trouble at all. "Thirty seconds," he murmured, as if reading a clock through wood.
At Gavin's back, the service walk filled with the sound of the shrub-tunnel man discovering the utility gap and deciding to be born again through it—shoulders, hips, the ratcheting rhythm of someone who didn't mind splinters.
Gavin set his palm under the hinge strap and felt the old pin's head. He let the saber's guard do its lever work without music. Up another grain. Again. The metal squealed just in his bones.
"Down," he said, and they did—settled—hands ready to lunge the second the hinge made a different sound.