Leo 12. In the basement of a house, a secret escape tunnel.
Secret journeys to destinies unknown. He never wondered how the tunnels got there, arched and bricked and always clean and going to unimaginably distant places. Sometimes he heard waters above him, and the songs of whales and knew he was traveling under a sea – which would explain the tunnel’s having descended for miles and miles, after which he would then reascend, sometimes into cities, ancient ones abandoned in impenetrable jungles or maybe cities of the future sprouting thousands of skyscrapers like weeds in a meadow.
The underground journeys never tired him. It was only after he returned that an unendurable weariness overcame him, lying in his bed, yearning to delve again back into the ground.