Gregor the Overlander

Gregor takes in the Underland City of Regalia: “Nothing was primitive about the magnificent city that spread before him” (45). The buildings were “a lovely misty gray which gave them a dreamlike quality” (46). He notices that thousands of torches illuminate the city. In the main square, he sees a host of cockroaches and fish. It turns out that only people live in Regalia, and the others are just visitors. Gregor tells Vikus that he finds Regalia more beautiful than any city in the Overland, which pleases Vikus. Boots notices there is no moon, and Gregor realizes they are in a huge underground cavern. 

Gregor asks Vikus how he knew they were from New York City. Vikus tells him there are only five gateways to the Underland, two are the waterways, two are the Deadlands and one is in NYC. As he and Boots aren’t soaking wet, the only possible way they could have come is through the New York City portal. He also says that their arrival was perfectly synchronized with the currents because Overlanders usually die before being discovered. They approach Luxa’s palace, which has no doors. Vikus tells him doors are for people who don’t have enemies, hinting at an unspoken conflict in the Underland. 

A platform lowers from the top of the castle door, they alight, and the platform takes them up. Gregor and Boots meet with servants, who take the pair to bathe before a formal dinner in the High Hall on the roof of the palace. One kind servant, Dulcet, is in charge of Boots. Gregor finds the servants’ manners very different from their royal counterparts—they are humble. He’s also introduced to Mareth and Perdita, his guards. They look strong but say very little. 

As the guards and servants lead him and Boots to the Cleansing Quarters, Gregor makes up his mind to escape: “They could call him their guest, but it didn’t change the fact that he and Boots were prisoners. Guests could leave if they wanted to. Prisoners had to escape. And that was exactly what he intended to do” (54). When he says goodbye to Boots, and Dulcet and goes into his own cleansing room, Gregor realizes there must be some kind of underground stream. He suddenly has an epiphany: “If the water could get in and out of the palace […] maybe he could too” (57).

Gregor cleans himself and steps out of the bath to see that his clothes have are gone and new ones are in their place: smoky blue garments of a silky material and straw sandals. He leaves the washroom and finds out from Mareth and Perdita that they burned his clothes: “The ash carries no scent” (59). Perdita says that, after a few days of eating the Underlander food, he and Boots will have no odor.

Dulcet gives Gregor a special pack with straps to carry Boots in—this thrills Gregor because he thinks of how much easier it will now be to escape. They go up several staircases and end up in a long room with a balcony—The High Hall. There’s no roof, but Dulcet says it’s because many bats often arrive at once. Vikus is there with his wife, Solovet: “The woman stepped forward and offered both her hands to him. The gesture surprised [Gregor]. No one else had made any effort to touch him since he’d landed” (61). She says she knows he wants to go home but returning to the Overland tonight would be quite impossible. 

From the balcony, Gregor takes in Regalia: “the streets which were paved in various shades of stone, were laid out in a complex geometric pattern so that the city looked like a giant mosaic” (63). They head over to the table for dinner, and Luxa comes in wearing an elegant gown—she enters with a young man about sixteen. Gregor remembers him from the stadium: “It was the rider who’d felt cocky enough to lie down on his bat as they’d swirled around his head” (64). Luxa introduces him as her cousin, Henry. 

Gregor also meets several bats, including Vikus’s bat, Euripides, and Luxa’s bat, Aurora. The bats can talk, and bats and humans form individual alliances called bonding. Gregor asks what they do together besides play ball games at the stadium. Luxa replies coldly “[we] keep each other alive” (67). It’s clear that survival is very important to these people and that they live with a consciousness of war and protection. The Underlanders get into an argument after Luxa insults the roaches, and Vikus tells her the crawlers may make the difference between their survival and their death; as a soon-to-be Queen, the way Luxa treats other species in the Underland is of dire importance. 

Vikus then leads Gregor and Boots through the history of Regalia: the original inhabitants came from England in the 1600’s and were led by a stonemason called Bartholomew of Sandwich: “He had visions of the future. He saw the Underland in a dream and he set out to find it” (70). Sandwich sailed to New York and befriended a group of Native Americans who had been going down beneath the surface of the earth for hundreds of years for ritual purposes. Vikus says Sandwich was ahead of his time because he knew that eventually “the earth would be empty of life except what was sustained beneath the ground” (71). Conversation of the Overland makes Gregor long for New York City and his mother; he knows he has to do everything he can to escape and get home.

At night, the Underland is darker than anything Gregor has ever experienced before. He blows out the oil lamp beside his bed, determined to save the light for his escape. Before bed, he spoke with Dulcet covertly about the water system. She told him that “[d]irty water falls into the river beneath the palace and then flows into the Waterway,” so he surmises “the river beneath the palace [is] their way out” (75). Gregor remembers Vikus mentioning that there were two gateways to the Overland from the water. 

Boots falls asleep, asking Gregor about their mother. Gregor heads into the hallway. There are no guards posted at his door because the Underlanders figure there is no place for him to go. Gregor feels slight guilt for leaving but decides his loyalty is to his mother, and he needs to get Boots back home. He puts Boots in the backpack and travels down the palace, floor by floor, paying careful attention to the location of the bathroom and water system. When he gets to the last level, he sees a Waterway full of rapid waves: “The Underland River looked like something out of an action adventure movie. It wasn’t terribly wide, but it ran with such speed that the surface was churned into white foam” (78).

He lights the oil lamp from the flame of a torch by the dock and climbs into one of the Underlander boats. Gregor takes off and then hears voices back on shore—two Underlanders screaming at him to come back. He knows they’re going to come after him, so he hurries forward. He doesn’t know how far it is to the Overland, but he’s too worried about staying alive to let his thoughts go there. Desperate to survive the rapids, he sees a beach up ahead with a tunnel that leads into the dark. He pulls up to shore, dragging Boots and the torch with him off the boat. When he gets to the tunnel, he finds himself face to face with a huge, monstrous, smiling rat.