Eight: Mammoth Cave

Artemis's fingers were pressed to Holly's throat, checking her pulse, when her eyelids fluttered open for the first time since the flight.

"Artemis," she croaked. He cracked open a bottle of water and brought it to her lips. She drank a few sips and then lay back again. Her hair was slick with sweat and her lips, cracked. "Where are we?"

"An hour south of Louisville, Kentucky," he replied. The rental car was parked along the shoulder of the I-65. Glancing to the back of the vehicle, he could see Butler rummaging in the trunk. "We have a flat tire," he added sheepishly as if this were a development he should have foreseen.

"How quaint."

"Butler will take care of the matter in a few minutes. But there might be some turbulence."

"Have you been able to reach Haven?"

Artemis shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not."

"What could be happening down there?" she murmured.

"We can concern ourselves with that once we've reached the fairy well. We won't get access to it until after dark." She nodded, but he could not help but notice the glassiness of her eyes and how the flecks of magic that leaped around her injured hand were a paler shade of blue. "I have a few questions in the meantime."

"Yes?"

"The iris-cam normally interfaces with your helmet. Is there a way to adapt the feed to another source?"

"Use the locator. Its computer should be able to receive the signal and feed it into a human monitor. You won't be able to access the higher functions – the zoom, infrared." Her voice grew hoarse as she spoke and he offered her a drink of water again.

He let her rest for a minute before he spoke again. "One more question, Holly. It's vital. When you were with Section Eight, the helmets you used had night vision that included filters that would prevent the wearer from being blinded by bright lights. Has that feature been added to standard LEP helmets?"

"Not yet," she replied. And then with a hint of a smile, "Budget cuts."

"Very well. You should get your rest. We won't arrive for another hour and a half." He moved to get out of the car then as Butler was preparing to use the jack, but her voice stopped him.

"Arty," she said. Even now, hearing her use his parents' pet name for him left him flustered. She had called him that in the past when she'd been turned into a fairy adolescent. She'd not used it since. "Thank you." And then she closed her eyes again and drifted back to sleep.

Artemis got out of the car and peered down the highway as tractor trailers and cars sped past, southward, in the direction in which all his hopes now lay.

ooo

"I'd still prefer it if you let me go instead," Butler said as they stood in the parking lot before the visitor's centre at Mammoth Cave National Park. The rental car's windows were tinted so at least they needn't worry about any tourists peering in and spotting Holly.

"Since I don't yet have a driver's licence," Artemis replied, looking up at Butler. "I think it best you stay with the car." Staying behind was tempting. He wasn't especially looking forward to a two hour walking tour in the bowels of the earth surrounded by jabbering tourists with camcorders, and he knew he would never forgive himself if anything happened to Holly while he was gone. But logically, he was the best candidate.

He resisted the urge to rub his right eye which now sported Holly's iris-cam, leaving him with a matching pair of hazel eyes. Just as Holly had said, he'd been able to use the locator to interface with his laptop and project the iris-cam's feed on its screen.

Artemis took a step towards the visitor center but halted when Butler boomed, "Shoes, Artemis." He glanced down at his loafers and sighed. Before they'd left for New York Butler had insisted he pack sneakers for their planned stakeout in Fort Tryon. They'd been retrieved from the jet and packed in the car along with their other supplies, most notably a pair of night vision goggles and two high-power flashlights. He now removed his loafers and pulled on the athletic shoes with a grimace.

Butler shook his head. "Most people don't go spelunking in a suit, but as long as you have the right shoes they can't turn you away."

"I'm off then."

"Good luck."

He was almost certain Butler was repressing a smile. Artemis straightened. "It's only a tour."

"A two mile tour that includes four hundred stairs."

"Four hundred and forty," Artemis corrected. "But I'm certain that I can manage. Olympian athleticism is not a requirement." And then, glancing back toward the tinted windows, "Take care of Holly."

"I will. Don't worry. She's a soldier. She'll hang in there."

Artemis nodded and made his way to the visitor's centre.

For reasons that defied logic, the western half of Kentucky was on central time so they had gained an hour when they'd left Louisville. That extra hour was the only reason Artemis managed to arrive early enough to attend the two o'clock tour that would take him down the route to the area where the fairy outpost was hidden.

Though it was late in the season, there was a sizable crowd, much to Artemis's annoyance. They milled about near the path to the caves, waiting for the ranger to lead them down to the main entrance. Decked out in beige and brown and a traditional campaign hat, she was currently explaining the legend surrounding the cave's rediscovery by American settlers in the seventeen nineties in what could only be described as a pronounced southern drawl. As they finally proceeded to the entrance, Artemis manoeuvred himself into the front of the group so that he – and by extension, Butler – would have an unobscured view. They would be making the trip down tonight without the benefit of the artificial lighting provided during regular hours.

A stone stairway with steel railings led down to the cave's natural entrance at the bottom of a ravine. Seventy feet at its highest point, the entrance seemed a gaping maw ready to swallow them down. A feeble stream of water cascaded from the overhanging ridge onto the cave floor to the left of the stairway. Artemis spared it only a moment before returning his attention to the path before them.

As they descended into the mouth of the cavern, the nattering of the tour group echoed off the walls. Artemis had to struggle not to grate his teeth as their inane chatter assaulted his ears. The darkness closed in around them and someone let out a wailing sound meant to be suggestive of a phantom. Artemis hated public tours. When he and his family travelled, they arranged for private guides as necessary.

The ranger paused to let the stragglers catch up and Artemis scanned the surroundings. There was little natural light now. To his right was a placard explaining that they had reached "The Twilight Zone," where natural light tapered off into total darkness ahead. It noted that racoons, salamanders, and various rodents often took refuge here and the placard bore the black and white illustration of a salamander and a rather plump rat. "Charming,"Artemis muttered.

Finally, the group began to move once more and Artemis let his eyes wander the cavern. He made a point of glancing behind to the other members of the group and up towards the ceiling so that Butler would get a proper sense of scale. The roof of the cavern was low enough here that Butler would probably have to stoop.

They made their first stop in the Rotunda through which a wooden walkway led, allowing the visitors to peer down into the cave while keeping them safely away from the artifacts below, the remains of the saltpetre mining operations of the early eighteen hundreds. He noted the number of spotlights required to light up the vast chamber with its vaulted ceiling. He and Butler would not have such luxuries.

From there they moved on through wider tunnels as the ranger explained the history of the cave's formation via water erosion. Some three hundred feet below, he knew, still ran the river that had carved out the cave. In fact one of the subterranean rivers was known as the Styx. An ominous name.

They passed a large rectangular formation with the descriptive name of "Giant's Coffin." He could not help but notice the graffiti of early explorers who had carved their names and the date into the rock upon visiting in 1839. It was exactly the sort of thing that would have caused Holly to launch into a tirade about Mud People. His chest constricted for a moment until he brought his mind back to the task at hand. He had to memorize this route in perfect detail.

The passages narrowed as they approached the area where the locator had indicated the fairy outpost would be. With the solid walls of stone looming close, he was certain Holly would have hated it; even if she'd conquered the claustrophobia that had troubled her in her youth, it was unlikely she would enjoy such cramped spaces even now.

Tonight she wouldn't be awake to notice in any case.

The ranger made a long cautionary speech before they entered the chamber known as the Bottomless Pit and then led them along the steel bridge that spanned the chasm. Even Artemis had to catch his breath.

Above and below, the walls stretched out into darkness. The chamber arched above, but the pit itself was elliptical in shape, perhaps six feet across at the widest point from the bridge. The sandstone walls were ridged, and in the yellow glow of the spotlights, the layers of sedimentary deposits of ages past were clearly visible in the grey and red of the stone.

"An explorer by the name of Stephen Bishop was the first to cross the Bottomless Pit," explained the ranger, as she leaned with unconcern against the railing, "back in 1838... when he was all of seventeen years old. He used a cedar ladder to make it across. Now back then they didn't have fancy lighting like we've got. He had a ladder and an oil lamp."

The crowd murmured its appreciation of the feat while a few cracked jokes, their voices rebounding in hollow echoes off the chasm walls. Shoes clacked on the steel grating of the bridge. A nervous laugh.

"When Stephen Bishop led tours," the ranger continued, "he used to set fire to bits of paper and toss them into the pit. They'd disappear into the dark and no one could ever see the bottom. Of course the pit isn't really bottomless. We know now that's it's 105 feet deep."

Or so you think.

From what he'd learned from the files on Holly's locator, the shaft had once extended right into the core of the earth. It was only when humans had begun frequenting the cave that the pit had been sealed off so as to prevent human access to chute E108, a shaft previously used mostly by fairy tourists who had flocked to the caves for family vacations. Several hundred feet below them, hidden somewhere in the rock walls, was an abandoned fairy shuttle port. And somewhere in the ridged rock face on the other side of this pit was the LEP watchpost he needed to reach in order to gain access to the fairy well.

The tour continued on through a low passage known as "Tall Man's Misery," where all but children had to stoop, and a narrow, winding passage known, in a grand act of political incorrectness, as "Fat Man's Misery." Artemis imagined that Butler, watching on the laptop in the car, must be feeling some relief that he would have not have to pass through either of these.

From there they moved on to River Hall where the water that filtered into the cave system was collected. They were deep underground now, some three hundred feet. After having travelled deeper into the earth's core than any human in history thanks to his adventures with the People, this seemed a paltry depth to Artemis; thinking onself at any great depth here would be like a climber standing on a hillock and thinking he'd summited Everest.

Artemis's feet were aching by the time they arrived at the tour's final stop, Mammoth Dome where the ceiling rose cathedral-like above them. He paled when he lay eyes on the tower of stairs spiralling upwards like a metal cage, one hundred and thirty-eight steps strong. In the parking lot, three hundred feet above, he suspected that Butler was chuckling.


A/N: On the subject of Holly and Artemis's eye switch... Does anyone have a straight answer on which eye is which? Book five mentioned Holly's left eye, but doesn't say which of Artemis's was switched. I assume that it's his right since it must have happened when they were looking into each other's eyes in the time stream. I would thus assume it was right which would have been facing her left?

Over-thinking things? Who me? ;)