Chapter Four – Over Hill, Under Hill
Joshua
Josh was sulking. Rain hammered down in silvery sheets and went gurgling away down the rocky paths. It drizzled off the ends of tree branches and dripped off pine needles. It whipped capriciously under shelters. Sat under the damp eaves of a hemlock, Josh watched the downpour sullenly. He had planned to cross over the mountain in little over half a day, and so come to Route 33 well before sunset. The weather, though, had other ideas.
Thunder rumbled overhead. It should have been a sensible plan. On the map, Union Cave looked to be longer and just as difficult as the mountain path. Being unfamiliar with mountain weather, Josh had been relying on the clear skies report from his Pokégear's weather app. So much for that – this rainstorm had seemingly blown in from nowhere.
The wind tried to drive rain under the shaggy hemlock branches. Josh zipped his old brown jacket right up to his chin, and wondered whether he should have tried to relocate to Olivine City or Goldenrod – somewhere his degree would be in higher demand. Well, that was the conundrum, right there. There was no guarantee that he'd manage to find work before his living money ran out. It was the sort of risk that would either pay off handsomely, or cost hundreds of dollars to no gain. On the whole it wasn't a risk Josh was willing to take, though he couldn't help but sometimes wonder if he'd made the right decision.
The pokémon he was sharing the shelter with wasn't helping, either. Nestled snugly in the branches of the hemlock, a hoothoot watched him unblinkingly with its round, red eyes. The rain didn't seem to be bothering it at all. Josh scowled up at it.
"Did you get up early just to watch me get soaked?" Hoothoot just hooted insolently back. Josh's brow furrowed again. He was beginning to suspect that the owl was laughing at him. Damn it. Four, maybe five miles to the west the path ran until it reached the top of a wide valley. A lively stream ran through it, but there were steps carved into the rock – good, safe steps. That was the Granite Pass, and walking downhill it would have been possible to be in the next village well before nightfall - if it hadn't rained.
Just as Josh was considering throwing something at the hoothoot, the rain slackened off. Thunder still rumbled further up the mountainside, but here on the lower slopes the downpour slowed to a scattered drizzle. Josh emerged stiffly from beneath the tree. There was still enough time to reach the Granite Pass before nightfall. Reaching to his belt, he unsnapped a Poké Ball from its clasp. Time to get to know his new pokémon.
"Out you come, Magnemite," he said. Magnemite didn't appear to be at all fazed by its capture. It just hovered, gazing blankly at him.
"Er. So. Magnemite," said Josh. "Looks like I'm your new trainer. No hard feelings over being caught, right?"
Magnemite stared back.
"We could be good friends, you know. Just ask Bulbasaur."
Stare.
"I thought we could walk to the pass together," he continued. "Get to know each other, sort of thing. Er."
Stare.
"In a creepy way, you're kind of cute really," he said desperately.
Magnemite listed to its left. Josh tried to work out whether that meant Magnemite liked the compliment. Its constant stare was beginning to make his eyes water. He gazed southwards down the mountainside; the slopes dominated by graceful, pencil-straight Godwood cedars. Well, while I'm here. Josh walked over to the nearest Godwood and picked a sprig of the aromatic needles – they went well with lemon tea. When he looked back, Magnemite was determinedly making its way up the mountainside.
"Oi, where are you going?" Josh shouted. "Get back here!"
His pokémon made no answer, except to spin on its axis a couple of times. Josh growled in frustration and gave chase. His boots kicked up against the rocky ground and he stumbled as he ran. He fumbled for Magnemite's Poké Ball as he leapt up a steep slope. Damn it! Who would have thought a Magnemite would be so swift?
"You stop right there, you screwball!" he yelled. "Do you hear me – ow!" Josh slipped on the wet leaf litter and fell hard. The Poké Ball went bouncing away down the slope. Magnemite watched in wide-eyed interest as its trainer scrambled to retrieve the Ball. Breathing heavily, Josh stabbed a threatening finger at his errant pokémon.
"Mag-nemiiiite," it droned in return and was off again, winding randomly through the dripping cedars.
"Return!" The recall beam skipped off a tree and dissipated. His second and third attempts to recall Magnemite similarly failed – aiming a recall beam was difficult whilst simultaneously trying to chase it through the trees. Josh bared his teeth. Right, that tears it, he thought. He half-sprinted, half-leapt up the mountainside, dodging tree-trunks and ducking branches. A listing spray of sugar pine dumped a shower of rainwater down his neck. Cursing breathlessly, Josh trod heavily on a large rock and sent it tumbling away. "Geo!" it complained, swinging its fists.
He passed Magnemite, giving it a wide circling berth, running on another few yards before smartly hiding behind a tree. Magnemite lost sight of him. It swivelled about, looking in completely the wrong directions, and slowly twiddled its screws in their sockets with dull squeaking noise. Josh crept out from his hiding place – he managed to get within a few feet of Magnemite before it heard him.
"Magnemite!" it cried, just in time to see its trainer pounce.
"Gotcha!" he shouted in triumph, seizing his pokémon with a flying tackle. The pair tumbled and bounced wildly down the mountain until a pine log halted them with a jolt. Josh lay on the damp ground, clutching Magnemite firmly. His body started to register complaints – aching legs, thumping chest, banged head. A hollow boom split the air apart. Lightning flashed.
"Oh dear …"
The storm was closing back in.
The thunderstorm rumbled down the mountains, lashing the slopes with sheets of water. The raindrops hit the ground so hard that they bounced back an inch or more. Black clouds brought on an early night. Lightning flashed, turning the forest into a stark tableau of dark trunks and silver rain.
The storm had been hanging around the uplands for days, gathering in power as it went. Now it dumped its accumulated strength in one go, joyously throwing everything it had at the hillsides. Pokémon huddled under logs and boulders to wait it out. At the eastern end of Union Cave, the tallest pine in the forest was split in half by a lightning strike. Granite Pass was a torrent of white water.
In the midst of it all, a trainer zigzagged through the forest, lost.
Which way was west?
Josh squinted through the gloom, Magnemite hovering at his shoulder. Raindrops clustered on the lenses of his glasses blurred his vision. He swung his lantern left and right, looking for a landmark, any landmark, that might give him a clue as to where he was. The illumination from the brief flashes of lightning was no help at all – all he saw was a barcode forest, ranks of dark pines stretching in every direction.
Not for the first time, Josh cursed the mountain path. He cursed Magnemite too, for its disobedience. Somehow during the chase he must have lost his bearings. In the dark of the storm he had no idea which way he had drifted, east or west, north or south. By the light of his lantern he saw a cut-out view of the forest, a circular peep-hole filled with rain.
Lightning speared a tree, its heartwood bursting into flame regardless of the downpour. It wasn't much more than a furlong away – too close for comfort. Josh's imagination supplied a vivid image of boiling sap and wooden shrapnel. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for Magnemite's Poké Ball.
"This is too dangerous. Get in, now," he commanded, recalling it.
Which way was west?
He headed downhill, on the basis that it would eventually take him down to Route 32, or 33. Downhill was the only recognisable direction at this point, anyway. Josh shivered. The rain had soon soaked him through to the skin, and now his old jumper sat heavily on his shoulders. He could feel his socks squelching in his boots, though the pounding rain drowned out all sound.
For the umpteenth time that day he slipped on a patch of scree. In the dark he couldn't see where to place his weight and so went tumbling down the slope yet again. Fresh scratches raised on his hands, with aching head he stumbled up to his feet. The lantern hadn't broken in the fall – at least that was something.
An unpleasant tight sensation was growing in his chest. This is ridiculous, Josh thought, I'm never lost. But there were no landmarks! Nothing to recognise, nothing to steer by! Josh heaved down a few steadying breaths. Alright, calm down, he told himself. Keep heading downhill. He methodically panned his lantern around again, and his heart leapt. There, further downhill, a gap in the forest! He was closer to the foothills than he'd thought.
Heading towards the gap with renewed purpose, Josh tried to wipe the rain from his glasses. It made no difference – the drops just smeared and were replaced in seconds anyway. The thunder seemed to grind and roar ever louder. Josh paused, confused. Was that thunder? He strained to hear past the lashing rain. It sounded deep, throaty, not like the hollow boom of thunder.
A particularly bright lightning strike lit up the forest. For a few seconds Josh could see clearly. About twenty feet away, a fully-grown onix was watching him and roaring. Josh spat out a curse and fled. An onix! A bloody territorial onix! He risked a glance behind – it was following, still roaring. What was an onix doing out in a thunderstorm?
He changed direction, half-running, half-leaping downhill. Picking up speed, he laughed breathlessly. Try and catch me now, boulder-boy! The laughter died in his throat as the onix went crashing by like a runaway train, smashing trees like matchsticks as it went. It turned, head held low to the ground. It opened its mouth wide, and screeched.
The noise was awful. Josh clapped his hands to his ears, and screamed.
Josh wasn't sure how long the Screech went on for. His eardrums throbbed. Onix lay motionless amid the ruined trees, watching him. Josh wondered why it hadn't attacked. What was it trying to do? He looked past the onix to the tree-gap, looking for a nest or lair of some kind. The rain eased off a little, and scarce feet away, a flash of lightning revealed –
… yawning depths, sheer cliffs, a black chasm …
Josh hurriedly threw an arm around a broken tree trunk.
"Unk," he managed. He clutched the broken trunk like a child clinging to his mother, shut his eyes and waited patiently for the world to stop spinning. Eventually, the ringing in his ears dimmed a little, and he dared to let go.
"You were trying to warn me about the cliff, weren't you?" he said. The onix seemed to relax. Josh supposed that meant it had understood. It was an imposing pokémon, especially in the gloom of the storm – a good thirty feet long, and darker coloured than most of its species. Its body was rounded rather than rugged, smoothened from years of tunnelling. The look it gave Josh was somehow old, like a stern but kindly grandfather.
Crunching over pulverised wood, Onix slithered a little way along the cliff. It partly turned back, staring expectantly. Josh followed cautiously, taking care to keep the onix between himself and the cliff face beyond. The old pokémon led him down a ledge that wound down the sheer side of the mountain. It kept glancing back to make sure that Josh was still there, seemingly unafraid of the yawning depths.
Eventually, Onix stopped at an apparently random spot. It coiled itself up slightly, its massive bulk only just squeezing onto the path. Without warning, it roared and smashed its way into the cliff face. The ground rumbled and shook, the night filled with the elemental sound of rock grinding on rock as it squirmed through the mountainside.
Josh cautiously shone his lantern down the tunnel. Tremors vibrated up from far underground. He hesitated, nervy at the prospect of following down an onix-burrow. He mentally shook himself. This old onix had stopped him from walking over the cliff edge, hadn't it? There was something in the look on its face – that grandfatherly expression – that suggested it knew very well what it was doing. Josh slid himself into the tunnel, took a deep breath, and was gone.
Deep underground, Josh struggled through the living rock. Slithering down an onix-burrow turned out to be a difficult, grubby, claustrophobic, business. He wasn't really feeling afraid any more, so much as persistent, deep-rooted apprehension. A change in the dispersal of the light seemed to reveal an end to the tunnel. Relieved, tired and sore, he slid down the last few yards and fell into a spacious, airy cavern.
Josh painfully regained his feet and panned his lantern around the cavern. The ceiling soared up four, maybe five fathoms – why did it occur to him to estimate it in terms of depth? - the cold electric light touching off galleries of stalactites. A wide pool covered almost half of the cavern floor, the surface perfectly still, like a molten mirror, speckled with peach-coloured stromatolites. The walls were frosted with some variety of chalk-white moss.
"Oh my …" Josh breathed. He'd heard stories of underground lakes hidden in obscure corners of Union Cave. How many people had seen this chamber, he wondered, stepping around the edge of the pool with reverent care, like a man in a cathedral – to disturb the water would be unthinkable, a sacrilege.
That wasn't really moss, was it? A closer look showed them to be an intricate, delicate forest of crystals, like tiny heads of club moss and bracken sprays, twinkling shyly in the lantern-light.
Exhaustion was trying to catch up with him. Josh blinked hard in an effort to stay awake. There was another tunnel on the far side of the cavern, leading off into the dark. Josh shone his lantern down it, trying to think through the fog of exhaustion. After a while, he released Magnemite.
"Alright, listen you," he said wearily. "Watch for other pokémon and listen for my orders. Understand?"
Magnemite said nothing. It was staring off into the blackness.
"Magnemite. Understand?"
"Magnemite!" it droned urgently, rapidly hovering down the tunnel.
"Oi! I'm the pathfinder. Don't make me recall you!" Stumbling with exhaustion, he chased his pokémon into the depths of Union Cave.