After arguing that just locating the caves couldn't do any harm, Sam finally convinced Dean to head north out of the city that afternoon to go take another look at the painting on the rocks. It was a short drive, but when they were almost there Dean caught sight of a place advertising peach pie and insisted on a snack break.
"One big slice of your freshest pie, ma'am," he said to the matronly woman behind the counter with his most charming Southern-boy smile. As she cut it to his specifications ("A little bigger – just a touch more – that's the ticket!") and presented it to him steaming hot and accompanied with a cup of coffee, he commented "You ought to rename this place 'Piasa Pies', take advantage of the local lore, y'know?"
She merely smiled at this, but as Dean performed his brief pre-pie-eating ritual of trembling indecision about where to dig in first, Sam noticed a wrinkled and sunburnt fellow at the next table eyeing the two of them sharply from behind a coffee cup. Seeing that Sam wasn't eating and didn't seem inclined to watch his brother do so, the stranger settled his bill and sauntered over to their table.
"Heard you boys talking about the Piasa," he said.
"That's right. We're passing through town and heard the legend about the bird." Sam pushed the table's third chair out a few inches. "You know anything about it?"
The stranger ignored the chair and kept standing. "Yuh. It's been a tourist attraction long as anyone around here can remember. Might not be for much longer."
"Why not?" Sam asked. Even Dean cocked an ear, although a good part of his attention remained solidly devoted to his pie.
"Girl got killed, couple days ago. Bear or something did it. Reminds some people of the bloodier side of the story. Piasa was supposed to kill people. Convenient to forget that part, over the years. Local sports team even named 'emselves after it, The Piasa Birds. The original story's been cleaned up a little."
"Really?" Sam couldn't conceal his interest. "I read about the tribe of Chief Ouatoga and how the warriors were supposed to have killed the bird..."
"Yuh. Nowadays people say Chief and his boys went out, saw it, killed it just like that. Original story goes like this: Chief and his boys go out, Piasa comes to get Chief and grabs him. He had to hold on to some roots in the ground while it tried to fly away with him, and every time its wings went up the warriors fired it full of arrows. Once, twice, again, six times they shot it up before it finally stopped tugging on the Chief and fell down dead. He lay half-alive for weeks after that. That thing was brutal. Yuh. That's how my gramps told me it. Ain't nothing pretty about playing ball with the Piasa. You get tore up real bad, 'cause that mother don't die easy."
"Wow." Sam was taken aback by the immediacy of the stranger's story. It sounded like something that could have happened last week, rather than in the distant past.
"So, you'll be heading up to the bluff," the stranger continued, while Sam tried to catch up with the other man's abrupt jump in topics.
"The... the bluff?"
"With the painting. Everybody goes to look at the painting. Even got its own parking lot put in. Next thing you know they'll be charging admission just to drive past it with your eyes open. Story goes, the Piasa's cave ought to be right up there on the mountain behind it. Kids used to go up there for kicks, but the whole place is a mess now."
"What do you mean, a mess?" This time the question came from Dean.
"Mountain mining," the man said, like it was obvious. "Yuh. Don't get a lot of it 'round here, but somebody tipped off Illinois Coal and they zeroed in on that sucker. Gonna level this town to the ground soon. Throwing up debris all over the place, you can't get near the caves now."
Sam was about to ask about the extent of the caves and the location of the supposed lair of the Piasa Bird, but they were interrupted by the lady who had served Dean his pie. She bustled by, gathering plates and glasses from neighboring tables, and noticed the stranger talking to Sam and Dean. "Harvey." Her tone was acidic. "You know the rules. You can only stay if you order something and if you don't bother my customers."
Harvey, mumbling resentfully to himself, sloped off without another word to the brothers, and Sam forced himself to smile at the store owner, who clearly thought she'd done them a favor. "He'd talk the ear off everyone who comes in here if I let him, with his conspiracy theories and crazy old stories," she confided to them as she cleared Dean's plate away. "Don't let it bother you, Harvey just adds to the local color."
***
Back in the car, Sam was even more determined to get up to the caves, regardless of Harvey's warnings about the mining. After his pie, Dean was a lot more optimistic about the plan as well. When they came around the bend in the road and saw the painting, Dean laughed out loud. "Dude, whoever had the idea to stick that thing up there must have been high."
"Yeah... literally," Sam agreed, staring up at it. "I wonder how they got up there? The caves must be on the other side, but I can't see if there's a path going up or anything."
"That Harvey guy said it's got its own parking lot, right?" Dean said. "Let's pull in and take a look."
It turned out that Harvey had been right, and on the far side of the parking lot there was indeed a path leading up to the top of the bluffs. It was winding and steep, but they reached the top soon enough, and Sam peered around. Scoping out the area revealed a wide, relatively fresh dirt track leading up to the bluffs from the other side, and the track continued beyond a fenced-off area with various signs announcing "Danger! Open Mine Shafts!", "Subsidence!" and "Authorized Personnel Only!"
Dean wasn't fazed. "I'm sure some of those IDs we got in the car make us authorized personnel, right, Sammy?" he called over his shoulder, already pushing through a gap in the fencing.
The area didn't turn out to be as much of a mess as advertised by Harvey, and after a bit of poking around, Dean located a pile of rubble that was half-concealing what was clearly a cave entrance. "Bull's-eye!" he crowed. "Check this out." His feet sliding on loose shale, Sam followed Dean down the incline to the cave mouth. It was almost completely blocked by the rock pile, but there was a space of a few feet on one side, just wide enough for the two of them to slip inside.
Sam was glad he'd brought a flashlight – the previously clear sky was clouding over, and inside the cave he couldn't see more than the vaguest outline of his brother a few feet in front of him. "Ow! Motherf––" Dean swore. "Sam, can you shine that light over here?"
Concealing a chuckle, Sam did so, and illuminated Dean rubbing his forehead and grimacing in pain. "This place is hardcore, they even got freakin' stalagmites all over the place."
"Stalactites," Sam corrected automatically. "Careful, it looks like the ground gets rough back there."
Ignoring the warning, Dean ventured a few more steps toward the back of the cave. "Come on, I think I found something."
Bent almost double to keep from banging his own head on the roof of the cave, Sam gingerly made his way after his brother. "What?"
"Wait, turn the light off."
"What?" Sam was confused. "How will you be able to see with the light off?"
"Just do it." There was cautious excitement in Dean's voice, so Sam obeyed.
After a few seconds, he suddenly understood Dean's odd request. As the after-image of his flashlight's beam in the dark faded from his eyes, he noticed a very faint glow coming from the ground on one side of the cave.
Dean got on his hands and knees and crawled forward a few feet, reaching out for the glowing material. "Hope it's not radioactive," he joked. "Although I suppose it would be kind of awesome to be the Human Torch."
Sam clenched his jaw nervously, but nothing happened when Dean picked up whatever it was. "Weird," his older brother said softly. "It feels... really weird."
A split second before Dean stood up carefully to show it to him, Sam suddenly knew what it was going to be. Sure enough, in Dean's hands lay a few glowing shards of what looked like porcelain. "Oh my god," Sam breathed.
When they clambered out of the cave, it had already started to rain, but Sam made Dean stop so he could look at the shards again. Out in the gray afternoon light, the glow was already fading, leaving just that shiny dark brown surface with a touch of blue to it. When he touched it, it felt strangely warm, just like the other shard he still had in his breast pocket. He took the new ones from Dean and added them to the pocket as well.
When they got back down to the car, breaking into a run as the rain increased, they found Gabriel waiting for them, sprawled out in the backseat as if he were at home. He raised his strawberry milkshake to greet them as they got in. "Howdy, boys. Fine weather for spelunking."
Dean gave him an evil eye in the rearview mirror. "I swear, archangel or not, if you get that stuff on my seats I will end you."
Gabriel emitted a long-suffering sigh. "It's so nice to see you too, Dean. That's what I like about you, you speak your mind. No need to walk on eggshells around me." And with a snap he vanished.
"What the hell?" Dean expostulated. "What was the point of that? Sometimes I really think the dude has a screw loose."
Sam's mind was whirring. "Wait, Dean." He blocked his brother's hand as he reached for the ignition. "Hang on just a sec."
"What is it?"
Sam met Dean's eyes, a grin beginning to spread across his face. "Eggs!"
"You talking about Gabriel's boiled eggs from this morning?"
"No, eggs in general! God, I'm such an idiot!" Sam laughed aloud. "Dean, he's been giving us clues the whole time. I can't believe we didn't get it sooner. The boiled eggs this morning, then appearing in the car and talking about eggs later on, then popping in just to say something about eggshells and leaving again." He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out one of the mysterious shards. "They're pieces of eggshell!" Now that he'd realized it, it seemed obvious on closer examination.
Dean's eyebrows lifted slightly in comprehension and a reluctant smile touched his lips. "Huh. That... kinda makes sense, actually. They gotta come from a real big egg, though. I guess this bird thing must be pretty huge, if it eats people." Suddenly his smile was gone again. "But seriously, why couldn't Gabriel have just told us that in the first place? If he knows all about this case, as he seems to, he could just go ahead and explain it to us and save us some time and effort. It's like he's having fun just playing with us."
Sam thought it prudent not to say anything in response to this, partly because he felt the same way. But for some reason, he didn't want to agree with Dean that the archangel was being a jerk on purpose. It was just the trickster thing, Sam told himself. It was practically part of Gabriel's nature at this point. He knew it annoyed Dean, but if Gabriel stopped playing tricks on them, he wouldn't really be Gabriel anymore. And Sam didn't want that.
***