CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"All right?" I call. No answer. No answer to his name, either.
Long moments pass. Can't hear a sound. Anything could be behind that opening; a cavern, a straight drop down. He could be stuck somewhere in the belly of the cliff. I wish I had a rope, a lantern, anything. With a rock I break out two shallow chips from the clay seam in the cliff face and wedge the toe of my boot in the lower one, grip the higher one with the tips of my fingers...
A pebble drops down onto my shoulder. I look up and Seamus is grinning at me over the edge, dirty-faced, silhouetted against the grey sky, hair hanging in his eyes.
"It's a robber's den. Come an' look. Here."
He flattens himself against the ledge and an arm reaches down, waves blindly. I stretch up to grasp his hand. It's knobby and strong and dry as bark, and grips mine like a vise. I raise my knee, press a boot against the wall, jump out from it, and he pulls me to him. My other hand grabs hold of the rim. Palm flat, pushing down, my chest swings forward and onto the ledge, scraping, and I'm up.
He's fallen onto his back, covered in gray dust, a pale wild figure splayed in the dirt laughing at me, wiping his hair back into place. Behind him is the cave. The opening is diamond-shaped, rather tall now I'm in front of it, and is exhaling a raw, sepulchral wind. Robber's den. My heart is fast in my chest, not just from the climb.
"Scared of closed places?" he asks, rubbing his arm where my weight scraped it against the rocks.
"No," I answer without thinking. I hate to be locked in the cellar, but that is something different.
He shrugs, and his smile is rueful. "I am. I went in far enough I remembered I don't like them much," he says. "It goes narrow after the first bit. I got part way and the matches ran out, and so did I." It's not often a man gives you a candid admission of cowardice. I dig in my pocket for my cigarette lighter and hand it over. Then, after a moment's consideration, the brandy. He winks at me over the rim, as thanks.
"Think anything's in there?" He means animals.
"Not anymore," I say. There's a soft stink to the wind, but it's nothing alive.
"How can you tell?" The speculative look is back. But in my life of hiding truths I've learned that the moment you allow interrogation to begin you've lost. Instead of answering I frown into the dark mouth of the cave. "Well, of course there isn't. It's a climb. Probably nothing's been in there for a hundred years." I pause. "Only... there was that shipwreck near here, but they never found the..." I let myself trail off. It works. The pirate in him rises helplessly to the bait. His eyes widen and then immediately narrow. "Never found what- " When I start laughing he punches my shoulder, not gently.
I go in first. Partly because Seamus is stalling. Mostly because the nearer I am to the cave the more compelling it is. I can't tell if the shift I feel as I step through the diamond is due to my abrupt blindness or to the sudden drop in atmosphere. Perhaps something else. Whatever it is, it hits me like a whip. There's no stolen gold, I don't think, but there is something here I want.
He's right about the first bit. The crack funnels down to a ragged black slit. We hunch over till we can't, crawl hands-and-knees till we can't, shuffle on our stomachs, pulling ourselves along by our elbows through powdery silt on the ground. Mixed in the silt is the hayloft smell of old spoor, the wet-newsprint stink of bats. The cave's ceiling drags the collar of my coat down my shoulders. Behind me, Seamus breathes fast and shallow and the air in the small passage becomes clouded- for me- by the luminous frost of his sweat. I try my best to ignore his fear. It's not that I find his claustrophobia shameful. Rather, the inverse. The scent and sound of his agitation is drawing the attention of something inside of me that I don't want to acknowledge.
Also it is waking up my body. It's not the fear itself it wants but what the fear is producing in him, the trembling, the warm damp vibrant smell of him. The sound of his rough breathing is making my hands shake. I hold the tip of my tongue between my teeth, bite down, try to think of nothing, of the cave, of anything but him.
A gust ruffles my hair. The passage suddenly doesn't seem as close. I push up on my elbows and nothing stops me; kneel and then crouch, tentatively. Nothing above me but hollow, velvety air. Openness. Seamus' hand knocks my heel as I stand up.
"Oh. What? Oh-" he says, and then a scuffling behind me. He grabs at my calf, pulling himself up, then at my coat, my shoulder, and then he's standing too, bumping into me, panting close behind my ear. Two clicks and a stink of gas, and suddenly a dim gold sphere blooms around us. We're in the center of a ball of light wavering in the mouth of a wide cavern, undulating ceiling strung with delicate spires of rock like ribs in a whale. Much bigger than I imagined. And it is beautiful.
"Christ," I whisper, involuntarily, and an elbow taps me.
"Don' think he can hear you in here," he says shakily, but I'm too overwhelmed by the beauty of it to laugh, to do anything but walk forward out of our globe of light and into the black belly of the cave.
In the darkness I jump, gently, arms above my head, touching nothing. It's like flying, this blind jumping. The dark seems to bend and contract around me, a trick of my eyes, but even without them I can see the cave in my mind, a map made of its scents. Up are the chalky eggshell-smelling spires in the ceiling. Down is the silty ground-wind with its aftertaste of brine. Back is Seamus' burning vulnerability. Forward is a smell I have only otherwise encountered in the half-world between wake and sleep: wet clay, tall grass, the mealy scent of drying bones, and the finest trace of an invisible perfume, like a field I used to pass through, years and years ago. Something from a childhood, but not my childhood- perhaps the one I had in my dreams. The memory of fur.
And I love it, if 'love' is even the right word; I feel as though I've been here before- not just been, but lived here in this cave, was nursed, hid shivering from thunder, slept warm in the velvet dark alongside the others. Then, somehow, through some process my memory has erased, was taken from it, couldn't find my way back. Forgot. And only now have accidentally been returned. A changeling back in the elven nest. A monster back in the den.
The ball of light wavers and comes through the darkness, swinging to rest behind me.
"Thought you'd like it," his voice says at my shoulder.
Like is not the word I'd use, but I appreciate him.
"Look, it keeps on. See, down in there- " He's holding the lighter forward like a torch, ineffectually, but beyond the glare I do see. Before us is a break in the rock. It's where this wind is issuing from, and now the wind blows a bitter mist of limewater. I know what's there. Past that break is another cavern, a big one, enormous, and trickling through it is a knife of pale water, singing in the dark, carving endlessly. Remember how you slept here, comes a thought from nowhere, and with it a memory that is not mine. Remember how you slept here in the winter and you were warm and safe-
We're moving forward and then in an instant, like a magic trick, we're in darkness. He curses. A clatter at my feet. I had forgotten that the lighter gets hot when it runs too long. A rustling below me as he pats the ground looking for it. The smell of hot brass somewhere to my left, out of his reach. Under the cursing his breathing stops, and I understand, as clearly as though he's told me, that he's in terror. That he needed the light to see the way out, to keep from feeling trapped.
It's too soon. I don't want to leave. I wanted to find the hidden river. But a trap is a trap. I kneel, aim into the fragrant vapor of his panic. My hand closes around his forearm. Inside his sinewy muscle I can feel his heartbeat racing and my own raises to match his. This has never happened; I have never been allowed to touch someone in this way. But, holding him, I know exactly what I want to do. There's a question that's been haunting me since my childhood, since the change. Now I have the answer.
"We don't need the light. Here's the way out. Just right here."
Seamus says something inarticulate. I grip the arm hard and he goes still, gathers himself. As he lets out his deep breath I feel it rushing against my cheek.
I don't let go. "Come on. We don't need the light. Here, stand up- "
I bring his arm along with me in the dark until my other hand bumps against the ridge of stone above the entrance. A trickle of fresh air comes through carrying the smell of rain on it. He starts laughing in relief, low and sudden and embarrassed, as I lie down to crawl. I feel his hand brush my ankle, lightly. The passage seems much shorter on the way out and then I'm standing again, blinking in the pearl-grey light, spring rain on my cheeks.
Behind me Seamus scrabbles out of the opening, ducking, blinking, still laughing unevenly. "Sorry," he's telling me, both thankful and sheepish, "Sorry. Couldn't do it, it was too..." and he stands there, dusty and reeling, embarrassed, still shaking. But his apology is unnecessary. I owe him. He discovered the cave, after all. Then he let me near him in his fear. Because of those two things I am different now.