by Sammie Joyce
“Indeed,” I agreed. “Shall we go find something to eat?”
“Do you know what I’d do for a coffee right now?” he asked and I snorted.
“I’m afraid the nearest Starbucks is 300 miles away,” I teased. “But if you run really fast…”
“I’ll settle for goji berries,” he sighed. “I saw a plant not far from here yesterday.”
“Good choice.”
I watched him amble to his feet and extended a hand for him to join me. His strong arm encircled my waist and we stared out at the trees, listening to birdsong in silence for a long moment.
“Lariss?”
“Hm?”
I kept my eyes trained on the view in front of us.
“Are you sure about this mountain?”
I shivered slightly, the question catching me off guard. I eyed him through my peripheral vision.
“Why are you asking me that?” I asked, trying to keep the defensiveness out of my tone.
“Because I know you and you seem a little on edge.”
“I’m sure,” I told him quickly. “Are you getting cold feet?”
He scowled slightly at the dare.
“That’s not what I mean,” he said flatly. “I’m just wondering where your head is at.”
“My head is in the same place it’s been since I started on the journey—finding an artifact.”
Ruben didn’t say anything but his arm tightened around my hip in a semblance of solidarity and I relaxed against him.
“Fine,” he agreed. “First goji berries, then let’s go get that artifact.”
* * *
From the moment we stepped out of the cave, the rain fell, drenching us both from head to hoof. Of course, our hollow fur made bearing the weather easier, the water beading to roll off our backs. Even so, the rain slowed us down significantly.
We didn’t gauge the time right—or if we had, the weather had certainly dampened our timing (no pun intended).
Night had almost fully fallen when we arrived at the base of the mountain and up close, it was even more imposing than it had been from a distance. The dread I’d experienced the previous day overwhelmed me now.
My instinct was to turn around and flee in the direction that we’d come, but I couldn’t. I was just too stubborn to obey my inherent sixth sense. I dismissed the thoughts that something might happen to me or to Ruben. I ignored the idea that it was dangerous to crawl through mountain caves at night, a fact that Ruben spoke aloud.
“We should wait until morning to explore,” he suggested but I shook my head vehemently. I wasn’t sure my resolve was going to last that long.
“No,” I said flatly. “We’re going in now.”
“But Larissa, we can’t see anything.”
I grinned at him disarmingly.
“I’m a shaman, darling. I can make fire, remember?”
“Right.”
I threw my head back and looked up as high as my neck could crane. Even then, I couldn’t see the peak from where I stood. I tried to remember the name of this mountain but try as I might, I couldn’t envision it on a map. The entire area was relatively unmanned, if not unexplored. There was no good reason for anyone to be that far northwest. Not in Alaska, not that day.
Why would artifacts even be in here? Who would have hidden them here?
The obvious answer, of course, was our ancestors. No one would journey this far unless they came looking specifically for something. There was barely any wildlife in that remote area. There was genuinely nothing there. If they were there, they had been purposely placed.
Did I have any right to touch them?
Suddenly I realized that was what had been bothering me all along.
Then again, if I wasn’t permitted to be there, the spirits would not have led me there.
I shut up my inner voice and turned to Ruben, my fingers reaching out to twine with his. Up ahead was the mouth of a cave and I knew whatever we sought lay beyond.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
We exchanged a look and stepped forward.
We were going in—gods help us both.
16
Larissa
It was exactly as I had seen it in my talks with the guides. Even in the dark I could tell as much.
“Watch where you’re going,” Ruben growled, his hand tightening on mine. “Should we shift?”
“No,” I said quickly. “We need to communicate.”
“But I can’t see anything like this,” he complained. I unhooked my hand from his and drew a circle with my toe before starting a fire along the stone ground. Instantly, the interior of the cave exploded in light.
“Woah.”
My sentiments exactly.
If we’d walked another three feet in front of us, we would have ended up inside a green lake. It was all eerily beautiful, haunting and filled with secrets so ancient, my mind couldn’t even absorb what was happening. I’d never seen anything so…primitive? I couldn’t think of the word for what I was witnessing.
“I don’t think there’s anything here, love,” Ruben said, his eyes scanning the area for signs of anything that might remotely resemble a totem. “Maybe there’s another entrance to the mountain.”
I shook my head.
“It’s here,” I told him with more confidence than I’d ever uttered anything before. “I’m sure of it.”
“Where?”
Outside, I heard a crack of thunder and I wondered if I should take it as a sign of foreshadowing.
“Larissa…”
“It’s here. I know it’s here.”
It was hard to keep the edge out of my voice but I tried to remember what my visions had told me. I had seen all this before, the lake, the mountain…
Oh. The lake.
I turned to Ruben who still looked around, a look of helpless exasperation on his face.
“I mean, I guess this is as good a place as any to hunker down,” he muttered but I think he was talking to himself. “We can go check out the rest of the mountain—”
He stopped speaking and watched me in disbelief.
“LARISSA!” he howled but the rest of his cry was cut off as I swan dived into the water and began to swim toward the bottom, my eyes wide open. It didn’t take me long to see the opening beneath and when I swam through, I quickly resurfaced on the other side of the mountain. For some reason, I could see better on this end, light there was light irradiating from some aspect which I couldn’t see. I was grateful for it, however because I could clearly see that this side was much larger than the one we’d entered from. As I treaded water, I could see a maze of smaller caves leading down several corridors and I smiled to myself.
Catching my breath, I ducked back down and swam back to where I’d left Ruben. To my chagrin, he’d gotten in the water and was thrashing around looking for me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, a bemused expression on my face. Relief flooded over him and he glowered at me.
“What am I doing?” he echoed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“There’s an entire other side under the lake,” I told him, splashing at him playfully. “We need to get over there.”
He eyed me dubiously.
“What do you mean an entire other side?”
“You’ll see. Come on.”
Without giving him a chance to respond, I was underwater again and gone, knowing that as always, Ruben was behind me.
This time, when I resurfaced, I pulled myself out onto the side of the lake and dripped onto the slate ground. It was much colder on this side but I barely noticed it as my eyes began to search over the area for clues of what I might be looking for.
A moment later, Ruben’s head popped up. I reached down to help him out of the water but he didn’t seem to notice me as he took in his new surroundings.
“This is…” he trailed off.
“Awesome?” I offered.
“Prehistoric,” he replied and
I realized that’s exactly what it was. Prehistoric. I could almost see dinosaurs roaming through there, looking to escape their predators. I shivered again.
Ruben crawled out after me and as water fell off our bodies, we padded toward the first entranceway, peering down inside.
“Okay, that’s really dark,” Ruben muttered and I agreed. We were going to need light sources, torches. I backtracked and sought out something to use for a stick. To my surprise, there was a fair amount of natural debris inside the cave although I had no idea from where it had come. I couldn’t see a single living thing inside except the water. I hadn’t even seen a fish or algae in the lake.
Weird.
It was a matter to analyze another time. Right now, we needed to find the artifacts.
Ruben waited as I created a slow burning blue light to illuminate the sticks before I handed him one and guided him toward the mouth of the first cave. My eyebrows shot up as we moved.
“What is this place?” I heard Ruben mutter, again echoing my own thoughts. I’d never seen such a system of caves like this. It was like a honeycomb but for life-sized bees. It was both unnerving and awe-inspiring, each emotion vying to outdo the other.
“Nature is miraculous,” I heard myself mutter but my words floated through the void as we moved forward. I veered slightly to the left, not realizing that Ruben had stayed to the right and suddenly, I was in a completely separate portion of the mountain. I felt like we had entered an endless abyss with tunnels that would continue for eternity.
“Larissa? Larissa!”
It was only then that I noticed that Ruben wasn’t behind me and I whirled around, hearing how far away his voice sounded. I instantly backtracked my steps, my pulse quickening as I went to search for him. He wasn’t where I ended up and I wondered if I’d taken a wrong turn again.
“Ruben?” I called back. “Yell out.”
Only silence met my request and if my heart was racing before, it was pounding now.
“Ruben?”
Again, the caves seemed to carry off my voice but I heard the faint echo of Ruben’s tones trying to reach me. I stood, paralyzed, trying to determine what direction his words were coming from but it was impossible to determine with the reverb happening around us.
Once more, I cried out for him, whirling to head back the way I’d come, thinking that maybe he’d come after me but again, I was out of luck—and in yet another cavern. How I knew that for certain, I couldn’t be sure. They all looked more or less identical, like some cosmic architect had designed the curved, stone walls to an equal space but I somehow knew this wasn’t a cavern I’d already entered.
“RUBEN?”
His name bounced off the walls and harmlessly and back into my ears. The dread that I’d felt before was back in full waves, making me feel nauseous. I had foreseen this, hadn’t I? I’d known that something bad was going to happen if we’d entered the mountain and yet I’d ignored my most basic instincts. And now I’d lost Ruben.
Stop panicking, I snapped at myself. That’s not going to help anyone.
I paused and steeled my breaths, forcing myself to focus on steadying my breathing. If we had found our way into the mountain, we could find our way out. I just needed to be rational, to think.
I backed up again, straining my ears for any sound of Ruben. Every once in a while, I could catch a snatch of something, but if it was him or the flutter of a bat’s wings, I had no idea.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going in circles, that I was wandering around and around but ending up in the same place.
I knew I had to get back to the water. That had to be where I’d find Ruben.
The only problem was, I had no idea how to accomplish that.
I was hopelessly lost inside the belly of a mountain. If I ever needed the spirits’ help, this was the time. I just hoped that they could hear me all the way down there.
Then I rounded yet another corner into yet another crevice and all my worries evaporated into a mist as wonderment filled me. Just beyond my reach was an antiquated trunk, rusted with age and time, the lime of the mountain eating away at what had once been a luxurious leather exterior, emblazoned in bronze.
My breath was stolen but I crept forward, vaguely aware of a deep rumbling from deep inside the mountain. I didn’t need to crack the eroded lock to know what was in there.
There was only one thing it could be in this remote mountain, in the middle of nowhere.
I’d found the artifacts.
17
Ruben
I don’t even know how it happened. One minute I was right behind her and the next, Larissa was gone.
I had never been prone to bouts of panic but in that instance, I thought I might have to make an exception. I didn’t need to be told by anyone about the danger we were facing, lost in the maze of cave halls without any sense of direction.
“LARISSA! LARISSA, ANSWER ME!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of black but instinctively, I knew it was a bat. What did I know about bats? How could they help me find my way back to Larissa?
Nothing, that’s what.
My only hope was to keep calling out her name and hope she would eventually respond. I knew we’d both ventured further into this labyrinth than we we should have and if I knew Larissa, she was probably trying to circle back, making matters worse. I needed to keep calling out for her. It was my only hope.
“LARISSA! LARISSA, ANSWER ME!”
Over and over, my words filtered through the hollow air and after half an hour, I realized something I hadn’t noticed before; the walls were rumbling.
How long had that been going on?
In my distress, I had probably dismissed the noise but now that I considered it, I knew it had been going on for a while. What was it?
I ignored the sense of mounting concern in my gut and again called out for Larissa, this time using all the force I could muster. I could only scream for so long before I lost my voice. I was going to need to make it worthwhile.
“LARISSA!”
This time, the rumbling became a dull roar in my ears and gooseflesh exploded over my body as I realized what it was; rocks were falling from somewhere inside the mountain. I knew enough about orology from living in the north to know that much. The structure wasn’t secure.
“LA-RISS-A!” There was full fledged panic in my calling now. It was terrifying enough having lost her in those looping caverns but if she was trapped somewhere, under a pile of rubble…
I didn’t want to think about it. I just needed to find her.
My well-honed instincts kicked in then and I knew what I needed to do to locate her. Without hesitation, I shifted, the torch falling to extinguish on the ground and I pounced forward on my hooves, allowing my senses to find her. To my relief, I could smell her nearby, much closer than I’d anticipated she’d be. I needed to bring her back to the lake and get her out of there before the mountain collapsed around us.
Although it was probably only minutes, it felt like another hour passed before I found her, my bullish presence startling her as she turned on her haunches to look at me from where she was crouched. I didn’t miss the shine of wonder in her eyes but there was no time to ask her what had her so excited.
I sprinted toward her, biting at her hair gently and she seemed to detect the urgency in my movements, the light fading slightly from her irises as the walls shook around us. Rocks began to tumble at our feet but thankfully, Larissa wasted no more time on the ground. In seconds, she had scrambled onto my back, trusting my instincts as I raced us through one winding corridor into another until finally, we were at the lake again. Only then did I shift back, yelling at her to go.
With a quick look at me over her shoulder, she dived elegantly into the water, missing the rocks that smashed into my face just milliseconds after she went under the surface.
Slightly disoriented, I ignored the shooting pain in my jaw and followed suit, knowing that if I didn’t I was going t
o get trapped in there alone.
The cold liquid did something to lift the dizziness I was feeling, but underwater, I was suddenly discombobulated, unsure of which way to go. I looked around the hazy waves, the air in my lungs depleting and a new anxiety kicked in. If I went the wrong way, I would end up in a living tomb. Which way was out?
Before full panic could take hold, I saw something swimming toward me and I realized it was Larissa. This time it was she who guided me, pulling me forward and I let her take me to safety, our heads crashing through the other side as the last of my air supply escaped my lungs. Gulping in mouthfuls of fresh oxygen, I treaded water for a moment until Larissa towed me to the side of the lake.
“We need to keep moving,” she told me urgently and I realized that we hadn’t avoided the danger yet. The walls continued to tremble here, their vibrations eerie against the light of the fire that Larissa had lit earlier. I knew she was right but my head was still throbbing and I felt confused. It took every fiber of my being to stumble after her, my body being pelted with sharp, stray rocks that fell from places I couldn’t see.
“Ruben!”
I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped but suddenly, my legs refused to move anymore. Through a thick fog, I could see the outline of Larissa’s body at the mouth of the cave’s entrance but spots began to dance over my eyes and she was fading away.
“RUBEN!”
I managed to hold up a hand, waving her to go but I couldn’t find my voice.
Go! I wanted to yell. Save yourself!
Despite my intentions to do the opposite, I felt my eyes growing heavier. I knew that succumbing to unconsciousness was a death sentence but I was powerless to stop it.
“Ruben!” I could hear the sob in Larissa’s voice as I finally permitted the blackness to take hold. I could only hope that she knew how much I loved her, even if I couldn’t say the words aloud.
I’ll see you in another life, I vowed silently and then there was nothing.
* * *
It was colder on the other side than I had expected. That was the first thing I noticed when I regained feeling again.