The Hickory Staff

by Rob Scott

  ‘So then we’ll pole our way out,’ she replied. ‘Steven? Garec? What do you think?’

  ‘Let’s go ahead,’ Garec agreed, ‘what can it hurt? And if we find someplace to go ashore, we’ll have shelter for the night.’ His voice cracked as he spoke and he realised his trepidation was now evident. He cursed to himself and began untying the rope securing his bow and quivers.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Brynne asked. ‘There’s nothing here to harm us. We haven’t seen a thing all day.’

  ‘True,’ Garec replied, ‘but you didn’t get to meet the last charming inhabitant of this miserable waterway.’

  Steven laughed; it bounced from the walls in a quickly moving echo that filled the cavern from top to bottom. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Fine,’ Mark agreed, drawing the battle-axe from his belt.

  The current quickened as they entered the narrow passage at the rear of the cavern, and Brynne realised she had spoken too soon. There was no way they would be able to pole their way back out. Looking over at Steven, she searched his face for signs of insecurity. He looked calm and confident, and she relaxed a little. The staff-wielding foreigner would find some way to propel them back against the current if necessary.

  The rock faces closed down around them until the pathway was little more than two raft-lengths across. They didn’t have to kneel down, but periodically Mark and Garec were forced to duck beneath a particularly low drop in the stone ceiling. Steven’s flame, now unable to float above the raft, moved out ahead to light the roughly hewn tunnel. Despite the luminance and warmth accompanying the fireball, a cold darkness settled about them and no one spoke as they wound their way deeper and deeper into the cavern.

  Finally Garec broke the silence. His face was formless in the murky firelight as he said quietly, ‘That’s it. I can’t reach the bottom any longer.’

  ‘Neither can I.’ Steven stretched low over the side of the Capina Fair, but he still failed to find solid ground. ‘Use the poles against the walls to keep us midstream. The current here is strong but deep. We won’t need to worry about unexpected rapids.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Mark asked. ‘Unless this pops out in an Orindale tavern, we’re going to have to get back out to the river tomorrow. How much further should we let this carry us?’

  ‘A bit further, that’s all,’ Steven suggested. ‘If we can’t find someplace soon to tie her off and dry things out, we’ll head back.’

  The tunnel wound its way in lazy curves back and forth and ever deeper into the gloom. The crisply moving current suggested their passageway stretched onwards, perhaps to the other side of the cliff, but Mark feared the ceiling would drop down suddenly, leaving this branch of the river to continue its flow underground. He wasn’t looking forward to feeling the overhead stone close down upon them, or having the walls of their already cosy tunnel narrowing to trap the Capina Fair between ponderous granite bookends for ever. He imagined them being slowly swallowed by a great stone god so beset by the general lassitude of the ages that it would not even realise it had eaten them whole, raft and all. Garec had placed his pole beside him on the deck and now held his bow loosely in one hand. Mark wasn’t sure what Garec planned to shoot, but he wouldn’t deny it was comforting to know he was armed and at the ready.

  Mark had never been one for nostalgia. He sometimes found it a bit worrying that important events, even entire years in his past, somehow collapsed down to just a few moments in his memory. Months of preparation had gone into the state swimming championships, which was probably the most anticipated event in his life thus far. He swam brilliantly, winning three events and shattering two school records – but now, ten years on, the memory of that time had been reduced to just a few glimpses. He could see his coach shouting at him from above the water; he could feel the cold winter air on his still-damp hair as he waited for his ride home. And, most often, he could remember a few seconds of underwater confusion while he reached for the finish wall, looked around and felt the elation well up. Four months of work and anticipation, the greatest single moment of his youth, represented by ten or twelve seconds of colour, sound and feeling.

  But thinking back over the time he and Steven had been in Eldarn, he thought that perhaps things here were different. There was almost nothing that he could not recall in vivid detail: the feel of the stones as they rubbed against his knuckles at Riverend, the smell of lodge pines burning above him as he slowly faded to sleep in the falling snow, the touch of Brynne’s body against his as they lay together in the forest cabin, each having thought the other dead: these and a thousand other incidents, he could still feel them, whole, in his memory. Right now, he was dreading the recollection he would carry of this cavern: he was pretty sure he would have to swim back out of this tunnel, and he knew he no longer had the strength.

  Soon they were forced to kneel. ‘Turn us around, Steven,’ Mark commanded. ‘This is getting too tight.’ The passageway closed further, and the raft bumped between stone walls as it pressed ever forward.

  ‘All right,’ Steven agreed. ‘I hoped we might find something, but you’re right. We should go back.’ He was reaching for the staff when his eye caught the faint glimmer of something up ahead. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Where?’ Garec was down onto all fours now, trying to avoid striking his head on the granite ceiling. Mark and Brynne soon joined him.

  ‘There, out beyond the stafflight. Something flickered, like another light.’

  ‘Steven,’ Mark interrupted, ‘we’re running out of room here.’

  Steven was about to lie flat on the Capina Fair’s deck when he heard Garec shout, ‘Ah, demonpiss!’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The ceiling, Steven, I hit my head on the ceiling—’ Garec shut up as the stafflight suddenly went out and they were plunged into a cruel and forbidding darkness, depthless, blacker than any of them could have imagined. The space ahead had grown too narrow for Steven’s fireball and it had extinguished itself in the river.

  Mark lay flat on his back, holding out his hands. An especially low section of ceiling scraped across his forehead and he felt a warm trickle of blood run down his temple. He tried to push against the rock, an impossible bench press, to force the raft down into the water and make room for his body to pass beneath the granite just scant inches above his face. Terrified, he held his breath and waited for Steven to summon the staff’s magic and carry them back upstream.

  A mantra ran through his mind: What if it didn’t work? It had failed that day on the riverbed; what if that happened again? Why was Steven hesitating – was he trying to summon the magic now, and was it ignoring him? He had agreed to take them back to the cavern mouth, but he hadn’t said a word since, and still they were inching their way forward. Where was he? Mark could hear the river rushing by beneath them; he wondered why the current was suddenly moving so quickly. ‘Steven,’ he cried, a muffled plea, ‘are you still there?’

  Get overboard. That was Mark’s only option. He had to get overboard and maybe find a hand or foothold in the wall so he could stop the raft’s progress long enough for the others to roll off into the water as well. Push and slide. That’s it. Push and slide. One leg down. Push and slide. Both legs.

  Mark relaxed the pressure he had been putting against the ceiling with his arms for a moment to adjust his grip, and in that instant, the Capina Fair buoyed upward forcing the granite down on his chest. Get a breath in. Get a breath in, shit. He tried to roll to one side, to inch one hand, one finger up between his chest and the rock ceiling, but he couldn’t. Desperate, he tried to push with his forehead. Not much, I don’t need much, just enough to get a breath in. Breathe. Get a breath in.

  Behind him he heard Brynne scream; beside him he could feel Garec kicking violently to free himself from the bone-crushing pressure.

  Suddenly everything erupted in a blinding flash. Water splashed over the sides of the Capina Fair, and Mark felt his lungs fill with welcome air. His hands free, he reached upwards for the gr
anite ceiling, but found nothing there. He tried to roll, expecting the stone to hold his shoulders down, but a moment later he tumbled from the deck into the frigid water.

  The cold cleared his head and as he kicked towards the surface, he saw light once again, a bright light that sliced through the darkness.

  Mark broke the surface of the water in a rage. ‘Steven, you stupid sonofabitch! What in the seven shades of Hell were you waiting for?’ His voice echoed back in huge, swollen waves, the inane mimicry of an irritating lesser god. Stunned silent by the din, Mark took in their surroundings. The Capina Fair, now about twenty yards ahead of him, drifted on an underground lake. Garec and Steven stood staring into the distance while Brynne reached out to him with one of the poles. He swam towards the raft. Behind them, he could see the impossibly narrow opening through which Steven had forced the raft only seconds before. There would be no going back that way. The river pushed through a hairline crack in the granite wall with tremendous force, and Mark marvelled at how they had managed to get through without losing their packs or supplies – or one another – in the narrow passage.

  In the air above the raft hovered an enormous ball of fire – no, as Mark peered upwards at it, he realised that it was somehow more than fire. It was blinding, a brighter, more intense flame, like something that might have come from a chemistry set, or maybe a magic stick.

  Around them, the lake stretched out to fill the gigantic cavern. Mark could still hear his voice, booming back from what felt like miles away: Sonofabitch … Sonofabitch … Sonofabitch …

  High above, the granite ceiling had retreated to its original position. It looked different now, flecked with iridescent minerals; odd colours sparkling in the magical light. Getting chilly now the fear had worn off, Mark drew his lungs full of air and dropped beneath the surface, allowing the cold to sink in and further clear his mind.

  He felt better. They were still alive. Steven’s fire could ensure they were warm and dry, and after a good night’s sleep, they could put their minds to finding a way out.

  When Mark resurfaced, he caught sight of Brynne, who was still holding the wooden pole out to him and staring grimly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, more quietly this time.

  She pointed towards the shoreline, and the grotesque discovery that had his friends silenced.

  Bones. Thousands – no, millions of bones. Human bones: skulls, femurs, ribs, some still held together in partial cage shapes by strands of rotten cartilage, radii, jawbones, and an apparently endless array of tiny hand and foot bones scattered about: a charnel-house to rival the largest mass grave ever by ten thousand times.

  ‘Good Christ,’ he whispered.

  ‘Mark,’ Steven called, ‘you’d better get up here.’

  The shoreline sloped gradually down to the water; as far as Mark could see the angle and depth remained the same in any direction. The only break in the shore was the forbidding edifice that rose up behind them, a huge granite monolith. Mark wondered if that wall was devoid of a shoreline because the river that burst from it had washed the shore away eons ago. Instead of sand, the shore was made up of small round pebbles mixed with the ubiquitous bone fragments; the way the light glinted from the stones made it look as if they were diamonds. Mark dreaded the moment when he would have to step ashore, for there would be no way to avoid feeling the bones crunch and shatter underfoot.

  He pulled himself up onto the deck and stood beside Steven. Clapping his friend on the back, he said, ‘What a lovely place you have here. How are you getting along with the neighbours?’

  ‘Mark, be serious,’ Brynne scolded.

  ‘Serious? I’m not the one who wanted to go into the cavern in the first place, let me remind you.’

  Steven shushed him. ‘Listen, I really did see something.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘A light. It flickered for a moment, and then it went out. There’s someone down here.’

  Mark stared at him incredulously. ‘Someone down here? Have you not noticed that the entire population of Uruguay appears to have their bones stacked against that wall? Of course there’s someone down here, but I’m not certain he’s setting out a warm welcome and a nice dinner for us right now.’

  Steven ignored him. ‘What do you suppose it was? A plague? A war?’

  ‘It couldn’t have been,’ Garec replied.

  ‘Why not?’ Brynne asked.

  ‘Look at the bones. They’re not jumbled together like they would be in a mass grave.’

  Mark exhaled. ‘Holy mother, he’s right.’

  Garec summed up what each of them was thinking. ‘Those bones were collected here, organised carefully into similar stacks, skulls here, legs there, arms across the way.’

  Brynne looked like she was about to dive into the water and risk the swim back upstream. ‘Who could have done this?’

  ‘Or what?’ Mark looked puzzled, as if trying to remember something. Grimacing, he turned to Steven. ‘Can you move the stafflight nearer the ceiling?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I hope it’s nothing, but send it up anyway.’

  Mark’s fears were confirmed: through the hazy, half-light they could see the ceiling had been decorated with bones. Some dangled downwards from the rocky roof while others lay flat, displayed against the dark surface of the stone, as if to enhance their ivory colour with a black backdrop. These bones were obviously prized. Skulls were hanging everywhere, ogling the trespassers through long-empty eye sockets.

  His mouth agape, Steven stared solemnly upwards, mute with stupefaction. His mind raced, but the image of what might have committed such a gruesome act made him close his eyes; he pictured some creature, nefarious, and crafty, with an almost human capacity for understanding, but with spindly legs like a spider’s, or perhaps thick membranous wings and wickedly clawed talons.

  He spoke as if to himself. ‘What is keeping them up there?’

  Mark surprised him by answering, ‘Glue, nails, John the Baptist? Who knows? It’s probably some secretion that comes out of an orifice I don’t like imagining in a creature I don’t like imagining that hardens like epoxy and holds them fast for ever.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To comfort little baby epoxy-secreting monsters as they go to sleep in their cribs? Again, who knows? Let’s focus on getting ourselves out of here before it – or they – return.’ Mark swallowed hard and began poling towards shore. The Capina Fair had held together so far, but she was badly in need of repair, and they were all in desperate need of food and rest.

  ‘We can use the light to explore along the shoreline. With that much water coming in here, there has to be an outlet – or maybe we can find a tunnel to the surface.’ He cringed when a sickly crunch resounded from below as their raft struck the shore.

  Two avens later, they had eaten, changed into dry clothing and used the stafflight to dry out the rest of their belongings. They explored a little along the shoreline; Mark and Brynne walked while Garec and Steven poled the Capina Fair through the shallows. It took them nearly half an aven to reach the end of the great charnel-house, and each was visibly relieved when they no longer heard the breaking of tiny hand and foot bones with every footfall.

  Finally they found a recessed area in the stone wall, small but dry, and they agreed to take turns sleeping and standing guard in pairs. There was no wood to make a fire, so Steven brought the stafflight down to the ground, weakened its intensity and left it to burn like a campfire. As soon as he fell asleep, however, the flame went out.

  ‘Well, this is a pain,’ Garec grumbled. ‘Steven, wake up.’

  Steven sat up with a start. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘The fire’s out.’

  ‘Oh, hell and damnation. Okay. So that’s not going to work, is it? Let me think a minute.’ He stared down at the space between them and moments later a pleasant campfire, devoid of fuel, was burning brightly on the pebbly shore. He lay back down and rolled over in his blanket.

  �
�Just a moment, Steven,’ Garec warned. ‘It went out when you went to sleep, and since we can’t have you up all night – or day, or whatever it is now, we’ll need some wood.’ His voiced trailed off as he searched around them. ‘Mark, help me with this.’

  The two men, not without difficulty, pulled a log from the Capina Fair’s middle deck and placed it in the fire. Garec smiled at Steven. ‘Just stay awake long enough for this thing to dry out a bit on this end.’

  ‘I’ll do you one better, Garec,’ Steven replied and inhaled deeply as he stared at the saturated pine log. Steam began to rise from the trunk in great clouds as Steven heated it from within.

  ‘Hey, that’s hot,’ Garec yelped and dropped the log to rub his burned fingers on his tunic. Moments later the log was dry throughout, and one end was crackling sharply in the fire. Garec pondered the length of pine then shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll just slide more of it into the campfire as that end burns down. Thanks, Steven.’

  Beside him, Mark said nothing as his exhausted friend fell back. Steven was asleep almost immediately.

  Noticing Mark’s stare, Garec cast him an inquisitive look. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

  ‘You didn’t see that?’ Mark was not confident he could believe his own eyes. He needed Garec to confirm his suspicions.

  ‘See what?’

  Mark answered, more to himself, ‘A neon sign … OIL CHANGE, twenty-six dollars and ninety-nine cents.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It happened that morning when he knocked that tree down as well – the morning you two almost killed each other.’

  Garec’s face flushed. ‘I don’t understand. It’s magic; we’ve seen him use it before … many times.’

  Mark didn’t respond, but instead motioned towards the far wall of their recessed camp.

  ‘So what?’ Garec was still confused. Finally something clicked and he realised what the foreigner was trying to tell him.