This Time Love

by Elizabeth Lowell

  She saw the tears glittering in the corners of his eyes and felt like she was being cut in two.

  “Get going,” he whispered huskily. “If you need me, this time I’ll be within reach. I promise you.”

  Blindly she pulled off her glove and touched his lips.

  He kissed her fingertips.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Go explore your new world. I’ll be right behind you.”

  For a moment she savored the warmth of his breath on her fingers. Then she pulled on her glove and began to wiggle feet first into the final narrow stretch of Small Favors. Almost immediately she heard the scuffle and scrape of Gabe following her.

  A few minutes later her boots connected with the thick metal eyelets of the pitons he’d driven into stone to hold her climbing rope. She turned on her side and inched down the tunnel between the pitons until her hands found the climbing rope. She attached it to the figure eight descender she’d already snapped on her Swiss seat. The friction of the rope passing through the figure eight would act as a brake, slowing the speed of her descent. There were fancier ways of doing it, but none she trusted more.

  After the rope was properly attached, she quietly cursed and squirmed until the climbing rope passed between her legs from the front, over her right hip, diagonally across her chest, and then back over her left shoulder. Only when the rope was in position for rappelling did she attach the short safety rope to the Swiss seat with a locking carabiner.

  It wasn’t the easiest or neatest arrangement she had ever used, especially in the narrow tunnel. But the short rope did ensure that if she lost her balance during the tricky transfer from the overhang to a safe rappelling position, the fall would be frightening, bruising—but very brief.

  She inched closer to the lip, feeding the climbing rope through the figure eight with steady pulls. As soon as she was rappelling, her own weight would pull the rope through the descender. Until then she had to do it the hard way.

  Suddenly her feet dangled over nothing at all. She kept going by using her arms to push herself. At the mouth of the tunnel, she tried to pull her legs back under her body, crouch, and walk slowly backward over the lip in the normal manner of a climber beginning a rappel.

  There wasn’t enough room.

  “Well, hell,” she muttered.

  There was no help for it. She would have to take a few scrapes as the price of admission to her castle.

  Whispering words as dark as the unlit cave, she bumped over the edge of the overhang like a lumpy snake until she dangled from the climbing rope. Gabe had cut the safety rope short enough that there was little chance of a tangle unless she was out of control and spinning like an badly thrown yo-yo.

  She wasn’t out of control. She let herself down by inches until she was beneath the overhang and tapping gently against the cave wall. By then just enough slack remained in the safety rope for her to release the carabiner’s locking mechanism.

  “Nicely calculated on the safety rope,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.”

  Joy positioned herself against the wall, feet spread as wide as her shoulders, climbing rope wrapped snugly in position for rappel. A sweep of her headlamp downward showed only a clean wall.

  “Up safety rope,” she called.

  “Rope coming up,” Gabe answered.

  The rope went very slowly up the overhang until he was sure that the attached carabiner was well beyond Joy’s face. Then he pulled swiftly.

  “Rappelling.” As she spoke, she kicked outward and released the tension on the rope with her right hand.

  If Gabe had been belaying her, he would have answered in the normal manner. But he wasn’t, so he didn’t.

  “Give ’em hell, sweetheart!”

  After his husky encouragement there was an instant of silence, then Joy’s pleased laughter floated up. The sound was surprising, exultant, vital, like the woman kicking out over unknown territory, confident of her own skills and those of the man who had anchored her climbing rope to stone.

  She rappelled smoothly, controlling her descent with small pressures of her right hand. At the end of each outward and downward swing she met the wall feetfirst, absorbed the small jolt on flexed knees, and then kicked out again, feeding rope as her controlled fall continued.

  When she checked for obstacles coming up to meet her, the headlight played over a fantastic subterranean landscape far below. Nothing was in her way. It was a clean fall right to the floor.

  Soon she stood on the edge of what had once been a pool below a thundering waterfall. Now the basin was quiet, swirled with ancient watermarks, and held a pool that had been there for unknowable years. Golden shelfstone grew out over the pool, slowly engulfing it. The water that glistened in her reflected helmet light looked no deeper than her hand.

  She knew better. Long experience in judging the depth of Lost River Cave’s incredibly clear waters told her that this pool was at least eight feet deep, perhaps more. The giveaway was the water’s luminous shade of green in some of the deepest curves and hollows of the pool. There was no color like it—except for Gabe’s eyes when he became a part of her, wanting her with an intensity that made her shiver to remember.

  Beautiful. Exhilarating. Wild.

  Laughing softly she tilted her head back, wanting to lift her arms and embrace the cave itself.

  The overhang where Gabe waited was lost in a night that her light alone couldn’t penetrate. Yet she knew he was up there, waiting for her signal. And she was down here, laughing like a giddy girl amid the murmurous sounds of water dripping, falling, sliding, water infusing and creating Joy’s Castle even as she stood there.

  Working quickly she pulled rope through her figure eight descender. At first the rope was taut, eager, bouncing back from being stretched by her weight. When the rope went slack she unsnapped herself and stepped clear.

  “Off rappel,” she called up to the darkness.

  “Yo!”

  She glanced around quickly, looking for a place where she could safely wait while Gabe rappelled down. The shelfstone around the pool looked fragile but wasn’t. Even so, she was careful as she picked her way along the edge of water that was haunted by tints and tones and shades of green.

  When she was well away from the area where Gabe would descend, she turned and called, “Clear!”

  Almost instantly he warned that he was rappelling down.

  Joy stood transfixed, head tilted back, absorbing the sight of Gabe descending to her in a series of powerful, utterly controlled arcs. If he had any fear of being on a rope after the accident in Peru, he’d conquered it.

  She respected and admired that. The nerve to climb before you had an accident was taken for granted. The plain courage it took to trust your life to a rope after a climbing accident was never taken for granted. As Fish had laconically pointed out, hard lessons stayed learned the longest. To take that kind of brutal lesson and use it to find out about life and yourself required not only physical courage, but courage of the mind and spirit as well.

  Instinctively Gabe had known that. He’d responded to the challenge with determination: As soon as I physically could, I went back. That mountain took a lot from me. I didn’t want it to take my self-respect too.

  Standing there in a vast darkness illuminated only by a single cone of light, she understood that he had taken his accident and used its terrifying lessons to expand rather than shrink the possibilities of his own life. Watching the smooth arcs of his descent, she wondered if she’d used the brutal lessons of her own past as well as he had, if those lessons had expanded or reduced the boundaries of her life.

  But most of all she wondered if she would have had the sheer guts to dangle on a rope again as he was doing, knowing full well that any moment her life could peel away again strand by strand.

  A grave two thousand feet deep.

  That kind of courage was humbling.

  Gabe had learned to trust a rope again. Except for Kati, Joy hadn’t learned
to trust people and life enough to love again. She was still frozen within the moment of terror when her emotional world had given way beneath her feet and she fell endlessly, screaming deep inside herself because there was no one else to hear her.

  She hadn’t learned anything subtle or profound from the harsh lessons of seven years ago. She had survived. Period. It had been enough, all and more than anyone could have expected of her.

  But now, for the first time, she questioned if mere survival was enough, if a mother’s love for her child was all that she expected for and from herself for the rest of her life.

  In a seething silence Joy watched Gabriel flying down toward her like his namesake archangel, power wrapped in darkness and light. He came to her where she stood surrounded by mystery, wrapped in a thousand nameless Voices whispering questions that had no answers but the taste of a man’s tears on her lips.

  Twenty-nine

  “OFF RAPPEL,” GABE CALLED. THEN, MORE SOFTLY, “JOY? Are you all right? You didn’t slip?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, her voice husky. “The shelfstone seems solid, but watch the pool. It’s deep enough to drown in.”

  “That little handful of water?”

  “I’m little,” she said as she watched him find his way quickly over stone to her.

  “Yes.” He bent and kissed her. “And you’re deep enough to drown in, too. But what a sweet drowning.”

  She hugged him suddenly, fiercely. “Have I told you that I’m glad you’re here?”

  He closed his eyes, letting her words sink into him, unable even to respond except to hold her close.

  Maggie’s voice came from the darkness above. “On rappel.”

  “Clear,” Gabe called.

  His voice was almost rough as it rose above the compelling murmur of water flowing, water dissolving away the old, creating the new, changing everything. He searched Joy’s eyes, seeing and accepting the clarity and the shadows.

  She was a woman now, a fascinating mixture of light and darkness. Unique.

  He wanted her even more for her shadowed depths than he had for her innocent clarity. She could share so much more of life now, understand so much more, hold so much more.

  Deep enough to drown in.

  He wondered if she knew that he was drowning. Then he wondered if she would even care, if she could see that he too was deeper than he’d been, able to hold more, understand more.

  Want more.

  Maggie hit the floor with a thump, staggered slightly, and began feeding rope through her descender until there was slack. She unclipped, called up to Fish and came over to where Joy and Gabe waited.

  “What a gorgeous green,” she said, looking into the depths of the pool. “Just like Gabe’s eyes.”

  He almost laughed out loud. The comment was like everything else about Maggie—matter-of-fact rather than flirtatious. He rapped his knuckles lightly against her helmet.

  “Keep it up,” he said, “and I’ll have to buy a new helmet when my head gets too big for the old.”

  “You should anyway,” she said. “I get chills just looking at the dents. Was Davy right? Did you really wear that through a landslide and over a cliff?”

  “Yeah. One of life’s little surprises.”

  Maggie grimaced. “I don’t know how you can be so casual about it.”

  “I survived. That’s all anyone can ask.”

  “Is it?” Joy asked suddenly, looking up at him. “Is that all you ask of yourself and life?”

  His green eyes searched her face. “No. I’m asking a hell of a lot more now. I don’t deserve it, but I’m asking for it just the same.”

  She wanted to ask what he meant, but didn’t because they weren’t alone. So she simply returned his unflinching glance and the pressure of his hand holding hers.

  Fish’s light seesawed gracefully through the darkness as he rappelled down the wall. Then Davy lowered all the equipment they would need. Finally he rappelled down himself. They divided up the equipment and split into two groups.

  Gabe and Joy took the west wall. Maggie, Fish, and Davy took the east. Normally they would have stayed in a single group to explore virgin territory, but there was nothing normal about this trip. They had to explore as much as possible of the room, as quickly as possible.

  “Remember,” Joy said, “this is a fast reconnoiter only. Davy, don’t be a perfectionist with your map. Don’t even be good. Just mark down the rough positions of possible passages, pits, and chimneys. Don’t explore them. We’ll do the same. Stay in sight of us when you can, and be damn sure you’re within yelling or radio distance at all times. Questions?”

  There weren’t any.

  Joy twisted a light stick, left it a few feet from the climbing rope, and the two groups took off in opposite directions. Using Gabe’s compass, he and Joy stayed as close as they could to the right-hand perimeter of the Castle.

  It was hard to move quickly, both because of the uneven surface and the constant siren call of velvet shadows, exquisitely decorated grottoes, colorful columns and draperies, pools shimmering like silent laughter; and through it all, the glisten and shine of water sighing, sliding, falling, dripping, the liquid sheen of a living cave.

  She had expected the sound of the hidden waterfall to get louder as they went farther into the room. Instead the muttering thunder faded.

  “We’re losing the waterfall,” he said as he wrote compass directions in his notebook.

  “I know.”

  “Want to go back and try another direction?”

  “No point. This room is like the Voices—it whispers about Lost River, but the river isn’t here.”

  “You sound more wistful than disappointed.”

  Joy laughed and swept her headlight in a slow arc across the vast, unexplored room. “How could I be disappointed with this?”

  Everywhere they went, there were signs of water. Sounds both mysterious and musical filled the air, as if somewhere just beyond the range of light the cave dreamed, and in dreaming, sang.

  Gabe turned his head slowly from side to side, trying to pinpoint the rushing, singing sounds.

  “Waterfall?” he asked.

  “Maybe a small one. Not the source of the Voices. They come from a good-sized waterfall that’s either way off or nearby but muffled by stone.”

  “Lord, but it’s beautiful.”

  Water gleamed in runnels among tiny stone channels, pooled transparently in hollows, and glittered as rivulets met and braided into swift, miniature streams. Sometimes the tiny streams ran musically among golden stalagmites and columns. Sometimes the braids came unraveled and vanished through cracks in the floor, sinking down and down in a network of channels far too small for human exploration.

  Yet still there was water everywhere, water gleaming from stone surfaces, water shining from the hems of draperies both stately and elegant. Formations grew out from the wall in a series of graceful curves that resembled the palettes used by artists. From the edges of the palettes hung fine, banded draperies, shapes so elegant and fluid it seemed impossible they were made of stone. When brushed by light, small pools winked back from darkness. Each time a drop of water fell, a pool shivered as if alive.

  And through it all came the murmur of water, the lifeblood of Lost River Cave flowing through hidden arteries and veins, rushing through darkness, singing over stone.

  Joy’s fingers closed over Gabe’s wrist. “Look.”

  The white cone of her light showed what looked like round bird eggs lying within a stone nest as big as a dinner plate.

  The sound of surprise and wonder he made joined the other murmurings of the Castle. He crouched down as she did, careful not to disturb anything. Patiently he waited while she took readings on nearby landmarks, fixing the position of the rare formation as best she could on her rough map.

  “What are they?” he asked as soon as she paused in her note making.

  “Oolites.”

  “That’s a textbook word. What do you call them?”<
br />
  “Cave pearls.”

  He laughed. “Scratch a caver and find a romantic every time.”

  She looked up at him, smiled, and said, “Now I suppose you want me to tell you all the theories about how they’re formed.”

  “Romantics?” he asked innocently.

  “Oolites.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Nope,” she said cheerfully. “None of the theories satisfy me, so I’m not going to tell you a single one of them.”

  “How do you explain cave pearls, then?”

  “They’re fantastic, utterly miraculous seeds,” she said, her voice serious and her lips tilted in a smile. “Like the ones that Jack of Beanstalk fame grew. Only my magic seeds grow down, not up. They’re tomorrow’s caves in embryo, waiting to be born. Someday the shells will split and new caves will develop out of the old, branching and spreading, alive with water, beauty growing through darkness, waiting only for the first touch of light to be revealed.”

  She leaned closer and whispered against Gabe’s mouth, “But if you tell my colleagues what cave pearls really are, I’ll be out of a job.”

  He kissed her swiftly. “My lips are sealed.”

  “I noticed,” she retorted.

  He kissed her again. Slowly. Thoroughly. Deeply. Then he lifted his mouth just enough to ask, “Was that better?”

  “Much.” She caught his lower lip delicately in her teeth, then reluctantly released him. “But not enough.”

  “I know what you mean.” He stood and pulled her to her feet. “If we don’t get moving, I’m going to do the kind of exploring that doesn’t require ropes, safety lines, and layers of clothing. Especially the clothes.”

  His face was taut, dark with desire. Just looking at him made Joy ache. She forced herself to turn her thoughts back to exploring the cave rather than the man.

  It wasn’t easy. She knew the time she had for both man and cave was very short.

  And she knew it wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly enough. A lifetime wouldn’t be enough to discover all of Lost River—or Gabe.

  She’d been given only a few weeks.

  Greedy little girl. You want it all, don’t you?