Shadows in the Cave

by Caleb Fox

  Aku saw Oghi start to speak and stop.

  They wandered around. Aku, Shonan, and Oghi couldn’t think of anything else to do, and Yah-Su seemed content to do whatever the others wanted. They came on twenty or thirty other wraiths, all far separated from the others. Some of them were crawling away from unseen threats. A number were rocking back and forth, weeping. Some were rolling around, beating their hands and feet and even heads on the floor. Except for the wounds they inflicted on themselves by scratching, biting, hitting, and banging their heads on the stone, none of them was being attacked or hurt in any way. All were howling, yowling, crying, yelling, bellowing, screaming, wailing, shrieking, screeching, squealing, sobbing, blubbering, sniveling, whimpering, snuffling, puling, moaning, mewling, keening, or caterwauling—a monstrous mural of cries of human suffering.

  “I’m tired,” said Aku.

  “I’m tired of all this pain,” said Oghi.

  “I can’t stand these horrible sounds in my head,” complained Shonan.

  “Let’s go to the stream,” said Aku. He led everyone there, perched, and opened Tsi-Li’s gift bag. They ate.

  Aku said, “Have you noticed? Whenever you eat Tsi-Li’s chestnuts, the bag refills itself.”

  “Give me the ordinary world,” said Shonan. “Does this racket ever let up?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Oghi. “That’s why this is called the Darkening Land and no one wants to come here.”

  “But people get to go back,” said Aku.

  “Yes,” said Oghi. “I don’t know how that works.”

  “How long are they down there? Who decides when they get to go back?”

  “The right way to come here,” said Shonan, “is by death in battle.”

  “Or giving birth, or trying to be born and failing,” said Oghi.

  “Whatever,” said Shonan. “Let’s just get Salya and get out of here.”

  “If we can get out,” said Yah-Su.

  “Tsi-Li said we can’t get out unless we gain the knowledge of death.”

  “He’s talking about that old story about how mortality came to Earth,” Shonan said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Oghi. “I think what we have to learn is right in front of us. I think we have to figure out what’s going on with these poor, terror-stricken people.”

  “I’d rather find a way to shut them up,” said Shonan.

  Oghi ignored him. “I’ve got some ideas,” he said. “I’m going to try something.”

  He pulled some red lichen out of his bag and mixed it with water in a horn.

  “Tea!” said Shonan. “That’s just going to use up our lamp fat.”

  “It works cold,” said Oghi.

  He stirred the brew thoroughly and downed it.

  23

  The world glowed faintly, even the Underworld. A thought floated idly through Oghi’s mind—the glow of the Land Beyond was partly due to the u-tsa-le-ta. But he didn’t want to spend his journey time on idle thoughts.

  Greetings, pilgrim, said Tsola.

  The brew slanted his thinking oddly, and he was startled—he’d forgotten momentarily. Greetings, Grandmother. I’m glad you’re with me. He could hear the tap of her drum, as on his journey to the Land Beyond, the steady thump of a heartbeat.

  I’ve never been to the Underworld, either. We’re both innocents.

  Oghi started wandering around. The cries of agony came from every direction, bouncing off the stone walls, so that he couldn’t guess where a spirit in pain might be. He drifted this way and that, and within fifty paces he saw one. They were much easier to see with the help of the u-tsa-le-ta—this spirit actually glowed a pale pink.

  He approached the whirl of energy gingerly, uncertain. It was yowling, screaming, and bellowing by turns. It cringed. It tried to bury its face in the stone.

  What is it so terrified of? said Oghi. There’s nothing here. It’s safe.

  Go into its consciousness, said Tsola.

  Which probably meant Tsola was already there. How does that work?

  If he were in the world, you could see what he sees. As it is, you can see what he’s thinking about and what he feels, whatever is in his mind. Remember, you have no control. All the choices are his. You just see.

  Oghi floated in, just as Tsola did into his mind, or the other travelers she accompanied. The spirit was confronting a woman, clearly his wife. She was yelling at him, throwing him out of the house. She said he was lazy and didn’t bring home any meat. She said he spent all his time lifting skirts, or trying to. She said he didn’t care about her or the children. In back of her the whole family chanted the same chorus. He was out. He left whimpering, raging with frustration.

  Let’s check with each other on what we’re seeing, said Tsola.

  He told her the pictures he saw, the words he heard. It feels like I’m rocking on waves of awful emotion, said Oghi. It’s … a sense of absolute helplessness.

  Yes, said Tsola. You are a talented seer.

  But it’s all imaginary. Why does he fret and make himself suffer?

  Yes, said Tsola, why do we? Her drum underlined her words.

  Oghi said, Now I see something else. He’s remembering how his father beat him when he was a child. He feels completely under his father’s thumb, and he hates that worse than the beating. Oghi waited, watching. It was a bizarre sensation, being inside someone else’s consciousness.

  He’s replaying that memory over and over. His screams are furious, and that’s why. Helplessness. Terrible fear.

  Oghi watched. This was a horrific punishment.

  He keeps going through the same memory over and over. What a horrible pain. This is really hell.

  Do you feel the pain yourself? asked Tsola.

  Yes, but I have some distance from it. For him it’s his whole existence. For me it’s not even close. He watched a little more. If this is what death is, reliving everything hateful in your life, no wonder everyone dreads it.

  Tsola said, Maybe it’s not going back through the bad things that happened. Maybe it’s the things you dwelled on, the things that might or might not have happened that you were obsessed about, always scared of.

  Whatever, it’s his version of hell, not mine.

  The man moaned and moaned. He rolled around the ground and flailed his arms. Then he lay still, whimpering.

  Wait, he’s shifting to a different memory. Now the man was a toddler. His older brother snatched his gourd rattle out of his little hand, threw it in the creek, and laughed as it floated off. The toddler bawled, helpless to do anything about it.

  Over and over this string of memory replayed itself in his mind. All the while the wraith rolled around on the ground, alternating between shouting in protest, whining, and sobbing.

  Why does he punish himself with the same memory? said Oghi.

  There’s an old story, said Tsola. The Galayi actually got it from the Amaso people, about a man who rebuilt a sand dune. Every day of his life, every moment of the day, he would pick up sand in two buffalo horns and walk up the dune and pour out the sand on top. Of course, his footsteps sent more sand to the bottom on every step going up and every step coming down. When he got back to the bottom, he would pick up two more horns’ worth and trek back up. This was his entire life, making a sand dune that would always fall down, by his own actions, faster than he could build it up.

  Her drum ended the tale with a rat-a-tat-tat.

  Some story, said Oghi. He watched, enthralled and horrified, as the wraith repeatedly became a toddler watching his rattle float away, unable to save it.

  This is about all I can stand of this … this mind. Let’s move on, said Oghi.

  Yes. Her drum sang a segue.

  The energy of the next wraith was darkest purple. The figure appeared to be squirming around on its back, grunting and breathing heavily.

  The drum insisted, and Oghi entered its consciousness.

  A woman was giving birth. The pain in her lower back was excruciating. From time
to time contractions came in her belly—then her agony and her screams wiped out all thought, all consciousness except for the anguish.

  Between contractions came fantasies Oghi participated in unwillingly. She saw a child holding up its own bloody arm and waving it. Blood gushed from the stump. From his expression the child appeared to be seeing too much, more than he could stand.

  A contraction swept the imaginary child away.

  In the next fantasy the woman inspected a series of her children, spoke to each of them gently, patted each one, and sent it on its way. Somehow she knew, and Oghi knew with her, that each way was some awful, unmentionable fate. Every child had something woefully wrong with it. One had an ear shaped like a hickory shell. Another was missing a hand. Another had a black, alluring hole where its nose should have been. The next had only one leg, and that one grew straight down from the center of its pelvis. It hopped straight toward her and cackled.

  Another contraction, a sweep through agony.

  The woman was circled by a half dozen children, all with the sunken cheeks and bloated bellies of starvation. In the center of the circle she was rapidly pulling grass and feeding it to them. Without expression, they munched on it. Some swallowed, and some let it dribble back out of their mouths. All awaited the next handful hopelessly.

  A contraction racked the woman. With a monstrous effort she gave birth. The child was a beautiful pink creature—but an infant boar, not a human being. It climbed up her belly and began to root in her nose.

  The second child was blue in the face. The mother slapped the boar away and grabbed the child. Quickly, she cut the cord and unwrapped it from the baby’s neck. She put a finger to the child’s nose and felt that it wasn’t breathing. She slapped its back. She thumbed the eyes open and saw that they were still and lifeless. She pumped the baby’s lungs with her hands. She held the child close against her breasts.

  She might never have set the dead child aside, except that a third child came out between her legs. It already had the gray pallor of death. She checked for a heartbeat and found none.

  A fourth child came out dead, a fifth, a sixth …

  I can’t stand this any more, said Oghi.

  Tsola’s drum sounded punctuation, and he withdrew from the wraith’s horror-mangled mind.

  Too much suffering, said Oghi.

  All of it imagined, said Tsola.

  Women do lose babies in childbirth, said Oghi, and that is a big fear.

  Tsola answered, What’s going on with that poor woman is not real loss. It’s self-torment.

  Regardless, this is all I can take for now. Let’s go back.

  Good.

  I know this makes sense somewhere, Oghi said. I need some sleep.

  All of the adventurers munched on something for supper, cakes of roasted chestnuts and honey, dried meat, acorn mush, or balls made from corn flour. They talked offhandedly. The truth was that they were all too discouraged to enjoy company. How on earth—below earth!—were they ever going to find Salya? Wander aimlessly? Around the whole world? What was the point in that?

  Yet they knew they couldn’t leave. They looked at each other with the knowledge in their eyes. We’re a long way from having whatever knowledge of death Tsi-Li demands to let us out of here.

  Only Oghi felt chipper at all. He had a hint of that understanding, but planned to say nothing, not yet. He said to Aku, “Why don’t you drink some u-tsa-le-ta with me tomorrow and we’ll both go journeying?”

  Shonan snapped, “You two traveling around in your heads isn’t going to help us find Salya.”

  Actually, a different possibility had occurred to Oghi. Maybe they could go anywhere in the Darkening Land on the u-tsa-le-ta, journey by mind, not body. Maybe a traveling mind could find Salya. But he said only, “Why don’t we sleep?”

  “Since we can’t tell day or night,” grumped Shonan, “we might as well have night whenever we feel like it.”

  But Shonan’s dreams were disturbed. He dreamt of redeeming himself against Maloch. He, Aku, Yah-Su, and a dozen select men sprang traps on the dragon. But every time Shonan made a fatal mistake. Once he directed all the men to attack Maloch from behind, where the diamond eye wouldn’t blind them. Aku’s job was to distract the monster with a feint, pretending to try to hurl a spear-thrower’s dart down Maloch’s throat. Part of Shonan’s mind yelled at him, “That’s insane, it won’t work, and Aku will get eaten.” The warriors got nowhere. They tried to climb onto the scales, but the thick body thrashed and threw them off. Then Maloch bit Aku in half.

  The dreaming Shonan cried, “No,” and decided to dream it again and make it turn out differently. This time Shonan was the bait, but Maloch whirled around, blinded all the other attackers with his diamond eye, and with a roar of pleasure ate them as they stumbled around, helpless.

  Shonan started the dream over and over. He was determined to find a different ending, an ending where he and Aku would triumph. In the next scenario things went wrong because Shonan turned into a coward and ran, which he had never done his life. Humiliated, he forced the attack on Maloch again. It always went wrong, and always because Shonan himself fouled things up.

  When he finally woke up, he saw that others were stirring. Aku was lighting a lamp. “May I have some tea, please?” Shonan said.

  “Sure,” said Aku. He poured it and handed it to his father. “What was wrong last night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Oghi and Yah-Su looked at him oddly, too.

  “You kept calling out and groaning, like you were having terrible dreams.”

  “We don’t need to talk about that.”

  “Shonan,” said Oghi gently, “I think we should …”

  “I said we don’t need to talk about that.” Shonan fished out one of his honey and chestnut cakes. They were everyone’s favorites.

  Oghi tried again. “Red Chief, we honor you. We know that you may be our protection against many possibilities in the Underworld. Right now, though, we seem to be in a place where nothing is happening except inside people’s heads. Uh, the consciousness of creatures.” He paused. “When something unusual happens in our minds, I think we need to know about it.”

  Shonan snapped, “I had bad dreams about fights. Things went wrong. That’s all you need to know.”

  “More than one? Repeated bad dreams?”

  Shonan nodded.

  “You failed.”

  He nodded again.

  “You’ve hardly ever had dreams like this before?”

  “Every warrior has night thoughts about what might go wrong. You should worry about the day thoughts I have. Worry about how I am when we’re head to head with trouble.”

  These words came out so harshly that everyone shut up.

  “I see something to the left,” said Oghi. Aku saw it, too, now.

  The wraith was a twisting, contorting heat wave, barely visible because it was purplish black in the darkness. It whined and puled softly, making a song of suffering.

  The picture in the wraith’s mind was a handsome, fit-looking young man hiding behind a tree in a thick forest. Beyond him fog cuddled up against a slow-moving stream. Two women walked down a trail leading from the village to the stream, carrying gourds. At the waterline they knelt, scooped water from the stream, stood up, and came back along the trail, chatting merrily. As they passed him, they called out, “Hi, Funai,” and giggled.

  Funai climbed up the tree and into the foliage.

  Funai has no interest in those two, said Oghi.

  Aku and Tsola said at the same time, No.

  A roly-poly woman, middle-aged and by herself, headed for the creek to get water for the family breakfast.

  The wraith mewled like an injured kitten.

  The woman hurried back toward her home.

  Who’s Funai waiting for? said Aku.

  That one, said Oghi.

  A slender, very beautiful woman skipped along the path alone, hardly more than a girl. She whirled, so that her wa
lk became a dance.

  The observers could all feel the watcher’s heart pound.

  The pretty girl stooped gracefully on the bank, dipped up water, and trod back toward the village.

  Funai followed her through the woods, parallel to the trail, where he could keep an eye on her. Twenty paces into the village clearing a stocky, virile-looking man came up to her and said something. She stopped, they traded some words and smiles, and she went on.

  He was flirting, said Oghi, but she wasn’t.

  Not yet, said Aku.

  Feel Funai’s fear, said Tsola.

  They all did. It skittered up and down the young man’s nerves as he watched the girl. When Funai’s eyes flicked over to the virile man, also walking away, rage played an obbligato over dread.

  The girl ducked into her house. Funai slipped out of the woods and walked quickly to the same house with the grace of the natural athlete. When he slid in, the observers could see the whole family gathered there, four generations. Funai gave the girl a quick kiss and her eyes sparkled. She set the gourds down next to an older woman, and the woman gave her a baby.

  They’re married, said Aku, with a child.

  And he has a horror of betrayal, said Oghi. Sadness flecked his voice.

  If he keeps that up, said Tsola, she’ll give him what he’s afraid of.

  The memory circled through the wraith’s mind again, unvarying in detail. This time the observers gave fuller attention to his feelings.

  Ugly, said Aku, nasty.

  What a way to make yourself miserable.

  Tortured by what hasn’t happened.

  The wraith curled into a fetal position and moaned, moaned, moaned.

  In a moment another memory materialized in his consciousness. He walked after a short, beefy man a generation older. Both of them carried the rackets used in the ball game, long sticks with small nets on the ends. Funai grabbed the older man hard by the shoulder. “Uncle,” he said, challenge seething in his voice, “who did you vote for as captain?”

  The uncle patiently lifted the gripping hand off his shoulder. “The other man,” he said.

  “My rival? I’m your nephew,” said the young man. “You owe me.”