Where She Fell

by Kaitlin Ward

  I let it go. “I won’t tell anyone you have it. I promise.”

  “Thank you.” He holds out the lighter toward the wall to our left. Where there’s … a half-blocked opening. “Well,” he sputters. “That’s … usually totally blocked.”

  As he moves the lighter closer, I notice something next to the opening. “Hang on.” I grab his wrist and guide the lighter closer to it. A marking, three straight lines scratched into the wall. “How long has that been there?”

  He shrugs, leaning closer to it. “Don’t know. I’ve never noticed it before. But I’ve only been down here once. I was … I don’t know if Alice or Eleanor or anyone told you, but I was pretty difficult when I first arrived. I was so mad. I think if I hadn’t been young and strong, they would have turned me away. Anyway, I got obsessed with this tunnel and why I wasn’t allowed in, and finally one day Glenn pretty much dragged me down here. He showed me the cave-in and then he shoved me against the wall and told me if I didn’t fix my attitude I was gone and I would die alone wandering the blackness. Seeing the cave-in … I guess it was the wake-up call I needed, and I did chill out.”

  “But it’s not a real cave-in, apparently.” I realize I’m still holding his wrist and let go, blushing.

  “Yeah.” His voice shakes. “So I guess we’d better see where it leads.” He goes first, stepping over the pile of unsettled stones, and then holding out a hand to help me do the same. I don’t need the help, but I’m sure willing to take it. His palm is warm and calloused and it makes my heart race in a good way.

  The tunnel is too narrow to walk side by side, so he stays ahead of me, but close. It’s craggy and the low ceiling spikes with soda straw formations. Several sharp twists later, I notice that my eyes seem to be adjusting to the dark. Which shouldn’t be possible. The darkness of a cave is a complete darkness, and even the faint glow of Grayson’s lighter barely cuts it. Eyes cannot adjust to that. But now the walls ahead of us are faintly visible.

  Grayson ducks under a jagged, low-hanging rock. I follow, and on the other side, find myself in another cavern. A glowing cavern.

  It’s like gazing up at an alien sky. The walls, the ceiling, even the floor emanate a greenish, bluish light. Unreal.

  “These are stones,” I realize, running my finger over one of the glowing areas on the wall. “We could probably break some of these off and bring them back to the main cavern for light.”

  Grayson is still slack-jawed, drinking in the whole scene. “How did this … What … How could Mary not tell us about this?”

  “Yeah, and where is she?” There’s no apparent exit to this cavern, but she’s nowhere to be seen. And it’s bright in here. So bright. I thought Mary was my friend in this; I thought she was trying to help. But here is this whole cavern of brightness, so close to where we live, and we are existing by the light of two tiny fires.

  “Look.” Grayson kneels beside a large rock. “It’s those three lines again. And there’s an opening!”

  I crouch beside him. It’s not a big opening, maybe a couple feet in each direction. I wriggle into it. The other side is dark, but it opens up again. “It’s another tunnel,” I call back to Grayson. “And you can stand.”

  “All right. I’m coming.”

  A moment later, he stands before me. It’s very dark here, with only the faintest glow of the cavern highlighting our outlines, and our nearness makes my skin tingle. His fingers brush mine when he reaches for his pocket. I hold my breath, imagining what it would feel like to kiss him. Just the thought is thrilling. Especially standing so close to him that the warmth of his skin radiates toward me. The gentle sound of his breathing. I want to run my fingers through his messily chopped hair. The want is strong enough that I nearly do it.

  But then the click of his lighter echoes, and the tiny flame appears like a barrier between us. He grins down at me and I smile back, but I’m a little shaken.

  This tunnel is wider, and we walk side by side except when a stalagmite or other formation gets in our way. We’re not walking long before we come to a fork. “Which way do you suppose she went?” Grayson asks. “Look, there’s those three lines in this right tunnel.”

  “Yeah.” I run my fingers over the three lines and then examine the left tunnel. “But look, this tunnel has a faint glow.”

  He joins me. Stands directly behind me so that his front is lightly brushing my back, and I don’t move, but I don’t understand how he doesn’t feel my heartbeat through my spine. Is he standing so close because he wants to be near me? Or because I’m in the way and he’s trying to see better?

  “Let’s try this tunnel, then,” he says.

  We go quietly, because the farther we get from the colony, the more likely we are to run into danger. As we walk, the glow gets brighter.

  And then we stop dead, simultaneously, pressing ourselves into the wall.

  This tunnel leads to another cavern filled with the glowing stones. Only this one is also filled with glowing people.

  “Bioluminescents,” Grayson whispers in horror.

  “And Mary,” I whisper back, pointing carefully.

  She stands in the middle of the cavern, looking deep in conversation with a couple of the bioluminescents. But everything’s so quiet. So many people wander about in the cavern, with luminescent skin, clawed hands, and an otherwise disconcertingly human appearance. But there’s no crackling of flame, no voices, only the gentle padding of their bare feet.

  Because they’re not speaking with voices, I realize, they’re speaking with gestures. The sign language Mary has been teaching me isn’t something she made up. It’s the language of the bioluminescents.

  I give Grayson a tiny shove in the direction opposite the cavern. He takes the hint and we hurry back, all the way to the place with the glowing stones.

  “What. Was. That.” He paces the length of the small cavern. “What is she thinking, what is she doing? The bioluminescents—I heard they’ve killed people from the colony before. And she’s been visiting them? I’ve been letting her come down here all this time. I thought maybe she just needed a place to be alone and to think. If I’d known she was doing this, I would have—”

  He stops when I step in front of him. “It doesn’t look good,” I agree. “But we have to be calm until we know what she’s actually doing. I mean, they were friendly with her, so that’s a good thing, isn’t it? I mean, they’re people. There are probably some good and some bad, just like us.”

  “You’re right.” He folds his arms and lets out a frustrated burst of breath. “But she still should have told everyone they were here and told us why she was teaching us this sign language. So I’m gonna stand right here until she comes back and she can explain herself.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Listen, I’m working with her tomorrow morning. I’ll talk to her. If she has a good explanation, then fine. But no matter what, she has no argument against letting us at least come into this cave right here and getting stones. We could really use the light. I think everyone would love it, and it isn’t fair that she’s keeping it from us. I think—I wonder if maybe it’d help make people feel more like themselves again.”

  Grayson does not want to leave here and go back to the colony. He keeps shifting his weight and clenching his fists and my stomach ties into a knot because I hate confrontation so much and the idea of confrontation with Grayson makes me want to vomit.

  “You’re right,” he says, surprising me. “I hate that you’re right, but you are. Promise you’ll tell me right away what she says?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay. Let’s—we should go back, then.”

  I nod, and we start toward the tunnel that will lead us home.

  I am a full-blown ice block the next morning when it comes time for my work with Mary. Confronting her from the very first second seems ill-advised, but I feel completely betrayed and I can’t bring myself to talk to her normally at all.

  “Did you reread your journal this morning?
”

  “Yup.”

  “And you still want to go home?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She narrows her eyes. “What is this attitude you’ve developed?”

  My whole body tenses. “Tell me, how’d you sleep last night?”

  “I slept very well. And you?”

  “Not good at all. My ribs still hurt and I can’t get comfortable. It means I wake a lot during the night. Sometimes get up to go to the bathroom.”

  I stop there, gazing levelly at her. When she doesn’t respond, I continue. “It’s interesting, what you see sometimes if you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Like maybe you see someone go down into the supposedly caved-in tunnel. And maybe you follow them.”

  Her expression changes now. Pure horror. “Follow them how far?” she asks in a low voice.

  “The whole way.” I fold my arms. “So. Got an explanation?”

  “Yes,” she says through gritted teeth. She glances nervously around. No one’s nearby and the darkness embraces us. When she speaks again, her voice is lowered. “But you absolutely cannot tell anyone. Not a soul.”

  I hesitate, thinking of Grayson. I don’t want to lie to Mary, but I don’t want her to close up if I tell her I can’t keep this secret. “I won’t,” I say, my limbs prickling with anxiety.

  She glances around again. The cavern is not quiet. People go about their daily tasks, laughing and talking in the semi-darkness. The baby’s unhappy and shrieking. But when you’re about to tell a secret, it always feels like your words will bounce off every wall and straight into the ears of people you want to hear nothing. “The reason I believe that we can escape by going deeper is because I know. Did you notice markings next to tunnel openings, below?”

  I nod, a chill spreading over me.

  “You said it before, Eliza. You believed that in order for a rumor to exist about a place where you can reach the earth’s core, someone had to make it out to tell the story. And someone did. My grandfather.” She slips onto her stool, pausing like she knows I need a minute for that to sink in. “He disappeared for over a year when he was in his mid-twenties and came back with a story about having fallen to the center of the earth. People didn’t know as much about the earth back then, so he really believed, when he reached the mantle, that he had visited the earth’s core. No one else believed even a sentence of his story; he was hospitalized for a psychotic break and he never spoke of it again until the dementia started in his nineties. I know people say a lot of things when their minds start to go, but when I would visit him, he described it all with such detail, such clarity. He told me all about the bioluminescents, that he’d lived among them for a time, that he’d wanted to stay. He lived here first, all alone, in this very cavern. And he left the markings to be able to find his way back when he explored. He didn’t want to go home until the day he stumbled upon magma accidentally. He said it knocked him out of a trance. So, frantically, he retraced his steps and tried to make his markings clearer, leaving himself notes when he could so that he wouldn’t forget that he wanted to leave. He hoped others would find the marks and follow them.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Except, we can’t follow them if we have no idea they lead anywhere, because of fake cave-ins.”

  She sighs, squeezes her hands into fists. “My grandfather passed away five years ago, and I’ve been researching ever since. I have probably read up on every single missing person case in the state of New York, searching for ones that seemed relevant. I hoped I could find someone else like my grandfather. Someone else who had left. There wasn’t anyone. So I decided I needed to come here myself. I found the bioluminescents before I found this place, and I still keep up with them, obviously. I’m hoping to someday get them to work with, to join together with, our colony here. The blockage in that tunnel looked to be a natural cave-in, I don’t think anyone hid it on purpose. But I didn’t tell anyone what was behind it, because I worried what they would do.”

  “You didn’t think people would like to know that there was a way out?” I refuse to let her off the hook about this.

  She laughs bitterly. “Of course I did. I’d found a different way here, and I was going to use it to help them get out while circumventing the bioluminescent village so they’d be left alone. All they really want is for us to leave them alone, you know. This is their home; it’s not ours. Anyway, no one wanted to follow or even remotely believed me about another way out. I always try, and no one ever has.”

  I digest what she’s saying, slowly. It’s hard to wrap my mind around. “Why haven’t you left by yourself?”

  She scoffs. “It’s dangerous, Eliza. Very dangerous.” As much as I hate to admit it, I think I understand where she’s coming from. Except for one thing: “You didn’t tell me this when I came. Have you given up on trying to help others get out?”

  “Absolutely not,” she says emphatically. “No, I’ve just … changed my methods. Since the old way wasn’t working so well for me.”

  I narrow my eyes.

  “I told this story when I arrived,” she said. “At least, part of it. I told them about my grandfather. None of them believed it at all.”

  “Well.” My throat is dry. “I believe you.”

  Her lips tremble and I think if it weren’t so dark, I would see tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She looks away from me, out over the cavern. “I’d forgotten what it feels like to hear those words.”

  “Did you tell Grayson this when he first came?” I ask. That’ll make things easier. I won’t really have to break my promise to her.

  She shakes her head. “I had planned to. Grayson was the toughest I’ve ever seen to acclimate, and he has the sort of personality that makes people want to follow his lead. But he didn’t settle into his fate slowly, like everyone else. One day he fought like a wildcat and the next he was a lifeless shell. I missed my window.”

  I frown. Grayson was the last person to arrive before me. “Shouldn’t you have told me right away, then? Instead of telling me to read my journal and being all cryptic?”

  “No,” she says vehemently. “Telling people too soon turns them into outcasts. The others become wary of you before they even get to know you. I had to wait; I just couldn’t wait too long.”

  This sounds perfectly reasonable, but something about what she’s saying seems off. She’s telling me now because I found out her secret. How long would she have waited, otherwise? I think there’s a part of her that wants me to know the truth, wants me to be able to go home. But I’m suspicious there’s another part—maybe a stronger part—that wants me to stay. To be her geology student forever.

  She was the person I trusted most down here. And now … now I don’t think I can trust her at all.

  “We don’t have to tell everyone about the bioluminescents,” I say slowly. “But they have to know about the stones. And if you don’t tell them, I will.”

  “You do still want to leave, don’t you?” she says. I can’t tell what she’s hoping I’ll say.

  “Of course I do. The stones?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell them.”

  “Good. And I’ll work with you again once it’s done.”

  Everyone is very excited about the stones. I, personally, am not so excited about how Mary tells everyone they were discovered.

  “Eliza got curious and went exploring,” she says. Colleen’s disappointed in me after. She’s the one who told me not to go down there, and I didn’t heed her. Since she doesn’t know why, it changes her view of me. She sees me now as a Mary clone—flighty and stubborn and unwilling to listen.

  But that’s fine. Because this whole thing has reminded me that I shouldn’t trust Mary, either. Just because she’s a geologist and she’s taken me under her wing doesn’t mean we have any kind of special bond. It makes me rethink … well, pretty much everything.

  I do think that keeping the bioluminescents a secret for now is wise, but only because of that one thing she said: All they really want is for us to leave them
alone, you know. We’re pretty much aliens, invading a place that doesn’t belong to us. The stories everyone tells about the bioluminescents don’t paint them in the best light, but it’s not up to me to decide their fates.

  After Mary’s announcement about the stones, Glenn leads the expedition into the cavern, because Glenn has to lead everything. He handpicks the people who will join him, and of course, I’m not included.

  Once they’ve extracted a good quantity of glowite, we place them around the edge of the cavern, and use them to brighten the ill-lit half of the river cavern and the tunnel between. They’re not a perfect substitute for fire, but they’d be better than nothing if we lost that light source. I shudder to consider the other repercussions of that, though. No fire means no cooking and no cooking means raw insect meat.

  Plus, nothing scares away animals like fire.

  “These are so pretty,” says Alice. I sit with her and Eleanor on the bridge across the river, and Alice is running her fingertips over the surprisingly smooth surface of the stone.

  The glowing bits are flecks, like how granite is speckled. The rest of the stone is a pale shade of gray.

  “They really are,” Eleanor agrees. Then she looks at me. “What’s your favorite rock, besides this one? Like, what’s the prettiest rock you’ve ever seen?”

  I glance at the glowing stone. “I don’t know. Not to be a complete nerd, but there are a lot of rocks I think are extremely beautiful. But I guess my favorite is tektite. It’s so neat-looking, and also I love that we don’t actually know if they come from space or from the planet.” I hesitate, knowing that everyone hates talking about life above, but then I ask: “What careers did you guys want to have?”

  “I had absolutely no idea,” says Eleanor. “When I was a kid I wanted to be a vet, but then I realized that you don’t just hug the animals better. I think I’d have an easier time cutting them open now that—now. But it still wouldn’t be right for me.”

  “I wanted to be a fashion designer,” says Alice. Her eyes dart off into the distance. “When I was little, I used to critique the outfits of all my friends. I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to hear that they did not love it.”