by D. H. Dunn
She opened her eyes cautiously, completely unsure of what they would show her. Her pulse quickened at the prospect, a mixture of fear and curiosity.
The view was dimmer than she expected, the low diffused light emanating from lines that seemed to hover above her. For a moment, all she could see were the lines. She was not sure if they were in the air or on the walls and ceiling of wherever she was. There were only the lines, pulsing in many colors, and the black spaces between them. They were static in form and color, crisscrossing and branching patterns of reds, yellows, blues. More colors and hues than she could count.
As her pupils adjusted to the dimness, it became clear to Nima she was in a natural cavern of some kind, and the lines of color ran through the ceiling and walls.
She could hear a great deal of dripping water. Echoes of it were both close and far away. There was no wind she could hear, but she could feel air flowing across her face, cooling her.
She turned her head to the left, unsurprised to see Drew lying there, yet her breath caught in her throat at the depth of his friendship.
She had run through the magical vortex without a word to Drew. She had not asked him to follow, yet here he was. Just as she should have known he would be.
She smiled at him, blinking away the moisture in her eyes.
His eyes were open as well, and he seemed to be looking carefully at his surroundings much as she was. He noticed her attention, a slight grin growing on his face.
“Finally, you two are awake.” Wanda’s voice echoed through the cavern. Nima finally saw the woman sitting cross-legged, propped against the cavern wall, staring at them both. “I have been watching the two of you sleep for what feels like hours. I thought you would never wake up―believe me I tried.”
Nima started to sit up again, causing the chamber to spin and her stomach lurch. She brought her head back down, this time fast enough that she was rewarded with a sharp smack against the stone floor. Fresh lights danced on the inside of her eyes as she rubbed the back of her head.
“Yes, I wouldn’t sit up just yet,” Wanda said with a chuckle. “Whatever we went through, it scrambles you up. I’d take it slow.”
“Pasang?” Nima asked. She didn’t expect Wanda had seen her brother, but her fear would not allow the question to go unasked. Her hoarse voice served to remind her how thirsty she was.
Deep inside, her stomach growled as if in competition with her thirst. She wondered how long they had been out, how long it had been since they had eaten.
“I am sorry,” Wanda said. “There is no sign of him, nor Carter, nor the creature who grabbed your brother.” Wanda picked up a small rock and threw it in frustration into the dark recesses of the cavern, where it clattered against stone as it skipped. “No sign of anyone.”
Next to her, Drew let out a sigh that echoed through the chamber. He lay back on the rocky floor, rubbing his temples. “Carter,” he said, the name echoing through the darkness. “Wanda, did you see him before you ran into . . . whatever that was?”
“No,” Wanda said. “I was directly behind you. I can only assume he is still on Everest. Perhaps he chose not to follow, or the path closed before he could.”
Resting on her elbow for a moment, Nima shut her eyes and pushed thoughts of Carter away. Her brother was here somewhere, and it was hard to focus on anything else.
She slowly eased herself into a sitting position, keeping her eyes closed while running a check over her body. Nothing felt broken, though everything felt sore. Her headache was more one of fatigue rather than of oxygen deprivation.
Holding a breath in and releasing slowly, she opened her eyes again, peering into the low light.
The three of them were sitting in a small, rocky cavern. Other than the multicolored lines pulsing through it, the rock itself looked no different than rocks in many caves she and Pasang had poked around as children. Like the air, the ground was damp. The misshapen room was probably ten yards across at its widest point, with an angled ceiling that started narrow and ended in a sheer wall that was twenty yards high, at Nima’s guess.
Sitting almost at ground level in the middle of the sheer wall was the portal, or what Nima surmised to be the other side of whatever they had passed through. The many lines running through the rock and stone all converged on it, though there was no eruption of energy, no arcing lightning on this side. What had been a vortex of magic on Everest was simply an oval of dull stone here, gray and featureless. Only its smooth surface made it noticeable against the rough wall of the cavern.
“I threw a rock at it,” Wanda said, predicting Nima’s question before she could ask it. “The rock bounced right off,” Wanda continued after a pause. Nima supposed she had been waiting for someone to answer her. “I tried different velocities and angles, all with the same results. Maybe organic material is required to go through. I was about to try one of those mushrooms there when you two finally started stirring.”
She had been busy while they slept. Nima supposed it made sense with the woman being a scientist. If Nima had woken first, she would have explored the cavern, not studied the entrance.
Nima stood, her legs shaking but holding. The ground beneath her feet was a soft collection of pebbles and stones mixed with brownish dirt. Lifting her foot, she could see her boot print surrounded by dozens of others.
Walking carefully, she traced most of the steps to the dull stone of the portal. On this side there was no pull, no feeling of suction or heat. It was almost as if she were staring into a pond of smooth rock, just turned on its side. She put her hand close to the surface, keeping it just a hair’s breadth away from the portal itself.
Wanda’s hand slowly closed on her wrist, pulling Nima’s back. “That would be foolish,” Wanda said. “We have no idea how these doorways work.”
Nima relented, allowing her arms to fall to her sides. “Pasang is here,” Nima said. “Somewhere. The Yeti tried to take you, Wanda, and now it has him. I need to bring him home.” She stopped for a moment, feeling the depth of her need to find her brother. It was a need that had many faces, both her own and her mother’s. “To bring him home, I will need to pass back through whatever this is.”
Wanda nodded. “As do I. What I search for will do my people no good if I cannot leave here, but we must be cautious. We must test it.”
Drew stood and walked toward them. Nima noticed he was taking care to keep his hands from touching any of the colored lines in the wall. “We don’t know anything about what we are dealing with here, but if we’re going to be here a while we need to think about survival. Wanda, you mentioned mushrooms. . . .”
“Huge ones, like nothing I’ve ever seen.” Wanda stepped away from the dull stone of the portal and walked toward the rear of the cavern. She pointed off into the darkness, a shadowy area only dimly lit by the colored veins in the walls.
He and Nima looked to where Wanda was pointing. An outcropping of mushrooms were growing in the dark corner of the cavern, hundreds of them ranging from smaller than Nima’s hand to larger than she was. They were as multicolored as the wall veins, and they pulsed with the same dim glow.
Drew gasped along with Nima. “They-they are huge!” he said.
“They’re also good eating,” came a voice from the darkness. “As long as you get to them before they get too big.”
Nima whirled at the voice, which came from the narrow end of the cavern. Drew jumped to his feet, taking a stance just ahead of her. Wanda remained sitting, though her hand strayed to her jacket, where, Nima supposed, she still had her gun.
Out of the low, colored light came a smaller man, about the same height as Nima. He had a broad girth, carried by stout legs. Muscular arms were clearly visible under his simple, drab-brown shirt. His face resembled a Sherpa’s in skin tone and demeanor and his smile was framed by a thick, bushy beard. To Nima he looked like an average Sherpa, if not for his strange clothes.
The man held out his hands, palms wide. He shuffled his feet while standing in place,
the gesture carrying some meaning that Nima could not guess.
“A friend,” he said. “I’m glad I found you before the Others did. My name is Kaditula, though you may wish to call me Kad, as my mate does. I’ve been watching you since you came through from the Out. Guarding you, you might say. The Others will check here again soon, and I did not want them to find you.” He paused again, looking around the cavern and over his shoulder. “You do not want them to find you,” Kad added. “It has been a long time. It would be a good idea to leave.”
“We’re not leaving until you tell us who you are and where we are,” Drew said, folding his arms.
Kad took a short step back, keeping his own palms showing. The man looked over his shoulder again, past the mushrooms into the dark recesses of the cavern.
Nima stepped around Drew, stepping closer to the small man. Kad’s grin stayed persistently on his face. His open palms were weathered and callused, his clothing hand-stitched and unlike any Sherpa clothing she had seen.
“Questions and question, of course,” he said, turning to gesture down the narrow end of the cavern. “I have questions, too. About your Out, about you. I can answer, you can answer. We will trade. But not here, not now. The Others will be soon to come, they check each of the ways, the doors. There is a worm path not far from here. I can take you to a quiet place. We can talk and eat food.”
Nima’s stomach rumbled at the mention of food, even as the hair on the back of her neck stood at the thought of worms. More than that, her skin crawled because of the way Kaditula spoke. The movements of his mouth did not line up with the words she was hearing.
She was about to question this when Wanda stepped forward, pulling her revolver from her jacket.
“Wanda!” Drew shouted, the echo carrying through the cavern.
If Kad recognized the weapon, he didn’t react as if he did. He kept the same smile on his face, palms still open, though his glances at the cavern exit had become more frequent.
“How can you be speaking Polish?” Wanda asked. Nima opened her mouth to protest that the man was obviously speaking Sherpa, then realized Wanda’s mouth movements did not match her words either, and that the Polish woman was speaking Sherpa as well. Something was explaining the words in her mind.
“More questions!” Kad replied. “I can answer, but you do not trust. I understand. I have stood where you are; felt the same. I came from an Out, too. This I will tell you: you came here, looking for others. Not the Others, of course.” He stopped to laugh at this apparent joke, his laughter deep and low. “Others from your Out. People like you, people taken. I can help you find them, but you must come. They will come, to say nothing of Vihrut.”
Nima had no idea what a “Vihrut” was, but Kad’s awareness of the kidnappings was enough. She wanted to pepper the small man with questions about Pasang, but it was clear they would not get any answers from him here, now.
She turned to Drew, who gave her a slow nod. He seemed unsure of himself, Nima could not sense the usual confidence brimming from him.
“Wanda?” Nima looked over at the woman, who had the revolver still clutched in her hand. Her hand shook, the motion barely noticeable in the low light. One drop of perspiration ran from Wanda’s hairline down her cheek. “I am speaking words of Poland to you, aren’t I? I have never learned it. I barely knew of Poland before I met you.” Wanda continued to point the weapon at the small man, even as she looked at Nima. “Whatever is going on here,” Nima continued, now taking a step toward the taller woman. “You came here to finish your father’s work. Also, Pasang is in here somewhere. I can’t say what I think of this Kaditula, but he seems just as uncertain of this language as we are.”
“A small answer I can give,” Kad said. “Without a trade even, so small is my help. It is a gift from the portals.” Kad extended his arm, his open hand indicating the dark oval embedded in the wall. “Once you have passed through, all speech is known to you. I do not know the reasons of it, though my spell-queen might.”
That the gods would grant such a gift made sense to Nima, if one was worthy and respectful. It was comforting, and further proof, that perhaps Chomolungma’s grace was watching over her.
Wanda looked less convinced, though the woman had doubted the existence of a Yeti even as it had carried her on its back. She looked back and forth between the dull oval of the portal on the far wall and Kaditula’s grin. She held her arm steady, shifting her eyes to Nima’s, who felt relief as the tension began to recede from Wanda’s face, her jaw unclenching.
Wanda shrugged and lowered the weapon, shoving it back into her pocket. “It’s out of rounds anyway,” she said.
Nima laughed, nodding encouragingly to the Polish woman. Wanda smiled back, brushing her red hair out of her eyes.
Drew opened his palms, mirroring Kaditula’s gesture, before stepping toward the small man. “We do have questions. We understand you want us out of danger. If you can guide us back to this place in the future, we will follow you.”
Kaditula nodded. He looked at Nima, his gray bushy eyebrows raised in question.
“I . . . agree?” Nima said, unsure if Kaditula was waiting for her approval as well. She pushed her hands into her pockets. The small man smiled even wider at her, which she had not thought possible.
“That is wonderful,” Kaditula said, closing his hands and clapping once. “Please follow. A short worm-tube ride and we will be there.”
With Drew taking the lead, Nima followed the shorter man as he waddled through the end of the cavern, ducking his head as he did so. She had no idea what a worm-tube was, but she figured it was better than meeting these Others.
She did hope there would be no worms in the tube.
8
“Maybe true, maybe not true. Better you believe.”
—Sherpa saying
Nima followed behind Drew, who had come to walk alongside Kad.
She regarded Kaditula as both the least strange and most important thing she had seen since regaining consciousness. He looked to be Sherpa; he had a kind face and quick laugh. In that way he reminded her of her Uncle Pemba.
He was knowledgeable in that he knew a route back to his camp and food, he knew about the cave they were in and he knew about the people who had led them here. Most importantly, he knew where Pasang might be.
Unfortunately, cheerful as he was, he didn’t seem willing to talk about any of it. Every attempt they made to get a question answered was met with pleasant but consistent deflection.
Could the portal they came through be opened again? The small man laughed and told them they needed to hurry.
Who were these Others and what was it they wanted? He said once they reached the camp, then questions would be answered.
Had he seen Pasang? What were these glowing lines in the wall? What was a Vihrut and why was Kad so afraid of it? Each question bounced off Kad like pebbles against a mountain.
A smiling, cheerful mountain. Nima liked their new companion, but she was growing frustrated almost as quickly as she was growing hungry.
Wanda walked behind her, the winding passage now too narrow for them to walk side by side. Due to the glowing veins of color that were woven through the walls, Nima was greeted with something both familiar and strange at every step
There were mushrooms and many other forms of fungus she had seen before, but they were often enormous and presented both colors and odors completely alien to her. She was tempted to eat the ones that looked the most familiar, but she supposed the sensible thing to do was wait for a chance to ask Kad which ones were safe. Assuming he’d tell her.
The sound of water was everywhere, though she had seen no source other than the condensation on the walls of the cavern. Great pillars of stone hung down from the ceiling as well as reached up from the floor, the shadows surrounding them was littered with bats. She had seen bats before, but these had white fur and streaks of red luminescence in their skin, especially around the head and eyes. She thought she saw a small spark
of flame once or twice erupting from the bats, but she could not be sure in the poor lighting. Nima felt her pulse quicken as she watched the creatures flit about above her. There was danger here but wonders as well.
Before long the passageway shrank and forced them to crawl. Kad assured them in his ever-friendly tone that they would not have to crawl very far. All the while, she and Drew alternated asking questions, even though it had become clear Kaditula was not going to answer even the most basic ones. She supposed it was better than the silence of her thoughts.
After a prolonged period of crawling, Nima was beginning to wonder what would give out first, her knees or her neck, when the tunnel finally opened into a small space with height enough for them to stand, but little room between them. With the four of them compressed, Kad pointed excitedly at a group of three large holes, perfect circles carved into the walls. Nima gauged each of them to be about a little more than a meter across, each tube slanted at a slight downward angle leading in different, dark directions.
Nima knelt to peek at one of the holes, its smooth sides tinted golden in the multicolored light of the room. Running her fingers along the interior, the surface was dry and glossy, feeling like fine fabric.
“These are your worm holes?” Drew asked, eyeing each in turn. Nima clenched her fists. Crawling through the caverns with an untold amount of rock over her head was bad enough. Tiny dark holes? Pasang would owe her for this, that was for sure.
“Do you mean these were made by . . . worms?” To Nima’s ears Wanda’s voice sounded clear and strong with her accent removed.
“Yes. Worms. Why does this bring you surprise? Do you not have worms in your Out?” Kad had already crawled into the left most of the three holes and seemed excited to slide into it. Even his portly shape fit well in the hole.
“We do,” Drew said. “They are just . . . not this big.” He took a deep breath. “Listen, Kad--we’re pretty anxious to find out what’s going on here. Where we are, what has happened to us. We’re also . . .”