The Spirit Well be-3

by Stephen R. Lawhead

Now air flowed over and around him-fresh and clean, not the stale, still stuff that filled the cave. At this, Kit felt the first flutter of worry: had he taken a wrong turn somewhere? Kit stood for a moment, frozen by indecision. Should he go back and try to find where he had gone wrong, or continue on? He felt the air on his face and decided to go forward. If nothing else, he reasoned, following the fresh air would eventually lead him out of the cave. He lurched ahead. He heard the plinking sound again and sensed a rush of movement just ahead of him. He glanced up to see a dark shape moving against the deeper darkness. In the same instant, his foot snagged something loose on the floor. He felt a jerk, lost his balance, and went down. The clamshell fell from his hand and clattered against the stone floor. The skull lamp’s fragile flame snuffed out.

  Absolute darkness-intense, complete, and impenetrable-descended on Kit. It felt as if the weight of the earth had collapsed upon him. The darkness was so oppressive that for a moment he felt as if he might suffocate.

  Relax, he told himself. Take a breath. Your light’s gone out, that’s all. It is only darkness-you won’t smother.

  With these and other thoughts he comforted himself as he lay on his side trying to decide if he was injured or merely unnerved. Other than utter blindness, he seemed to be intact. His best, if not his only, option was simply to keep following the fresh air until he came out of the cave and then wait at the entrance for Dardok and the others, who would eventually emerge to discover him. Rolling over onto all fours, he climbed unsteadily to his feet and heard the clinking sound echoing off the rocks some distance away. Turning his head towards the sound, he glimpsed a faint glow of pale light ahead-a ghostly gleam so weak it might have been imagined. Kit closed his eyes and counted to ten, then opened them again. The light remained. He looked away. Looked back. The pale cast of radiance persisted- along with that maddening rattling clink.

  Kit pushed himself along with one hand on the wall beside him, stumbling towards the distant glint of light. After a few dozen steps the light seemed to grow brighter, showing grey-white from an unknown distance ahead. The sound was moving that way too, it seemed. Then again, perhaps the source of the plink-clink emanated from there. Given the reverberating nature of the cave, there was no way to tell. He shuffled forward, holding the glow in the centre of his vision. The shimmering radiance grew accordingly larger and brighter until Kit realised he was looking at sunlight reflected off the stone sidewall of the passage ahead.

  A few more steps carried him to the place where the tunnel twisted sharply to the right. Kit rounded the corner, and the light grew brighter. He worked his way along the uneven floor, scrambling over rocks and loose rubble. Up ahead, the passage turned again. The plink-clink sound stopped.

  As he rounded the corner, he saw the cave mouth. Brilliant white streamed in through the irregular opening. To Kit’s light-deprived eyes it was like looking into a blazing furnace or a miniature sun. He squeezed his eyes shut; then, putting his hands over his face, he allowed the light in a little at a time until his pupils had time to adjust. He looked again. The opening was still there, still ablaze with radiance, and sitting in that warm sunlight was the unmistakeable, larger-than-life form of another cave lion; looking more than anything like a grossly oversized housecat, it sat on its haunches, licking a forepaw the size of a soup bowl.

  Kit was already in midstep and could not stop himself in time. His foot came down on a loose bit of rock, which tipped and skidded under his weight. The resulting clatter startled the beast, and it turned its head towards him. Seen entirely in silhouette, the animal appeared smaller than the one the hunters had killed earlier in the day-a young one, perhaps-but still big enough to fatally maul Kit with a single swipe of its rapier claws. Kit could not see the creature’s eyes, but it was looking right at him. He held himself perfectly still in the hope of being downwind, of being invisible in the darkness. The cave cat simply watched him for a moment, then rose.

  Slowly, slowly, Kit bent down and felt on the floor for a rock. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck. His sweaty hand closed on a ragged stone, and he gripped it tightly. At least he would not go down without a fight.

  He straightened again.

  The cave lion took a step towards him, and Kit drew a breath and shouted. He ran forward, screaming like a crazy man. The big cat halted, turned tail, and fled. As it leapt from the cave opening, Kit glimpsed something in its flash of movement that almost made his heart stop: the cave cat was wearing an iron chain. As the beast bounded away, the chain swung out. Standing in the cave mouth, Kit saw the trailing links clearly in the light. The end of the chain struck the rocks- clink-plink, clink-plink.

  Time telescoped. How long had he been with River City Clan? How long since he had seen a fully evolved human being, conversed in a modern language, worn real clothes? His mind reeled as he tried to place himself in an altered perspective, for Kit knew this cat; he knew it from another time and another place, another reality. This cave cat was the property of the thugs known as the Burley Men. This cat had a name: Baby. And the last time he had seen Baby, that chain had been in the hands of a Burley Man named Mal.

  Stunned, Kit hurried to the cave entrance and looked out. The gorge was gone, the snow vanished, and winter with it. Instead, he gazed out on a scrubby green hillside. The slope fell away steeply, and at the bottom far below, he saw the cave cat streaking for the wide silver arc of a river and, just beyond the river, a two-lane blacktop highway.

  CHAPTER 13

  In Which an Assault Is Launched

  Sunrise was Cassandra’s favourite time of day in Sedona. The air was fresh and cool from the previous night and the sky pale pink, the rising sun still hidden from view behind the rim of towering red rock stacks that formed the horizon in every direction. Cassandra put the key into the ignition of one of the small white utility vans, started the engine, and eased out of the parking lot of the King’s Arms motel. There were few cars on the road, and she made the familiar drive out to the dig site in good time. She pulled into the site staging area and parked behind the mound of rubble bags so the van would be less visible from the highway.

  Taking her hat, sunglasses, and camera, she tucked the keys under the vehicle’s rubber floor mat, cracked the windows, and left the van in the little shade provided by a small canvas awning attached to the sorting shed. She shouldered her day pack and wove her way through the excavation potholes and trenches, moving towards the escarpment shielding the deep arroyo known as Secret Canyon. She breathed in the morning air, heavy with the scent of sagebrush, and fell into an easy rhythmic stride, enjoying the crunch of scree beneath her thick-soled boots. Cass had come dressed for action, wearing her good, well-worn hiking boots and thick socks, her long-sleeved chambray shirt, her lightweight cargo trousers, and the oversized cotton scarf she used as a sun shield. In her day pack she carried two litres of water; a margarine tub full of raisins, peanuts, M amp;M’S, and dried cranberries; a tube of factor 100+ sunscreen; a folding knife; her emergency first-aid kit with snakebite accessories; and lightweight travel binoculars-everything she needed for a desert assault. If what happened today was at all similar to what had happened the evening before, she would be ready. In any event, she wanted to take some pictures and write some notes, to begin documenting the phenomenon. When her father arrived later in the day, they could sit down together and design a more thoroughgoing investigation. First, however, she intended to test her theory that the phenomenon that Friday called the Coyote Bridge was actually a spacetime anomaly connected to or embedded in the physical landscape of the earth.

  After speaking to her father, Cass had gone to bed, but was way too keyed up to sleep, so she spent the night online researching such things as shamanistic flight, soul travel, and astral projection. Most of what she read as she sat in bed hunched over her laptop was incoherent blather-a mixture of New Age tripe and bizzaro fantasy-but she found enough level-headed material to convince her that what she had experienced the day before was
not a dream, vision, or mental aberration such as a hallucination or some kind of hysteria. The violent storm, sudden and short-lived; the weird vertigo; the abrupt arrival in a foreign place-these were, apparently, more or less common features of the phenomenon, attested to in many cultures and times. Some writers ascribed mystical significance to the experience and others were quite workaday in their appraisal.

  Moreover, while many outlandish claims and explanations were offered, and there was very little agreement among people with startlingly divergent orientations to life-some exhibiting an extremely loose grip on reality-Cass was able to tease out a few common threads: a belief that travel to other dimensions or parallel realities was shared by many different cultures in many different ages, and that such travel was not only possible, it was a practise that could be taught, learned, and mastered. The author of one intriguing article- a woman with waist-length white hair who went by the name of Star Eagle-offered the observation that not only were specific locations on the landscape important for Shamanic Flight, but the specified locations were time sensitive; that is, the would-be flyer would be most likely to achieve success if he or she embarked at sunrise or sunset. Dawn and twilight were the best times to fly, she said.

  Hardheaded scientist that she was, Cass would have written off all this as so much malarkey and mumbo jumbo. If not for her own firsthand experience the day before, she would have consigned astral travel to the loony bin along with rainbow worship, crop circles, and almond-eyed aliens. Yet something had happened and, whatever it was, she could not ignore it. Like a good open-minded researcher, she had come prepared to test and document her discovery, however unsettling; plus, she wanted to have something tangible-a few photographs, at least-to show her father.

  She walked easily through the desert, enjoying the stroll among the cacti and creosote bushes with the almost giddy sensation of a little girl on Christmas Eve, that flutter in the stomach and a feverish anticipation. When she reached the arroyo she paused for a moment to take a few snaps of the Secret Canyon entrance, still deep in shadow. She could feel the night-cooled air issuing from the mouth of the gorge, wafting over her and dissipating. The darkened opening yawned like a cave and seemed somehow forbidding. Cass hesitated, taking a few more pictures. Finally, as the rising sun cleared the ragged hill line to the east, spilling light across the valley, she drew a breath and whispered a simple prayer: “God, don’t let me break my neck.” She put her arm through the dangling strap of her pack and stepped into the canyon, adding, “Also, please, oh please, don’t let me get lost.”

  The walls closed around her. She walked slowly, placing her footsteps with exaggerated care as if measuring distance, alert to whatever sensations she might feel. Aside from the sound of her own footsteps pinging off the high sandstone walls, there was nothing. She had reached the straight track and was a fair way into the gorge when it occurred to her that when she had been here the first time she had been chasing Friday, trying to catch him. So she picked up her pace. A cool breeze gusted down from the stony heights of the undulating walls. She stepped up her pace still more.

  From somewhere high on the canyon rim above her, Cass heard a sound like that of a hawk-a keening, whine-like whistle-and felt a spatter of rain strike the back of her hand. She glanced up and got another raindrop smack on her brow. A low mist cloud hung over the gap between the narrow rock walls. She kept moving, noting the sudden change in the weather as gusting wind whipped around her legs, blowing loose sand and dry yucca leaves down the path ahead of her. The mist descended, enveloping her, slicking her face with moisture. In the same moment, a queasy sensation squirmed through her, and her step faltered-as if the surface beneath her feet had dropped half a step lower. She saw light ahead where the sun was burning through the all-enveloping fog and moved towards it, emerging to find herself on a vast plain stretching away in every direction to a horizon of black hills far away.

  She had arrived in the Ghost World.

  The travel sickness hit her all at once, slamming into her even as she stood looking at the emptiness opening around her. She doubled over and retched into the dust at her feet; hands on knees, she stood for a moment, breathing through her nose until the dizziness passed. She dabbed her lips and rinsed her mouth with a swig from her water bottle, thankful that this time there was no headache. She swallowed some more water and then, raising her camera, began photographing the bleak, monochrome landscape in a wide panoramic sweep to take in the open, empty, bone-dry, flat-as-an-iron volcanic pan around her. The sun stood low in the western sky, almost touching the tops of the far distant hills, illuminating the lines that covered the cinder plain stretched away arrow-straight across a totally featureless wastelandno cacti, no boulders, no rocks larger than any other, nothing in any direction as far as the eye could see… except the mysterious lines. Some of the lines were arrow straight; others curved into immense spirals splayed across acres of empty landscape.

  Lowering her camera, Cass squatted down to take a few pictures of the path on which she stood, then put down a hand to feel the gritty texture of the pumice and discovered that the layer beneath was lighter than that which was above.

  “Oxidation,” she breathed to herself. “So that’s how they’re made.”

  It was simplicity itself: by moving the surface layer off to either side to expose the lighter material beneath, a stripe of light-coloured stone was created. She remembered pictures of chalk drawings presented in prehistoric anthropology lectures at university where, to create a drawing on a hillside, primitive people simply removed the turf to expose the white chalk just below the surface-a technique requiring few tools, but lots of manpower. The principle here was the same.

  Cass stepped off the line and took a photo of the trail from another angle. The light dimmed somewhat; the sun was beginning its descent behind the hills. Cass decided that, having done what she intended, she should go back while the Coyote Bridge between the worlds was still open. She stepped onto the track once more and started back the way she had come, walking with quick purpose.

  Almost at once, the wind sprang up. It howled around her in whirling dust devils, raising clouds of fine volcanic dust. Cass shut her eyes tight against the blowing grit, and in a moment felt the sheen of moisture on her face. She continued a few more paces, and the wind died away with a last trailing shriek; she was back in the canyon, in the shadowed cool of early morning, the tall stone walls rising sheer on either hand.

  She managed a few more steps before the incipient motion sickness caught up with her. It was dry heaves this time, and she put a hand to the nearest wall to steady herself, drawing deep breaths through her nose until the queasiness passed-to be replaced by a surge of joy at having successfully navigated the Coyote Bridge between worlds without a guide, and without a hitch. Wait until Dad hears about this! she thought. He’ll be so amazed. Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she moved on.

  Her moment of blissful triumph ended abruptly as she stepped from the mouth of the canyon and was met by the sight of a wide green valley with a broad river flowing through it in graceful arcs beneath a sky dappled with small, white powder-puff clouds. A line of stately poplar trees rose above the rich brown earth of newly ploughed fields on the hills either side of the river. The gentle rural scene met her astonished gaze, and her heart clenched in her chest.

  Wherever she was, it was definitely not Arizona. Her brain thrummed with a single thought: Now what? Now what? Now what?

  Cass’s first inclination was to promptly sit down, hug her knees to her chest, close her eyes against the sight, and wish it all away-as one would with an ordinary nightmare. Her second thought was to calmly, carefully enumerate and categorise her options. She did neither of those things. Instead, she gave in to a far more instinctual urge and simply turned and fled the way she had come, darting back into the canyon once more. She raced along the sandstone walls, her heart in her mouth, hoping against hope that the Coyote Bridge was still accessible.

  Before she
had taken a dozen flying steps, her vision grew misty and a blast of hot wind swept down upon her, driving her forward. The ground gave way beneath her and she lurched a falling half step, stumbled, and pitched forward. Her camera banged into her forehead, causing her eyes to water; all knees and elbows, she landed in a heap, raising a cloud of dust.

  As before, the light filtering down from on high was dim, the air cool on her skin, and she sighed with relief at the sight of the Secret Canyon’s familiar sandstone walls. But as her eyes adjusted to the faint light and she looked around, the walls turned out to be whitewashed plaster and the path was a cobbled stone alley. Just ahead, a low and narrow archway opened onto a brighter, sunlit way beyond.

  “Oh great,” she muttered between gritted teeth. “ Now where am I?”

  Determined this time not to give in to panic, but to approach this admitted setback in a calm, rational, scientific way, Cass dragged herself to her feet, swatted the dust from her clothes, and moved towards the archway. With a calming breath, she stepped through. A white sun blazed in a cloudless sky of intense blue, beating down upon a street lined with ruined columns and bounded by tiny shops sporting colourful striped awnings and, directly before her, a cobbled thoroughfare straight as a plumb line and squeezed to near impassibility by a formidable gauntlet of street merchants selling from carts and stalls and barrows.

  She stood at the entrance to the alleyway and gazed down along the avenue. Clutches of people moved among the vendors, examining the merchandise, bargaining, buying, and bearing away their purchases. All were dressed in billowy garments: long head-to-heel robes of black, brown, or blue-and-white-stripes for the women; and for the men, baggy striped trousers-ballooned around the legs and tight at the ankles-with floppy white shirts and truncated waistcoats in yellow, green, or blue. Every head was covered: the women wore scarves or veils of netted lace; the men wore hats in brick tones or blood red.