John Bowman's Cave

by Erron Adams

  Bowman impulsively embraced the man. “Rain Dog, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you!”

  The Rory smiled and pushed him away. “I’m likewise pleased. But you’re heading in the wrong direction, if it’s Caylen you’re after. They went that way.” He pointed to the better-lit tunnel.

  “Trust you to be able to read sign in this gloom. I assume the other part of ‘they’ is Keemon?”

  “From what I see of another man’s bootprints, yes.”

  “Will you come with me, help me track them?”

  The Rory smiled. “Did I teach you nothing? Ah well, let’s go!”

  “Yes, let’s all go find Keemon and that Rory bitch!” a voice said. Rain Dog and Bowman jumped as though they occupied the one skin. Unconnu came up and stood by Rain Dog. She looked at Bowman. “But first, the little matter of a ring. Hand it over!”

  Bowman spat between her feet and held his naked ring hand up for her to see. “I don’t have it.”

  “What? Where… oh, of course, you gave it to her. Did you think it would be safer on her hand than yours? You fool!”

  “You’ll never know what I think, Unconnu, unless I tell you. As to the ring, you can have this instead!” Bowman brought the bow up and went to draw, but a blinding agony in his stomach forced him back down, hunched and gasping.

  “Don’t push your feeble mind where it can’t go, Outlander,” Unconnu said. She turned back to Rain Dog. “It will be quicker, and you’ll live longer, if you guide me to them. But I’ll find them anyway. Your choice, Rory!”

  “How.. how did you gain on me like that, without me knowing?”

  “Oh, Rory hunters aren’t the only ones who can track their prey! Now, do we go, or do you and this Outlander choose death, and leave a poor old crone to find her own way?”

  Bowman’s wind was coming back; he looked up at her, his face still contorted. “You’re forgetting something, aren’t you? You need me to travel between the worlds!”

  She laughed. “Idiot! The power to travel lies in the ring. Trust a fool Outlander to make that mistake. If only you could tap the power of your egos! At any rate, what makes you think my interest in the ring is the same as Keemon’s?” She came over to Bowman. “My interest is to ensure the infernal thing goes back where it came from! After I’ve made use of it, that is.”

  Bowman straightened, nodding, piecing it together. “Of course, I am an idiot! How could I be so blind? That’s why Keemon brought Caylen here. She must have let him in on its secret, for whatever reason. And that’s why you wanted me. You knew I had the ring, and that ring is the only thing that threatens your power in Kasina Nabir, isn’t it, Unconnu?”

  “Kasina Nabir?” Unconnu threw her head back and laughed. “My ambitions extend well beyond there, I’m afraid.”

  “Such as Grealding, I assume,” said Rain Dog bitterly.

  “Yes, exactly. The one place that holds me out, with that Mirror! But the Ring of Return, you see, allows those wearing it to enter Grealding, and any who are connected to the ring-wearer as well. That’s how Keemon got past the Mirror Guard.” She purred at Bowman. “Do you see now, my sweet little idiot Outlander?”

  Bowman felt sick. “So, it was me.”

  “Yes, well, you and Keemon. You’d make quite a pair, I’ll be glad to be rid of you both. And that’s what I intend doing now.” she said, pointing to the bright passage.

  ***

  Chapter 29

  The Ring Of Return

  She walked up smiling.

  “You came.”

  “Yes. With company,” he said, dropping his things to embrace her. She looked behind him and smiled at her Rory brother. When her gaze came round to Unconnu they looked at one another with the expressionless gaze of someone who has been long condemned.

  Bowman stepped to one side of Caylen to observe the Soul Gate. Someone had placed sunrock torches either side of the bank Oyen and he had knelt on, a seeming lifetime ago. They gave the usual murky light of such brands, but somehow managed to illuminate the whole cavern. More sorcery, thought Bowman. A canoe bobbed in the circulating current by the water's edge, its mooring rope around a small rock. Over by the wall stood Keemon, index finger hammer-drilling the deafened ear nearest the now silent Soul Gate.

  Bowman nodded in the direction of the Vortex. “Why can't I hear it?” he said to Caylen. The Soul Gate turned and churned and whorled as usual. He could feel the cold of the place and sense its pulsing power coming through his feet; he was already soaked with its icy vapour. But the Thing itself was silenced, had been for the last few minutes of their journey here. No howling torment battered Bowman’s ears this time, and he could hear Caylen speak, plain as in a kitchen table conversation.

  Unconnu came forward and looked at Bowman. “I silenced the Gate.” She exuded pride as she said this, though the effort of fighting the mountain evidently drained her; her face was a tight mask of struggle. She turned to Caylen and went on quickly. “You have something I want, girl.” She pointed to the ring on Caylen’s finger. “Give it up!”

  Bowman stepped before Caylen, but she, in turn, slithered around him and put a restraining hand against his chest. “No, it’s alright, John,” she said and addressed Unconnu. “It’s not yours to demand, only mine to give.”

  “Oh really?” the crone guffawed. “Then give, by all means!”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you need persuading.” Unconnu extended her left hand out to the side of her body, palm up. A flame appeared, that quickly grew to a furnace blast extending several feet above her hand. She smiled placidly, like some madonna-figure about to bestow a blessing. Then she flung the flame at Rain Dog.

  It flew towards him, flaring out sheets that grew and wrapped back into the steadily expanding centre. At first Rain Dog froze like someone who has turned around to see a wall of water bearing down on them. As it reached him it stretched either side and overhead, then advanced slowly, forcing him back till it pinned him to the wall. He cowered under the searing heat.

  “Now, the choice is yours, my dear.” Unconnu crooned. “Your friend roasts, or you ‘give’ me the ring.”

  Caylen watched Rain Dog’s torment briefly, then took hold of the ring with her other hand and slid it past the knuckle.

  Sensing the exchange about to take place, Keemon yelled at her. “No, are you mad? Don’t give it to her. We’re all done for if she gets it!”

  Caylen glared at Unconnu. “Take it and go to Hell!” she said and threw the ring in the canoe.

  But Keemon acted first. Leaping into the canoe he reached down and grabbed the ring. It slipped easily on his right index finger.

  “Well look at that, it likes me!” Keemon strutted the narrow confines of the bobbing craft, holding the ring hand out in ostentatious examination.

  Unconnu ran towards him, shrieking. “Give me that, give me the ring now!”

  Keemon pointed his revolver at her and cocked it. “Not so fast, crone! This belongs to me, after all the work I’ve done getting it. And don’t try any more of your tricks. You’re well stretched as it is, and bullets fly faster than spells.”

  “Yes, let him have it!” Bowman said. He sprinted to the canoe and bent to slip the mooring rope free. Immediately the current started taking the little craft along the cavern’s periphery, but Bowman arrowed into the water and came up at its stern, kicking it out towards the Soul Gate.

  Keemon leant and placed the gun close to Bowman’s head and spoke. “Bowman, you idiot! You're a Convict; always have been, always will be, and I've got your number in my pocket.”

  Bowman's blurred close vision picked out hand, gun, the strangely trembling forearm. Only the ring shone clear at that range, as if it always stood at such a perfect distance and made its own image for the world. He dove under the canoe. Keemon fired, cursed, cocked the weapon and craned over the edge. “Where the fuck are you, Convict?” he muttered.

  For stretched seconds Caylen watched the water. Then she let her breath go
as she saw Bowman’s head come up, under the prow. As the canoe swung behind the Soul Gate’s black-mist funnel she saw Keemon manoeuvering to take aim again. She went to move past Unconnu to the water’s edge, to scream a warning to Bowman, but froze when a voice behind her said, “Step aside, little sister!”

  The voice was attached to footsteps, the light, ‘sish - sish’ footsteps of fringed Rory hunting boots in full stride. It went on, “a dead witch has no power to burn anything!”

  Caylen whirled as the shaft went past. Yalnita had snap-shot as she walked, and before Unconnu turned fully round to face her, she was dead, the arrow smashing ribs on both sides of her chest as it passed through, cleaving the heart. The crone crashed to her knees like a collapsing building, her mouth gaping, groaned the last of her life into the air, and fell face down on the wet floor.

  The fire around Rain Dog vanished. He lowered his arms, peered out at the scene like some small animal about to leave its burrow, then brushed away the smouldering pieces of his clothes.

  The cavern refilled with sound. As the canoe came past the shore, the reignited cacophony of the vortex tore at Keemon’s concentration, and he wavered in his aim. Before he could regain a balanced platform to fire from, Oyen had drawn on him. Keemon ducked and the shaft went by his head, so close he heard the fletching hiss above the din of the Soul Gate. Keemon fired four quick shots back, wayward shots, but they sent all the Rory scuttling for cover.

  Stuff this! the cop thought. I’ve got all I need here, on this hand. I just have to say the word and I’m back in Dyall’s Ford. Let’s see their arrows follow me there! First I’ll take care of this little jerk in the water, he took aim at Bowman, now trying to tow the canoe out towards the Soul Gate, and then I’m going Home! As he mentally intoned the word Home, Keemon’s eyes glazed. The hand that held both gun and ring swung upwards till it pointed at the violently spiralling core of the Soul Gate.

  Keemon stood frozen, a human signpost to the black water spout. Beneath his feet, he felt the canoe move in the direction indicated by his arm. With tremendous effort he managed to break the paralysis, but no worldly transportation occurred; he remained in the screaming cave.

  And the canoe accelerated on its path for the centre of the Soul Gate.

  Keemon’s face ran with sweat and sick beginnings of terror rolled in his stomach.

  Bowman felt the canoe stop fighting him. It moved in the direction he’d been pulling, ground over his chest and crunched his jaw aside, pushing his head under. It went over the top of him before he had time to think, and the mooring rope caught and wound about his wrist, reversing the roles of tower and towed. By the time he extricated himself, he’d gone far out; the Soul Gate towered over him like a tornado. Charged with a panic that iron-banded his musculature, he thrashed for the shore.

  As the current swept Bowman out of sight behind the spout, Caylen glimpsed the cop’s last moment: canoe and occupant shooting to the centre of the whirlpool, wide-eyed Keemon trying to rip the black ring off his hand.

  She looked back to see Bowman re-emerge from behind the mist, thrashing and failing, and she wanted to drown out all the screaming in her head with another scream. Rain Dog, Yalnita and her brother stood, looking helplessly to one another. With seconds to act, seconds before Bowman’s life was swept from hers forever, Caylen leapt into the water, waving frantically to the others to follow.

  With Keemon gone, Bowman faced his own fight with the maelstrom. No ordinary water this, and a greater foe than Keemon, one no trick could undo, nor strength of arm or purpose thwart its spiral will. As he surged and plunged within its black coils he felt things coming up from deeper down, un-guessable depths ascended to make their claim, colder currents that swirled around his feet and the chill, toothless gums of something sliding over ankles, biting him down.

  He fought on, saying over and over to himself, that you live as long as you remain within the struggle.

  But as he came by the bank and saw the chain the Rory had formed in the water - Oyen holding the shore, Yalnita next, and Caylen on its end, her arm stretched out to him - the black truth hit: there'd be at least an arm's gap between her seeking hand and his.

  His life replayed, a selected viewing. Scenes of muted rage, a loser's life in the lost topography of the Great Southern Land. Never let the bastards grind you down, he'd learnt in school's abusive chaos, and then an image of his father's face came, lined and whiskered, with its own topography of benign melanomas from a life of carefree exposure. An old soldier's face, saying that you can’t undo what’s done, saying you should never look behind, saying that each moment’s where life’s launched from.

  Saying if you must go down, go down, but by all means go down swinging.

  So he swung. Swung and punched and kicked against the water's will.

  Rain Dog saw the thrashing too, and, knowing from the solid shore that he alone could act to change things now, scrambled to where Bowman had dropped his meagre possessions when he’d greeted Caylen. I am not burnt, I am not crippled, he silently affirmed. Then he hopped down to the water’s edge and shouted to Caylen, and uttered a silent prayer, of all the shots you ever grant me, let this one be true. And then he threw.

  Coming by the place he'd seen Caylen for the last time, Bowman began to sink, gulping mouthfuls of the chill that burnt his throat. His arms had stopped stroking, stretched out for salvation he could only pray was there, and could in this extremity, meaningfully pray for. He prayed for human flesh to once more anchor him to life. And none came.

  Only bony fingers that slipped past his hand as one of the depth's demons emerged to lay its pincer claim. As it bit he fought back, bringing his other hand into the fray and twisting, but it followed where his arm went, never letting go.

  Until at length his free hand slid down to the vice-like claw around his wrist, and he recognized the timber-string apex of his foe. He rolled back to face the shore from where the line of Rory extended into the water; to the last link where Caylen held tight the gnarled limb of the stickbow that had saved him, twice now.

  ***

  A few night insects, moon a cracked-off plate sliver amongst the myriad stars.

  “She's gone to the moon circle,” said Oyen, and Bowman went up the mountain where the Rory pointed. He found her in a ring of sunrock fires and had to wait until she drew him in. All the mountain's bare crown had been pushed up there to bathe in silver light. They trampled flat the dried grass of Autumn's death and cast their clothes on it, went down and held each other's face for the wholeness only lovers can embrace in pairing.

  The cold mountain ground unnumbered bones beneath them; the ocean arced above them polished what was hers to keep, but they were content to lift the dark a little space and make the world over, join the dance.

  Together they became the nuzzling blindworm of love, his push her drawing tide, until they cancelled one another out, fusing for a moment in the quicksilver stream a shooting star entrails, and then they pulled the coverlet of night above their heads and slept.

  Funny how the touch of a human hand can absolve so much, thought Bowman as he drifted. Who cared if he didn't know who put what where? Who spattered the stars in their place, who painted that tree black against the sky on that hill line, who left the moon's pocked silver dish up there on the table of night? The Big Questions no longer really mattered, now that he'd been taken in by Love again.

  She'd said yes. Not so much in words, but when, in the cooling afternoon, after he’d slipped the hastily plaited grass ring on her hand, he’d said, I have to go, will you come with me? she’d smiled. To the bitter end? He’d laughed, and she smiled even wider, and there was light at the back of her dark eyes, like distant starlight glimmering, that answered for them both.

  ***

  Argilan found him stretched out on his back along a bench in the Feasting Hall, hands behind his head. No one else was there.

  “Greetings, John Bowman!” The old man came and sat on one of the tables, left his le
gs dangling. He smiled at the Outlander. “It’s a nice day for canoeing, I believe. I had one, left it somewhere, can’t remember where. Doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

  Bowman laughed. “Hello, Argilan, I wondered when you’d show. Here at the beginning, here at the end, huh? I was just taking a last look. This is the place I landed in with a broken wing, remember?”

  “Oh yes, how well I do!”

  “I’ve only just realised what memories are. They’re the things we construct meaning from, aren’t they? Even the ones we think we’ve forgotten, the ones we’ve conveniently put behind us; they’re what drive the story.”

  “The story goes on. Always.”

  Bowman smiled. “Even when we only want to rest a while. I’ve come to the end of this cave; now it’s time to go.”

  “As I said it would be, John. Now the Gate is opened.”

  “Yes. You found your ‘Key’ man, after all.”

  “Yes.”

  Bowman swung his legs over and stood. He held his left hand up to Argilan, pointing to the ring finger with his thumb.

  “Lost the ring again, I’m afraid!”

  Argilan snapped the outstretched hand up. “What you want is something that will always know where you are, even when your mind's off wandering.” He slipped the black ring on.

  Bowman blinked, lost for words. He looked at the black band closely, at the myriad points of light that seemed to glint in it, far off somewhere in the depths of its stone universe. He began to murmur something he hoped would be appropriate.

  “I…I thought I'd lost it.”

  “Oh, it was never lost. It went on a journey to do something, and now it has come home.”

  John Bowman’s eyes froze on the circlet of glimmerings. How signal stars had been for him, ever since the log truck smashed through the dream back in Dyall's Ford. The actual awakening came as an after-shock now, far along from the first impact. He stood somewhere and looked in front. There were stars in the tears. The world he'd made began to wash away. Behind him, he could sense light growing as the mountain thinned. Then the light itself dimmed as this dream finished melting, leaving just black night and its stars, so close now he felt kinship with them. One of the stars glowed warm like a lover’s smile, and he drew towards it. These and so many other things he wanted to tell Argilan, but there wasn’t really time for it; in fact he now realised there’d never really been any time at all. So he just said Thank You, and left Animarl without ever looking back.