The Cave By Nova Martin
– 1 –
One famous travel article called it “The Best Cave You’ll Never See.” Another, less optimistic, simply called it “The Dark,” implying that when you descended, it wasn’t just your body disappearing, but your soul. The opening was high in the heart of the mountains, smooth, thin, and horizontal like a mail slot. Few could fit through; many tried and left disappointed, the cool whisper of the caverns calling its lament. The locals would not go near the entrance – and it was the only entrance that anyone knew of – saying the caves were full of malignant spirits.
But we knew better than that. We’d been twice, Mana, Iliza, Trish, and me, into the darkness that was not so cold after a few hours. In fact, it was comforting, the drip-drops of the stalactites like a lullaby. Whatever darkness was in the cave was mixed with an equal goodness, we knew, and it was perhaps the most spiritual experience any of us had had in our young lives.
That was what drew people, really. People claim they felt a body high just sitting still (though this is often explained away by the altitude). Some say they spoke to God, or felt an unnatural presence that gave them understanding. Some came out with a warped perception of time, sometimes taking up to five days more than they intended to emerge. Yet, no one was hurt or experienced anything more than thirst after spending a week in the caves.
Others say they came across treasure, gold, even though none of them had the mind to take it. Those people say they felt a peace that they couldn’t mar with material gain, and the supposed treasures never made it to the surface. I never saw anything of the sort, and I thought it was unlikely to exist. If I did stumble upon it, I’d like to think I’d snap out of my head long enough to realize gold could pay my rent for years to come.
But it was the promise of “higher understanding” that brought me to the entrance years before. We each had our reasons: Mana had always been fascinated by mysterious things; Trish was in school for geology and wanted to see the inside of this little-studied cave; and Iliza likely came for the challenge since she was known for her daring, if ill-advised, adventures.
Entering the cave was illegal then, though many tourists did so. We came to see the city, drink tequila, and take a short amateur spelunking trip. Instead of the afternoon we intended to spend in the cave, we spent two days. All of us were about 20 years old, four slender girls with high-gear metabolisms. We fit easily into the slot, our biggest challenge pulling our packs in after us. Not everyone could see the inside, we knew that, but in our heads we fit because we were special, not because we were young or because we had the right genetics for the job. To us, it was because we were chosen. When others said they could not go in because of their size, we said we were sad they couldn’t come…but we weren’t. We were glad to keep it to ourselves. We were special. The cave chose us.
****
Iliza had been my longtime childhood friend. She was perhaps the most adventurous and capable of us. Our first time, she had led the way through the darkness while the rest of us cowered behind her. Iliza, always the leader. She had always been the one to talk us down when we’re having a personal crisis, and also the one to tell us to get our shit together when we needed to hear it. I can still hear the echo of her in the caves, “We’re a team down here and there’s nothing we can’t handle together.” Somehow, the things she said often became undeniable truth. Like when she said we would feel calmer when we stopped trying to rely solely on our eyes and focus on our ears and touch. It was weird, it made no sense, but it worked, feeling around with sound and hands.
That first trip, after an hour or two in the cave, the rest of us had calmed a bit. We felt warmer. Reassured. Mesmerized. No one felt the pull more than Mana. Mana was always quiet, sensitive, and perceptive. She was the superstitious type, and we discounted the uneasiness that she felt rising in the dark. We kept turning to find her eyes unfocused, ear close to the rock. The feeling of belonging that Iliza and I both felt in the cave was different to her. Later, on our way back out, she was anxious – convinced that the cave was watching her. “We’re the ones watching you,” Iliza tried to say with a laugh, but it ended in a flat tone that got whisked away into a whisper into the caves behind us. It was a mystery that couldn’t be solved, and the more it evaded, the more paranoid she became.
Our second trip was short, and though Mana could have easily fit through the slot, she stayed behind. She told me later that she felt something when Iliza and I were inside. She said she felt it call to her, like a friend. She was mesmerized by it. Like a fire she wanted to get close to. Feel the warmth, letting it melt the pain and sadness. Letting it fill her up. And maybe consume her.
She didn’t trust herself to ever come out, she told me before the second excursion. I didn’t buy it. I thought she was too afraid to find her truth, too superstitious to let the feeling of peace wash over her.
Trish was quiet about her experience, though she was an adventurous hiker like myself. I met her in college, living next to one another during that exciting time when life was changing quickly. Trish was excessively positive, even about the things that didn’t matter. Like she was talking herself down from a ledge that wasn’t more than a step. She had a nervous nature, which was endearing and made me feel like I was taking care of her. Not that she needed us. She was overly prepared for all her adventures. She was the smartest one out of all of us, still pulling a 4.0 in her third year of college.
Trish came primarily for the wildlife. She was in school for geology, and it was her who suggested the trip. “You guys look for meaning or whatever, I’ll look for things that are actually there.” Mana scoffed but didn’t say anything. “What?” Trish said, unaware that spiritual meaning was a thing at all. “I just meant it’s a science trip for me, and something different for you.” She shrugged. I elbowed Mana and gave her a small humorous smile. Mana excused herself to go pull a tarot card about it.
****
Entering the cave was officially legal now, as we returned for our third trip, though the city mandated that visitors could not journey in alone. But no one listened when visiting the site was supposed to be illegal, so why would that change with this rule either? Not us. Because I was going it alone this time. Trish, with her hips, Mana, with her superstitions, and Iliza, now pregnant and showing, along with Iliza’s boyfriend, Sully, also with a protruding belly, would all be camping outside the cave waiting for my return.
The trek up the mountains took most of the morning. Pregnancy hadn’t slowed Iliza down a tick. She was an avid hiker and it seemed that she’d conditioned Sully as well. Sully was not one you’d expect to have stamina. Compared to the beautiful Iliza, he was dripping in mediocrity: white, grubby-bearded, supplying jokes here and there that never landed. The difference between the two of them was something he obviously felt insecure about, and she obviously didn’t notice at all.
We reached the site just before noon. Other hikers were there. Two guys were setting up a tent under the trees. Another tent sat down the trail a bit on a wide part of the path. Two women were packing up a third tent on the other side, nearest the opening. No one wanted to camp too close, for reasons I didn’t understand. Iliza chose a spot only a meter from the entrance. Mana gave me an uneasy look, but she said nothing. Sully dropped his pack and stretched showily as if he’d just reached the end of a warmup.
We rested here and set up camp. We had drinks with the guys camping across the way, who were waiting for a couple of buddies to return.
The guys were named Dave and Rey. They were waiting on Henry and Roberto who had gone in as soon as they’d gotten there that morning. “I’m waiting until tomorrow morning,” I said. “I want to get a good night’s sleep before I start. Get my head right.”
“This will do it,” said Rey, reaching into their cooler, handing us beers.
“What do you think of the way the locals don’t like the cave?” Trish asked, looking at Dave.
“What’s there to say? It’s something they don’t understand.”
“Yeah, but to make it illegal to go alone? Like who cares what other people do, right?”
“I wouldn’t go in alone,” said Rey, “Even if I could. I’d be afraid of doing something stupid and irrational. You felt like a head fog in there, too?”
“Definitely,” Mana said soberly, looking at the campfire darkly. Always the dramatic one, I thought.
“Maybe they’re just afraid people will get hurt and trapped,” Dave said. “There’s no other entrance. There’s no way they could get someone out of there if they needed equipment.”
Iliza and I exchanged long looks.
“You been in?” I asked to change the subject before Trish replied.
“Yeah, once,” Dave said. “When I was scrawny.” He shrugs his shoulders to flex. Trish laughed. I wonder if they’ll be a couple by the time I return. Rey is looking at me though, and I look away as if I don’t notice.
“I’ve been in too,” Rey says, still looking at me for a moment longer. “I can’t say I’m hiking all the way up here for Henry or Rob.”
He and Dave smile sheepishly.
That’s the nature of the cave. When you’ve been, it calls you back.
****
My bag was packed full. It was early, we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and Trish surreptitiously left an aluminum foil pouch of eggs and bacon for Rey and Dave, who had shamelessly told us they were living on jerky and granola bars. After we ate I donned a hardhat with a headlamp and put on my jacket even though it was pushing 85 degrees already.
“Be careful down there,” Mana said with wide brown eyes and hugged me earnestly.
Mana seemed resolute in staying back, timid, even, to camp here. I wondered if it was so smart for me to go alone after all. Would the warm feeling return to me? Would it then lead me too far down the earth to ever return? The idea was silly, but I knew a bit of that feeling in there, the one Mana was afraid of. Reality suspended in the absence of daylight.
Iliza looked me up and down.
“You good?”
“Yes, perfect,” I said.
“You’ve got fresh socks?”
“Yes.”
“Sleeping mat?”
“Yes.”
“Beanie?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I could go,” she pouted, with her lower lip out and rubbed her belly.
“Next time.”
Trish grabbed and held me close. “I wish I could go too,” she said, a twinge of embarrassment in her eyes.
Sully hugged me awkwardly, and said, “But you’re coming back pretty soon, right?”
I nodded, but I honestly didn’t know. It could be days, or like some travelers, it could be weeks. We hadn’t prepared for that possibility, but it sounded like a folk tale meant to scare off visitors. But something in the back of my mind wasn’t going to discount it.
There were a few rocks positioned under the slot to make a step up for leverage. I put my right leg in first, then turned to sit on the lip of the opening and swung my left leg in, holding myself up with my right arm.
I turned and gave them one more smile before I slid in, the darkness closing over my head.
The girls appeared at the slot and shone a light inside. The cave was big enough for me to walk hunched over. The air was at least 15 degrees cooler than on the outside, and the inside was pristine despite the number of travelers who had been here. The outside was scattered with litter, wear, and some graffiti, but the dark itself seemed to ward off such desecrations. The only offenders were little weeds pushing themselves through the rocks and vestiges of mud in rock depressions.
“Keeping right,” I said, reminding both them and myself that I knew the way.
“Give it our love,” Iliza said, giggling.
“Don’t wait up,” I said, and followed the wall as the floor slid downward. Here we go, I thought, as I shone the light on the narrow passage I would shimmy down into the earth.
-2-
The last trip was only Iliza and me. Mana, too spooked to go back in, and Trish, a little too blessed in the behind, camped outside. I felt guilty heading in without them, and I could tell by reading Iliza’s face that she did too. But we’d come all this way for a reason. It’d be pointless if we didn’t go in now.
Iliza had smirked at me challengingly as we geared up. The first day was uneventful. I thought of Mana and Trish bored outside of the entrance, maybe taking a hike here and there to stave off boredom. I asked them, after, what it was like to wait.
“I dreamed I was in there,” Mana said. “But instead of going in, I woke up out here and I was glad of it.” She smiled ruefully. And Trish said it was still worth it, just feeling near to this place, exploring the mountain, telling spooky campfire stories, watching others go in and out.
That was another one of the strange things about the cave. No matter how many people were in the cave, no one ever came across anyone other than their own companions. Trish told us of a loud couple who bickered the whole time setting up and getting in, and then they heard their echoes swallowed up as they descended, surely echoing downward in the caves. But we never saw or heard anyone. Nor did we feel that running into anyone else was a possibility. The inside made you feel alone, but in a way that made you want to be undisturbed and whole with yourself and your friends, never having to answer to anyone or anything in the world.
Iliza and I kept right, as we had the first time, eager to get there as soon as possible. We didn’t have long before we felt lost, finding a cave that looked strange and unfamiliar an hour in. Maybe caves changed faster than we knew. Maybe in the dark the shapes and the water move of their own accord, unwatched. But we found the place anyway, staying the course, and we immediately threw our things down and stripped to our underwear and jumped in, hand in hand.
****
The first hour of my climb has been uneventful. The rocks feel like they conform to my hands as I grip and push. My feet haven’t slipped once, even though the rocks are damp and muddy. My heart is pounding from exertion and I am grateful when I find a ledge I can comfortably sit on and not be hunched over or cramped. I hear water close by, behind rocks through which I intend to find a path. Not because I need water but because I know the waterfall. For lack of a better word. We have always stopped at the waterfall and wondered at the ceiling that doesn’t appear to end. Even with our lamps, the stalactites disappear into dark. The water, too, seems to come from the dark itself, but it comes from the wall, both above and below. Fissures spew and seep until it looks like a fountain of unending water.
Thinking about the place spurs me from my resting place. I need to see it. Now.
I have to crawl up into a shaft-like gap to my right that I can barely make out by my lamplight. Always to the right. I secure my boot on the wall to the right of the ledge, and then my other boot and hands to the other. I take my bag off and secure it to my waist with a rope. I hate the feeling of the dead weight hanging from me, but it’s the only way.
I grab a handhold just inside and leverage my footing to pull myself in. I get my hips over the curve of the rock. The dark tunnel ahead of me looks craggy and ominous, and I almost feel a hush roll over my ears and a tremble through my body. I’ll have to crawl on my hands and knees, carefully.
I get my knees into the space I brace myself awkwardly and begin to pull the rope up by hand, my bag misunderstanding the direction we’re going, trying to pull me back out the way I came.. It comes up in a few pulls and I wedge it in what little room I have between my legs, then scoot forward so it doesn’t fall back down.
It’s hard to catch my breath in the cramped position, so I push urgently to get out of it, scooting inch by inch, with barely room to use the tips of my toes to move myself forward. The tight crawlspace feels like a coffin, cold stone on all sides, and only enough room to shine my light forward, like the only part of me that exists are my arms and head.
A rock catches my shoulder hard. I’m sure it’ll bruise, and I have to twist sideways to squeeze by. The air feels like it is closing in on me. The smooth rock of the first gap is almost in my arm’s reach. I’m inching on my side toward it when my bag catches on the same rock, yoking me to a stop. I’m caught somewhere between mobility and immobility, the opening in sight, myself feeling a bit lightheaded, and leashed inside a crush of rock. I’m unable to see my bag to unhook it and dread flows through my chest. It is irrational being that I’ve been in such predicaments before, but maybe it’s the feeling of being alone for the first time, realizing if I get trapped in here, no one is behind me to help, no one is there to run and get help if I need it.
Just as I’m doubting myself, and if I should even be here, a sudden warmth flows through me. It starts at the base of my skull and spreads, fills my chest, stretching rapidly through my limbs, warms my numb fingers and toes. It is as if reassurance took physical form. I can take care of this. I can take care of myself. And the cave will take care of me. As it always has. Even in situations that may have been dangerous elsewhere, there was something about this place that didn’t seem to let that happen. No one had ever been lost or trapped in this cave, nor had anyone died, as far as we knew, which is very unusual for caves. They’re easy to get lost in. Or to die in.
I push myself backward to give the rope slack, and then try to pull forward again. It gets stuck again. I scoot back further to reach the bag with my foot and pull it toward the opposite side, pinning it with both my feet as I scoot forward again on my forearms. I reach and touch the smooth rock ahead of me in the gap, and even without being out of the crawlspace I feel like I can fill my lungs properly again and feel the strength returning to my limbs. I made it.
I sit up and pull my bag all the way through, reaching for my water this time. I turn off my lamp for a minute while I rest to save battery. I breathe, the warmth filling me with clarity. Confidence. The darkness can’t scare me now as it did five minutes earlier on the ledge, when I was too uncomfortable to take my eyes off my surroundings. The darkness feels like a soft bed where I can rest. Just calm. Breathing. Calm.
I remember what Iliza had told us on our first trip here. We could get through one obstacle at a time. If we keep our heads about us. I picture her in my mind’s eye, her headlamp’s warm glow on her face like she was born with a natural face spotlight and this was only a very useful landscape for it. She didn’t have to try to convince us. We knew we could do it. I didn’t know at the time that the advice would be useful, not then, but now, in solitary darkness, while she and Mana and Trish sat, possibly less than 200 feet of solid rock away.
I think of their giggles when I tell them this story later and Iliza teasing me for reaching for her face for strength. Mana’s dark, excited eyes. Trish’s fidgety anticipation. Hell, even Sully’s jovial, punctuated laugh. This journey is for all of us. It’s for me, especially, but I’m also doing it for them. Telling the cave we haven’t forgotten.
****
The city was full of fear for me. I didn’t mind the bustle, the noise, even the crime. Those things are expected. No, it’s the way you lose yourself. The way people think of you, and what you want them to think of you. It chips away at yourself, molding you into a space you weren’t sure you ever wanted to fit into. It wasn’t like squeezing into the rock. It was like being shaped by it. Rivulets carving paths into your skin, and you think it’s OK because that’s what others want, but you look down and you realize you can’t remember what your skin used to feel like without these carvings and discolorations and the cold. I couldn’t remember. I didn’t recognize myself. At least in caves there are no mirrors, and no expectations, and no chipping away. Only safety like a fox burrowed in the earth.
And then here I was reunited with the people who make me feel most at home, the most seen, and we go to this place that is hidden away and pure. Warmth, again, in my bones and in my soul. The one thing that shouldn’t be in a cave, but there it was, arms open. Here, I am never cut by prying eyes or the fear of failure. I only exist in the pursuit of movement and in that it doesn’t matter who I am, or what I am. The dark is a great equalizer. It gives you space to exist, more importantly, to be whole. When I move here, I feel myself, inside and out, the only thing that matters down here. The dark lets me be, even healing my skin, stitching together the carved places, growing it back, feeding my singular, core self like there was never anything else there but me.
-3-
I slide into the waterfall room, light on my feet. The floor is smooth, punctuated with small potholes of water, some fluttering rivulets too. The water disappears into cracks and tears in the rock. The room has about 10 feet of semi-flat footing in an oblong shape. At the opposite end is a passage I’ll take out of here, the right-most passage, though there are at least two openings to my left I could squeeze into if I wanted. But this wasn’t the trip for going off the beaten path.
I walk over to the wall and brush my fingertips through the water. It feels cold, but it doesn’t shoot up my arm or make me withdraw. It’s familiar. My fingers split the water momentarily before it finds itself again, reunites, undisturbed. To be able to explore this cave as water must be a wondrous thing, I think. To find everything possible, through tiny holes and breaks, never being stuck, never trapped. Not really.
Mana had said she heard whispers from the water when she touched it. I remember her suddenly retracting her touch, confusion in her eyes. She seemed to have thought about touching it again, her hand hovering close to the water, when she snatched it away again. “I feel like it’s trying to draw me into it,” she’d said.
“Oh, I know,” Trish had said earnestly, though, looking back, she’d only brought her own understanding to the cave, instead of listening to it, and I had the feeling she didn’t understand what Mana meant at all.
We’d emerged from the slot, dirty, scraped, exhilarated, slightly out of touch with the world around us, like the cave was a dream and we were still in it. None of us felt particularly thirsty or hungry, even though we hadn’t eaten in almost a full day. The food had run out hours earlier, and that was the real reason we felt the excursion was at an end.
We didn’t talk about the cave much after other than to say how much we needed to go back. Just to make sure it really was real. All of us were at a loss for words, other than very underwhelming, bland ones like “beautiful” and “magical.” And the strange spiritual feeling that we were at one with ourselves and each other. We could never put our finger on what it was that we loved about it, or why we were drawn back. Maybe that was the beauty of it all.
Turning from the waterfall I wedge through the next passage, looking back one last time at the wall and the water as it whispers its goodbye. I wave gently as though it can see me.
****
The journey has taken me downward. There was a while where I could simply shimmy sideways between rocks, able to still stand. It lasted longer than I had remembered, and I briefly thought maybe there had been an opening I’d missed. Then, one wall opened up and I remembered this discovery from before. I had an upward climb from there, at a 45 degree angle on broken boulders and scattered stone. The handholds and footholds were easy enough to manage, after some negotiation, with the complication of a bunch of spiders hanging out in the corners above my head. I jumped off the wall before I’d even realized it. I’m not afraid of spiders, but when you meet them in the dark, and in such large numbers, you rethink your affinity. They didn’t bother me, however, as I slid past.
I lost track of time and was jolted when I looked down at my watch and saw it was nearly 11 p.m. and I’d hardly eaten anything since breakfast. I made myself stop soon after when I found a big enough open space to roll out my sleeping pad.
It’s a safe-feeling room. The part where I have my bed is mostly dry and slightly raised from the other side of the floor. There are not many holes where spiders can crawl in, and the ceiling is a good ten feet, so I don’t have to stoop.
Once I get into my sleeping bag I turn off my headlamp. I don’t take it off right now. I have my bag flush against my side, for the comfort of knowing where it is.
There is no sound save for the echoing drips, intense like someone clicking away at a keyboard. My aching body is hungry for sleep and I drift off sooner than later.
****
Iliza had perched herself awkwardly on a boulder to adjust her shoe. “I think I’ve got a rock,” she said, twisting her hand into the heel awkwardly.
“It’s cool, I need to sit a sec anyway,” I said. It was late at night, according to my watch, my only true link to the world outside. Here, we could be in the scalding heat of midday and could think it was the depths of midnight. I pulled out my water and some nuts, throwing them hungrily into my mouth. “Gimme some,” Iliza said, shoe off and being shaken vigorously. She opened her mouth theatrically. I aimed poorly, the cashew bouncing off her ear. She kept her mouth open for me to keep trying. “You know this isn’t going to get us anywhere,” I said, as another hit her headlamp with a tick. “I don’t care,” she said.
“How about I just pour the bag into your mouth?”
“That’s fine too.”
“Really.” I gave her the bag, in feigned disgust. She returned her shoe to her foot and wiped her hands as clean as she could before opening it. She munched thoughtfully for a moment, as though I had just said something profound.
“You know,” she munched, “I feel bad,” she said, still chewing.
“That we left Mana and Trish?” I supplied.
“No.” She swallowed. “I feel bad that I don’t feel bad. Us. Here. Everything else fades to background noise.”
“I thought you felt bad,” I said. “When we were gearing up. You looked like it.”
“I did, actually.” She tossed the bag back to me and dusted her hands again. Her face shone with sweat under her headlamp. “But that’s the weird thing, right? I did care, and now I don’t. I have like this slight inkling, this nagging idea at the back of my mind that I’m forgetting something, and every now and then I remember. It’s them. It’s like losing cell service when we climb down. All that dead space in the rock.” Her eyes narrowed seriously. “Do you feel that?”
I worried at a stuck cashew in my back tooth for a moment, pretending to consider this. “I don’t know. I still feel pretty bad. But I don’t feel like we could’ve done anything else, you know? This is what we came for.”
“Exactly. And it’s like that’s all that my mind zeroes in on. I don’t think about anything else when I’m here. Not Mana or Trish or even Sully. Like I could lose myself in here. Really lose myself.”
“Isn’t that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know.”
We sat in silence for a moment and I giggled. “The dark is getting to you.”
“What?”
“It’s getting to you.”
“Oh.” She paused. “Yeah…” She trailed off as though her head went somewhere else, away from me too.
****
I wriggle my way up the stone. It’s off the path I mean to take but there is something so enticing about this narrow chamber above me, disappearing out of sight. I have been climbing for hours, but going up this vertical breach, now, I feel like I am floating, so easy this has become, until, like before, my bag catches and I realize I’ve turned a corner without meaning to. How many corners have I turned? The passage looks nothing like what I started. I only remembered climbing upward, but now, I am crawling on my belly again, on all fours. I shine my light around uneasily to try to find where I came from.
A shock runs through my body. At first I don’t know what it is. I’m stunned and immobile. And then something dreadful slices through me. The cavern is lit up. My eyes are painfully blinded. It is like someone turned on fluorescent lights, but there is no light source to be seen. There are no shadows, just stark, bright rock.
I blink hard, my body still frozen with terror. My heart is trampling. Someone, something, knows I’m here. The cave is deadly silent and I don’t recognize my surroundings. My bright, bright surroundings.
I wake with a start, my eyes searching wildly in the darkness. I’m gasping for air like the light on all sides had been as solid as the rock, crushing in. I flip on my headlamp quickly and take a moment to get my bearings. I try to slow my breathing but I can’t help but pant desperately. It was a dream, I tell myself. I’m where I camped last night. I’m safe.
But as I slow my breath to shallow, sucking gasps, I realize the place looks different. There’s water running close to my feet and stalactites. I don’t remember being here before. The place where I came in looks smaller than when I came in last night, and the mud on the rocks looks undisturbed. I feel like the air is thinning around me. How did I get here?
I sit up and convince myself that it was just the dream making me feel strange. This is a cave. Things don’t look the same in one direction as the other. I sit here, breathing heavily, for about 10 minutes. Or maybe an hour. I’m not sure. I finally decide I just need to get my wits together and everything will be fine. There’s no way I could be in a different place than yesterday. There’s no way a cave can light up. I hold onto that thought as I pull on my mud-scraped boots and overshirt and jacket. I set up my camp burner and make instant coffee and instant oats and I throw in a handful of nuts in the oats.
My legs are already sore, but the familiar feeling is welcome. A reassurance that my body is normal, grounded in reality. I am feeling better by the time I’ve eaten. I know this cave as well as anyone, and it knows me just as well. The thought is comforting as I remember the rush of steady calm I felt when I was stuck yesterday. It remembers me.
-4-
My camp is packed and I’m ready to head out. My destination is within a two-day hike, and if I climbed so late last night, I should be getting there before long.
On our first adventure we found the place we didn’t know we were looking for. The place we would look for every time after. The second day into that journey, the caves started opening up a bit. We went from crevices to caverns. The ceiling often lifted to 10 feet above our heads, and where there used to be cracks to shimmy through, now there were thick stalagmites. There was more water in these caverns. There were some pools, streams, and some, like the waterfall wall, sheets of barely visible water lighting along surfaces, making their own subtle music.
We’d been seeing some small slivers of light here and there, and a faint flush of daylight around the corner of the cavern. We assumed it was an exit. How far had we gone? No one else had found an exit from the slot caves, as far as we knew, yet here we were, barely two days into our journey and here was light.
We chattered gleefully as we trekked closer to the opening, hidden behind a craggy rock with a jagged edge. Mana went first, stopping her winded story sharply to tell us to be careful on the rock; she’d cut her hand. I went last, noticing the smudge of blood on it, at the same time warm air started to hit my face. I remember the blood having a surreal sheen to it. It caught my eye and I stopped and stared for a moment and it seemed like it moved under the shadows. It was enchanting, eerie. I felt a sudden flush of dread as it moved under my gaze.
The chatter had stopped and that jolted me from my trance. I looked into the drop ahead of me, seeing three sets of legs facing forward. I had jumped down and I remember my jaw opening stupidly. It was a vast, glittering cenote, the water a clear cerulean, maybe 40 feet across. There was another shore on the opposite end, as well as a few boulders and formations along the other edges, all with sparkling reflections sweeping along them.
The light came from above. Maybe 30 to 40 feet in the air was a round opening curtained with stringy vines reaching down toward the water. It wasn’t a large opening, as I had always seen with cenotes. It was hidden. I doubted anyone has been through it.
I heard the chatter of bugs, and if I strained, the faint rustling of leaves in the world above.
A flash caught the corner of my eye and I looked around to see Iliza walking slowly along the shore, taking photos with her cell phone.
I reached down to touch the water and found it to be cool, but not unpleasantly cold. The air in here was also warmer than the rest of the cave, and I intended to enjoy it. I walked back a moment, dropped my bag, and stripped to my underwear.
“What are you doing?” Mana said, sounding bothered.
“Calm your tits. I’m going for a swim.”
“Isn’t it cold?”
I waded in to my ankles and noticed the ground dropped off in front of me. “We’re going to find out.”
I plugged my nose and hopped in feet-first. The water was magical. My aching muscles felt alive in suspended movement. I felt the water’s caress in every crevice of my skin. Just as the light above opened to another world, the water, too, was its own universe. Alive, moving, welcoming.
No sound, my eyes closed, touching nothing but water. Even my lungs seemed to be disinterested in the air above. Let’s stay here, they said. I opened my eyes. Darkness was below. Beams of reaching, dancing light were around me. I, too, was one of them.
I don’t know how long I had been underwater; it felt like time had stood still. I reluctantly pushed to the surface, not wanting my friends to worry about me. But the feeling lingered as beads rolled down my head and I brushed water from my face. I laughed at my friends’ anxious faces, as though they feared I’d suddenly be pulled under by a sci-fi-esque creature. To think the water was dangerous was unimaginable. I didn’t ever want to leave.
After the girls finally decided to join in the swim, we spent hours there. We played and splashed and dunked our heads and closed our eyes so that the world around us disappeared except for the sound of cicadas, the jostling of water, and faint drippings echoing from further in the cave. When we got out, finally, we found that Iliza’s bag had gotten soaked. We slept by the cenote that night, only shivering slightly as we dried ourselves on a flat rock, and laid all her things out to dry. Later, she found out her memory chip had been ruined, and thus we had nothing to show of our discovery but our word.
Later on, we checked with the local hiking authority to try and find the cenote on a map. No such cenote has been recorded, the guide told us. It couldn’t be right, we had said. We’re experienced, but we’re not professional spelunkers. There’s no way no one had run into this before. But no one else we’d talked to about the caves had ever seen or heard of the cenote. Some skeptics told us we just saw the water cave, which we did, actually, see, but it was a different place altogether. The water was flowing, always, and it pooled in the floor, maybe 10 feet across, three feet deep at the most. The water was cold and shallow – very different from the comfortable, lit pool we swam in. The insinuation we’d made it up, or didn’t know what we were talking about, was insulting if not unnerving.
There, we could hear faint animal noises in the night above us. Bugs chirped and we heard the cry of an occasional coyote yipping at the moon. We couldn’t clearly see through the overgrown opening above us, but somehow looking up and seeing the slightest light from the full moon felt as good as if we were in the open desert looking at the stars. Complete darkness can be wearing, and the moonlight, however slight, invigorated us.
In the morning we swam again for hours before we reluctantly packed up. We’d hardly had any food for the rest of the day, and it would take at least a day to get back out – possibly more. We didn’t feel hungry though. I had never felt so alive. Exhausted. Dirty. Out of breath. Somewhat delirious from the underground world. But the cave never threatened us; it had offered us everything we needed and more.
-5-
This day has felt longer than the last. I am second-guessing myself many times before feeling the familiar wave of calm. I just have to keep going. Though I am sore, I feel steady and strong. Unease has been coming from the corners of my eyes. Small flashes, irksome movement – enough to catch my attention, but gone when I turn to it. The light is playing tricks on me, I decide after this happens the fourth time. We’d never encountered any animals in the caves, which, looking back, is unusual. In exploring other caves, we’ve seen lizards, spiders, even a couple of raccoons once. They weren’t abundant, but now that I think of it, I don’t remember seeing any of these animals in the slot caves.
But perhaps this is just a first. Maybe I am being followed by a cave-dwelling coati. I do have jerky in my bag, which might put off a smell enough for a coati to catch onto.
I blaze forth, trying to ignore the small catches in my peripheral. I find a tall opening I can climb up, although my instinct tells me that the way is forward through the passage I’ve been following. I look up again, hoping to see some sign as to where it might lead. There is no water on the rocks as far as I can see, so it wouldn’t be slippery. I feel curious. The opening is inviting. A slight challenge, but still more open than the way forward. At least I could stretch.
Oooooouuuuuuuup.
It feels like a breeze in my ear that sends a queer chill up my spine. I look around to try to locate the sound.
Oooouuuuuuppppp.
It’s little more than a whisper. Like the cave is telling me where to go. I put my hand on the rock above me and feel a slight warmth to it like the sound itself.
I feel a lightness. Like my body is floating upward, or my mind, without it. It is like I found a pocket, some catch, that is pulling me from that spot, yet I haven’t moved, but I see the path above me, closer, clearer than before, like I am exploring outside my body. Even my feet feel like they are lifting. Just like in my dream.
I panic. I step back and trip over my feet. I ruin the moment. The chill damp returns to me and I feel myself return to my body. Perhaps I’m more exhausted than I thought. I am probably drifting to sleep standing up. I shake my head and shiver. I can’t help but feel regret before I move forward in the passage, which feels darker and colder than before.
****
It is past midday and I have reached my first big cavern. There is a flowing stream that wends its way across the floor and exits out several yards away, where I will exit as well. This is where the caves get interesting. Big caverns make me feel small and big all at the same time. Small now because the rock has been shrugged away from my shoulders and I am no longer struggling to squeeze from one space to another. Big because I am the only one here. My sense of self expanding to fill up the space. This cavern is mine; the only one it whispers to. I bend down and touch the stream and let the water brush across my fingertips.
I am here.
Yes, I think, I am.
I am here.
It’s the same warm voice but it sounds like Mana in my ear.
I turn around quickly, wondering if I truly am going crazy. I turn my light around the room and no one is there.
“Mana?” I yell. “Mana are you here?”
Find me. The words blaze in my inner ear like a flame.
“Mana!”
The sound of my voice echoes back into my ears sharply, repeating again and again in the space that is now my whole self. “Where are you?”
My heart is pumping fast and my eyes press hard into the sides of the cave like I just need to see a little better. Her voice sounds sad and far away, and just when I’m worried she’s too far away to speak again she says,
I found you.
I picture her round brown eyes looking at me, waiting for an answer. Mana was the one who had been most scared, the most timid, superstitious, and yet she somehow braved the dark, out of everyone? It was like her soul had descended here with me, guiding me, but yet she felt more real, calling from just out of sight.
“Where are you?” I scream. I listen as hard as I’ve ever listened to try to hear her again. All I hear is a sob, which I quickly realize came from myself, and I have tears falling down my cheeks. No more voices come to me except my own, echoing over again and again.
I realize I’m on the ground, my knees digging into rock and my hands fully leaning into the little creek. The water is cold and my hands are numb. I sit there like this for a while. I start to wonder whether I didn’t fall asleep again. I didn’t remember kneeling down into the stream, after all. Nor do I remember leaving my bag across the room.
I slowly roll off my knees which have surely bruised badly by now. Blood rushes back to them as I sit back with my knees up, still in too much pain to unbend. I try to sit on my hands to warm them up too, but I manage to make it feel like I’m just sitting on ice and now my butt is cold as well. Maybe I’ll become frozen right here. I will stay in this cave for eternity, my knees bent, sitting on my hands, tear streaks down my cheeks, still listening for any voice but my own. They’ll find me – however long it’d take for someone else to make their way down here – and wonder at my state. The delirium and pain I’m in, frozen forever. Maybe they’ll pull my body out and set it at the opening to warn tourists, once and for all, to stay away.
But the thing is, I don’t want to leave. Cold, eerie, warm, inviting, this cave is magic. I’d rather be cold and stiff and scared in here than anywhere above. I let go of the fear that had crept into me. Your body needs something and it’s trying to tell you. You are fine, but you need food and water. You will die if you let yourself feel fear. The feeling1 washed over me again, my hands still cold, but my chest loosening and the pain in my knees sharper instead of radiating and frozen.
I retrieve my bag after I stumble to my feet. I find the jerky and tear the bag open. I hardly taste it. I open my water and find it empty. I finish it and then scoot back to the stream and let it fill my canister. The water tastes a little dirty, but it’s cold and fresh, so I drink it.
I sit for a few more minutes to try to regain my strength. I start to feel better and allow myself to feel excited about seeing the cenote again. Everything will be right when I get there. If I keep going I might make it by nighttime and I can camp next to it like we had before. Hurry, something says, and this time I think it’s me in my own head. You’ll make it in time.
****
Iliza followed me down the rocky, narrow path into the bigger cavern, just a few hundred yards from where Mana had cut her hand last time. We were tired after trekking for a full day and a half, hardly stopping for a few hours to sleep early that morning. We stopped in a room with deep rivets in the floor sloping into tall cracks in the wall like each was the others’ shadow. “I need water…” Iliza said, hand absentmindedly wiping her forehead, and then, “Ew,” and rubbed off the mud with her sleeve, leaving smudgy marks.
“I think we’re close,” I said, pulling out my water too, reluctant to stop.
“Are you nervous?” she said. I realized in that moment that she was.
“A little,” I said, just to make her feel better. “But a little relieved too.”
“What we came here for…” she said absentmindedly as she swigged her water and then slipped it back in her bag.
It was as beautiful as we remembered, even more so with some rogue viney flowers in bloom along the ceiling and the edges of the pool.
We were drunk on the cave. Whatever unsettling feelings we had before were washed away by the water, intoxicating, making everything else a blur – everything. The journey, Mana and Trish, the city, the responsibilities, the failures, the heartaches, and the insecurities. There was only us and the cocoon of blue and grey.
We laid out afterward, naked, giggling, imbibing whatever sparse sunlight reached our skin.
And that was the last thing I remembered. I didn’t remember getting up, putting my clothes back on, packing up, or if we even camped again. The next thing I remember is hiking down the mountain with the others, sadly wishing we could stay longer. I asked Iliza if she remembered the hike back, and she said, “Of course, why wouldn’t I?” And I was afraid she’d think I was crazy so I didn’t say anything else about it. I didn’t even know how many days we were gone.
-6-
Instead of strolling through the caverns as we had in the past, I walk fast, powering through our previous path and only pausing briefly to make sure to drink water and nibble on some jerky. I am damp and shivering for some reason. It feels more imperative than ever to get to my destination.
The thought of going back out to my friends is distant. It isn’t really important except that I don’t want them to worry, but that’s the most of it. I don’t have an internal need to leave. I could live here forever if I want.
At last, the final cave. I’m nearly crying tears of joy. I’ve trekked for three hours, maybe more. My body aches to be free. Every part of me has wanted to get here so badly. I feel like the stalactites are reaching down from above to greet me. Their drips caressing my face to welcome me back like a grandmother getting a closer look at how you’ve changed. My light skitters about on different wet surfaces like the floor itself is ablaze. I see another movement at the corner of my eye and I lock onto the spot involuntarily. Another shimmering spot. Different from the others though. It is nearly iridescent, but darker at the same time. It is on a jagged rock about 50 feet away.
I suddenly feel dizzy. I forget my mission completely in that instant and am drawn only to this spot. I climb over rocks and around stalagmites to get there – the light glowing faintly from behind it. This is the spot. But how could it be?
I crawl up to it on my hands and knees. Dark red, moving, alive. On a particularly sharp rock at the opening. It was the same as the first time I saw it. The blood glistening and carrying an altogether unearthly quality. Not only that, but there was more blood now. It hadn’t dried. It hadn’t scraped off. It had morphed and grown to claim the rock. I feel an inexplicable need to touch it, just to see if it is real. Maybe I could somehow take a sample and send it to a lab. Maybe it was some sort of fungi that has preserved it, changed it. The surface shimmers menacingly, but I can’t help but touch it.
I reach out. My middle two fingertips feel a searing pain as they touch first. It feels like a burn, but I pull my hand back and there’s a fresh cut sliced across them. I’m bleeding now too. The bright red wells up, dribbles over the tips of my fingers and, fascinated, I hold it over Mana’s blood. A drip falls and my bright red penetrates and disperses in the dark with a swirling sheen. Gone. I want to touch it again but I don’t.
Then I remember like the spark of steel on steel. The pool is just past these rocks. It will heal me, my instincts tell me, I know it. I push, crawl past the rock, scraping my knees again, smudging blood everywhere, still seeping from my fingers. Instead of the cenote, I find myself in another crawlspace. It’s small and cramped, and doesn’t look like there’s light on the other side.
This wasn’t here before. But maybe there’d been a rockfall. I shimmy forward through the rocks, expecting to find an opening to the cenote. I come out from between the jagged, clawing rock to find another dark cavern. It looks similar to the ones past. I keep moving. Surely this will lead to it. Rockfalls just made the path different, I am certain. I explore the cavern to find another opening on the right side – always the right – and I had to squeeze through upright, using a foothold to push myself over a particularly tight space between the rock.
Another open cavern. No cenote.
“Is it really you?”
My head turns around mechanically and my light falls on Mana. Her eyes are wide and so is her smile.
I’m frozen. I wait for her to move lest I fall out of this dream.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Mana says. “I came in after you.”
“Why?” I croak.
“I changed my mind. I couldn’t let you go alone. I knew I’d find you.”
“You didn’t hear me at all? You didn’t call for me?” I said.
“I called for you, you heard me.”
Yeah, but I thought I was imagining it. An uncontrollable shiver finds its way up my spine.
“Well, we’re here now,” I say though I don’t trust her voice because it’s the same as the cave’s. It has changed her like it is changing me. It’s making me angry to think she is real because it doesn’t make sense. I believe her. I want to run. I want to trust her. She’s standing in front of me, her hair undone and messy, her hands and knees dirty from climbing, the same shirt she was wearing when I left them.
It doesn’t make any sense to see her like this. She wouldn’t come by herself. She was scared of the place. But she didn’t look scared now. She stands, casual as you please, as though she just wandered into her bedroom instead of an underground cavern. But she seems relieved to see me. What sense would it make if I saw my best friend in the depths of a cave and didn’t bring her back with me? I push past my doubt and pull her into a hug.
She is unusually warm and her body feels frail against me.
“Are you OK?” I ask.
“I’m fine. I just wanted to find you.”
“Where’s your bag?” I say. I’d just realized she was standing here with only a headlamp. She seems surprised by this too, at least momentarily.
“Oh, I left it in another cavern. I rushed over to find you and needed to unload it,” she says. I feel my eyebrows furrow as distrust bubbles again. I shove it aside.
“Ok. Let’s go get it.”
She leads me to a different opening than the one I’d come in and back to the room with the bloody rock. There is more undulating blood here than before.
“Mana, did you cut yourself again?”
“No.”
“But look at this!” I said. I pointed to the rock, menacing as an evil grin.
“Yeah, I cut myself in the cave before, remember?”
“That was years ago! There’s no way it should be here. And it’s crazy weird. Look at it. It looks like it’s moving. It’s not normal.”
She shrugged her shoulders a little. It shocked me more than anything I’d seen or heard thus far. Mana was always looking for and running away from the supernatural. It was a weird fascination that was also paranoia. She would have been freaked out by it. But here she is, uninterested in the scientific anomaly of her own DNA right here in front of her.
“This doesn’t feel right,” I said. “And where’s the cenote?”
“What cenote?” Her eyes were wide with innocence.
“Don’t play with me. I’m already freaked out.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her expression is impassive and I badly want to shake her.
“Th- the cave! The one with the bright blue water and the hole in the ceiling and where we swam for hours when we were here before…the only reason I’m back here?”
“That’s not the only reason,” she says defensively, her arms crossed like I’d just insulted her somehow.
“I don’t get it. Why are you here?”
“For you.”
My brain feels like a series of rusty gears struggling to move. Telling me she’s not real. Telling me maybe I’m being unreasonable somehow. Or there’s something there tying all these thoughts together I’m not seeing.
“Where’s your bag?” I say.
She looked up again and swept her headlight around the cavern. “Mana,” I say, urgently. She says, “I – I don’t know.” Her eyes look slightly more focused as she turns around. She seems to be seeing me clearly for the first time, her brain lagging as much as mine.
“I thought you said it was here.”
“I don’t know.”
She struggles to remember. She puts her hand to her mouth in a quaint sort of confusion. My breath is shallow with impatience.
“And you’re sure you brought it in here?”
“I think so – “
She rubbed her hands together and brought them up to her mouth to warm them. I realize then that she is also underdressed. Is she hypothermic?
I take off my jacket and hand it to her. She has on a long-sleeve thermal and thick leggings. That’s about it.
“Thanks,” she says.
I look around again in the cavern again, starting to feel lightheaded again. No sign of her gear. No sign of the cenote.
A blind panic settles in my chest. We are lost. I whip my head around. I can’t even remember where we came into this cavern.
The voice comes back and tells me I am not lost, but this time it does not feel reassuring or remotely helpful. The cave has us lost in its labyrinth, I think, but we will find our way out. We always have.
“Come with me,” I say, holding out my hand for her to stay close. Her fingers feel frozen like they could break off in my grasp.
I look closely behind boulders and stalagmites and in dark corners. I feel like the temperature has dropped in the past few minutes, and not because of taking off my jacket. I see my breath fog in the air. I put my hand in the air in front of me while I breathe. It seems real enough. My cold nose says it’s real. I touch it and it’s numb.
Then, a drop falls on my hand. I wouldn’t have looked if my hand wasn’t already in front of my face. Drips happen all the time in caves. Drips of water. This isn’t water.
On my hand, it glistens. Swirling, dark, sinister. I can’t move. My brain locks up. It rolls down my hand and leaves a dark streak. My hand shakes as my breath is expelled in short, visible bursts.
“What’s wrong?” Mana asks. She moves around to get in front of me.
“Is that blood?”
“I don’t know,” she says. I’m shaking horribly and the cold air is sharp in my lungs. My stomach is queasy, bordering on actual pain.
It looks like blood.
Another drop hits the stone between our feet. I jump back and look up.
The stalactites are oozing it. Blood shimmers on the pillars, like a predator’s teeth. They’re all I can see until the ceiling disappears into darkness. Some drip in long slimy strings. There are pools starting to form. Its pace is quickening. The staccato beat of liquid on stone sounding more and more like a heavy rain. It has come for us.
Mana seems to have forgotten where she is again and she looks blankly at me as if I just said something she didn’t quite catch.
“We need to get out of here,” I breathed. Before, I was afraid of moving and the drops hitting me. Now, I am afraid if I stand still it will engulf me. I tug Mana forward, jumping over deep puddles and dodging sharp stalagmites. I wipe my headlight because it’s already getting covered, and even then, there’s so much blood falling that I can’t hardly tell where I’m going.
When I come to a halt in front of the corner where I expected to be an exit, Mana, for the first time, pulls me in a different direction. I follow, and duck under an overhang that covers a tight passage that goes into the ground and out of sight.
Mana scrambles in, lighter and faster than me with my pack. I have to remove it and pull it behind me, fumbling to tie it to my carabiner. I crawl in behind Mana, and I’m unable to catch my breath. No calming warmth washes over me. I’m cold to the bone, my skin stings, my lungs burn with effort as I listen to the inexplicable slaps of blood on stone.
We need to move, I think, or it’ll flood this passage. And we’ll drown in blood.
We start crawling, hoping this leads to a way out. I think I hear Mana sniffle a few times. “You OK?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she grunts, though I find little tear droplets on the rock as I move forward.
It feels like hours like this, crawling frantically, Mana making scared noises that suggest she’s somewhat grounded again, at least in her fear. I find myself dry heaving from time to time, the jerky apparently unwilling to make an appearance. Mana doesn’t stop to try and check on me and I’m grateful because all I care about is moving. Then Mana cries out.
“Here!” she says, scooting forward another 10 feet before sitting up. I see her headlamp reflect back to her off the rock above. It’s a small crevice but it looks like it might open up more. We shimmy upward, and sure enough, we come out at a cavern, dropping down into the cave from about 6 feet above. We pant and I drop my bag to the floor, then we drop, ourselves. I don’t know how long we were crawling. I feel exhausted. Mana pants on the ground beside me.
We sit, gasping for air, drenched in shining red. I’m acutely aware that it’s been in my mouth and ears, and under my fingernails. I wonder if it’s Mana’s, the thought churning my stomach again. Or mine. Because caves don’t bleed.
Mana bursts into tears unexpectedly. She makes a horrible, shrieking sob that chills my bones further. It disgusts me, but despite this, I force myself to move closer and pull her into my arms.
She continues to sob for a while. I feel too exhausted to ask why. Everything that has made me feel strange and confused the past several hours boils over inside of me. I don’t cry. It doesn’t do to waste water. But I want to. Really really want to. This place feels like a whole other planet than the cave we visited two years ago. It’s not friendly anymore.
Minutes pass. Maybe hours. I lost my watch somehow.
There is a trickle of water coming from one of the walls and we try to scrub the red off our arms and faces. It lingers in the crevices of our skin. The water is freezing, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Our clothes have it too, but it’s too cold to take them off. Mana just ties her hair up in a knot and leaves it, bloody. She looks wild. I must look wild too.
Mana tells me, her eyes distant, that she doesn’t remember going into the cave, but that she couldn’t stop thinking of me, dreaming of me and the cave.
“We were worried about you, you know. You’ve been too long.”
“I’ve only been two days.”
She turns her head slowly, mechanically, side to side.
“How long has it been?”
“Five days,” Mana says. “Maybe more.”
“That’s impossible.” I laugh. “I have enough food left for four more days.”
“Five.” She says with that odd, distant quality. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you in here.”
“No,” I say, “Look.” I scramble over to my pack and pull out my food supply. I rustle through the bags. Something hard feels lodged in my throat. The jerky is empty. The nuts, empty. Oats, empty. Protein bars, empty. Each one is empty. “What.” I frantically pull them out. “The.” And fling them onto the ground. “Fuck.” I scream it and howl because none of this makes sense. I must be losing my mind.
My head feels like someone is squeezing it. Am I dreaming? I know I wasn’t careless. I’m never careless. And I’ve only been here two days, not five. I couldn’t possibly go through all of it. I was just eating before I ran into Mana. And yet nothing came up when you retched, said a small, cold voice in my mind. I try to calm my breathing. What the fuck am I going to eat?
You don’t eat. You drink. The voice inside me responds to the other.
I should have drank the blood.
My vision is blurry. My breath comes in short punctuated gasps and the last thing I remember is Mana telling me I don’t need food anyway.
****
We wake up to black. I don’t want to turn my headlamp on. I am a creature of the cave. I am not something that journeyed in; I am something that was lost without.
The water trickles in perfect tinkling music and I slink to the wall and cup my hand against it awkwardly and sip from my palm. That doesn’t work well. I put my lips to the wall. At first I let it roll into my open mouth, then I get greedy and suck the stone. It gives for me. Water flows into me, as much as I want. I feel so alive. The cave is alive. I don’t know where I end and it begins. I don’t need the lamp to see anymore. I know the cave as if I designed it. Beautiful, meandering, sharp and jagged. They returned me. They returned all of us. Mana wakes with open eyes and questioning senses. She crawls on her toes and fingers to the wall and drinks. My pack is gone. It was never here. We always were.
