Helena woke up on the ground someplace very dark. For the first time in a long time she wasn’t cold, and she might’ve even been hot if she’d had a stitch of clothing on. She couldn’t see anything, but the smell of wet rock and dirt told her that she was in some kind of cavern.
Under normal circumstances her situation would be cause for panic, but the fact that she was warm and that she didn’t hear or smell Mr. Elephant Cage kept her calm. She’d been passed from monster to monster and stripped naked and left high up in a tree in a rainstorm and forced to eat raw fish, so any change in circumstances was welcome. Helena stretched out sleepily and waited for her eyes to adjust, but the more she strained to make out her surroundings the less she saw.
She sat up and reached out in the darkness, trying to get a sense of her surroundings by touch. She was sitting on a smooth stone surface, and there was a jagged rock wall behind her. “Hello?” She called out, more for herself than for anyone who might hear. The sound told her that the space wasn’t large.
She started to stand but hit her head. She crouched down and put one hand on the rocks behind her and moved along them, keeping low. She stumbled off the edge of the stone she’d been sleeping on and found that she could stand, and that she’d been on a sort of ledge in the wall. Slowly, she began moving, taking every step carefully and keeping one hand on the wall. She came down a steep grade, turned a corner and then stopped and peered into the darkness.
There was a faint cloud of bluish-green light hovering in the distance. It was softly undulating, becoming brighter and darker in places, and changing color very slightly over time. She stared at it, trying to make out what it was, and after awhile decided to get a closer look. As she continued along the wall, she could see a light underneath the cloud, and soon she saw that it wasn’t a cloud at all, but a reflection shining onto the rocks from a pool of water below.
Helena moved to the edge of the pool and looked down into its depths at a multitude of tiny luminous plankton. There were millions of dots of light all pulsing brighter and darker at irregular intervals. She got down on her knees and leaned over the pool to get a closer look at the mysterious creatures. The longer she watched, the more she became convinced that the lightening and darkening was a form of communication among them. She could trace a bright streak that would arc down deep across thousands of the creatures and spiral its way back to the surface. It was like nothing she’d ever seen. They were putting on a magic light show just for her.
She wanted to reach in and touch them, but when she put her hand into the ice-cold water the luminous plankton all retreated from it. Helena kept her hand still and little by little they came back and soon she was watching them swim around her fingers, as if exploring a new feature of their environment. Helena noticed that she could see more of the cavern now, and she thought her eyes were adjusting, but then she realized it was a shaft of sunlight that was streaming down onto the pool. The plankton all excitedly moved to the surface as if it were food coming down instead of light.
She was so transfixed by the sight that she didn’t notice that Rei had come into the cavern. She jumped when she felt his big hands lift her away from the water. She thought vaguely that she should’ve run when she had the chance, but she didn’t know the way out of the cave, and besides, she was naked. She could run away and live in the wilderness and eat crickets and search for help, but she wasn’t going to do it naked.
Rei took her into the cold, bright morning, exiting the cavern onto a rock precipice. He climbed down to some young woods where his brother Cal was waiting by a creek. He was sitting, leaning up against a tree, and Helena thought he looked very old with his slumped posture and grey hair. Rei put Helena down on the rocky shore of the creek in front of his brother. She looked from Cal to Rei, feeling the calm that comes with being in a hopeless situation. “See?” Rei said to his brother, “she doesn’t fear us.”
The cold bit into Helena’s skin after the warmth of the cavern. She crouched down and wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “The human is cold.” Cal said. He yawned and flared his nostrils at his brother. “It already polluted my warm chamber with its dreams, if it freezes to death in my wild it’ll bring bad luck.”
“But Cal, just wait until you see the little human speak.” Rei said. He reached down and nudged Helena, “go on, say something.” Helena just stared back at Rei, concentrating on keeping her mind blank so that no yeti words would escape by accident. “Please,” Rei said, “demonstrate your ability to speak our language to my brother. He doesn’t believe you can do it.”
Helena just stared at him, saying nothing. She squeezed herself tighter against the cold. Cal stood up and stretched out, looking at his brother with a mixture of annoyance and pity. “Your human fixation is just a way to avoid forming any real bonds with other yetis.” He said. “We’ve had this discussion before. It’s time that you found a mate and had a pup of your own instead of practicing on a little bald human. It’s not good for you or for the human. Do you think a mature female wants to spend time with an eccentric who lives among filthy animals? Obsession has made you blind to the fact that you’re embarrassing yourself.”
Rei leaned in and looked at Helena up close. “Speak!” He said. “Please little bird, say something -anything.” Helena just stared. Rei looked up at his brother. “I know how you feel about me, and about humans, but I’m telling you I’ve made an important discovery here. I just need time to prove it. I’ll adopt her with or without your consent, but I’d rather have it. It would cost you nothing to give.”
“You think having a brother like you is without cost? No, I’d never consent to such insanity.”
Rei picked up Helena and made a well-known yeti gesture that could be translated as ‘life is futile’ or some other, more profane human expressions. He walked until he was out of his brother’s wild and then he began to run.