Chapter 9
Stalactites and Spears
Sarah shook her head and sat up. She tried to look around, but it was as wholly dark as a black hole in space. What? Why? Maybe the light from her helmet had shattered, when it had crashed against the rock on the side of the cliff. And maybe Matt’s had, too. Spikes of pain jabbed her just about everywhere, but her bones didn’t crunch as she tried to move. Nothing broken, at least. When she probed beneath her, she found out why. A soft cushion of what felt like mud, but was probably bat guano, layered the ground in this section of the cave. They must have stumbled into a roosting area. Thank goodness, or they both might have been seriously injured or killed.
“Matt,” she called anxiously. Matt groaned somewhere nearby. “Are you okay?”
“Okay?” he said groggily. “Define ‘okay.’”
“Alive?”
“Barely.”
“Able to speak?”
“Obviously.”
“Able to move?”
“Not so sure.”
Sarah crept towards the sound of his voice. She dusted the ground with her hands until she touched his torn and rumpled jacket. “Oh, there you are. Any broken bones?” She felt along his limbs until he swatted her away.
“Just bruised,” said Matt. He sat up slowly. “I guess you’re okay.”
“Yes,” said Sarah. “Lucky for us we landed on bat poop.”
“Oh, that’s what this is,” said Matt. “Never thought I’d say I was lucky I landed in a pile of poop.”
Sarah giggled. “Me neither.”
“Sarah!” her father called from above. “Sarah, Matt, are you okay?” A pencil of light penetrated the inky darkness over their heads. It revealed the dim outline of Matt minus his helmet. He must not have had it strapped on.
“Dad, I’m here.” Sarah waved. “We’re all right. We had a cushioned landing.”
“That’s a relief,” he called down with a sigh. “Guy says we can’t get you out from up here. We have to go around. What happened to your lights?”
“They must have broken.” She touched the top of her helmet and discovered cracked plastic.
Some mumbling trickled down from above. Her father yelled, “We’d throw you down a flashlight, but Guy thinks it will break, too. Can you hang tight until we get there?”
“Sure, Dad. We’re tough cookies.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “You scared me to death. I’ll be right there.” His voice faded. Sarah bit her lip as the light shrank and eventually blinked out. This left them in a total blackout.
“I hope it won’t take them long,” said Sarah.
“Not afraid, are you?” asked Matt.
“Me, afraid? Never.” She gulped.
He clasped her hand and squeezed. “You’re shivering.”
“Just the cold.”
Matt snuggled closer to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. It made her feel better but she couldn’t suppress fear creeping down her spine.
“Do you feel eyes on us?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“Hundreds of eyes?”
“It’s a bats’ nest, for goodness sake.”
Sarah chewed on her lip. “I guess they’re not vampire bats.”
“Your garden fruit variety.”
“Harmless, right?”
“Of course.”
She shivered again. “Well, I suppose we could search for your helmet. If the light still works, we’d be able to see something at least.”
“And explore some more, too.”
Sarah gave him a shove. “Aren’t you tired of exploring after falling off a cliff?”
“Never,” said Matt. “I guess I have a little of my dad’s blood in me, after all.”
They hunted around on their hands and knees, feeling rocks and guano and a trickling stream, but no helmet. Matt’s voice drew farther away, so Sarah hurried in his direction.
“Wait up,” she called.
“I’m not going anywhere. Ow!”
“What?” asked Sarah, trying to peer through a wall of black for some sign of danger.
“I don’t know. Something sharp.” Matt had stopped, but Sarah didn’t know it until she rammed into his back and sent him sprawling.
“Hey, watch out,” said Matt, sitting up and spitting out what could only be bat droppings. “I really didn’t want to eat this stuff.”
“Sorry,” said Sarah. “What was sharp?”
“Hold out your hand.”
She did and Matt placed a stick in her hand. She ran her other hand over it. There were soft feathers on one end and a sharp triangular point at the other. “Arrow?”
“I think so,” said Matt.
“Like in First Nations?”
“Well, they used to live here.”
A wind swept through the cave, chilling Sarah’s face. “I wonder where that wind came from?”
Matt didn’t answer.
“I mean, it’s strange, you know, so deep in a cave, to have such a strong wind.”
Matt stayed quiet.
“Matt?”
The silence was tomblike.
“Yoo-hoo.” Sarah reached out. She swirled her hand in empty space. Suddenly she shrank back as a light appeared in the dark cave—a pearly pale light that swelled into a gigantic sphere. It encased Matt. His eyes bulged; his mouth formed an oval that looked like a scream, although no sound escaped.
Then the silence snapped, like a tree hit by lightning. Wild chants and shrieks flooded the cave. A swarm of First Nations people emerged from the shadows, unleashing arrows into the sphere. This time she heard Matt screaming. The sound knifed into her heart. And there was blood, so much blood—
The bubble burst.
“Matt!” she cried, her voice echoing madly off the cavern walls.
“What?” he said.
“Are you okay?” She dropped the arrow. Desperately, she probed and prodded the soft earth until she found him. “Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?”
“No,” said Matt. “Are you nuts?”
“Don’t make fun of me, Matt,” she said. “You weren’t here two seconds ago. When you were, you were in that bubble, like the one in your dad’s lab. There were First Nations people everywhere. You were bleeding . . . all over. . . .”
Matt grabbed her arm even as she still frantically searched his body for penetrating wounds. “I’m okay,” he said. “Maybe you were dreaming.”
“It was no dream.”
“Then maybe you hit your head when you fell.”
“Matt, it was real. I saw it. I heard them.”
“There are no First Nations people in here, Sarah.” He gently released her arm.
Sarah fell silent. Finally she said what she’d held back since they’d met. “Matt, that bubble follows you around.”
“What?”
“A car passed right through you, and I saw it then. When we opened your father’s lab, it was there. And now, you were in it.”
“What the heck does that mean?”
“It means that you’re connected to your father’s invention. Whether it’s a spirit or your father himself, whether in the future, the past, or the present, it’s with you. Maybe even part of you. And it scares me. It scares me to death.”
Matt didn’t reply. At first Sarah was afraid he’d disappeared again. “Matt?”
“I’m still here. Do you think,” he said, taking a deep breath, “that my father’s protecting me?”
“I hope so. But what I saw today didn’t look like protection.”
“A warning, maybe? If he knows the past, maybe he knows the future.”
“The future? What does the future have to do with First Nations?”
“They’re still around. There’s reservations not too far from here.”
“Maybe some First Nations people are still around, but they’re not dressed in feathers and buckskin. They don’t carry bows and arrows.”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t get it, then
.”
“Neither do I,” said Sarah.
The gloom gave way to a piercing light. Sarah leaped backward, terrified it was a repeat episode of the bubble attack. She stumbled over some rocks and crashed to the ground.
“Sarah!” shouted her father. “Are you there?”
“Here, Dad,” she said, scrambling to her feet. She waved with one hand and shielded her eyes with the other, so she could see the advancing rescue party. Three human shapes with bobbing lights approached. She eagerly stepped forward, but flinched as something sharp jabbed into her foot.
“Ouch!”
She bent down. The arrow jutted from the sole of her boot. “Not this thing again.” She wrenched it out and whisked it up to the light. A droplet of blood trickled down the head.
“Sarah,” said her father as he swept into the cavern. “Sweetheart.”
She looked up, about to cast the arrow aside, when the third person in the rescue party stepped around Guy. It wasn’t Nadine. It was a black-braided, fur-wrapped member of the First Nations.
“Sarah, this is Chief Annawan. He’s an Algonquin . . .”
Her knees buckled. The world went black again.