Chapter Ten
He must have slept for a long time, because he woke up feeling better than before. His body was so cold he thought he might never feel warm again, but he knew exercise would soon cure that. He was also hungry enough that he thought he might try eating a rock soon, if nothing better showed up.
He clicked on the flashlight and immediately noticed that Rachel was in a different part of the cave than he remembered. She lay crumpled in an unnatural heap on the sand, not at all like any normal person would choose to sleep. But asleep she surely was, and that puzzled him. He crawled over to shake her awake.
“Wake up, Raych,” he said, and she only groaned.
Brian was uneasy. Rachel had been true to her word and never once complained about anything they’d had to do, no matter how dangerous or disgusting or difficult it might be. It wasn’t like her to start doing it now.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, anxiously.
“I think maybe I had a seizure, Brian,” she finally told him, her voice thick and heavy.
“You do?” he asked, stupidly.
“Yeah, I bit my tongue really bad, and this is always how it feels after it’s over. Being really bone tired like this, like my whole body’s made of lead,” she said dully.
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
“No, there’s really not. I knew it was coming, with no medicine. But you’re right, I need to get up. You may have to help me, though; let me lean on you when I need to,” she said.
He helped her struggle to her feet, and she seemed frail and weak in a way he’d never yet seen her. She had to grip his shoulder for support, just to stand.
“Can you make it?” he asked, worried.
“I’ve got to. I’ll be all right, I promise. Just don’t let me fall,” she told him.
In this way they staggered and stumbled along as best they could, and after a while she seemed to recover enough so she didn’t have to lean on him so much.
He was glad, but what if it happened again? He was afraid to mention it, for fear it might somehow make it happen. That was stupid, of course, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. The possibility hung like a black cloud over his head, weighing him down. But as bad as that was, he soon had something even worse to worry about.
Before long, he started to notice how weak the flashlight batteries were getting, and he knew it was only a matter of hours before they died completely.
That was such a horrible thought that he stopped in mid-stride and switched off the light completely.
“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.
“The light’s starting to get dim. We need to keep it off as much as we can,” he explained.
“Yeah, I guess. But we better hold hands if we’ve got to walk in the dark, so we don’t get lost,” she pointed out. Brian shrugged and grabbed her hand, doing his best to feel his way along the walls by touch. But he was haunted by the fear of missing a turn, or stepping blindly off the edge of some yawning pit that might open up at their feet at any time, or who-knew-what else. Therefore he compromised, using the light in brief spurts to let them see what was ahead, and then groping their way through the darkness until he thought they needed another glimpse. Now and then he checked the pointer, but there seemed to be no turns in this region.
After a while, he felt Rachel’s body suddenly go rigid as stone beside him, and before he could think to ask what was wrong she fell heavily to the floor like dead weight, her arms and legs thrashing violently while spit and snot flew everywhere. For a second he panicked, until he realized it had to be one of her seizures. Then he stood beside her helplessly, remembering what she’d said about waiting it out.
It wasn’t very long before the convulsion was over, and when he was sure she was finished, he wiped the foam and blood off her face with the cleanest part of his t-shirt that he could find. There was nothing else he could do for her.
A minute or two later her eyes opened for a moment, and then closed again as she seemed to settle into a deep sleep. Brian sat beside her and ate another pear while he waited, thinking darkly of what might happen to them if things kept getting worse. After an hour or two she woke, and when he switched on the light he noticed that she had tears in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, bending down beside her.
“I can’t go on anymore, Brian. I just can’t do it,” she said in a thick voice, and then started to sob uncontrollably. Brian awkwardly put his arms around her shoulders and shushed her like he might have done with Brandon, not knowing how else to comfort her.
“It’ll be all right,” he soothed, patting her back.
“No it won’t. You have to leave me here and go get somebody, or else bring me some water from that Fountain and then we’ll see if it can really do anything. But I can’t go any farther,” she said.
“You know I can’t leave you here,” he told her.
“Then you’ll die too,” she told him, with brutal directness.
“No I won’t. Nobody’s going to die, Raych. I know you can’t walk right now, but can you hold on to my back and let me carry you for a while?” he asked. The very thought was exhausting, and he was already bone tired. But he’d never admit it until he collapsed on the floor. Until then, he’d try to make sure they both made it out of there.
She considered the idea.
“Yeah, I guess I could probably do that. For a while,” she agreed.
“Then climb up,” he told her, squatting down so she could get on his back. She did so, painfully slowly, and he had to hunch forward a little bit so she wouldn’t slide off. She put her arms around his neck, and thus arranged piggy-back, they went on.
Several times, Brian was absolutely certain that he couldn’t possibly take a single more step, but somehow he always did. He had to stop and rest several times, but he wasn’t ready to give up yet.
He could feel Rachel’s body twitching and jerking now and then and he was afraid she might have another seizure at any moment, but it was still the dying flashlight that terrified him more than anything else. No matter how carefully he tried to conserve the batteries, the light grew steadily weaker, and at last it winked out completely, leaving them in utter darkness.
Brian was strangely unmoved by this, by the time it happened. Perhaps he’d finally blown every fuse in his fear circuits, or maybe he was simply too worn out and too close to despair to care anymore. It would have been easy at that moment to simply sit down on the floor beside Rachel, curl up in a ball, and wait for the end to come. But he found that somehow he couldn’t give up until the bitter end, if bitter was how it had to be. So he kept on doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, not willing to quit until he lacked the strength to keep going. The tunnel never divided anymore, although it twisted and turned repeatedly.
Rachel had two more seizures, one of them really bad, and each time he had to put her down on the floor of the cave and wait for her to revive enough to climb up on his back again. But each time she got weaker, and he could tell that after a few more episodes like that she wouldn’t have the strength even to hold on to him anymore. Even if she did, he didn’t know how much longer he could carry her. He was nearly at the end of his rope.
After a long time, a pale greenish glow began to filter into the cavern. It was so faint that he almost thought he was imagining it at first, and he wouldn’t have been able to see it at all if his eyes hadn’t been accustomed to pitch blackness for so long. But the light grew gradually stronger, until soon there was no mistaking it.
“I think there’s something up ahead,” he whispered to Rachel.
“Are we coming back outside?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe,” he said, doubtfully. It didn’t look like daylight, but what else could it be?
Still, it gave him hope, and along with that hope came a fresh surge of energy that he hadn’t known he possessed. He straightened up and hurried forward, and though he
staggered he didn’t fall.
At last he rounded a final twist in the passage and stepped out into another immense cavern, almost full of water except for the sandy white beach where he stood. The water itself was the source of the light he’d seen, for it was somehow lit up from below and seemed to glow a bright, clear, emerald green. Small ripples cast dancing light across the ceiling and across Brian’s face.
“What is this place?” Rachel whispered.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, staring at the emerald green water with wide eyes. Then he suddenly felt her shaking with laughter on his back.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, confused.
“You, that’s what. And me too, I guess, standing here staring at that pool of water like it’s something spooky. It’s just daylight, that’s all, reflecting up from the limestone on the bottom. There must be a cave that leads outside, somewhere down below the surface,” she explained.
“Yeah, I didn’t think of that,” he agreed, feeling foolish.
“It’s beautiful, though,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” he agreed heavily, thinking to himself that neither one of them was in any condition for another swim. He shuddered at the very idea.
He could hear the sound of water flowing somewhere not too awfully far away, and he walked a little farther out onto the sandy fringe of the pool so he could see better. As soon as he did, he immediately noticed a flowing fountain to the left built of jet-black rock, quite thoroughly out of place amongst the white limestone.
From the fountain there gushed forth a stream of cold water, clear as glass, which overflowed the top and soon lost itself in the emerald depths of the lake. That was the source of the splashing sound.
“Is that the Fountain?” Rachel asked, in a hushed voice. Brian glanced at the amulet, and found that the pointer aimed straight for the black stone.
“I think it might be,” he told her, hardly daring to believe it.
“I think I could stand for a little while now, if you put me down,” she told him, and he allowed her to get off his back. She was still unsteady, but the rest seemed to have done her good, and she was able to stand on her own two feet by leaning on Brian’s shoulder.
Neither of them said a word, but by mutual agreement they crept forward toward the Fountain together. And when they came near enough, they saw carven letters cut deep into the black rock, hard to make out until they got very close.
Then Brian was lost in wonder, for upon the stone lip of the basin were written these words:
The strong of heart shall drink of Me,
The life-giving Life, and the Beauty that makes beautiful.
Upon the edge of the Fountain there sat a golden cup, and Brian with trembling hand reached out to grasp it quickly, and dipped the cup in the gushing Fountain to fill it.
“Here, drink,” he said, and offered the cup to Rachel first.
“No, say a blessing first. It wouldn’t be right to just drink,” she said. He nodded, and after a moment of thought he spoke aloud.
“To God Most High, may our taste of this Fountain give you glory forever,” he said, holding the cup aloft with both hands. Then he lowered it and glanced at her, to see if he’d spoken too grandly and if she might laugh at him. It seemed the kind of solemn moment for which no less of a blessing would do, but he would have blushed bright red if she’d laughed. But she only nodded with perfect seriousness, so perhaps she felt the solemnity too.
She took the cup from him with hands that trembled, whether from illness and exhaustion or from awe, he knew not which. She closed her eyes and murmured something under her breath, then she lifted the cup to her lips and drank.
Nothing happened that he could see immediately, but she handed him the cup.
“Now you, Brian. Drink,” she told him.
He dipped the cup again into the Fountain, but then he hesitated for a moment with the cup full to brimming in his hand, remembering Miss Sadie’s warning. Did he love the world enough, and God enough, to live his life for nothing else, however long that might be? He wondered if anyone had ever stood before the Fountain like this, and then decided not to drink after all. The responsibility that came with it was a huge one.
Then he made his choice, and lifted the golden cup to his lips. The water was icy cold, as if it came indeed from the very heart of the earth, and he shivered as he drank deep, but he felt nothing else unusual. Just as with the amulet, there was nothing to tell him if it had worked or not. Nevertheless, he knelt down in that sacred place and gave thanks, and Rachel beside him.
When they were done with that, Brian reverently replaced the cup on the lip of the Fountain, and looked at Rachel.
“Do you feel any different?” he whispered, looking earnestly at her. Both of them were still filthy and exhausted, and then again the green light made everything look magical and half unreal, so that he couldn’t tell for certain if she looked different or not.
“I feel stronger now, almost like I could walk again if I needed to, but still very tired. What about you?” she asked. He considered the idea.
“I guess I don’t feel much different, but then I wasn’t sick to start with,” he finally admitted.
“So how can we tell for sure if it worked or not?” she asked.
“You can’t tell if your eyes are better, or your tongue?” he asked. She thought about this for a minute, and then slowly took her glasses off.
“I can see without my glasses,” she said wonderingly, and then broke into a huge grin.
“I think it worked, Raych,” he told her.
“Yeah, I think so too, but surely there’s some way we could tell about you,” she said. Brian thought about this, and then he smiled.
“I think I know a way. Miss Sadie told me we’d be beautiful and perfect after we drank the water, didn’t she? I have a scar from where I got cut with an axe pretty bad on my left foot one time, splitting wood. Maybe it’s gone now,” he suggested. He quickly stripped off his filthy left shoe and exposed the place. It was smooth and clean as a baby’s foot, with no trace of the scar at all.
He quickly checked other spots. . . the chicken pox scar on his elbow, the deep scratch on his knee from a thorn bush last fall; they were all gone.
“Do you have any scars?” he asked, looking up. She nodded.
“Yeah, I have one on my side, where I had my appendix taken out,” she agreed, lifting the edge of her shirt to show him the place.
It was gone, too.
They looked at each other with delight, and Rachel was the first one to break the spell.
“What do we do now?” she finally asked, and for some reason the question tickled him, though he couldn’t have said why.
“Go home, I guess,” he laughed. She smiled too.
“True. But how do we get out of here? I’m not sure we can find our way back the same way we came,” she pointed out.
“No, not without the pointer to show us the way,” he agreed.
“Well, does it show the way out?” she asked.
It was a good question, and Brian immediately looked at the amulet to see. In the back of his mind, he’d always had a vague hope that the pointer might perhaps swing around and lead them back out from the place of the Fountain again, once they’d found it and drunk from the water. But when he looked, he found that the back of the amulet was shut again, and nothing he could do would reopen it.
“I think we’re on our own now, Raych. I can’t get it open at all anymore,” he told her.
“I guess it’s done its job, now that we’re here. We’d never make it back through all those caves with no light, anyway, even if it did show us the way. Not to mention we’d have to cross the river again,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, I forgot about that. We’ll just have to think of something else,” he admitted.
Brian eyed the emerald green lake thoughtfully. There was definitely sunlight coming in from somewhere, so there had to
be a way out beneath the lake, if they were brave enough to look for it.
He still had vivid memories of their near-drowning in the river yesterday, and he wasn’t happy with the idea of going back in the water again so soon. He thought wryly to himself that he’d become awfully good at getting himself into situations where there was no way out except by doing something he hated.
“I think we could maybe get out through the lake,” he finally told her.
“Yeah, I was afraid you’d say that,” she agreed, with a humorless smile.
“I know; I don’t like it either. But there’s got to be a way out, down there. The light has to come in from somewhere, and it can’t be all that far or it wouldn’t be so bright,” he said, talking just as much for his own benefit as for hers.
“What if it’s too deep for us to swim, though?” she pointed out, and all he could do was shrug.
“Maybe it is, but do we have any other choice?” he asked.
“No, I guess we don’t,” she agreed.
“Okay, then, I tell you what. Let’s rest for a little while to get our strength back, maybe sleep a couple hours if we can. Then we’ll try it,” he suggested, and she nodded.
“All right, but at least let’s scrub some of this filth off, first. We’ve got water now,” she said, waving a hand at the lake.
“That’s a great idea,” he said.
So they went to the edge of the emerald lake, stripped off their shoes and socks, and left them in a pile on the beach. There was no way they could take them along when they left the cavern. If someone else ever found his way to the Fountain, then maybe he’d come across two pairs of filthy Nikes and wonder who’d left them behind.
Then they walked barefoot out into the lake. Brian had been braced for freezing cold water like what he’d felt in the underground river, and he was all the more ready to expect this after drinking the icy water from the Fountain, but it wasn’t so. The lake was no worse than cool, not even enough to make them shiver.
“At least it’s warm,” he commented.
“Yeah, at least. No current, either,” she agreed, and he knew she was thinking about the underground river, just like he’d been doing.
There was a wide shelf of limestone near the beach, and then a sudden drop-off about ten feet out from shore. Brian couldn’t tell how deep the water might be after that, for it was so crystal clear that it was hard to judge distances very well. Still, when he looked down he could see a jumble of white boulders, and vaguely make out the opening of a tunnel mouth through which reflected sunlight poured. There was no telling how far the tunnel itself might stretch.
But that could wait, and in the meantime, Brian and Rachel scrubbed themselves as clean as they could without soap. Then they sat down on the beach together and leaned their backs against the stone wall near the Fountain, quietly eating the last two pears while they rested. They both needed to get some strength back, before they tried a swim like that.
“I think you really do look different, Brian,” she commented after a while.
“Like how?” he asked. He’d been thinking the same thing about her, but it was hard to put his finger on what the difference might be.
“Well. . . I know it’ll sound weird to say it like this, but you’re beautiful. Perfect, like one of those statues of a Greek god a long time ago. I couldn’t tell what it was at first because the difference isn’t much, and the dirt and the bat crap didn’t help, but I’m sure, now,” she told him.
“And it took you this long to notice that?” he asked her jokingly, trying to make light of it.
“I always thought you looked like that, Brian. It’s just a little bit more, now,” she told him. She seemed perfectly serious, although he noticed her knotting her fingers together like she was nervous to be saying it.
Her words embarrassed him, and he couldn’t think of a good way to answer her. He suspected she was probably every bit as uncomfortable as he was, but unfortunately they couldn’t just drop the subject. If the change was real, then they needed to be sure.
He studied her face carefully, and decided she might be right. The difference was a subtle thing, hard to notice at first, but it was definitely there. He could remember, vaguely, that he’d once thought she was something less than beautiful. But now she was just. . . perfect, like she’d said. She reminded him of Sadie Jones’ roses, or one of his animals at Black Rock; flawless, with not a spot or a stain of any kind.
“You’re beautiful, too,” he finally told her, and she smiled like a girl who hasn’t heard such a thing very often.
“Do you think other people will notice, when we get back home?” she asked, and he shrugged.
“If we can tell the difference then I imagine other people will probably see it, too. But I don’t think it matters if they do. It’s not enough to make us look freaky or anything,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’ll just take some getting used to,” she agreed. They were silent for a while after that, thinking their own thoughts, until she spoke again.
“Brian?” she asked.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“Thank you for showing me this place. Even if we drown in the lake tomorrow, it was worth it, just to come here with you and see all this,” she told him.
“I think it was worth it, too,” he agreed, and reached out to clasp her hand. She squeezed back, and they said nothing more for a long time. Eventually they both slept.
When Brian woke, Rachel’s head was lying on his chest, and his face was buried in her hair. He could almost have sworn it was softer and thicker than he remembered, and he couldn’t help noticing the burnt spots from the fire and the sewer-smell from the bat cave were gone. He wondered what else the Fountain had done to them.
They must have been asleep for at least several hours; his body was rested enough to feel almost human again. He blinked his eyes and decided it was probably time to get moving.
“Wake up, Raych,” he whispered, shaking her. She took a deep breath and sat up.
“How long did we sleep?” she asked, yawning.
“I’m not sure, but I think I’m strong enough to swim, now. What about you?” he asked. She considered.
“Yeah, I’m up for it if you are,” she agreed, nodding.
They took a few minutes to stretch their arms and legs and get fully awake, and then they waded back into the green lake together, stopping at the edge of the drop-off. They both took several deep breaths, and then held the last one before they dived for the bottom.
Brian’s ears popped as he went down, and he could feel the pressure building up all around him as he swam deeper. It reminded him unpleasantly of the underground river, and he shoved the thought aside. If he started thinking about that too much, he’d panic for sure.
He opened his eyes so he could find the tunnel mouth, and quickly entered it. He was already beginning to feel the need to breathe, but he didn’t let himself think about that, either. He swam along the cavern wall, using handholds to pull himself along a little faster whenever he could. Then the cavern turned a corner, and he saw real, honest-to-goodness daylight streaming down from somewhere up ahead.
By the time they exited the cavern, Brian’s lungs were bursting for lack of air, and he looked up to see the surface far above his head. There were several other cavern mouths all around them which might have led almost anywhere. Rachel was close beside him, and together they rushed for the surface.
Just when he thought he couldn’t stand it even one more second, Brian’s head broke out into open air, and a second later Rachel’s popped up next to him a few feet away.
He took deep, gasping breaths of late afternoon air, treading water and unable to think of anything else except the blessed oxygen for a while. Only after he’d satisfied his body’s craving for breath did he glance around to see where in the world they might be.
They seemed to be in a lake, very small but deep and clear, with
steep cliffs all the way around, almost like a sinkhole. Of houses or boats or other traces of men, Brian saw nothing at all. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
“Where are we?” Rachel called to him.
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” he said.
The shore was close by, and as soon as Brian pulled himself out onto the rocks, he checked to make sure the amulet was still in his pocket. Then he looked at the cliff face above them. It was only about a hundred feet high, if that, but it might as well have been a thousand if they couldn’t find a way to climb it.
He noticed there were breaks and cracks in the limestone all over the place. They shouldn’t have a problem finding handholds, but the whole thing looked dangerously crumbly.
“I’m not sure we can climb that wall without a rope,” he said worriedly.
“Do we have a choice?” she asked.
“Well. . . no, not really. Maybe if we tried to climb it over there where the cliff rises right out of the water, then it might be a little bit safer. That way, we’d just fall back into the lake if we slipped,” he said, thoughtfully.
“That would hurt bad enough, if we were very high up,” she said.
“Yeah, but at least it wouldn’t break any bones and it wouldn’t kill us. Not like landing on these rocks,” he pointed out.
“Let’s try it, then,” she sighed.
They got back in the water and swam a short distance to reach the bottom of the almost sheer cliff. Then Brian reached up to grab hold of the lowest crack in the rock.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, and heaved himself up, scrambling to get a foothold. Almost immediately, the weak limestone broke off under his weight and he fell backwards into the water with a huge splash. He came up sputtering and coughing, and Rachel laughed.
“It’s not funny,” he told her, when he could talk.
“I’m sorry, Brian. You just looked silly, that’s all, falling backwards and grabbing air like that,” she said.
“No doubt. Nothing to do but try again,” he said, and moved toward the cliff again.
“Wait just a minute. I think the cliff leans backward a little bit, over there on the far side. I know it’s not much, but it might help some,” she told him, nodding her head toward the far shore.
Brian looked, and the cliff did in fact look a little less imposing over there. There was just enough slope to give them a decent chance of making it to the top without ropes. Of course, it also meant there was just enough slope to send them bouncing and rolling and smashing their skulls against rocks all the way back down to the water if they fell. Not long ago, Brian would never have dreamed of trying to climb such a thing. But then again, he’d been forced to do a lot of things lately that he never would have tried before.
He gazed at the steep slope uneasily, not liking the idea but unable to think of anything better.
“Let’s try it,” he shrugged, and took off swimming in that direction.
He reached it first, and grabbed hold of a rock just like he’d done before. This time he was able to pull himself up and cling to the stone without falling, and soon Rachel was up beside him.
“I think we can make it this time,” she said.
It was a ticklish business, and they both had to climb slowly and carefully, testing the holds to make sure they wouldn’t break. More than once they knocked loose stones that fell down into the water far below, and the higher they got, the scarier it looked.
But eventually Brian threw one hand over the top and grabbed a tree root to pull himself up the last few feet. He laid himself flat on his stomach and reached down to give Rachel a hand up, and for a few minutes they both sat there at the edge of the cliff, exhausted but happy.
“No wonder nobody ever finds this place. It looks just like any other sinkhole from up here; dime a dozen,” Rachel commented, looking down. The emerald-green water far below them was set like a jewel at the bottom of the limestone cavity, not betraying the slightest trace that it concealed anything unusual.
“Well. . . maybe that’s all it is, you know. Remember what Miss Sadie told us about how nobody ever finds the Fountain in the same place twice? It may not even be down there anymore,” he said. That was a strange and novel idea, but no sooner had he spoken the words than it already seemed like an indisputable fact.
“You really think so?” Rachel asked, raising one eyebrow.
“We’ll never know for sure unless we try to swim back down, but I really don’t think it matters much either way. We found it when we needed to, and if somebody else needs to find it one of these days then I doubt they’ll need any help from us,” he said.
“Suits me,” she agreed, still peering down into the green depths.
“Let’s go, then,” he finally said, and they both got up and walked together away from the cliff’s edge. Neither of them looked back.
“Do you have any idea where we are?” Rachel finally asked, after they’d walked for a little while.
“Nope, not a clue. I’m just headed west so we can follow the sun and not get lost,” he admitted, and she laughed.
“Sounds like we’re already lost, but hey, it’s a good enough plan for me,” she agreed with a shrug.
They walked for several hours without seeing a single soul, and several hours after dark, they suddenly stumbled across an old timber road. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a hundred years, but it had to go somewhere.
“That looks promising,” Rachel said, eyeing the road. Brian knew how she felt; his feet were sore from trudging barefoot through the woods for so long, and he was ready for some easier walking.
So they took to the road and kept walking, and eventually they passed an old wooden bridge where they found a place to crawl up underneath and spend what was left of the night. It was a rough bed, but they were both so tired by then that they couldn’t have cared less.