“That’s characteristically self-important,” Mez growls.
“We should tell them everything, Sky,” Rumi says, hopping so he’s between panther and macaw. “There’s plenty of chance we might have overlooked something.”
Sky doesn’t reply. He just inclines his head, waiting for Rumi to start.
Mez settles in, sitting up, head upright and alert. With sunlight dawning outside, casting gray rays along the slippery stone floor, Gogi flounces over Mez, draping his body over her back. Though her expression is still stern, Mez begins purring loudly. It’s been well established how much she loves snuggling.
For his part, Rumi continues to bathe himself in algae and goop, while Sky takes up a position beside him, ready to add any details that Rumi misses.
Rumi looks at the loving friends before him. He wants to tell them everything, anything that will help save their rainforest world, but all the same he’s worried about where his story will lead, what secrets he’s about to reveal. Will they still look at him with such affection once his tale is finished? He can hope so, but no matter how prodigious his reasoning brain, it’s proved very inaccurate at predicting the ways of the heart.
Ah well. The only cure for his worry is to continue forward, to take the risk and tell his tale.
Rumi sips some puddle water, makes a big croak to clear his throat, then begins his story.
I should start with a confession: Sky and I seemed more confident than we really were when we left. I got on Sky’s back and we flew off, then landed out of sight so we could discuss what we were going to do.
This much we knew: If we wanted to keep our rainforest intact, we needed to destroy the Ant Queen. If we wanted to destroy the Ant Queen, we needed the lens. But seeking out a mysterious ancient lens with only the slimmest idea where it was, or if it still even existed, meant we had plenty to worry about.
All we knew was that the Cave of Riddles was in the far north, so that’s where we headed. Our flight took us over misty rolling mountains, the black waters of slow rivers of grass, copses of fig and ironwood and willow, wide swamps dotted with scrubby bushes. Much of it was healthy, but we also passed over zones where the Ant Queen’s minions had already worked their scheme, devouring whatever animals they came across and converting the remaining vegetation to fungus farms.
Sky and I shared theories about how the various regions of Caldera influenced one another, watching the riot of saplings that emerged from a fallen giant, tracking the bird populations as they shifted from macaws to pipers to herons. I won’t bore you guys with all that.
Eventually we came to a beach. That’s where you used the tail feather, Gogi, and we were able to communicate and catch up with everyone’s progress. Well, I couldn’t hear you, but at least you got to see where we were.
Sky and I knew some sort of boundary between ocean and land had to exist, and we had come up with all sorts of theories about what it would look like, but seeing one in person was truly fascinating! To look out at that expanse of water, as seemingly endless as the broadest jungle, only blue and deep, made us both feel so humble and small. What sorts of creatures might live in that water? How giant and how tiny? How peaceful and how aggressive?
Okay, I see you want me to get to the Cave of Riddles. Sorry, sorry, I’m hurrying!
We traveled as far north as we could, and there, just as the boto said we would, we found a tall cliff, its stones as yellow as a newly broken branch. I chirped for a while at the beauty of it.
Without any warning, Sky stepped right off the top of the cliff, and swooped down over the iron-gray waves before lifting back up toward the sky. At first I thought he just wanted to give us a close view of the ocean, but then I realized he was scanning the cliff for an opening. Sure enough, he found a cavity halfway up.
We managed the landing, Sky’s claws scraping on the stone, and fell into a sort of stunned silence. Above us were strange squiggly carvings, like the ones I’d spent the previous year studying on the blocks of the Ziggurat of the Sun and Moon. The two-legs had clearly been involved with this place, too. My theory is that the carved symbols are a written version of what the extinct two-legs spoke to one another.
I started examining as many as I could, seeing which might be similar to anything I had seen at the ruined temple. Some were images I thought I recognized, a sun or a crescent moon. One was a picture that showed a giant ant being attacked on the underside by two-legs wielding fiery sticks, trying to jab them between plates in the insect’s armor. The other carvings would take some time to decipher, if I could manage it at all. I wanted to stay until I figured out as many as I could, but Sky was worried about how much time we’d be wasting, with the lunar eclipse—and its opportunity for harnessing the magic of Caldera—coming ever nearer.
We had a debate, didn’t we, Sky? About whether to spend time preparing or race right in? We chose to race in.
It would prove to be a fateful choice.
At first we flew, but the Cave of Riddles was narrow and dark, the rock passageway twisting around unexpected turns, so Sky soon had to land. With his dayflyer eyes, he couldn’t make out enough detail of where we were heading. I went first, letting out chirps to let him know where I was. Sky walked on his claws. It’s not the most elegant way for a macaw to travel, and I could always hear where he was from the noisy skittering of rocks as I hopped along beside him.
At first the air was briny, and the ground was slick and salty from the sea mists. After a few minutes, though, we were deep enough into the cave that the ocean vapors no longer made it in, and instead the air was musty and dry, like we’d just buried our noses in a pile of gravel. The tunnel narrowed, with large chunks of stone jumbled along the floor, so that one of the two-legs, or even you, Mez, would have found it difficult to pass. But it was not so hard for a macaw and definitely not for a tree frog. Being puny has its advantages!
After its narrowest point, the tunnel opened into a broad and dimly lit chamber. There was a small glowing stone at the far end, but it didn’t give off enough light to fill the chamber. I couldn’t figure out the other light source, but then Sky jerked his beak toward the roof, pointing out that it was covered in translucent stone panels, ribboned with darker veins. It was amazing how the two-legs had carved the stone to such an incredible thinness that it could let light in from above.
This was no natural cave, that was for sure.
Even in the dusty air we could make out another tunnel that continued deeper into the mountain, again lit from above by the thinly carved stone. I hopped toward it, but then Sky nudged me: there were five more tunnels leading off to the center of the chamber, where there was a simple stone sphere on a pedestal.
The two-legs created the Cave of Riddles to prevent the unworthy from finding the magical lens. I figured that choosing the correct exit tunnel must be our first challenge.
Select the wrong one, and the best case would be that we wandered lost through the inner workings of the cliffs. The worst case? We’d meet our ends, killed by whatever horrific traps or guardians the two-legs had put in place.
We examined the tunnel entrances, but there was nothing to distinguish them. Then we examined the simple stone sphere. Around the circumference of the pedestal, Sky discovered small carvings, just visible in the dim light. Six stages of the moon, like this:
Something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t figure out what. I racked my brain for memories of the moon. I’m a frog—we’re very lunar focused, but even though I’ve spent so many long nights croaking up to the moon, I still couldn’t remember the order of the moon’s phases. I was so mad at myself. Why had I never thought to consider noting, night after night, how the moon changed?
We examined the small glowing stone and discovered that it was embedded in a track carved in the rock, running along the edge of the chamber. With some difficulty, Sky used his beak to push the glowing stone along the track, casting changing shadows around the room. Nothing happened even after he’d moved it a few f
eet, so rather than tire him out needlessly, we took a break to think.
While Sky and I were puzzling everything through, he observed something that proved useful: instead of thinking which image was right, we could ask ourselves which one was wrong. That was when I realized that, since the revolutions of the moon are regular, its phases should go in a reasonable order. One waxing crescent was in the wrong place. I see you all aren’t following. Just trust me, and check it out the next few times you’re looking at the moon!
But how to use that information?
Sky suddenly cawed out, and instructed me to wait by the entrance tunnel. He asked me to stare at the sphere, at the light that changed on it while he moved the glowing stone. I didn’t understand at first, but then I saw the shadows on the sphere’s surface move—they represented the phases of the moon!
Sky continued to adjust the light source, and he didn’t need to tell me what I was looking for. I urged him on until the shadow on the sphere was the waxing crescent. Then I told him to step back.
At first there was nothing, but then a grinding sound filled the chamber. The sphere quivered and lowered into the floor, leaving an opening in the center.
Sky and I investigated. The opening dropped a few feet before turning sharply into a sideways tunnel. We’d found our way forward.
Without sparing a moment to celebrate our victory, we passed along the dim tunnel. It brought us scrambling high into the cliffs only to descend again, until the air was cool and the light was nearly gone. Half the time I hopped along, and the other half Sky carried me on his back.
We were both suffering. Sky was nearly blinded, but my eyes could see better in the dark. The chill impacts amphibian blood quicker, though, and I was starting to feel worn down and sluggish by the time we reached our next challenge, the second of three.
We came to a column of open space. High above, as high as the tops of the highest tree, was another panel of thin stone that let in traces of light. The bottom was a pool of water, more still than any water I’ve ever seen. Not a single trickling stream disturbed its gleaming surface, not a single water skimmer danced on it, which was too bad—I’d started to feel a little hungry.
It took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the light, but once they did I noticed the walls. I thought that the stone merely had strange patterns on it, marbling like you sometimes see on the white pebbles by riverbanks. But it wasn’t just texture to the stone; it was decoration, and as tall as the tallest ironwood.
The pictures were of strange trees. At least that’s what I thought I was seeing. But I soon noticed that these structures were straighter than any tree can be, and perfectly squared off at the top. There were little boxes up and down them, hundreds, and in those boxes I could see two-legs going about their lives—eating, sleeping, talking. It was like a forest of artificial trees, all jumbled one on top of the other, that the two-legs lived in. Most unusual!
Sky and I studied the drawings as best we could in the dim light, trying to get as much information as possible. It was Sky who noticed, off to the side of the forest of rectangular trees, a trail leading to a mountain—a mountain that was giving off smoke. A volcano, like the one under Caldera, the one we’re trying to stop now! Perhaps the very same one. The trail led up to it, and there were strange humped animals, with circles at their bottoms instead of feet, traveling in and out of the mountain, right into the volcano. For what purpose, I had no idea. I still don’t.
There are two things we discovered in the drawings that I’m still puzzling through, even today. One is that there was a spot on the shallow edge of the mountain, below the tunnel with the humped animals, that was marked with an X. I don’t know why. No matter how much Sky and I examined it, we couldn’t find anything particularly special about that location.
Another was a large inset picture of what appeared to be a sort of fish egg. It was being squeezed by amorphous appendages so that it pouched out all over, ready to burst. Then, in the next picture over, another hand held a sharpened stick, and came in from the side to puncture the glob.
In the final picture, the contents of the fish egg spilled off to the side, the egg emptying. Even an egg-eating frog knows it’s cruel to puncture an egg and waste the contents—I still don’t know why the two-legs wanted to immortalize such barbarity.
Once we’d finished examining the drawings for as long as we dared, we turned our attention to the smooth gray surface of the pool at the bottom. I’d just asked Sky if he thought we should swim in when the water began to ripple, and a strange creature rose up from the surface. It was long and thin, like a snake, but had gills that flared behind its head, like a fish. It was only about twice as long as I am. Nothing I’d want to eat, but nothing that would want to eat me, either. So at least there was that.
It pivoted one way and then the next, and that’s when I realized that this fish had no eyes. Where there would have been eyes was a pink pulsating membrane. I don’t know how it was sensing the world, but it clearly knew that Sky and I were there. The strange creature dipped under the surface and stilled. Then it burst through the surface right in front of us, suddenly enough that I hopped right into the air, croaking my head off, and Sky squawked backward.
The long fish hovered its head over the water, then began to speak. It had a sort of voice I’ve never heard before: high-pitched but dignified, all the same. “You have made it this far, and are the first to do so in many years. I am Kalk, the current guardian of the inner challenge of the Cave of Riddles. My children and their children will serve as guardians when my time is done.”
“Hello, Kalk, nice to meet you,” I said. Sky made an awkward squawk at that, but I don’t know what I was supposed to have said.
You might not be surprised that Kalk didn’t say, “Nice to meet you” back. He just kept presenting the challenge. “Only those wise enough to use the lens responsibly will be allowed to pass to the next stage. Your challenge is a riddle. Answer it correctly, and I will ask you two more. Answer it incorrectly, and you will have failed and this chamber will flood, drowning you.”
I could have told Kalk that I was an amphibian and that it would take a while for me to drown, and that Sky could fly above the surface . . . but the strange fish would be proven right in the long term; we would eventually succumb. I would rather not inspire Kalk to prove he was right, since that would involve the two of us dying and everything. So instead I told him that I understood his words, and that we were ready.
“Only one of you at a time may respond to the riddles,” Kalk said. “Who will go first?”
Sky and I didn’t have to discuss for long. Riddles and trivia are pet interests of mine. I stepped forward.
“Here is your first question: What grows whenever it shortens?”
The very first riddle, and I was already stuck. I wanted to look back at Sky for help, but who knew what might happen if Kalk decided that we’d cheated. I started to do a structural analysis of the riddles themselves: they’d have to be solvable by any number of animals that might have approached, so it couldn’t be specific to any one time or place or environment. A salamander probably had as much chance as a monkey or a bird. So I decided the answers were probably abstract. I considered saying “tension,” but that didn’t really seem to fit.
That’s when I realized the perfect answer.
“Temper!” I said.
“Very good,” Kalk said. “You may proceed to the next platform.”
With a grinding sound, a stone rose from within the dark and forbidding pool of water. It was a flat and slimy surface, just above the water level. Sky and I hopped over to it. We were a quarter across the watery chasm now.
Kalk swam so he was directly in front of me. I could see right into his white-pink throat as he spoke. “Your second riddle is this: What grows as the body gets sick, finds fertile soil in sorrow, though age too will do the trick?”
“Wow. I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” I asked.
Kalk did. I tapped my li
ps. Grows in age and sorrow. Hmm.
This one was easier. I decided my answer. “Wisdom,” I said.
Kalk paused. Then he nodded. “Very good. You may proceed.”
Another grinding sound, and another platform raised. We made our way over. Halfway now!
“Here is your final riddle,” Kalk said. “What is the only cure for regret, easily sought, but hard to get?”
I held perfectly still. My throat pouch started to go in and out rapidly, a sure sign of panic. I’d expected these questions to be math problems or logic puzzles. But they were all about virtues. It made sense, I guess, since the two-legs that had set up the cave were trying to make sure the lens only ended up in honorable hands. I’m not nearly as confident about the emotional side of things, though, as you guys know. This question, especially: it felt like there was a blank space in my mind, where this bit of knowledge should easily lie. I started worrying what was wrong with me!
Kalk was perfectly patient. There was no time limit for these riddles. But I would only be able to answer once.
Sky’s feathers rustled as he shifted on the platform beside me. I looked down, and saw what had captured his attention: great spiny eels were arrowing through the water. They were like Kalk but much larger, wicked teeth extending from their mouths. If this platform dropped now, a few bites and it would all be over. He wouldn’t even need to drown us.
The eels made it even harder to think straight. As I panicked, I could feel poison exuding from my pores. “Don’t touch me,” I said to Sky.
“Why would I touch you?” Sky answered.
“I don’t know! Just don’t! Is the answer . . . is it . . .” I said. “Is it knowledge?”
Kalk paused. “You are incorrect.”
With a horrible grinding sound, the stone dropped toward the water. I tensed my legs, ready to make a desperate spring to safety. “Stop!” Sky squawked. “Let me try!”
Rumi's Riddle Page 2
