by E A Bagby
“Giels,” Meritus shouted without turning, “are you capturing our voices with your new device?”
What made him ask that? Does it have something to do with the mortal’s spirit inside it? Giels, forget why; just answer. Do something. “The recorder? It should be activated. Any reason?” My voice sounded flat.
“Later, I want the device to repeat back our conversations. Otherwise, I wouldn’t believe we’d been here.”
That’s what’s on his mind?
“Focus on driving, Meritus,” Alana said. “Why’d you do this, Erikal? What were you thinking?”
Good questions, Alana.
“I didn’t plan to,” he responded, his back still facing us. “I wanted to test the cab against the wind and go just a short way in. But somewhere, we lost control because of the cave’s power. We’re working on slowing down, but the wings are functioning abnormally.” He flapped a hand in the air as if portraying erratic wing blades.
Alana held the rim of the window and awkwardly squatted as though she were ready to lunge forward to escape. “How come we’re not falling?”
“We’re working on that too,” Erikal said.
“We’re not working on falling,” Meritus added, “but working on understanding why we’re not falling.”
Alana looked at me. “There are dead souls here. Might they catch us? Enter us? That’s what they do, isn’t it?”
I tried to search my mind for relevant lore, but I could not work out a complex thought. My head felt like a poorly assembled machine shooting sparks and emitting smoke. “I’m no shaman,” I said. But one fact from an arcane story did come to mind. My friends were more educated than most and undoubtedly knew of the beast, but I dared not remind them of the Guardian out of fear of summoning the demon.
“If there are dead souls here,” Erikal said, “then they let us in.”
Was Erikal mad? Why would he believe they let us in? And for what awful reason would they? Is he thinking they’re aware of the recorder’s message? My nerves suddenly screamed with fear, shocking my consciousness.
“Erikal,” I said, “it’s not supposed to be possible to enter the cave, even with the strongest vehicle. That’s clear from the Original Peoples’ stories.” My mind is working.
“Who forces the air out of the cave?”
“Salihandron,” I admitted. He cannot still believe Salihandron is helping us. No lore suggests that he would. “The god breathes through the cave to stop mortals from entering.”
“Do you recall the exact words in the stories that say the wind makes it impossible to enter the cave?” Erikal asked.
“Yes . . . ,” I said. “‘Salihandron saw to it that while alive, mortals could no longer return to the deep. He forever blows his wind through the exit to keep them out. . . .’ From Gift of the Gods—that’s it, word for word.”
“Yet, we’re here,” Cleo said. “Erikal made his vehicle just a little faster and stronger than others. Perhaps that’s exactly why Salihandron entrusted us with the soul.” Cleo had relaxed a little; she appeared apprehensive but calm.
Alana chewed a fingernail. “Then it did send the message. Oh, the Sun, this is more real than I had imagined.”
Whether our power to enter the cave came because of Salihandron’s guidance, I did not know, but what Cleo had said needed no discussion. It was undeniable. We were seeing a hidden world—us, five youths from the Deo.
“I suppose, then,” I said, “we’re telling a new story.” That offhand statement, more prescient than I could have imagined, born of disbelief at our current situation, hinted at a simmering desire, deep—very deep—within me.
The dramatic epics I recited were full of strife, war, suffering, and glory, from a time before the gods sent the mortal World into its peaceable balance. The stories chronicled the turbulent evolution that led to the World’s current, sustained state; a time when the mortals, spirits, demigods, and gods all struggled to find their purposes. Why must so much horror come before peace? Despite the awfulness, the lure of the heroes’ magnificence had always brought me into the tales. A part of me, extending back to my earliest memories, loved the stories not so much for their history, but from wanting to create some for myself.
Cleo looked at me as though something profound occurred to her. “Our own story?” Awe washed over her face.
“How do the stories describe the cave?” Alana said.
Her question tugged uncomfortably at me—it was one I hoped to avoid. The stories talk about chambers—some huge—twisting passages, dripping water, darkness, burning light, all of which had led me to think of the Underworld as a rocky cave like the one near the entrance. But I could not recall where the stories specified the chambers and passages as typical caverns, nor could I say that we had even reached the Underworld. It made me feel ignorant of the truth. Seeing the place, it made me think our entire tribe was ignorant.
I opened my mouth to say something. I did not know what, but Erikal shouted, “That’s it! The driving power isn’t coming from everywhere—as you’d expect underground. I have a test; I’ll ground-side left, that’ll tell us. Hold on! This is fantastic.”
Ground-side, or “taylayk” in our language, refers to aggressive banking of the vehicle, tilting one side a quarter rotation. Since I sat against the hull’s left wall, I braced for Alana and Cleo, who sat opposite, to tumble into me. They grabbed handholds. The vehicle tilted only a little, however, and leveled off.
“I’m getting it!” Erikal said to Meritus. “The power must be coming from the sides only.” The pair vigorously coordinated and worked at the controls. I did not understand the details of what they said.
“Hold on—we might spin!” Meritus shouted.
Instead of spinning, our bodies moved forward with a jolt. The three of us who sat used our palms and all of our strength to brace against the possibility of sliding.
We did not slide. The vehicle slowed gracefully.
“It’s working. Amazing!” Erikal said, turning to face the three of us. His eyes sparkled as they often did when he accomplished something new. Instead of worrying, he seemed excited.
“Friends, I’ve just seen something!” Cleo said. “It looked like an outline. A rectangle. On the wall, next to the big walkway.” She pointed towards the continuous platform on the right.
“A door,” Alana said, looking through the windows while clutching herself.
“Yes, maybe you’re right.” Cleo stretched her thin neck and saddled her cheek against the glass, attempting to look back at it. “We passed so quickly, I can’t say.”
“Exciting!” Meritus said. “A door. It makes perfect sense. This cave can’t go on forever with no way out.” Meritus possessed a keen disposition. Nothing shown to be true seemed unreasonable to him. He looked up at Erikal. “If you think of how fast we’ve been going, we’ve come a very long way. Maybe even twice as far as from the Deo to the Boromount Plateau.”
Could it be?
“How long have we travelled?” Cleo asked.
“About an hour?” Meritus said, facing us. He pulled a timepiece from a pocket. “Oh, right, no Sun.” Such devices require Sunlight to function. With an embarrassed smile, he shoved it back into his pocket.
“When we were going the fastest,” Cleo said, “we passed the ribs about once per heartbeat or two. They appear to be about five hundred feet apart. If we had a computer, we could figure out how far by—”
“Seven hundred and fifty miles,” Erikal interrupted while still handling the controls. “Which is certainly longer than the distance from the Deo to the plateau. The entire breadth of the world between the earth and sky may not be that far.”
Cleo raised her eyebrows and gestured to Erikal. “I forgot. We do have a computer.”
Meritus looked at the ceiling, perhaps attempting to do the calculation in his own mind. He shook his head as if giving up.
My best friends were usually confident, but their apparent comfort in our situation had me terrified
. “Turn around,” I said.
“My estimation was a quick guess,” Erikal said to me. “We can’t say where this cave goes, and maybe it doesn’t end, but, as you implied, we’re doing something no one has ever done since the time of the old stories. We’ll get back, but even if we don’t, can you believe that, right now, in this exact moment, we are in the Underworld? This is where we go after we die. And it seems to me, because of that, we’re safe—safer than in any place imaginable.”
Safe because it is where dead people live? What in the Sun did he mean?
A daunting thought arose in my mind: that we might be dead and not know it. That Salihandron did not place us on an errand but summoned our souls. Perhaps Erikal was somehow aware of the truth and was now preparing us with hints. My eyes darted around as if searching for evidence. When would we have died?
“Giels is right,” Alana said in a slow, deliberate tone. “Turn around. Take our situation seriously. The Underworld is—” She pointed through the forward windows and cried out. The cab had listed so far that we passed within feet of one of the structural ribs. Erikal and Meritus turned back to the forward view.
Erikal casually pushed a lever and tapped several buttons. The Silver Dare moved from the sidewall.
“Be careful!” Alana shouted. “Oh, the Sun!”
“We weren’t in danger,” Erikal said. “I knew our position.”
Erikal and Meritus brought the cab back to the cave’s center.
“I wonder how we might interpret the meaning of the door,” Cleo said.
“Meaning?” Meritus asked. “It probably means we could go through it—if we can open it.”
“Meritus, as Giels will tell you, there may be some meaning—”
“Why are you talking about the door?” Alana interrupted. “Turn around, as Giels said.”
Erikal again pivoted to face everyone. His eyes flashed. The flash was cold and piercing—almost frightening. “We should go see the door. It’ll be on our way back. And I’d like to see if I have that much control of the vehicle.”
“You can turn us back?” Alana said.
“I don’t think it’ll take much effort. After all, we slowed down. Going back will be the same thing as coming out here—or should be.”
“Should be?” Alana said. “And is the other option ‘we travel endlessly into the depths’?” A tear rolled down her cheek.
Alana turned to me. “Giels, is there supposed to be a door in the cave?”
Our oldest stories had many references to the separation between our world and the spirit world, and they usually included a door. A passage came to mind that I recited to distract myself as I held the side rail, white-knuckled:
The cave is a threshold from which all things human flow. Love, hate, always seek one another. They are moonlit branches of two trees curling around, never touching except for the wind, a temperamental thing. It blows strong, forever, filling or destroying us. The threshold’s door opened wide in its push. The branches swayed and broke. I closed it just enough to allow the leaves to dance.
“Lore that I’m familiar with is silent on whether there are doors in the Underworld,” I continued. “That’s a metaphor from the Talik Stories—Songs of the Wind Cave.”
“Timely,” Alana said. Her body shook. “Beautiful. Erikal, I see you are excited, and I’m excited, I think. I don’t know. Terrified, to be honest, but if you say we’re safe, then I’ll try to be excited also. If you decide to go look at the door, pass it quickly.”
The vehicle jolted leftward with a thump—as though we had been floating downstream and collided with a rock. We all screamed or shouted except for Erikal, who kept his focus. No visible obstacle had caused the bump.
We again lurched sideways. The cab turned a little and thumped again. It continued turning and thumping over and over until we faced the direction from which we had come.
Underscoring how far we had gone, the way back converged to a vanishing point, just like the outbound direction.
The vehicle’s wings, which had been still, started to move. First in unison, but then the wings’ chromadium facets separated and orchestrated themselves in a familiar wavelike pattern, glistening in the cab’s Sunfire light.
“We’re going backwards. Still outbound.” Erikal said to Meritus, “The cave has so much power. Changing momentum is tricky.” He contorted himself to work multiple controls at once. Cleo moved to the fore to assist. Erikal, Meritus, and Cleo’s voices were nearly absent of anxiety; instead, focus and precision colored their discussions.
How did they remain calm?
My body leaned back from the momentum as the cab slowed, then it straightened, and leaned back again so fast I had to catch myself.
“Here we go!” Meritus announced. “We’re accelerating. Going home!”
“Thank the Sun!” Alana said. “Get us out of here. Now!”
Cleo nodded. “Agreed.”
“Agreed,” I said. Worse than the obvious danger of driving there, beyond the Guardian, my growing awareness of the place’s bizarre incongruity with everything I believed strained my psyche. Alana stared at my hands. I had not realized they were shaking uncontrollably.
“Working on it,” Erikal said. “Promise.”
The wings continued their quiet, slow undulations, but the cab occasionally jolted.
Our speed increased. The bumping stopped. We drifted slightly to the left and down, slowly approaching the continuous flat ledge on the lower left of the tunnel.
“Is there something wrong with the landing controls?” Cleo asked.
Before any of us—especially Alana and I—could be roused into another panic, Erikal responded, “The cave is amazing. I think we can stop anywhere we want.” Meritus and Cleo followed Erikal’s lead with the controls.
We flew towards the horizontal plane more quickly.
“It’s there!” Alana said, pointing.
We all searched and soon saw what Alana saw. The door’s surface sat flush with the surrounding wall and matched its smooth, warm-grey finish.
“How did you spot that?” Meritus said.
Only the outline—the joint between the door and wall—a recessed handle, and a small, flush control panel on the left revealed its existence. We approached fast. The panel contained a strange assortment of buttons and a small glass rectangle.
“Stoppiiinng . . . ,” Meritus hummed. We hit the walking surface with a bang on the cab’s underside. The landing skis must have been retracted still. The ship jerked in a pivot and slid towards the precipice along the edge of the platform. The left side inclined up. I grabbed the handhold to keep from slipping. Erikal and Cleo stumbled into Alana and Meritus.
The Silver Dare slowly rolled sideways, their weight piling against the right wall helping it along. Through the right-side windows, the deep canyon at the bottom of the cave moved into view. To my horror, we rotated over the precipice.
7
Doors
“Are we falling off?” I shouted.
In a panic, I hastened to my feet. But with the carpeted floor at an angle and moist, I slipped. My hands scrambled for the handhold and missed. I slid to the others, exacerbating the ship’s roll towards the edge.
Screams filled the hull, including mine. Suddenly, the cab stopped.
Cleo lay on top of the pile as though reposed on cushions. She popped her head up above the sill. “We’re fine. A wing blade stopped us.” She let out a sigh. “But, Erikal, wing facets are damaged.” The others squirmed under her.
“Damn!” Erikal said, pushing himself up. Cleo slid onto Alana.
“Ow!”
Cleo rolled off of her. “Are you okay?”
Alana gave a slight nod and put a hand to her temple.
Cleo pulled herself up with one of the window muntins and stood next to Erikal. “We should look at the wings.”
Meritus leaped to his feet, one foot on the floor and the other on the wall. “We should test everything first.” He nodded towards the c
ontrols.
“No. Cleo’s right,” Erikal said, “we need to verify the wing movements match the cams while someone’s at the controls. It’s the only way; unless we feel like taking our chances.”
Although I understood little about the design of cabs, I knew that the shape of each of the unique blade-like wing facets was essential for proper flight. If one were in the wrong position or damaged, the cab would not fly correctly, if at all. The fall had disfigured two facets that hung the furthest over the precipice.
“I should have listened to my instincts,” Alana said to herself, her thick, wavy hair covering her face. “I should have stayed on the plateau, taking my chances with the boromounts!”
“Alana, let’s not assume the worst . . . yet,” Cleo said. Her voice quavered. “We may be fine.”
“If not, then we’re dead.” Alana added, as if in soliloquy, “A slow death. Starvation, as we hopelessly walk our way out of this cave, if the souls allow it. Do you recall that twisting first part? Even if we made it there, how would we climb through?” Alana clawed at her scalp. But something bold and commanding came through. Her arm and finger extended to point firmly outside. “And, we don’t know what’s out there. You need to figure this out!”
“You’re right—there could easily be human spirits floating about,” Meritus said. “Does anyone know an incantation?” He fluttered his fingers and smiled. His attempt at humor dumbfounded me.
“Cleo, Meritus, can you work the controls?” Erikal asked.
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“Why?” Meritus asked.
“I’m going out there.” Erikal pushed a lever, which emitted a clang indicating he had locked the wings. “I see no spirits.”
“Spirits are invisible,” Alana said.
“Does it matter?” Cleo said, her face screwed up a little. “Would the walls of a cab keep them out?”
With the ease of a spider ascending a tree, Erikal walked the inclined floor to the cab’s only exit.
