Cave Beneath the Sea

by Edward Willett

  Major smiled. “We’ll follow the shore, thanks.”

  “Do you want to walk there now, or take the sub back?”

  “We’ll walk,” Major said. “To be sure we know the way.”

  “Well, you can’t really miss it.” Camus pointed up the steps. “Go up there, you’ll see the start of the path. It’s level and paved with crushed stone, and there are boardwalks that take you over some lovely tidal pools.”

  “How long a walk?”

  “About half an hour.”

  “So we’ll have a few hours at the hotel?” Felicia put in.

  Major glanced at her. “Why?”

  “There’s a pool,” Felicia said. “With a floating bar. And a cute bartender.”

  Camus laughed. “That’s Felipe. He’ll be happy to have the company, since there’s no one else at the resort.”

  “Very well,” Major said. “Come along, Felicia. Thank you, Mr. Camus.”

  He led his young charge up the stairs to the platform at the top. There was a small hut there, probably for equipment. The path to the hotel began with a railless boardwalk bridge, wet with spray, under which the stream tumbled into the darkness of the cave. On the other side, a signpost pointed up the hillside: “To Tanama Lake.” Lewis was already a hundred yards along the path, toiling upwards.

  Major watched him climb. He didn’t think that Wally and Ariane were still on the island. They would have left, gone somewhere out of easy reach, to plan. And he thought he knew what that plan had to be. They had seen how inaccessible the fourth shard was. Ariane could do nothing with salt water. They would scheme instead to somehow steal the shard from him after he had done whatever was necessary to retrieve it, as they had done once before, in Yellowknife. But they didn’t know that he knew that they knew he was here. He knew the precautions to take. They would not, could not succeed.

  And if things went well in Victoria...

  He smiled, then. The fourth shard was a prize, to be certain, and he would claim it: but it also made excellent bait for a trap. If – when – Wally and Ariane showed up, he would spring that trap, and put an end to this tiresome charade once and for all.

  He pulled out his smartphone. Felicia gave him a scornful look. “You don’t really think you’re going to get a signal out here, do you?”

  “Actually, I’m certain of it,” Major said. “Didn’t you read the welcome brochure in your room? You can use your phone anywhere. At ruinous expense, of course, but the people who come to private islands for vacations don’t usually care about the expense. And people like me, who rented the whole island, really don’t care.”

  “Dammit,” Felicia muttered. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have left mine in my room.”

  Major checked his email. Nothing yet from Victoria, but it was still early there. And they had six hours before low tide. Wally was smart: he’d have figured out that the best time for Major to try to retrieve the shard would be then. That was when Ariane and Wally would show up. And that would be when the trap would spring, if all went well.

  He tucked the phone back into his pocket. “Let’s hurry along, shall we?”

  But despite the pleasures awaiting her at the hotel, Felicia hesitated. “You’re sure you’re not worried about Wally and Ariane? You don’t want to stay here in case they turn up?”

  Again, Major felt a flash of approval. “Commendable thinking,” he said, “but I don’t think we have to worry about them for a while. And I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of your rendezvous with the floating bartender.” He indicated the path. “After you, milady.”

  Felicia actually grinned at that, and set off along the path to the resort.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lightning and Ice

  Some six hours after they had left Cacibajagua Island, Ariane and Wally returned, materializing in a fountain of spray at the edge of Lake Tanama just as they had the night before, but this time in daylight – though just barely: sunset was only an hour away and the sky remained overcast.

  They’d spent the intervening time in Cockburn Town on Grand Turk Island, a pleasant place with low-rise brightly coloured buildings and old-fashioned lampposts. Despite the grey weather, it had been heavily infested with tourists from two giant cruise ships currently in port. The crowds had suited Wally and Ariane just fine, since they’d blended right in even in their swimsuits. They’d bought food, they’d bought more bottled water to take with them back to Cacibajagua – Ariane could probably purify water to make it safe to drink, but bottled water was easier, and Wally’s mention of brain-eating amoeba had disinclined Ariane to experiment – and they’d talked about their plan.

  Wally’s plan, really.

  “At low tide, most of those rocks at the base of the cataract are going to be exposed, and the water running over them and between them will be fresh water,” he said, as they sat by the beach eating jerk chicken from a nearby beach bar. “Freeze what’s there, and keep freezing the water that flows in from the cataract, and those boulders will shift. Especially since you can freeze the water instantly. That’s a lot of force.”

  “You have a lot of confidence in my abilities,” Ariane mumbled around a mouthful of chicken. It really was the best chicken she’d ever eaten. The virgin cocktail at her right hand was also delicious, once you fought your way past the umbrella and fruit slices decorating the edge of the fake-coconut cup.

  “If I may quote something someone said to me recently,” Wally said, “you’re the freaking Lady of the Lake.”

  Ariane laughed, but she wasn’t nearly as certain as Wally that what he was suggesting would work. Yes, she’d frozen water in small amounts – but freezing that much, and that quickly? Could she do it? Would she have the power?

  “I’ll need your help,” she said. “I’ll need all the power I can get. That means drawing on the shard, with you holding it. Just like when we crossed the Pacific from New Zealand.”

  Wally nodded seriously. “I’ll be right there at your side,” he said, taking her hand. “Always.”

  She’d squeezed his hand in return, and then kept holding it, because it felt good. A matronly woman passing by in a broad-brimmed white hat and a brightly coloured muumuu had given them an indulgent smile. Ariane had smiled back.

  Now she and Wally, holding hands again, waded out of Tanama Lake in roughly the same place they’d come ashore the night before. She shuddered a little at the thought of the leeches, even though her power had sent them all tumbling away from them through the water. She shuddered more at the thought of brain-eating amoeba, even though Wally had apologized for mentioning them and assured her he didn’t really think the lake was infested with them. Once on land, she ordered them both dry. They still wore their swimsuits, but they’d each pulled a T-shirt on over top and put on their runners without socks to protect their feet. Ariane’s T-shirt was black, her preferred colour: Wally’s, a spare one he’d had in his backpack, was another in the seemingly endless series of geeky shirts that made up the bulk of his wardrobe. This one was leaf-green and bore a single phrase in block letters: I AM GROOT.

  The overcast had, if anything, thickened, the clouds lower than that morning and moving swiftly across the sky. Though sheltered where they stood, she could hear wind hissing through the trees. Palm fronds swayed high overhead. Wally looked up. “Storm’s coming in.”

  “But you said it’s not a hurricane, right?” Ariane said anxiously. She’d always had a fear of hurricanes, a pretty irrational one considering she’d lived her whole life thousands of kilometres inland. Oddly enough, she didn’t really worry about tornadoes, even though the worst tornado disaster in Canadian history had actually occurred in her hometown of Regina. That had been well over a century ago, though.

  “The forecast wasn’t calling it a hurricane. And officially, hurricane season ended November 30. But it’s way more than an ordinary thunderstorm. And it’s really unusual to have this kind of cloud cover in the Caribbean, lasting for so long.”

  Ariane s
tared up at the clouds again. How much of this weird weather was due to chance, and how much was the insidious working of magic from Faerie? She remembered another extraordinary bit of luck, the cruise ship in whose pool she’d materialized when she’d been on the verge of falling from the sky into the sea on her way back from France. She’d felt more than once that the shards wanted to be found by her rather than Major. Could the Lady’s magic exert power even over the weather?

  She knew it could: she’d made it snow in Regina the first time she’d reached up to the clouds.

  It should have been reassuring to think that somehow her power was aiding her in ways she didn’t even realize – but it wasn’t, not entirely, because if her magic had something to do with these clouds, it was magic that was happening outside her control. And that made her wonder how much control she really had over any of the events into which she’d been plunged. Was she really the Lady of the Lake, a queen on the chessboard, or just a pawn in some greater game?

  She shook her head. Or maybe, she thought, it just happens to be a cloudy day.

  They’d timed their return to give them almost an hour until low tide. Their last plunge into the salt water of the cavern had been out of control and dangerous. This time they intended to walk down – if they could.

  “There has to be a path down to the cavern from the lake,” Wally had reasoned while they were holding hands on the beach at Cockburn Town. “We just couldn’t see it in the dark.”

  Now here they were in the light, and once again, Wally’s reasoning proved sound. A path circled the lake. They’d followed it before to a platform that overlooked the sea and the falling stream, and when they returned to that platform, they saw below them the hut where they’d spent the night and the entrance to the cavern. But now they could also see the other end of the path round the lake, just on the other side of the waterfall at their feet, the start of a steep switch-backing trail down the hillside. ”Joju Cave,” read a signpost.

  Looking down, Ariane saw that a boardwalk bridge crossed the stream just above where it fell into the cavern. A well-marked path then continued along the seashore, presumably all the way to the resort. “Where do you suppose Rex Major is?” she said uneasily. “We’re going to be awfully exposed on that trail.”

  “No way to tell,” Wally said. “But my guess is he’s at the resort, probably Commanding left, right, and centre, telling them to bring in heavy equipment and explosives. It won’t be easy even with his magic to get them to destroy their major attraction. With luck, it’ll keep him too busy to bother us.”

  Luck, Ariane thought. There’s that word again. She looked up at the clouds. If the power of the Lady can influence the world to that extent – if it really has anything to do with the weather that made it easier for us to get here – can it also influence Rex Major?

  No, she decided. His magic is at odds with the Lady’s. He has power, too, more than before, thanks to the shards returning to the world and his possession of one...and with Flish to help him. If the Lady’s magic is helping us all the way from Faerie, it’s doing it in subtle ways. And it will take something far from subtle to influence Merlin.

  “Then let’s get moving,” she said.

  They hurried around the small lake, reaching the head of the path down to the cavern in about fifteen minutes. The trail proved to be every bit as steep as it had looked, but at least it wasn’t slippery and half-covered in snow like the one they’d twice descended to Horseshoe Bay. Ariane blinked in astonishment: had that really just been yesterday?

  It had. It seemed a lifetime.

  The wind grew stronger as they neared the cavern, and as they reached the top of the stairs lightning flickered out over the ocean. Several seconds later Ariane heard a low grumble.

  “Storm’s coming,” Wally said, staring out at sea. “And look at the surf.”

  The waves had grown angry in the short time it had taken them to descend from Lake Tanama. The sea hurled itself against the rocks, exploding in huge fountains of white spray.

  “Shouldn’t bother us in the cave,” Ariane said.

  “No,” Wally said. “Although it may increase the swell.” He took another long look out to sea before ducking into the hut to turn on the lights inside the cavern; with sunset just minutes away and the clouds so thick, it was already getting hard to see. Then he followed Ariane down into the cataract chamber.

  The seawater inside had receded an astonishing amount, uncovering almost all of the tumbled boulders at the base of the cataract. “I can feel it now even from here,” Wally said, staring at the fresh water cascading over the rocks. “Stronger than ever.”

  “I still can’t feel it at all,” Ariane said. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” Wally turned wide eyes to her. “You really can’t feel it, and I can?”

  She nodded, feeling irritated. “Yeah. Really.”

  “It must still be under the salt water.” He checked his watch. “It’s not quite low tide, but it won’t go out much more. I think you should get started.”

  Ariane nodded. She’d thought about how to approach the task, and realized the only way she could bring the necessary power to bear was to be as close to the water as possible. She didn’t think she could use her power at all if she were in the salt water, but she didn’t think she could do what she needed to do from the dock, either. And she needed Wally with her if she was going to make good use of the shard she wore against her skin, beneath her swimsuit. “Let’s do it.”

  Side by side, they pulled off their T-shirts and shoes, and stuffed them into their backpacks. Ariane swung herself off onto the ladder and descended to the seawater. Wally followed her down.

  “Nice and warm,” he said, treading water.

  “It’s disgusting,” she said between clenched teeth. “Let’s get out of here.” She set out across the pool in a splashy front crawl. She hated the touch of the sea more than ever. It seemed wrong. It felt like water, it moved like water, but she could do nothing with it. It not only resisted her, it seemed to actively dislike her. But it was only water, all the same, and even though it made her skin squirm, she could swim in it.

  A minute later she hauled herself out onto the rocks down which the cascade tumbled. Wally climbed out after her. She plunged her head into the wonderfully fresh water. She felt her power roar up within her, the shard she wore against her skin blazing like a star in her inner sight.

  Oops. The shard. Wally had to hold it if she were going to draw on its power. And she’d cleverly put it underneath her swimsuit. Which meant...

  She sighed. “Turn your back,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Turn your back,” she said. “The shard is under my swimsuit. I’m going to have to peel it down to get to it. Turn your back.”

  “Oh!” Wally blushed, and since he was only wearing swim trunks, she could see that the blush went all the way to his belly button. “Sorry!”

  He hastily turned his back. Ariane turned her back on him, too, peeled the suit half-off, pulled out the shard, and then tugged the swimsuit back into place. “All right,” she said.

  He turned around again. Ariane, using the shard of Excalibur like a pointer, indicated the top of the pile of stones, right where the water poured in. “I think we need to be up there,” she said. “Come on.”

  She began picking her way up the slippery rocks. Although nothing very big grew on them, probably because they alternated between being covered with fresh water and being covered with salt, clearly something microscopic had enthusiastically colonized them and set about busily producing that favorite product of all things bacterial: slime. As she and Wally climbed, she saw a flicker of lightning in the hole in the cave ceiling, lighting up the darkening sky, followed by a grumble of thunder.

  She only slipped badly once, her foot going out from under her, and Wally grabbed her ankle and guided her toes back to safety before she lost her grip completely. She took a deep breath, glanced back with a smile, and then cont
inued climbing.

  At the top of the rocks the ceiling of the cave closely overhung a kind of ledge. The overhang was too low to let them sit on the ledge, but they could lie down on it, side by side – though just barely. With Wally’s body pressed against hers, Ariane took hold of the shard and had him take hold of the other end.

  Instantly the power she had at her call expanded, the feeling so sudden she gasped with pleasure. I can do this, she said. I know I can.

  She closed her eyes, and concentrated.

  She didn’t want to freeze the water up here, where it continued to pour in, flashes of lightning from the approaching storm illuminating it as though paparazzi stood just outside the cave taking photos. The freezing had to happen down below, in the myriad cracks and crevices and gaps between the boulders: and it had to happen suddenly. Instantly. She let the strange sense that told her exactly where water was and how it would behave take over. There, she thought. There, there, there, and...there.

  She seized power from within herself, and from the shard, and hurled it into the pile of stones.

  A deafening crack, far louder than the thunder outside, reverberated around the cavern. Two smaller stones burst from the pile as if punched by the fists of trolls, and hurtled into the middle of the cave, splashing into the heaving salt water. The entire pile groaned.

  Ariane kept her eyes closed. New gaps had opened. More water poured into them. Once again she exerted her power. Once again the water flashed to ice, expanding as it did so. And once again, as it did all over the world, as it always had, the rock, not the ice, gave way. The pile of stones grumbled, shifted. A boulder half as big as Wally burst loose and crashed downhill, hitting the water with a splash that hurled wavelets against all the walls of the cavern.

  More water, more ice, more cracking of stones, more tumbling boulders. The entire pile groaned and shifted. Now the cascade hardly poured down the outside of the rocks at all. Instead, it drained into the interior of the pile, puddling on the ice Ariane had already formed, filling every cubic centimetre of open space. She waited...waited...waited until the water was everywhere in the pile, until it began spilling out – and then, once more, she thrust power into the heap.