Greenways

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  ‘I’ll shake it up a little.’ said Kel, remembering what Mec had told him to do, and the light brightened up a little, but they knew it wouldn’t last for long.

  They raced on as best they could, but the light was fading again, and they came to a halt for fear of falling down a hole or what ever else the inky blackness held.

  ‘I can only think of one thing, and that may not work,’ said Kel, ‘I’ll use my water. Quick Moss, hold out your hands and I’ll put a little of the powder in each, you tip it into the pot when I tell you.’

  Fumbling about in the near dark and trying to direct his water into the light pot, could have been humorous if it hadn’t been for the desperate situation they were in.

  The light giving chemicals in the little pot swirled around as Kel did his best to fill it, and in doing so gave a gentle violet glow to the scene.

  ‘I think that’s enough, tip the powders in now Moss, and we’ll see if it works.’

  Moss could just about see the outline of the pot in the encroaching darkness, and managed to get most of the powders into the pot, Kel put the bung in and shook it up.

  A few seconds later and the whole tunnel was lit up in the bright glow from the transparent insect case.

  ‘It works even better than ordinary water,’ Kel exclaimed,

  ‘We must remember to tell Mec about this when we get back home.’

  ‘Do you really think we’ll ever get back to Mec and the others?’ asked Moss. ‘I somehow doubt it.’

  Now able to see their way clearly, the trio set off at top speed up the tunnel, their footsteps echoing strangely as though there were many more of them racing along.

  They almost missed the side tunnel, with its flight of steps going up again, and would have done so if Kel hadn’t bumped into Moss as he slowed down for a moment.

  ‘Now which way do we go?’ asked Moss, usually the one to make the decisions.

  ‘Up the steps again, I suppose, as we want to get out of these tunnels and into the open.’ replied Kel, turning into the new passage.

  The long climb up finally terminated in yet another passage, with a gentle upwards slope. Rounding a bend, they were confronted by a total blockage.

  ‘What do you think it is? It’s certainly not stone by the look of it.’ Kel ran his hand over the huge steel door, some of the rust flakes coming off on his hand.

  ‘It’s not stone or wood, so it may be some kind of meetel used by the giants who made this place.’ Moss said, as he pushed forward to inspect the barrier.

  Moss too found the rust flakes coming off when he touched the door, and instinctively gave it a jab with his bladed stave. A small shower of brown rust rattled to the floor of the tunnel, and Moss then energetically went to work on the door as if their lives depended on breaking through, which of course they did.

  Before long, there was a big pile of rust at the base of the door, and then the stave broke through into open air, and light trickled in through the tiny hole.

  With Moss and Kel hacking away at the crumbling remains of what was supposed to have been an impenetrable barrier, an opening was soon made, enabling them to crawl out into the open and the bright light of the Greater Sun, which they had feared they would never see again.

  ‘Look how thick this barrier is,’ commented Kel, ‘it’s almost as thick as my head is wide, so why didn’t they make it out of something stronger?’

  ‘I expect it was, but over the long amount of time since it was made, it has rotted into this crumbly stuff, and just as well for us that it has!’ Moss added gratefully.

  They were out on an open plain of grassland which ran down to the cliff through which they had just come, and behind them were the shaggy contours of a mountain range, capped with snow and sparkling in the bight light of the sun.

  The entrance to the tunnel had been carved into a small cliff which ran back into a larger rock formation of massive jumbled stone blocks.

  ‘The first thing to do is to find some water, my throat feels as though it has been filled with dry wood scrapings.’ Kel suggested, so they picked up their equipment and headed up the slope towards the rocks.

  The grass was lush, and several bushes bearing fruits which looked familiar were dotted about the plain, so Moss reasoned that water couldn’t be far away, and the rock pile proved his point.

  As they drew nearer the jumbled cascade of stone, Jay, well out in front, waved her arms wildly and called out excitedly ‘Look, water, coming down from up there.’

  Above the rocks, the lip of a higher plateau jutted out, and from its edge a small stream of silver white water poured over and chattered its way down over the broken remains of a once huge water cistern.

  Only the remains of the base section had survived the ravages of time, and that had filled up with water from the small stream which trickled down from above, to overflow from a crack high in its outer wall into the ground below, to disappear from view.

  They quickly climbed the lower blocks, and sliding down between two massive chunks of broken concrete, reached the water’s edge.

  ‘Let’s check it out first.’ Kel remembered the surprise they all had from the volcanic pool on the mainland, and didn’t want a repeat of that experience.

  They probed the nooks and crannies around them with the staves, but nothing unpleasant appeared, and the rest of the pool looked clear right down to the bottom.

  ‘Rinse the water bags out well, or the water will lose it’s sweetness before long.’ Moss called out, scooping water greedily into his mouth from cupped hands.

  Having slaked their not inconsiderable thirst, and filled the water bags, Jay set about looking for an enclosed section of the pool in which she could safely bathe.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ asked Moss, always keen to know what was going on.

  ‘I want to wash the stickiness from me.’ she replied.

  It was only then that Moss and Kel realized that they too were feeling unclean.

  ‘I think it must be something from the splashes we got from the Great Water we crossed, as it tastes the same when I lick my arm.’ Kel suggested, making a face which showed his disgust at the taste.

  ‘This looks a good place.’ Jay’s faint voice echoed up from between the huge blocks, and the other two scrambled in what they thought was the correct direction to see what she had found.

  In one corner of the huge cistern, some blocks had fallen to form an enclosed section of water, and in it was a delighted Jay, splashing about and sending a silver shower of water droplets high into the air as she cavorted about.

  ‘This very good.’ she called joyfully, and turned to splash Moss and Kel as they too entered the bathing pool.

  Having removed the encrusted salt from the fine hair of their bodies, the trio returned to the grass covered ground below the old cistern to run about and dry themselves off, having discarded their carry belts and feeling free from stress and worry for the first time since beginning their long journey.

  When finally exhausted, they lay down on the soft grass of the plain to soak up the warm radiance from the Greater Sun, their bodies having been chilled due to the evaporation of the water.

  ‘I think the giants had made the water pool for their own use,’ said a slightly drowsy Moss, ‘because some of the big stones had flat smooth surfaces, and they don’t come about naturally. There may be other remains here, left over from the earlier time, and I think we should look for them as they may tell us a little more about the giants.’

  Jay agreed, adding that they may also find some things which might come in useful, and anyway, finding new things was good fun. But Kel stated that he was quite happy to lounge around for a while, and enjoy the new freedom they had found.

  That evening when fruit gathering, another of Jay’s talents became apparent when she stopped Kel from eating what he though was a fruit similar to those he had known in the forest.

  ‘Not good, make you sick.’ she said, taking it away from him and throwing it as far away
as she could.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asked.

  ‘I always know what good to eat, you not know that?’

  He shook his head, and Jay became their food selector by default and was to save their lives many times over.

  A plentiful supply of fruit, berries and pods of various sizes and shapes, together with their water supply, satisfied their daily needs. So before long, they were looking for something exciting to do, as life was becoming a little tame after all they had shared together.

  The tumbled concrete blocks of the water cistern had been gone over thoroughly and nothing other than it being the remains of a water storage unit was found, much to their disappointment.

  Moss reckoned there should be the remains of the ‘Giant’s Hutts’ somewhere about, and eventually they found the outline of a building protruding from the surrounding ground, very much weather worn, but definitely of man’s construction.

  ‘The giants must have been very much bigger than us.’ commented Jay, the others nodded sagely.

  ‘There must be something left around here, apart from their hutts.’ Moss said, frustration sounding in his voice.

  ‘They made the steps in the tunnel we came up through. Oh! and there’s the other tunnel we didn’t explore when we came out onto the plain.’

  ‘I don’t fancy going down there again.’ Kel was quite adamant and Jay agreed with him.

  Moss could see he wasn’t going to get the other two down into the cliff passageways just yet, but he would try again later.

  ‘Well, let’s explore the rest of this land, there must be something else for us to find.’

  Setting out next day, Moss checked the Direction Pointer and found that it had swung around to point at the mountains.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ he muttered, ‘when we were in the bot, it pointed off to one side of this land, and now it has changed to point over there.’ indicating the distant snow capped rocks.

  ‘Perhaps it thinks we should go there.’ offered Kel.

  ‘It can’t think!’ Moss exclaimed, ‘It’s only a piece of twig like stuff on a piece of floating wood. Anyway, Mec said it would always point in the same direction, and now it doesn’t, so we can’t trust it any more.’

  ‘Well, let’s go in that direction anyway, and if we find nothing of interest, we can come back and try another way.’

  Kel was impatient to carry on, there was usually something to find.

  They left the flatter area of the plateau, and the gradual climb up to the foot of the mountain range began. The going was quite good, but the grass was a little coarser here with a few rocks to circumnavigate, otherwise they made good progress.

  ‘It feels a lot colder up here, do you think we are going into the strange land of hard water which Mec told us about?’ asked Kel, but Moss didn’t really know either, and as he was so far up ahead, could be forgiven for not hearing correctly, as he just grunted.

  So far, there had been no predators or other unpleasant surprises during their time on the island, but they still kept an eye out for the unusual, as nature had a trick of catching the unwary in a very unforgiving way.

  Two days travel took them to the first sign of snow, little patches of it unmelted where it had fallen in the shadow of a rock or gully, and where the sun hadn’t quite reached it.

  ‘There you are! Hard Water.’ said Kel, pointing triumphantly, and then running over to the patch of snow with Moss hard on his heels.

  ‘I wouldn’t call this hard water, Kel. It’s more like soft white water, and very cold. Now this is hard water.’ he said, braking off a small icicle which had formed on the edge of a rock, but soon dropped it as the chill bit into his fingers.

  ‘If we go any higher, we shall become like that hard water, stiff and cold, so where shall we go now?’ asked Kel, shivering slightly, the hairs on his body all stiffened out, trying to conserve heat.

  Before Moss could answer, or a joint decision be made, the matter was taken out of their hands.

  Unnoticed, a large black cloud had swept in from the sea, and they could see the sheets of rain descending from it and drenching the plateau below.

  All three looked around for shelter, Jay being the first to signal she had seen something. Pointing up the slope to a sheer rock face which barred their way, a dark hole promised the chance of shelter, if they could get there in time.

  The mad scramble for the cave caused much laughter later on, but at the time it was deadly serious, as the rain had turned to snow at this altitude, and felt very cold indeed.

  All three rushed into the cave entrance as a single body, taking it in turns to brush off the considerable amount of snow which had already coated their back and shoulders.

  ‘I don’t like that stuff,’ Jay said, snuggling up to Kel for warmth, ‘I like the warm down below.’

  ‘Me too.’ the other two responded in unison.

  They watched, fascinated, as a thick blanket of snow quickly built up outside the cave, and changed the entire look of the landscape.

  The snow storm passed as quickly as it had come, but the clouds grew blacker and more menacing, until the first flash of lightning and the resounding crash which followed, made them jump several paces further back into the cave.

  Several more strikes followed in quick succession, and they soon lost their fear when they realized that the lightning was consistently hitting the rocks some distance away.

  Peering out from the entrance, Moss was the first to notice that the strikes were being attracted to a series of shiny spikes which seemed to have grown out of the very rocks themselves.

  ‘Why don’t they burst into fire like the trees did back in the forest?’ he asked no one in particular. But no one knew.

  Kel made the next discovery, but not its significance.

  ‘Look at that, the last strike came down and then went sideways, as if the shiny spike wanted to be touched by it. And there’s another, doing the same thing.’

  ‘I’ll bet they were made by the giants before they went away.’ Moss said, a real note of confidence in his voice. ‘Perhaps they could collect the sky fire, and use it for something.’ he added, but without the firmness of his former statement.

  Little did they know how near the truth they were.

  It was ironic, and very sad in a way, that the three were witnessing man’s last and most successful attempt yet to harness the power of nature without creating an overwhelming amount of pollution and problems for future generations.

  The lightning attractors had been made from the finest materials available, and consequently had stood the test of time, drawing the huge amounts of energy deep down into the mountain where it was stored and converted into a more useful and manageable form.

  The energy conversion and storage system had carried on working flawlessly ever since man’s greed and hatred of his fellow men had caused nation to rise up against nation, both rattling their sabres, and neither willing to back down.

  Eventually, someone coughed or sneezed in the wrong place, and because things were on such a fine knife-edge, it all got out of hand, and mankind, as such, was no more after the time of the Great Lights.

  The lightning ceased to crackle and roar around the mountain top, the clouds lightened, and finally drifted away, while the Greater Sun came forth and bathed the whole area in its warm and comforting rays.

  They stood outside the entrance of the cave, soaking up the gentle warmth, and feeling better by the minute.

  ‘Can we see how far we go into the cave? asked Jay, and that surprised them both.

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ Kel answered, ‘I don’t want to use the light pot unless we really have to, as I can’t replace the magic powders given to us by Mec, but we could go in until it is too dark for us to see.’

  When they had stopped shivering, the little group turned and went back into the dark opening. There was a fair amount of debris, small stones, leaves and the odd few twigs lying about just within the entrance, but as th
ey went further in, it became evident that the smooth stone floor of the cave had been cut from the living rock, and was obviously not an accident of nature.

  Their eyes adjusted to the falling light level as they went deeper into the side of the mountain, but they sensed that they couldn’t go much further. They were just on the point of returning to the outside world because it had become too dark to see safely what lay ahead, when the titanium quartz lamp switched itself on, having detected the presence of a warm body within it’s sensor range.

  Their basic instinct was to turn and run, but Moss held them back from their intended headlong rush to things more familiar.

  ‘It’s only a light,’ he yelled, ‘like Kel’s light pot, but different. Let’s see what happens next.’

  Nothing did. They stood there in the now brightly lit tunnel, facing a huge shiny metal door, baring their further progress.

  ‘It’s like the meetel barrier we found in the tunnel from the Great Water, but this one is made of a different meetel, like the bot we used, as it hasn’t rotted like the one in the tunnel.’ Moss felt quite confident in his appraisal of the situation.

  Kel moved forward to give the door a thump with his clenched fist, and the deep boom which followed didn’t frighten them as much as what happened next.

  The door sensor mechanism circuit had partly corroded, disabling the recognition system, so that it now ‘recognized’ any warm bodied creature within its sensor field, and that included the three.

  A soft click followed by a quiet whirring sound, and the door glided back to reveal the continuance of the brightly lit passage even further into the mountain.

  ‘Do we go in?’ asked a rather nervous Kel.

  ‘Why not? we’ve come this far, and we want to find out what the giants have left behind.’

  ‘What if we go in, and can’t get out again?’ Kel was only being cautious.

  ‘All right, let’s play it as safely as possible. One of us goes in, and if the barrier shuts and won’t open from the inside, we can still open it from out here.’ Moss was getting a little impatient, and wanted to get on with the exploration of the mysterious tunnel.