by A. L. Knorr
My ankle rolled into a depression and I looked down. Two shallow holes were inset in the rock floor of the cavern. I bent down and brushed the sand out of the divots, realizing with a strange mixture of fear and wonder that the depressions were shaped sort of like feet. I felt around the edges. The stone had been sanded away, made smooth. Two long, gentle crescent shapes faced one another, together making a nearly perfect circle. These depressions were not accidental, either; they had to have been put here intentionally. I stood and stepped back, looking at them from higher up. A soft line of moonlight appeared as a shaft poured down into the cavern from the oculus at the top. The beam of light, soft though it was, highlighted motes in the air and streamed down like a gentle spotlight onto the crescents in front of me.
Hackles rose again on my neck, but this time they were not from fear. This was some kind of magic–the way the moonlight was traversing the floor, creeping its way across the crescents, slowly bringing them into the light. I watched, nearly breathless with wonder, as the moonbeam inched its way across the depressions.
Moved by some unexpected feeling from an unknown place, I kicked off my sneakers and left them on the rock behind me. The footprints were nearly fully illuminated now, beckoning.
I placed my bare feet in the crescents and gasped. The rock beneath me was also warm. My feet looked blue in the moonbeam and only the little toes of my left foot were still in shadow. The light traveled as I watched, transfixed. Inch by inch, it threw both my feet into light until the entire crescents along with my bare feet and legs were bathed in desert moonlight.
A wind swept through the cave, as sudden and fierce as a spring storm blowing in from across the Atlantic. But this was not an Atlantic wind; it was warm and dry. It picked up my hair, whirled it around, and slapped it into my face. I inhaled this new breeze but stiffened with shock because my lungs inflated and seemed not to stop. I tried to cry out at the feeling of my body taking in too much air. My lungs felt as though they were stretching to accommodate the wind, inflating like two zeppelins. My mind whirled and I tried again to scream. Tendrils of fear curled around my heart–what was happening to me?
I scanned the cave, my eyes darting about for an answer that was not forthcoming. The wind went on filling me. The obsidian and the desert glass and I made a perfect triangle, and I could imagine the vision saying, you've finally noticed our little triumvirate, have you? The stones lit and a pulse filled the cave. Not just the cave—the pulse filled me, and my heart matched its rhythm. It was an oscillation not of sound, but vibration. A hum like a giant generator filled my senses.
My feet lifted off the floor and my head and arms arched back. I felt stretched and far more buoyant than any human should be. The oscillation continued and my vision went white. My ears popped as the air pressure increased.
A scene unfolded in front of my blind eyes, painting my mind with color and life: an oasis of green, a backdrop of trees and flowers. Birds took to wing from the tops of palm trees and elephants grazed at the edge of a deep blue pool. A man appeared, materializing as though transitioning from smoke into flesh. Brown-skinned and wiry, with black wavy hair threaded with gray at his temples, he wore a simple black button-up shirt and dark denim pants. His hands were graceful and beautiful, the tapered fingers long and elegant–a musician’s hands. The angles of his face were familiar but I had never seen him before, I was sure of it. It was his eyes that held my attention; they were gray too, as light as a dove's breast, just like mine. As I watched, they took on a silver cast which swirled like mercury laced with streams of white paint. He had my chin, my lips, the shape of my brow. Or did I have his?
Dad?
I had only thought the word, but it filled the air with the sound of a million voices on the wind all speaking in unison.
The man's face changed. It softened as if in response and his chin tilted down in a partial nod. But his movements were extremely slow, like he was trapped in a dream which forced him to move at a mere quarter of his normal speed.
I thought my heart would explode but it held steady, matching the pulse filling my head and all around me.
The question hung in the air, and a second flock of birds, cranes, exploded from the bush and took to the darkening sky.
His face moved in slow motion, he blinked his eyes slowly closed, then opened them again. His lips parted and tightened to form a word. His brows drew together and one arm moved slowly up from his side, his hand reaching toward me. Those silver eyes filled with urgency. Silently, and very slowly, he said one simple word. It was unmistakeable, even for someone unaccustomed to lipreading.
Run.
My skin prickled. That strange oscillation of which I was part continued playing without ceasing. A fork of bright lightning stabbed down from the sky and thunder whacked as the scene went black.
I collapsed on the cave floor, trembling and out of breath. My sight returned and I covered my eyes and rolled them under my fingertips. I coughed and choked, struggling for my lungs to return to normal.
As I lay there gasping, a second vision came, though not nearly as real and vivid as the first. It was of a newborn, sweet and vulnerable in her mother’s arms. She was working for that first inhale of life. I gasped and sucked in an enormous breath and winced as my lungs came unstuck as though they had never breathed before. Whispered words found my ears: The first breath is where it all begins.
My heart flew to my chest where my system felt stretched and aching. As my breathing calmed, I looked up at the black stone, then to the green one. They sat there dormant, as though nothing had happened. They remained unchanged. Unlike me.
"What was that?" I asked the stone. My own voice frightened me. I took stock of my body as I slowly got to my feet. My chest and heart calmed and the aching had ceased, and yet, why did my torso feel like a barrel of dormant energy? My heart no longer felt like a flexing muscle, pushing blood through my system. I closed my eyes. No, instead it felt like a throbbing battery of energy. The difference was unmistakeable. Like an energy cell of some kind, sending out small repeated booms of power as it beat.
I slowed my breathing to concentrate on this difference, and became like a sleeping person–an observer in their own dream, watching things like a god who could reach out and change things if she so chose. Reaching out a curious mental finger at this energy cell living in my chest, I asked the pulse to speed up. It responded obediently. I asked it to slow down. It responded again. I asked it to cease. It did not cease, it held steady as if to say: Ask me anything and I will give it to you, but if my rhythm ceases, you die. I am your heart.
I opened my eyes and looked down at my hands. They were still my flesh and blood but had somehow become more than that. They too, were conductors and receivers of energy, each finger a tendril of power. What could be done with these limbs now? I didn't know. And that frightened me.
I looked down at my feet and at the floor, and something else frightened me.
The crescent-shaped depressions in the cave floor were gone.
I squatted, suddenly panting and startled, the battery of my heart jumping. I ran my hands over the floor. The light in here was dim as the moon had moved her glow elsewhere. Perhaps I just couldn't see them in the shadows? But the floor was smooth and cool to the touch. The footprints were no longer there; my eyes had not deceived me.
I looked up at the desert glass, now dull in the quiet nighttime gloom. I crossed the cave and reached up to touch it. It was cool and silent. Wait. Not silent. I closed my eyes and felt that it had a pulse all its own. I let out a laugh of wonder and opened my eyes.
Keeping my palm against the glass, I tuned in to my heart. My heart had its pulse and the glass had its pulse, and the two oscillated in their own rhythms, not meeting but skipping around one another, every third beat matching. I slowed my heart to meet the pulse of the glass. Like a runner joining another on the road, I fell into step with the crystal.
SHHH-CRACK!
I screamed reflexively, my hea
rt jumping back to its own rhythm, as the glass shattered and exploded across the cave. Shards of glass sprayed the floor, tinkling with a thousand dry tik tik tiks. Silence descended again.
Breathing hard, I stared at the mess I'd made. Something like terror crept up behind me and traced its fingers up my back. I realized two things at once: though I was standing directly in front of the glass, not a shard had touched me. My face and chest should have been embedded with hundreds of tiny scimitars, but I was unscathed.
The second realization was that I had destroyed something beautiful, something meaningful and mysterious, and I hadn't meant to.
My hand flew to cover my mouth. I was horrified at what I had done. The light glinted dully off the shattered glass coating the cave floor. Where the glass had been, there was now nothing but a depression in the stone. An empty shadow. Regret soured in my mouth. What have you done?
"Petra?"
I gave a startled scream and looked up. "Jesse?"
"Petra, I was going crazy. What happened to you? Are you okay?"
Good question.
The light in the cave dimmed as a shadow moved across the oculus. "How did you get down there? My God, Petra." Jesse's voice filled with concern. "Did you fall?"
"Sort of." I peered through the oculus. I was afraid to move my feet as the floor was covered in glass and I hadn't put my shoes back on yet. Jesse's head was nothing but a black silhouette. "I hit some loose sand and I slid. There's an opening on the other side. Jesse, I—" but words did not come. Where did I even begin? "I can't get out without help."
He snorted. "No kidding. I've been looking for you for half an hour. Why didn’t you yell for me?”
"I did. Maybe not enough. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry, for Pete's sake. I'm just relieved that you're okay. Can you wait a little longer while I go get a rope?"
"Of course."
"Hang tight, I'll be right back." His head disappeared.
"Jesse!"
The shadow reappeared. "Yeah?"
"Don't run," I said. "And don't step where it looks like sand has coated the rock. There might be no rock under it. That's how I fell in here."
"Sure. Okay." He paused, but I couldn’t see his expression. "You're sure you're all right? Nothing broken or sprained?"
"I'm fine." It wasn't exactly a lie. I am fine, I thought. I’m just different.
As I waited for Jesse, I put my hand against the cave wall and closed my eyes. It, too, had a pulse. I could feel it thrumming quietly under my hand. I took my hand away. I did not dare match its rhythm with my heart. I crossed the cave and put my hand on the obsidian. The pulse was there, too, different yet again to the glass and the cave. Its rhythm was closer to my own heart's rhythm than anything else I had touched before it. I snatched my hand away in fear. The last thing I wanted to do was destroy it accidentally.
I realized that based on what had just happened, I had the means to get myself out of here without any help. I had the means to shatter the cave into dust and walk from the rubble untouched.
I bent and put my hands near the floor, turning my palms toward the far wall. With an easy mental shove, the shards of glass blew across the rock and piled up along the wall. I padded across the cave to my shoes and pulled them on, then I stood under the hole in the ceiling and waited.
"You sure you're okay?" asked Jesse, after he'd lifted me from the cave and up through the hole in the ceiling. His hands squeezed my shoulders, my biceps, my elbows, my ribcage, then pulled me in for a hug.
"I'm okay." I breathed in his scent and hugged him back. "Just a little frightened."
"Yeah, no doubt!" He released me from the hug and put his palms on either side of my face. He peered into my eyes. His expression was partially shrouded in shadow but I could make out the concern there. "You seem so calm. It's freaking me out a little."
I gave a shaky laugh. "You want me to cry?"
He hugged me again. "No, of course not. I'm just not sure I would have handled that as well as you are."
"I knew you would come along," I said. But it was filler. I hadn't been thinking about Jesse at all while I was hanging suspended above the cave floor, my lungs feeling like they might pop, and a vision of someone who looked like he could be my father invading my mind. My smile faltered at the thought of the man with the silver eyes. I could still see the lines of his face as they grew serious, his lips as they formed a directive I did not understand.
Run.
Run from what? Run from who? There was no one dangerous here. I was surrounded by a bunch of archaeologists and researchers, history geeks just like me. We had sponsorship dollars, we had security. I felt completely safe. I thought of the man at the airport and the strange symbol on his wrist. But he was long gone and far away. Surely not a threat.
Jesse helped me get to me feet and we made our way toward the camp. He threaded his fingers through mine and didn't let go of my hand the entire way back. I could feel the pulse of his heart distinctly through his fingers. My fingers grew cold at the horrifying thought of Jesse exploding if I matched my heartbeat to his and I almost dropped his hand. I shoved the unwelcome thought away almost violently. Jesse stopped when we were still outside of earshot of the cluster of tents and vehicles.
"Maybe, we—" he began, his voice in a whisper.
"Should keep this between us?"
He let out a breath. "Yeah."
"Fine by me." The fewer questions I got about what had happened to me in that cave, the better.
I moved to start walking again and Jesse stopped me and pulled me around to face him. We stood there face to face, breathing together in the dark.
"You really scared me, Petra. I'm not sure I’ve ever been that scared." Then he added with a head bob, "My baby sister got bit by a spider once and started throwing up, that was pretty scary. But since then—" He cupped my face with a palm and tucked my hair behind my ear with his fingers. His hands were cool and a little clammy. Fear does that.
My pulse sped up a fraction. The last time someone had shown this kind of concern about my well-being was when I had wandered away from my group on a school trip and become lost. It was the unadulterated relief that slumped Beverly's shoulders when the police delivered me to her front door. Deliverance from her worst nightmare made her clutch me for so long I thought we'd get stuck in that hug, her muscles quivering and her tears wetting my hair and clothes. The experience had hammered into my preteen brain—I was loved, and not knowing my whereabouts had caused Beverly a horrible pain. This wasn't entirely the same, but the authenticity of Jesse's concern filled my body with warmth. I did not doubt his care for me in that moment, and that was a rare thing.
He pulled my forehead to his and I wrapped my hands around his wrists.
"Petra," he said. "I just have the weirdest feeling that something happened to you in that cave." His words were stilted, unsure.
"What makes you say that?" My heart jumped another notch.
"I don't know." He held me there, not releasing me from his grip. His dark eyes looked into mine. "Am I wrong?"
"I'm okay, Jesse."
"That's not—" He finally let my forehead go, but pulled back to get a better look at me. Moonlight brushed the bones of his face, his cheekbones, his forehead, his strong straight nose, his lips. "I'm glad you're okay, but something did happen to you. Didn't it."
A beat.
"Maybe," I finally admitted.
He almost seemed relieved and let out a pent-up breath. When I said no more, he added, "You can talk to me. Anytime. You know that, right?"
I nodded. My own hands were cool and clammy by this time and my thoughts were racing. How had Jesse picked up that something had happened to me? And how would I even describe what had happened?
I had to show the cave to the team, it was too important a find not to. But then, how would I explain the shards of desert glass lining the wall?
Overwhelm sat its heavy body on both my shoulders and its brother, fatigue, joined t
he party. "Let’s go." I made for camp. "I'm tired, and I'm sure you are too."
"All right, Petra." His disappointment was palpable.
We finished the journey to the site and after a final hug, Jesse crawled into his tent and I crawled into mine.
Chapter 11
I had just finished dumping my bucket of excavated dirt into a tray to begin the dry-screening process when the wind kicked up, blew my hat off, picked up some of the dirt and threw it into my face and eyes. I blinked and lifted my hand to brush the dirt and sand from eyes when I heard Jesse's voice behind me.
"Your hands are dirty, that'll make it worse. Let me. I've been wearing gloves." Warm hands took my face. "Can you look up?"
I tried to look up but had to blink rapidly. Thumbs gently pulled down the grit from the corner of my right eye.
"That better?"
"The left one is worse, actually," I said, trying to hold still.
Another powerful gust of wind blew over us, throwing sand and dirt into the air like confetti and whipping our clothes against our limbs. It was followed by a second more powerful blast that made Jesse and me bend our faces into each other's shoulders. Annoyed voices cried out from the excavation pit.
"Throw your tarps over and take shelter!" Ethan's voice called over the wind.
Jesse and I tucked our buckets away into the shelving under the tables and worked to cover our trench with the emergency tarps we had for just this reason. Winds could kick up out of nowhere and we couldn’t have them tearing apart our pits. We finished and Jesse took my hand.
"Come on." Jesse led me, head bent against the wind and eyes mostly closed as more dust and sand whipped us in the face, stinging our cheeks.
"My tent is the closest." I stumbled after him, the wind tearing the words from my mouth. But he heard me and I felt him redirect.
We fumbled our way, half-blind, through my tent door, both of us squatting in close proximity as Jesse zipped the door shut. The calm inside the tent made me breathe a sigh of relief.
