by K. J. Emrick
“Speak for yourself,” Maria said, looking up at the low ceiling again as if bats would appear here at any moment.
“No worries,” Godfrey told her, stepping very close to her side. “I’ll protect you.”
She seemed less than impressed by his offer. Addie got the sense that with those cute looks of hers, Maria was used to being flirted with by guys. Godfrey was obviously used to being the one doing the flirting.
Doyle shook his head, making his ears twitch. He didn’t have much patience for all this foolish human interaction. In his defense, Addie knew that he was just concerned about getting this group in and out of the caverns as quick as possible without revealing the secret of the Well of Essence, like they’d done year after year before. He was thinking of the family, and their responsibilities. He was a good cat. He was just old and set in his ways.
“All right, everyone,” Kiera said, clapping her hands together lightly. “Stay together. Follow the directions that I or my sisters give you. Remember the rules, and have fun. Please remember that there won’t be any cellphone signal in the tunnels so if anyone needs to make a call or send a text, they should do so now. All right? Good. Let’s begin.”
As soon as everyone’s backs were turned, Addie did the required task of sealing the doors behind them. It wasn’t as simple as pulling the gate through the snow to snap the padlock into place again. There were three spells to whisper, each one creating a layer of magical protection that would keep anyone out who didn’t know the counterspells. Thankfully, only Kilorians knew those spells. That meant her, and Willow, and Kiera, and the cats Doyle and Domovyk. They were all inside the caves now, so Addie was confident this gate was going to stay closed until they got back.
Kiera led the group down the tunnel, telling them to be careful when the slope began to drop off more quickly. The lights were all on at regular intervals, giving them plenty of light to see by, even if the areas in between each set was thick with shadows. Their flashlights took care of that. Addie and Willow brought up the rear, while Doyle and Domovyk roamed wherever they liked. This was Dom’s first visit to the caverns. He sniffed at absolutely everything.
The first part of the tour was just up ahead. The entry tunnel was already levelling off after dropping only a couple of hundred feet, and Addie knew what that meant.
“Think there’s any chance,” Willow asked her quietly, “that we’ll be done by two o’clock with this? Me and Gary have a date.”
“It depends,” Addie mused. “Even if we get done by early afternoon, we still have the weather outside to contend with getting back. Depending on how hard it snows we might find the vehicles buried, remember?”
“Ha, ha. I remember what I said, thank you very much.” Willow pouted. “I just don’t want to stand Gary up.”
“How could you make a date with the weather this bad?”
“Like I was supposed to know that Snow-mageddon was going to be coming down when we made plans to meet up.”
Hook up, was more like it, Addie was sure.
“If we don’t get snowed in,” she promised Willow, “I’ll make sure you make your date.”
“Wow, sis,” was the surprised answer. “Look who’s become a true romantic. Being with Lucian has been good for you. What’s up with you two, by the way? Last time I saw you together you couldn’t keep your hands off each other.”
Addie smiled as the tunnel began to open up around them. That had been just a few days ago, for Christmas. For a witch, the celebration of Christ’s birth was also the celebration of the Winter Solstice. The two holidays celebrated very different things, but they weren’t exactly mutually exclusive. Since Christians had adopted a lot of the decorations and rituals of the Winter Solstice—like the Christmas tree and mistletoe—the celebrations actually dovetailed nicely. Lucian had felt right at home in Stonecrest helping them enjoy the wintertime.
After all, God made witches too. What Catholics and Protestants called the soul, witches called a person’s Life Essence. Different aspects of the same thing, like a mirror facing another mirror.
Christmas night, she and Lucian had sat and talked to each other for hours on end. Of course, talking had led to touching and there was plenty of that as well, but the talking was what Addie remembered most. All about that one simple question he’d asked her.
Addie smiled. At the time, she thought her answer had been the right one.
Then she started having second thoughts.
Ahead of them, the tunnel finally dropped level again and as it did it opened up into a wide chamber.
It was shaped like a lopsided star with wide, person-sized tunnels spurring off at random angles chosen by Mother Nature centuries ago. The center of it was an oval chamber nearly a hundred feet across. The ceiling dipped low in several spots where tapering stalactites reached toward the floor. Five of those had joined stalagmites rising from the floor and created columns as thick as Addie’s waist. Geographically speaking, it would have taken thousands of years for them to form.
Everywhere sparkled with minerals and semi-precious gemstones. Under the electric lights arranged at the curve of the ceiling, the room was a shimmering wonderland.
After a moment, Maria remembered to lift up her phone and start taking pictures. “This is absolutamente increible,” she said, slipping into her native Spanish. “Look at how the sparkles in the rock change with you as you move.”
Godfrey ran his hand around one of the stalactite columns. “I’ve never seen mineral deposits like this. Not this concentrated.”
Addie understood how they felt. She had been just as amazed when she had first seen this place, back when she was a child. “We call this section of the caves Shimmer Spokes. I’m sure you can see why. This, along with several other sections of Shadow Lake Caverns is actually listed with the UNESCO world heritage center.”
Evelyn let out a whistle that echoed around the chamber and down the tunnel spokes all around. “Hard to believe no one’s broken in here to chip some of this out of the stone. It’s not like your security is very tough.”
“Tougher than you might think,” Willow told her. Doyle and Domovyk sat at her feet, watching with indifferent cat stares that hid the way they took notice of everything around them.
“Also,” Addie said, “the crystals and minerals here only look expensive. It would take several tons to make it worth anyone’s time. It’s a type of feldspar that only fetches about three dollars a ton.”
Evelyn sniffed, and pouted. She looked disappointed to hear she wasn’t surrounded by riches.
Mister and Mrs. Abbott were going from entrance to entrance of the tunnels leading off this chamber. All of them had twists that hid their further end from sight.
“Do we get to explore some of these, too?” Purity asked, her voice fairly shaking with excitement. “Ooh, I certainly hope so.”
“Actually,” her husband Chase said, puffing out his flabby cheeks, “I was hoping we could rest here for a bit. We’ve already walked all this way.”
“Seriously?” Purity scolded him. “We’ve only been walking for ten minutes.”
“Fifteen,” he griped. “I was timing us.”
She laughed at him. “You silly man. I’ll let you rest tonight.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said with what was probably supposed to be a sexy smile. On his puffy face, it just looked odd.
“No, it’s fine,” Purity insisted. “I know how much you need your sleep.”
He frowned but didn’t argue the point.
Off to the side, Addie saw the way Evelyn Collins smirked at the frustration clearly written on Chase’s face.
Again… interesting.
Kiera waved a hand to each of the tunnels. “You may explore any of the spokes running off this main room. Each one only goes a few hundred feet. Each one is a special sight to behold. Each is different. The only one you have to stay out of, for now, is the one not yet lit. It leads to the next part of the cave system. We’ll go there when
you’re all ready to move on.”
With a murmur of conversation among themselves, the five tourists chose different tunnels and began exploring. The sisters heard muted laughter soon after, echoing all around. Godfrey and the Abbotts and even Evelyn began rushing from one spur to another, over and over, while Maria walked more slowly and methodically, recording every detail on her phone.
Kiera positioned herself in front of the dark tunnel, waiting to press the switch for the lights until they were all ready, just to make sure no one ventured that way. Doyle and Domovyk laid down, closing their eyes and pretending to sleep. Let them rest, Addie thought to herself. They were going to earn their tuna today.
Surprisingly, it was Godfrey who had his fill of the Shimmer Spokes first. He came out of a spur he’d been in twice already, carrying his backpack in one hand. “This is fascinating, but I’m eager to see the rest. There’s a section with cave drawings, right? Like the Lascaux Cave in France?”
“Similar, yes,” Kiera promised him. “We should be to that section in about an hour. A few centuries ago, there were Native Americans who used Shadow Lake Caverns as their home. It’s really quite fascinating.”
Addie marveled at her sister’s ability to filter the truth. Those ‘Native Americans’ who lived in the caves were actually a community of elf sprites. Their species had died off in the early 1900s, and their story was a sad tale that regular people would never hear.
Kiera waited for there to be questions, and then said, “Shall we continue, then?”
“Wait,” Chase said, suddenly looking all around them. “Where’s my wife?”
“Here I am,” Purity called to him, stepping out of a spur on the far side of the room. “Sorry, I just wanted to get a selfie in that section with the pink rock that’s shaped like an angel. I’m ready now.”
Evelyn snorted as she fussed with her fur trimmed leather gloves. “I wouldn’t leave my husband’s side for a selfie. Not if I had your man.”
Purity glared daggers at the woman. Chase’s face reddened, and not from the cold, either.
A picture was beginning to form in Addie’s mind with those three. Usually a husband speaks up for his wife and defends her against other women. Interesting, and more interesting. Then again it wasn’t her job to pry into the lives of her guests. Her only job was to get them in and out of here with no one the wiser about the secret hidden in these caves.
Putting her arm through her husband’s arm, Purity turned Chase away from the snobbish Evelyn Collins. They kept their backs to her, but Addie noticed Chase looking over his shoulder whenever he thought his wife wasn’t paying attention.
At the front of the group, Kiera reached over to a steel box mounted to the wall along the electrical conduit. A push of the switch and the next passageway was illuminated.
“All right,” she said to everyone. “Let’s continue.”
For just a moment, Addie thought she saw a flash of something back the way they had come. Just past where it started to curve out of sight. Just a brief glimpse of something red moving in the shadows, and then it was gone again. Everyone was moving forward, and she was moving with them. No one else said anything, so she might have imagined it completely.
There were other things down here in the caverns besides themselves, however. Some of them friendly.
Some of them… not so much.
Chapter 3
This section of the caves they were coming into now was actually one of the most dangerous. The Corkscrew, as Addie and her sisters had named it, curved around and around on itself as it burrowed down into the ground. Melting water had found its way in here in prehistoric times and carved out this path, going deep into the Earth, following some fault in the rock that gave it this shape. When the floor of the tunnel got wet, it got slippery, and with the severity of the slope Addie had taken more than one tumble herself.
Which was why there were rope lines bolted to both sides.
Willow ran her hand casually along the rope on the right side, humming an Irish tune to herself as they went. “I hope the cats will be okay,” she said after a moment. “Maybe we should have kept them in the carrier.”
Doyle and Domovyk were carefully stepping their way down. Addie knew they would be fine, as long as they went slow. There wasn’t any water running through this section today. It was all nice and dry.
“How far down does this go?” Godfrey asked at one point. He unzipped his jacket, and took off his gloves, wiping the back of his hand against his forehead. This was definitely a workout, but it was getting warmer, too. Just like they’d promised everyone, Shadow Lake Caverns were heating up.
“From here,” Kiera explained, “it goes half a mile straight down. It’s much further to walk, of course, because of the twisting path.”
“Did anyone else know it would be this much walking?” Evelyn griped under her breath.
Maria was taking her time, hand over hand on the rope, looking down the winding tunnel like she was scared to death to let go. Addie liked that they were experiencing everything with such emotion. These caverns really were a national treasure. She only wished they could share more of it, more often. That could never happen, though. It was just too much of a risk.
It was warmer by degrees with every step.
“Wow,” Godfrey said, pulling off his jacket completely. “Are we going down to a volcano?”
“There are thermal vents that feed into the caverns,” Kiera explained. “It’s always very pleasantly warm down here no matter how cold it might be in town.”
“Certainly cold today,” Purity complained.
“It’s nice,” Chase said, “but too bad you can’t vent the heat up there. Maybe it would melt some of the snow.”
Evelyn snorted as she unzipped her jacket as well.
“She’s a real peach,” Willow whispered to Addie, “isn’t she?”
Addie pressed her lips together and kept her opinion to herself. There was definitely something going on there. It wasn’t anything she could put into words, but it was there. This wasn’t going to be like the other tours. Addie could feel it in the pit of her stomach.
The curling tunnel ended abruptly around one last twisting section into a wide, flat area. If Addie hadn’t seen it before she would have thought someone carved out this part of Shadow Lake Caverns by hand. The floor was smooth and perfectly level. The walls to either side were almost uniform in the way they curved up to a spiky ceiling of stubby, barely formed stalactites. At the farther end, the tunnel continued on, smaller and more cramped.
To the right side a metal banded door stood in the wall. It was barred, and padlocked, and set with alarms, and layered with enough spells to make Harry Potter jealous.
Heh. Witch humor.
There were also rows of coat pegs bolted to the wall on the left. Addie and Willow and Kiera were already taking off their coats and scarves and hung them up. Their snow pants too, since they had dressed in layers with jeans underneath. Willow for her part, was in a short-sleeved blouse. After all that winter outside, she was more than ready to enjoy the heat.
Their guests began following their example. Godfrey had even brought a pair of steel-toed hiking sneakers in his pack to replace his heavy winter boots. Once everyone was changed they were in much better spirits. The warmth of the lower tunnels was putting them in a good mood. Evelyn was the only one who hadn’t paid attention to the instructions in the guidebook sent out with their tickets to this tour. She was wearing a heavy pink sweater under her coat. She was going to be uncomfortably hot for most of the rest of the tour. Addie felt sorry for her, but not too much so, considering how much grief she’d been giving the Abbotts.
No one mentioned the barricaded door on the right. No one so much as looked at it. That was the effect of one of the spells. It let everyone’s gaze just slip right past, so they didn’t even see there was a door there at all.
At least, it was supposed to.
“What’s in there?” Maria asked, nodding her head
to that side of the cavern.
Addie stopped, and looked at Willow. Willow looked at Kiera. Kiera looked at both of them.
Doyle yawned and stretched out on his front paws. Addie could almost hear the sarcastic comment he would have given them, in his feline-ish Irish accent, if there weren’t other people around. Something along the lines of ‘I told you so.’ He was always expecting something to go wrong.
“You can see the door?” she asked Maria.
“Uh, yeah,” the reporter said flippantly. “It’s kind of right there. I know, I know, you said some sections were off limits, but what’s down there?”
“That,” Kiera said quickly, “is nothing exciting. I believe there was a cave in that way, if memory serves. It became necessary to seal it off.”
“Cave in?” Maria asked, looking up at the rock ceiling above her. “Does that happen a lot?”
“Rarely. Stay in the designated sections and you’ll be fine.”
Maria visibly swallowed. “You promise?”
“Sure we do,” Willow said brightly. “But if something does happen our insurance premiums are all paid up.”
Addie glared at her sister. That wasn’t very funny.
“What are you people talking about?” Evelyn asked them. “What door?”
Well, at least the spells were working on everyone else. Maria must have a stronger mind than most. There might even be a touch of magic within her. That happened sometimes with Typics.
“If everyone has what they’re bringing with them,” Addie said, changing the subject, “then let’s go on. There’s an amazing hot spring up ahead. Then there’s the reflective cavern, and a lot more. Maria, I hope you have lots of space on that phone of yours for photos. You’re going to need it.”
Most of them chuckled at that. Maria took a picture of the group, holding the phone’s camera out to get herself in the shot as well. Just one picture among several.
The floor of the tunnel dipped down and then up again, over and over, like a stationary roller coaster. This section was just plain gray and brown rock, unimpressive, and not much to look at. The exciting parts were coming up.
