by Gabe Sluis
Chapter 12- The Silver Cave
He was a rat gripped by a falcon, helplessly dragged through the air. Darkness hugged Donny tighter and tighter the deeper he was dragged into the depths. His midsection was in a giant clamp, with no room for movement. There was no view of what was doing this to him, only a powerful aura latched on to his body. And then it was gone.
Instant freedom was granted to Donny’s flailing movements. The serpent dissolved into a storm of air bubbles replacing its existence, the laws of physics taking over and forcing them upward. Donny twisted and turned, seeing nothing in the darkness. He swept the hair from his face and began to panic as he became aware of the lack of air in his lungs. He looked up and saw a faint light and frantically kicked for the surface. The pressure on his ears eased back as he felt himself rocketing to the surface, surrounded by the gale of tiny bubbles dancing along with him. His lungs cried out for oxygen as he burned what little he had left to reach the only light visible in the void of darkness that he had been sucked into. Strangely, it was his throat that seemed to betray him as he fought to keep from taking a breath before breaking the surface. He swallowed hard and scrunched his face as he passed the final moments of this horrible test.
Donny broke the surface with a gasp and took in the sweetest air he had tasted in his life. His eyes blurred from the water dripping into them and Donny ineffectively brushed his longish hair off of his forehead. He treaded water for a moment and went for the solid surface in front of him. Coughing and with little thought but to get out of the water that had nearly killed him, Donny pulled his wet body onto the stone ground of the cave he had surfaced inside.
Donny coughed and dripped, lying on the ground. A little chunk of black gunk came out and he spit it on to the stone. I gotta quit smoking, Donny thought to himself. After he felt better, he rolled over and sat up. Raking his hair into a semblance of its place, he looked around the silver cave.
It was the best way he describe the cave area he was in, and obvious as well, with the veins of silver metal running through the rocks like zebra stripe. It was everywhere too: running along the uneven ground, the walls, the graphic ceiling, and even veins showing in the stalagmites and stalactites. In fact, it seemed that the light that was allowing Donny to see all these features was coming from the metal itself. He looked around, knowing something strange was going on, but was happy to be on solid ground nonetheless.
Donny turned back around to look at the circular pool that he had come up through, wondering if he could see a way out, back to the waterfall and his friends. The light giving metal seamed to begin where he was standing, and anything further back in the cavern was darkness, as was the pool. This worried him, but not overly so, as getting back into the water to backtrack through giant serpent infested waters did not hold any power in moving him that way. That thought made him walk backwards from the edge of the water to a safer distance.
Donny stood for a second, listening to the sound of dripping water. The absence of any waterfall noises made up his mind that he must have been pulled far from his friends, and would have to find his way out of this cave as fast as he could. They had a mission to accomplish; something Chris was counting on him for help, and he need to be there for the two of them. Whatever help he could give, that was.
He picked his way though the cave, finding the caverns’ exit in the back. That lead to a hallway, and another cavern was ahead. He could feel a breeze, and knowing from everything he had watched or read, that this was a good sign for finding the exits of caves.
The fact that he knew that made him smile. Maybe he would be some help for the other two. So far he had done nothing but get himself lost, not to mention the doubts he had about what was going to happen when they caught up to the man on the wanted poster. Despite how much he loved them, Chris and Jake could be so irreverent toward life sometimes. The two of them seamed to gang up on him a lot, taking the hard line and feeding off each other. They would give their best arguments, which made sense most of the time, and would try to convince Donny that any apprehension he felt was just him being tenderhearted. But he knew what was right to him, and being tenderhearted sometimes wasn’t a bad thing, it was who he was.
The more Donny thought about it, the more he realized how much the two of them really did gang up on him. He knew their hearts were in the right place, ‘Donny quit smoking. Donny get a real job! Donny your place is a wreck. You need to stop partying so much,’ but stuff like that grated on him. He knew he needed to do better, but things take time. Changing big stuff wouldn’t just happen overnight because you want it to. All that subtle nagging made him want to push the two of them away instead. It was hard being around those two, who thought they had it all figured out, when they constantly try to change a guy. But then again, he was the one stuck alone in a cave.
The next cavern opened up. It was smaller than the first and had less cave-furniture, but the ceiling was higher. Three steps in to the room, he saw the pedestal. The veins of silver grew thicker at the base and took over the rock by the time it reached the top. But the most interesting part, Donny saw as he walked closer, was the item lying on top.
A pan flute, he recognized the instrument at once. It had nine, thin wooden pipes in a single row, tapering from big to small. Donny stood idle for a moment and after looking for something resembling a booby trap or pressure switch, he picked up the flute. He turned it over and looked down the pipes. The flute looked to have been tuned by poured wax in the base of each pipe, and there was nothing he could see that lashed the pipes together. It was as if the instrument was carved from one solid piece. Impulsively, he put the flute to his lips and blew across the top of the center pipe.
Throughout the cave a perfect ‘C’ note filled the audible space and felt like it instantly added ten degrees of warm air. The void produced by the ending of the note left a slight ringing in Donny’s mind. He played it again. Up and down the scale he played, feeling the power of each note, the echo of each fleeing in a whisper. Donny smiled. He was brought out of his glum mood, and was reinvigorated.
There was no thought in his mind that he should replace the instrument. The fact that this was now his flute was as true as gravity to Donny. He walked away with his treasure, now feeling somehow more complete. As he walked deeper into the cave, following the flow of fresh air, Donny played notes at random, taking pleasure in the taste of each. He walked out of the cavern and into a tunnel where the light from the walls became less as the silver veins contracted.
Totally absorbed by the music, he began to hash out a tune. He had an ear for music; He could play a tight guitar and loved to fiddle around on a keyboard. Though he had never played a pan flute like this before, Donny picked up the mechanics quickly, stabbing at a jazzy tune as he ambled along. Before he knew it, his feet began to make a beat as they slapped the ground. It was getting dark now, but there was a light ahead, so he just continued playing along with his feet-slappin’ beat. Donny felt fine as he approached the yellow light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s when he noticed it; he was no longer in a cave, but a round brick tunnel. He slipped the flute in his back pocket.
The sound of water hit his ears in the absence of his song. He crept the last few yards to the end of the tunnel. Donny took to his belly and crawled over the corroding red bricks to the edge. He was in a water works of some kind. Brick and steel structures ran around the large room that was lit by buzzing yellow fluorescents. He felt as if he was in a different world, wondering how far he had come since he was separated from his friends at the waterfall. There was a thin wrought iron ladder anchored into the wall leading to his position, high up on a wall. Seeing no one, Donny swung his feet over and began to climb down. He went hand over hand, peering down past his feet, and shortly reached the ground.
But, before he could turn away from the ladder, something blunt poked him in the back. A voice spoke, making him jump.
“Stay right where you are, Songbird.”
