Shadows in the Cave (17 page)

The pretty girl stooped gracefully on the bank, dipped up water, and trod back toward the village.

Funai followed her through the woods, parallel to the trail, where he could keep an eye on her. Twenty paces into the village clearing a stocky, virile-looking man came up to her and said something. She stopped, they traded some words and smiles, and she went on.

He was flirting
, said Oghi,
but she wasn’t
.

Not yet
, said Aku.

Feel Funai’s fear
, said Tsola.

They all did. It skittered up and down the young man’s nerves as he watched the girl. When Funai’s eyes flicked over to the virile man, also walking away, rage played an obbligato over dread.

The girl ducked into her house. Funai slipped out of the woods and walked quickly to the same house with the grace of the natural athlete. When he slid in, the observers could see the whole family gathered there, four generations. Funai gave the girl a quick kiss and her eyes sparkled. She set the
gourds down next to an older woman, and the woman gave her a baby.

They’re married
, said Aku,
with a child
.

And he has a horror of betrayal
, said Oghi. Sadness flecked his voice.

If he keeps that up
, said Tsola,
she’ll give him what he’s afraid of
.

The memory circled through the wraith’s mind again, unvarying in detail. This time the observers gave fuller attention to his feelings.

Ugly
, said Aku,
nasty
.

What a way to make yourself miserable
.

Tortured by what hasn’t happened
.

The wraith curled into a fetal position and moaned, moaned, moaned.

In a moment another memory materialized in his consciousness. He walked after a short, beefy man a generation older. Both of them carried the rackets used in the ball game, long sticks with small nets on the ends. Funai grabbed the older man hard by the shoulder. “Uncle,” he said, challenge seething in his voice, “who did you vote for as captain?”

The uncle patiently lifted the gripping hand off his shoulder. “The other man,” he said.

“My rival? I’m your nephew,” said the young man. “You owe me.”

“I owe the team. You are the best player, but you are not the best leader.”

“You betrayed me.” Funai’s eyes flashed fury.

“My duty is to the team.”

“What about your duty to me?” Here a hint of whine slipped into his voice.

“It is to help you become a man,” said the uncle. “I’ve always done that, and I’m doing it now.” He walked away.

The young man whirled in rage. He raised his racket, slammed it down, and broke it over his knee. He turned toward his uncle and shouted, “Traitor!”

Immediately, the memory started its rerun.

Fear of betrayal
, said Oghi.

I wonder how many other fears torment him
, said Tsola.

Are they all like this?
asked Aku.

They are all consumed with fear
, said Oghi.
Fear is the flame that inflicts all their suffering
.

Tsola said,
Everything we’re seeing down here is what they’re afraid of. None of this happened in real life. None
.

Aku and Oghi had nothing to say.

The wraith was a lurid red. Her terror was loud. She screamed, she shrieked, she caterwauled. Aku and Oghi stood well back, intimidated by the grand display of her agony.

Slowly, half step by half step, they crept close enough to see. A child was running, holding her mother’s hand. Lightning struck like a dozen blades of light all around them. Thunder banged louder than any human being had ever heard it on Earth. A deluge of rain whipped at them. The little girl screeched in terror, but her screech was the call of a songbird compared to yowling of the wraith, which was like a thousand horns braying at once, in a horrific clash of keys.

Mother and daughter made it to their hut and scrambled inside. Now the rain was gone, and the lightning was only a flicker through the smoke hole at the top. But the explosions of thunder were immense, overwhelming, soul-shaking.

The mother stripped the child’s dress off and wrapped her in a soft elk hide with the fur against her skin. Then mother
and father lay down by the fire, both holding the child tightly.

Her screams nearly shattered their ears. They kept holding her. “Rana, Rana,” cooed the mother, “everything is okay. It can’t get us here. Rana, Rana, it’s okay.”

When the child switched from screaming to blubbering, the wraith restarted the memory. Booms of thunder like a hundred cymbals struck at once in the head, lightning forks like a thousand fingers of the devil.

Eaten alive by her own imagination
, said Oghi.

Abruptly—stunningly—the wraith silenced itself. They felt a hint of calm ease through it.

The scene changed. Rana poked her head out of the family hut. Dark clouds clumped around the peaks to the west. Occasionally, she could see the glare of sheets of lightning, and afterwards the growl of thunder.

“Come in,” said her mother, “it’s going to storm.”

Rana stayed with her head out. The claps of thunder were what she imagined a bear’s growl sounded like. She had never seen a bear, but she’d heard her father and uncles describe bears that seemed to jump out from nowhere and roar angrily, or even attack. Usually, the men backed away slowly, leaving the bear to its territory and slipping toward their own.

She’d also heard stories sometimes of men who had visions that the bear was their spirit animal, and who believed that they should kill a bear and wear its claws in a necklace, or wear even its head in battle. In the stories, at least, none of these men got killed. They had to fight fiercely, and some got bad wounds, but they killed the bear, ate its heart to take its courage, and wore a part of it as a sign of their brave spirits.

Rana wanted to be brave.

“Rana,” said her mother more sharply, “come on back, a storm is coming. You hate storms.”

Rana stepped outside. She took a full look to the west. Flickers of lightning here, forks there, the rumbles of thunder from every direction.

Right then a few raindrops flicked her face. Unsure, she stepped toward the middle of the village common and faced to the west. She told herself it was all right, that everything was going to be all right. Though old men and women told stories about people getting hit by lightning, no one could remember such a person. Lots of people were caught out in storms, and they came home okay.

Rana wanted to have courage.

“Rana,” her mother called from the door, “get in here.”

The rain sliced down harder, but Rana held her place.

Her mother strode out to the child and grabbed her hand.

Rana jerked it away. “Mama,” she said, eyes fixed on the storm closing in, “I don’t want to live afraid.”

Her mother stiffened in surprise.

“How do I feel brave?”

Her mother thought. She said, “It’s not what you feel, it’s what you do.”

After a few very long moments, she took Rana’s hand. They both stood right out in the open through the entire storm. Though lightning bolts appeared to strike the tops of nearby hills, none hit Rana or her mother, or anything in the village.

Wow!
said Aku.

She just played it in her mind in a different way
, said Oghi.
Nothing hard
.

Tsola said,
The choice was always hers
.

Grandmother
, said Aku,
is that why you sent me flying as a war eagle?

The first of the great virtues—not the only one—is courage. Come to the cave of paintings and learn the others.

If we get out of here alive
, said Aku.

Oghi and Aku walked for what seemed like a long time before they saw another wraith, this one glowing an ugly, muddy, mustard-like green. It barely moved, as though barely capable of stirring, but it moaned continually. It was a very old man lying on a pad of elk hides. Being inside his head was unspeakable. He had vertigo all the time—the world spun continually.

This is awful
, said Aku.

I’m drawing back
, said Oghi. Quickly, he transformed himself into a sea turtle.
In my flat-bottomed shell, with my wide base on the ground, I might not feel so crazy in the head
.

Does it work?
said Aku.

Oghi rejoined Aku in the old man’s mind.
No
, Oghi said.

He’s creating it
, said Aku.
If we’re in him, we’re in it
.

The world is still doing flip-flops
.

Every few minutes the old man threw up. Fortunately, they were dry retches. Oghi and Aku hated being there.

His wife stooped down and offered him a horn of broth. “Sip some of this, Mynu.”

Mynu flung out a hand to brush away the offer and accidentally hit the cup. The hot broth spilled all over his wife, who jumped back and dunked her hands and arms in cold water.

Mynu’s going through a bad illness
, said Oghi.

I think it’s something more
, said Tsola.

Oghi studied Mynu’s belly. He hadn’t eaten much in days. Oghi let his eyes explore the entire body. It was weak. Mynu was undernourished. Maybe he didn’t feel like eating, or
couldn’t keep food down. Maybe his lack of teeth made eating hard. Maybe the family didn’t have enough to eat. Regardless, this old man had been hungry for weeks.

Oghi said,
I can feel the failure of his limbs, the difficulty of his breaths, the weakness of his heart
.

Aku said,
He won’t get through the winter
.

Now the spinning of the world slowed in Mynu’s mind. He began to think of other things. He remembered his other wife, the left side of her face sagging, even the eyelid, her left arm hanging useless. She lay in her blankets, unable to get to her feet or even to crawl, fouling herself. Mynu’s present wife, her sister, had to change the hide blankets, clean her sister, and wash the hides in the cold creek. The old woman lay in a stupor, caring about nothing, acknowledging no one.

As Oghi, Aku, and Tsola watched, all the while Mynu remembered or imagined innumerable times when he’d felt helpless. He remembered when the boys chose teams for the kick-the-ball game and he got chosen last. Instead of playing all out, he shuffled around aimlessly. When he wanted to practice flint-knapping with his own brothers but was too shy to ask for flints, they worked and he watched. He remembered when he wanted to join the circle of men flirting with a girl he fancied. She’d recently had her becoming-a-woman ceremony. But he was afraid to intrude. When they gave her to another man in marriage, her parents never even knew Mynu had been interested in her.

He ran such scenes through his mind one by one, repeated some, leapt forward to others. Helpless, helpless, he was forever helpless.

Oghi said,
Life doesn’t have to be that way
.

Tsola said,
It was for Mynu
.

What is all this
, said Aku,
fear of old age and death?

They should worry about hell
, said Oghi,
not death
.

It’s none of the above
, said Tsola.

Suddenly, Mynu’s fantasy jumped forward. Oghi and Aku could feel his will take hold, his control over his thoughts, tenuous and weak but real.

He’s sick of rubbing this wound raw
, said Aku.

Perhaps
, said Tsola.

The hut was dark, the fire out, everyone asleep. For the moment Mynu had no vertigo. He sat up and looked around. The three observers saw the opportunity occur to him. Mynu wrapped two hides around himself. He stood up and wobbled.

As the old man in the fantasy wobbled, so did the wraith’s imagination. Fear tramped around in the wraith’s heart, a monster.

Aku, Oghi, and Tsola felt the wraith ward it off a little. The wraith thought,
To hell with being helpless
.

Mynu wove his unsteady way from the back of the hut around the dead fire to the door flap. Careful to be quiet, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled out the door.

The night air was bitter. Mynu breathed it in and out, his breath pluming, then back in. He smiled. It felt fresh, and it was cold enough.

He hoped the vertigo would stay away long enough for him to get outside the village into the forest, into a snowbank. Something about the idea of snow as a third blanket appealed to him. Snow was soft, the thought of it comforting.

He set out away from the village common into the trees. He didn’t have many steps left in his old legs, and he could lose his balance at any time, so he staggered toward the hillside, not the creek. He didn’t want the women to find him when they made the trip for water in the morning.

Soon he fell, but crawled on. He got barely to the edge
of the brush. There he fell forward into the snow. He shook the white stuff off his face and head. When his nose was in it, it didn’t seem so damn comforting. He got to his knees but couldn’t get up. He took thought and smiled.
Why not?
He rolled up in the hides.
Pointless, but
… He lay back and smiled. He didn’t want to shiver. He would go to sleep and not wake up.
I am not helpless
.

The wraith disappeared.

Simultaneously, Aku, Oghi, and Tsola gasped. They stared at the spot where the energy had lain in misery, howling, moaning, and whining. It was empty air.

What happened?
said Aku.

He’s gone
, said Oghi, feeling foolish for saying the obvious.

Where can they go?
said Aku.

The three observers waited, stunned.

Back to Earth?
said Oghi.

They sat in a circle and told Shonan and Yah-Su the story of what they’d just seen.