The B Girls (23 page)

Lucy started climbing, slow and steady, testing
every hand and foothold before trusting her weight to them. It was an easy
climb. Jane must have been unlucky enough to grab the one loose rock in the
shaft.

Three minutes and she was at the top. She found a
sturdy formation to tie off the rope and tossed it down to Mae with a warning
it was on its way.

With the security of the rope to back her up, it
only took Mae two minutes to reach the top.

She unclipped her harness and gave Lucy a look.
"Are you sure about this?"

"As sure as I'm going to be. Keep an eye on
the time. If we get much past an hour, hour and a half and we're still not near
the end we'll turn back."

Mae nodded. "Let's move as fast as we
can."

###

The passage they'd climbed into was the easiest one
they'd encountered since the first rappel. Almost wide enough for outstretched
arms and with ceilings well above their heads, even a big man would be able to
maneuver without trouble.

Still, Lucy moved with careful deliberation.
According to the map there was some sort of shaft or hole in the floor ahead
that she didn't want to step into.

They found the hole about twenty yards down the
passage. It was filled with water that dripped from a stalactite with a slow,
steady, plop.

The hole was about four feet across and looked
deep. It wasn't much more than a giant step, just a little jump and they'd be
across. But the consequences of not making it or of falling back when landing
made the gulf seem larger.

Lucy looked around for someplace to tie off a
safety rope. Of course, the walls in this area were smooth because nothing
about this could
actually
be easy.
There was a narrow ledge between the right hand wall and the pool, maybe four
inches of damp rock that looked slippery.

What to do? Jump? Or edge around the right side?

"What do you think?" Lucy asked Mae.

She pointed to a lip of rock, like a ripple a few
feet back from the edge of the hole. "If I sit and brace my feet on that,
I can belay you while you tiptoe around the edge. You can find a spot to do the
same for me on the other side."

"Do you really think you can hold me if I
fall?"

She shrugged. "It's not like you're going off
a cliff. The water will give you some buoyancy."

Lucy looked at the hole again. Mae was right, the
water would be cold an uncomfortable but Lucy probably wouldn't get hurt and
Mae would only have to help haul her out if she couldn't find a hold to pull
herself out. "Good thinking."

They set up the rig and Lucy eased out onto the
ledge with her face to the wall. Good thing neither of them had more than a C
cup.

Lucy edged around the hole to the other side
without getting wet and breathed a sigh of relief.

Mae waited while Lucy found a spot to brace her
feet and followed her across.

Lucy's heart was pounding a little from the stress
and it looked to her like Mae was breathing a little fast but they didn't rest.
Knowing Jane was waiting and in pain was good incentive to keep moving.

Lucy checked the map. "That hole seems to be
about the halfway point. At least according to this, but who knows?"

The floor sloped slightly down on this side of the
hole and it looked like water sometimes flowed along the passage.

"I always thought caves were supposed to be
pretty," Mae said. "You know with fool's gold sparkles and colored
rocks."

Lucy had been thinking the same thing. Everything
in the cave seemed to be variations of muddy brown, Georgia clay red or a dull
baby-shit yellow. "I thought so too but I seem to recall having similar
thoughts on the Ruby Falls tour. Some of the formations were amazing and of
course the falls were beautiful but most of the place was dull brown
rock."

"I guess nature is sparing with the amazing
parts so we can appreciate them more."

Lucy gave her the eye at that even though Mae
couldn't see her. "Aren't you just a little philosopher. Still, I'd love
to see a real magical cave."

Mae chuckled. "This from the woman who vowed
never to go underground again if we get out alive."

Another thirty yards or so brought them to a climb
down.

They didn't waste time talking about it. Lucy
rigged a rope, clipped in and started to climb down. This was another one of
the twisty climbs. "Come on after me as soon as I make the first turn.
Just try not to kick any loose rocks on my head."

"I'll yell if something gets loose," Mae
said.

Lucy nodded and kept moving down.

They were making really good time. According to the
map, at the bottom of this climb they'd find one more passage then a large room
with some big stalagmites and stalactites. The X--hopefully--marking the
Declaration's hiding spot was on the far side of the lowest hanging stalactite
in that room.

The climb was long and narrow but not too dangerous
since the shaft twisted often enough to make any fall a short one. It was,
however, slow going. About twenty-five minutes of finger, elbow and knee
scraping later, Lucy stepped to the floor of what, she hoped, was a short
passage leading into the final chamber.

Lucy moved out of the way so Mae wouldn't have to
navigate around her and took her first look at the final lap.

Lucy's breath caught in her throat and she decided
maybe she should learn to pray.

The light disappeared into a three foot high, two
foot wide crack.

It was her worst nightmare.

"That can't be right. There must be another
passage. No way we're supposed to go in there,"

Mae swept her light over the walls. No other
openings were visible.

"The right opening must be hidden," Lucy said.
Please let there be another opening. A bigger opening.

"No. This is it," Mae said.

Lucy shuddered. "What makes you so sure?"

"The map. If there was more than one small
passage I'd think it would have been pointed out on the map," Mae said.

Lucy realized Mae was right. If the choice was
between a small crack and a large tunnel maybe there wouldn't be any reference
on the map but if there was a choice to be made between one or more, small,
scary cracks surely Paul Morris would have noted which small, scary crack was
the right one.

The
real
crack
of doom mocked her from three feet away.

"We're going to have to go in," Mae said.

The crack exhaled a dank breath filled with a ripe
moist smell onto Lucy's face. Irrational as it was, it seemed to her the smell
you'd expect coming up from a grave after a storm. She couldn't get past the
idea that she'd be buried alive if she went in there.

She didn't fear a cave-in as much as she feared
somehow just getting stuck, unable to move forward or back--uninjured, fully
awake and aware and able to anticipate with every breath her long, slow death
in the dark.

"Lucy? Are you okay?"

Mae's voice penetrated Lucy's morbid daydream.

Lucy shivered, took Mae's hand and stood up.

"Lucy?" Mae said again.

"I think I'm about to lose it," Lucy
said.

"Lose it? You have to get it together. If I
managed to rappel down that hole, you can manage to navigate a little
tunnel."

A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled up out of
Lucy's mouth. "Little is right."

Mae propped her hands on her hips and cocked her
head. "Now look here, your Aunt Belle is counting on us to get to that
Declaration."

Yes, Belle was counting on her, but fear this big
tended to overwhelm everything in its path. "Two words--cave in."

"Two more--kid-napper." Mae punctuated
the last with a clap for each syllable.

"That's one word," Lucy pointed out.

Mae sighed in exasperation. "Fine, if we're
not going forward let's go back. We have to get Jane out of here too."

"I didn't say I wasn't going," Lucy said.
"I just need a little time to work up the nerve."

"Good. That's good," Mae said.

Lucy thought she sounded like she was talking to
one of her teenagers after they'd told her they planned to save sex for the
wedding night. She wasn't ready to throw in the towel yet. Jane had broken an
arm and refused to let them quit. The only thing stopping Lucy was fear and
that wouldn't change in the next few minutes or even the next few hours.

She pictured Gary telling her she'd become a boring
drudge. That did it.

"I can't quit. We have to get the Declaration
today. Let's see if we can make it through," Lucy said.

"I'm not sure we'll be able to get through
wearing our packs," Mae said as she made a test foray into the opening. Sure
enough, her pack snagged on the top of the opening even when she flopped on her
belly.

"We can't leave them behind," Lucy said.
"We don't know what equipment we might need. Not to mention the water and
batteries."

"Why don't we use some carabineers and attach
them to a piece of rope. We can pull them behind us," Mae said.

"Sounds like a plan." Maybe not the best
plan but at least Mae was still capable of logic. "You can pull them and
I'll be able to push if necessary," Lucy said.

Mae cut a piece of rope from one of the bundles
dangling from her climbing harness and started to rig her pack to it. Lucy
shrugged out of hers so Mae could rig them together.

"I hope this mess doesn't get caught on
anything. I'm probably not going to have a lot of room to maneuver in
there," Mae said as she locked the final carabineer onto Mae's pack.

"If we can get through the packs can get
through," Lucy said. She clipped the carabineer Mae had attached to the
other end of the rope to a loop on her harness. "Let's get this over
with."

"Ready?" Mae said.

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Of course I'm not
ready. I'm about to present myself to that hideous hole like some kind of human
sacrifice."

"Not too late to go back."

"Just go before I lose my nerve."

Mae dropped and crawled into the crack.

Lucy shuddered and held a last second debate with
herself. In the end, she decided she couldn't live with wimping out now.

She dropped and followed Mae into the hole.

###

Lucy tried to conjure an image of a magical
underground world as she crawled into the crack of doom behind Mae.

She tried to channel Lara Croft--brave, adventurous
and more than capable of saving Belle from one scholarly kidnapper.

It didn't help. She still knew she was a soon to be
divorced, (nearly) middle-aged woman with bad hair and no sense of style who on
a good day could achieve a true meditative state for ten minutes max.

Her heart pounded, she was breathing way too fast,
and she was seeing spots. She was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. At
least that's what she thought it would be called since she'd never had a panic
attack before now.

"Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to die we go. We're
idiots in over our heads. Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho."

Jane's singing brought Lucy up short. It was only
in her head. A bubble of hysterical laughter popped out of her mouth. That is
exactly what Jane would be doing, making some sick joke about this nightmare.

The imagined off-key version of the dwarves' song
did the trick--a happy, animated vision of the cave popped into her head. Walls
gleaming with polished gems, nice smooth passages and her fellow dwarves in
fine voice.

Lucy shuffled on and held on to the vision.
"Find your happy place," she said to herself. This was all about
choosing how to feel. She could choose not to be afraid. She could choose to
enjoy the adventure. She could choose to succeed in saving Belle.

She started humming "Hi Ho" under her
breath.

"What's going on back there?" Mae called
from some distance ahead.

"Coming," Lucy said. "How is it up
there?"

"I don't see the end but it hasn't gotten any
smaller."

After ten minutes more minutes of crawling, Lucy
was pretty sure ninety-nine percent of the muscles in her body were either
cramped or thinking about it. The going was slow.

"Uh oh," Mae said.

"Uh oh? No uh oh. I don't want to hear uh
oh."

"Hold on," Mae said. "I think it
might be a dead end."

For a few seconds Lucy's mind warred between relief
that she wouldn't have to keep going in the narrow dark and disappointment at
not finding the Declaration. "It can't be a dead end. The map shows some
sort of formation in this passage could that be what you're seeing?"