Shadows in the Cave (19 page)

They all laughed, and Koz hollered, “Jump, you coward!”

He did. Judging from the infinity in the air, it was about as high as a mountaintop reaches above a valley. Flying would have been glorious. Plummeting into darkness was … The water saved him. Air, water, back to air.

The rest of the day they swam two more underground rivers, and the party made Aku go first, so they could shove him if he slowed down. But he didn’t. Scared into good sense.

When they woke up, Koz said, “It’s not far now.”

The group walked in a hush. They had come so far to see Salya. What would she be like? Fear jiggled in their minds.

They climbed a short hill. Koz stopped beside an alcove, “Aku, Shonan—your sister, your daughter.”

Shonan barged forward, and Aku peered around his father at his twin. She was a dead thing. Salya, face up, naked, arms and legs akimbo, head dropped back. The stillness in her felt like something hard and immovable, a boulder.

Shonan knelt and put a hand on her heart. “Still pumping,” he said.

“Body alive, spirit gone,” confirmed Ohgi.

“Every once in a while we get one of these,” said Koz. “After a long time, what I guess you would call many winters up on the surface, the body quits, and there’s nothing. Until then we just leave them be.”

Aku felt like he had been hit by a flash flood. For the first time the enormity of what Maloch had done crashed into his mind, into his emotions. The dragon had eaten Salya’s
life
. Even the wraiths down here, however miserable, were alive. They felt, they moved—even pain was a kind of energy. Salya was dead, her spirit-fire gone. The wraiths would
return to Earth and walk and jump and see and smell and laugh. Salya was
dead
.

He sat down and looked at her. For a long time he didn’t hear whatever his father and Koz were talking about, didn’t notice what Oghi and Yah-Su were doing. Waves of awareness swept over him. Salya’s dead face.
My dead face. That’s what I’ll look like when I’m dead
. For a long time he was struck immobile.

Slowly, tentatively, he got out his red flute. He touched his father’s elbow and got his attention. “Now I have to do something.” He held up the flute. He swallowed with difficulty. “This is the song the Little People taught me that brings people back to life.”

Shonan started to speak, but Aku’s glance cut him off.

He launched into the sound. His fingers and ears took over the song, and his mind sailed away. He saw pictures floating on the stream of notes. He saw the first leaves on oak trees unfurl, the ones with their green still silvered by fuzz. He saw the wildflowers of spring—gaywings, the dwarf iris, Salya’s favorite, in royal purple, the scarlet trillium, his own favorite, with its three points, the suns of marsh marigolds. He saw flocks of blackbirds swimming through the sky, whirling together beautifully, a single creature dancing.

The next drifting picture shocked him, a glimpse of the future. He saw Iona, legs split wide and a tiny head with a tinsel of hair emerging. He wanted to cry out, “My child.” He nearly spoiled the melody he was playing, but his devotion saved the song for Salya.

Now he saw the elusive denizen of the deep woods, the brown wood thrush with its spotted belly. When he listened for its haunting song, he heard instead the song of healing he was playing for Salya. And that song was coming to an end.

She didn’t stir. She didn’t blink. Her mouth didn’t move, or her fingers twitch. She didn’t breathe.

He looked into his father’s face and tried to speak but couldn’t.

“Notice,” said Koz, “she don’t even breathe. Air feeds the fire of spirit, and she’s got no spirit. She’s, like, frozen.”

“Let’s get going,” Shonan said. “Let’s get her out of here.”

He got a buffalo hide, stretched it out, and rolled Salya onto it. Aku started to help, but one touch of Salya’s arm made him jump back. Somehow he hadn’t expected her to be cold.

“It ain’t the heart, boy, it’s the spirit-fire. Life ain’t physical.”

Incomprehensible. Not breathing yet heart beating. Dead but potentially alive. Impossible, but this was a different world. He looked into her face, his face, her death, his death.

Shonan’s tone was gentle. “You yourself said that your song only works when the person has just died.” They both wondered whether that meant when the spirit was still in or near the body.

Shonan and Yah-Su hoisted the dead weight. “Where to?” said Shonan, looking at Koz.

“Well, boys, we can’t go back the way we came, against the river current and up long drops and through the squeezed alleys. There’s a way, and it’s not as hard, but it’s long. Very long.”

The alligator looked at Salya and her bearers. “Carrying her is gonna get old,” he said, “real old. You big ones can’t do it all the time, and you two can’t pair up. We’ll put a big one with a little one.”

They accepted.

They marched, marched, marched. They switched off carrying Salya and marched.

“By the way,” said Koz, “you’re going to run out of candles soon. Then we get to walk in the dark. And you”—he pointed his snout at Aku—“Put out your candle.” Koz said to Oghi, “I said put out your candle.”

Oghi did.

The darkness was appalling.

“That’s just right,” said Koz, “that’s just right.” His voice was eerie. “Now, when we’re walking in the absolute darkness, you’ll know where I am. I’ll jabber, I’ll keep the words coming straight out.” Silence and darkness. “If I fall silent, watch out.”

“Why?” said Aku.

“Because this is coming!”

Koz clacked his teeth what seemed a dozen times. The sound was like an avalanche of stones hurtling out of the darkness. Aku fell down and barely kept himself from crying out.

“Now that you’re all proper scared,” said Koz, “light the candle.”

Oghi did.

Aku breathed again.

“Stick it up to my mouth.” He gaped his jaws wide.

Oghi thrust the candle near.

“Come on,” said Koz, his voice completely normal even with his jaws open, “stick it right in.”

Oghi did. The teeth gleamed like knives in the full moon.

“Teeth are handy, you see.”

Koz started off again, and the four adventurers followed, Shonan and Aku carrying Salya in the litter.

“Need a break,” said Aku. They set her down. Aku shook out his aching fingers. “Lucky alligator,” he said, “born with no hands.”

“Teeth are better,” Koz agreed merrily. “This way I don’t have to help the fools who come to the Underworld.”

That night they camped beside a small stream of clear water. While everyone else slept, Aku lit one of the horns for a moment, sat close to Salya, and blew it out. She was wrapped in one of his robes, but she needed no decency in the darkness.

He changed into owl form and just sat. He didn’t know what to do, what to think, what to feel. He looked at his own face on her bones, a dull face, inert. He searched for words.
Not animated by life
. That phrase didn’t do it either.

He wondered whether she slept. He didn’t think so. When you slept, your awareness went from outside to inside, world to dream. Salya had no awareness, nothing inside there that could sleep.

She wasn’t dead, either. Dead was something that happened to the body, and her body was whole. The catastrophe, what befell her, happened to her spirit.

He looked at her and again saw his own face deprived of its spirit-fire. He felt himself teeter on the edge of something unimaginably awful. He felt hollow, empty, a hole.

He closed his owl eyes, looked where he knew she was, and pictured the presence of his sister, of his twin, his companion through the years of his life. The sassy girl who played with him, shared his feelings, endured the death of their mother, even defied their father when necessary. He thought of the time she stayed out all night with Kumu. They weren’t a bit apologetic, either, not Salya, not Kumu, and not his father Zinna, who declared himself glad that she was full of Kumu’s juice. No, they were full of fire and dare. Salya
backed Shonan down. Aku loved her. He missed her. He wanted to save her. For himself.

He thought again of his two flutes. They were also empty holes, but if a man blew into them, if he poured his spirit-breath through them in that way, they made beautiful songs. Hollow as he felt, he could use his breath to make a story for Salya.

She used to like for Crani to tell her stories, the stories that came down from the oldest times, when all the animals, including people, were first on Turtle Island and were discovering who they were and how life on Earth might work. He remembered that she liked the one about how the people lost tobacco and got it back, so he told it now to her limp form.

“In the beginning,” he said, “the people had plenty of tobacco, and we smoked it at all the dances and ceremonies and whenever we wanted to pray and have our breath carry our prayers to the sky. Before long, though, we used up all the tobacco, and everyone started suffering. People felt listless and lackadaisical. Some felt ill. And one old man was dying.

“This man’s son, Walelu, knew that his father had been surviving for some time on smoke alone, and he loved his father very much. So he decided to make the long journey to tobacco country and get some more.

“It was a hard journey. Tobacco grew in a place far to the south, over high mountains, and the mountain passes were guarded.

“Walelu, though, was a shaman and a shape-shifter. When he got near the passes, he opened his medicine pouch, took out the skin of a hummingbird, and slipped it on. Up he flew over the mountains, as hard to see as a whirlwind. The guards
at the tobacco patches didn’t see him either. He took a whole plant, tucked it into his medicine pouch, and sailed back over the mountains.”

Aku looked at his twin, or rather the husk that was not his sister. He wished he could tell her that he had done what she wanted, and what their mother wanted, and become a shape-shifter.
I am owl
. But the husk had no way to feel glad.

He went on, “When Walelu changed back into a man and was walking home, he saw a very beautiful woman looking out of a hole next to the lowest branches of a tree. Immediately, he wanted her. He tried to climb the tree but slipped back. Walelu wasn’t stumped by that. He took medicine moccasins out of his pouch and scooted right up the tree.

“When he got to the hole, it wasn’t there. He looked up and saw that it was higher. Up he climbed, and the hole was still higher. No matter how high he climbed, the hole was always higher.

“Walelu had no choice. He put his lust away and climbed back down. As he walked, he pondered. Walelu was a shaman and knew that he had seen the beautiful woman and the hole in the tree with his spirit eye, not his physical eye. The spirits don’t appear to human beings idly—they always have a purpose. So Walelu thought about what that purpose might be.

“When he got home, he immediately gave his father some tobacco to smoke, and the old man perked right back up.

“Then Walelu thought about that beautiful spirit woman and how he wanted to plant his seed in her, and suddenly he understood about tobacco. He took the tobacco seeds and planted them. The people knew what seeds were, but no one had ever tried to grow a plant from a seed on purpose. The people have been planting it ever since.”

Aku waited, but his audience didn’t respond to the story. His voice just rattled off the walls of the cave and echoed down the long passages.

He transformed himself into his human shape, took a deep breath, blew it out through his hollow self, and rolled up and went to sleep.

25

“T
his is the easy way?” Aku tried to make the words sound light, but everyone heard the undertone. At the moment Aku was in human form, helping his father carry his sister.

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” said Koz.

“We have been walking for days,” said Shonan.

“There are no days or nights in the Underworld,” said their alligator guide. “No time. Well, time as you know it. All times forever are here, past to future.
If
you get back, it’ll be the same day you left, ain’t that handy?”

“You are our torturer,” said Aku. Quick as a snake Koz turned his head as far to the side as he could, straight toward Aku. “And guide and executioner,” the alligator said with a smile.

This “easy way” out of the caverns of the Darkening Land seemed four times the length of the long walk they took to find Salya. They ran out of lamps, which slowed them down painfully, Koz and Aku directing every step of the three blind men. They ran out of all food but Tsi-Li’s chestnuts, which they got sick of eating. At one point they traveled two and a half days without water.

“I may as well toss you a bone,” said Koz. “Before we sleep, you’ll be in the big owl’s house.”

“All but one of us,” said Aku.

“Exactly,” said Koz.

Mouldywarp said, “Aren’t you the ones? To make it back when the others didn’t.” His pink nose twitched.

“Don’t do that thing with your nose, okay, Mouldywarp?” said Koz. “Just make a path for us, would you?”

Mouldywarp had a kind of magic. He was only the size of Aku’s hand, but when he nosed through a dusty, root-crossed passage his own size, human beings and alligators could follow him. So could men bearing a litter.

Tsi-Li, Great Dusky Owl, materialized as from nowhere and looked the adventurers over. “Thank you, Mouldywarp.” The mole disappeared. “Well, behold. I see you pilgrims have damn near killed yourselves. Mean to save me the trouble?”

Aku was feeling drained and mopey. He didn’t need his great-grandfather’s grim idea of humor.

Suddenly Tsi-Li’s owl visage was huge, looming. Aku didn’t expect any leniency from him. Probably in Tsi-Li’s mind justice worked in the world the way a rock fell, impersonal and inevitable. Between the Great Dusky Owl and the Boss of the Underworld, none of them would get out of here alive.

Inside their heads Aku and Oghi heard Tsola whisper,
You don’t need me for a while now. Good-bye
. Aku flinched at these ominous words.

Tsi-Li said in a soft boom, “Let’s see the prize you brought forth.” He regarded Salya’s limp, gangling body for a long moment. “What it inevitably must be.” Though the master of life and death probably intended to sound neutral, Aku heard the sorrow in his voice. Salya was his grandchild, too.

The great owl put his head closer to her, his attention acute. Aku wondered if he was trying to enter her mind. Surely the immortal owl had that power.

“Truly dead,” he said.

Tsi-Li opened a portal that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

“Come into my home.” Suddenly, magically, they all saw the house, there in the thicket of roots. It looked magnificent.

“You’ll need to leave the young lady,” said Koz. “If I have her, one of you will come back for her. Our little bargain.”

“Well and good,” said Shonan.

“This way,” said Tsi-Li, still holding his door open.

“You go ahead,” Yah-Su said to the others. “I want to stay with Salya. I don’t trust this alligator.”

“As you wish,” said Tsi-Li.

Aku thought,
That’s odd
. He said, “You should be with your friends.”

The buffalo man looked sheepish. “It’s wonderful to have friends.”

“This way,” the owl repeated, nodding Aku, his father, and Oghi into a large room with a smaller one on each side.

Aku went ahead. He suspected that Yah-Su felt uncomfortable about going into such a fancy place.

“Have you ever been in a house with three chambers?” said Tsi-Li, knowing perfectly well that none of his guests had. He invited them to look into one of the side rooms. “For sleeping,” he said. It had a perch with plenty of head room for a bird the size of a man, and something bowl-shaped straight below.

He led them back into the large room and across to the door of the other small chamber. It had a fire in the center, a
spit with a roast, and various cooking utensils. “I cook here, on the rare occasions that I cook. We owls like our meat as nature makes it. We have our feathers to keep us warm, and we don’t take to flames.” He shuddered, as though at the thought of fire brushing at his feathers.

“Thank you, then,” said Shonan, “for making something for us.”

“Oh, yes, we’ll have food and drink. It is a special occasion. Afterward, we’ll have some questions. Perhaps even some answers.”

Aku was in a complete muddle. He didn’t know whether to be more afraid that he’d lose his father or afraid they’d all be examined and sent back to the land of the dead.

Tsi-Li turned back to the main chamber and spread his wings wide. “So do you like my home?” The huge abode was directly beneath the Tree of Life and Death, the big roots themselves acting as beams to support the walls. These walls were not dust that got up everybody’s nose or mud that fell on them. They were plastered into a hard shell and buffed to a shine. It occurred to Aku that having a large home among the roots was physically impossible, but then Immortals didn’t play by the rules of Earth.

Aku kept sneaking looks at his father.
No. Impossible. I can’t lose him
.

The large central room they stood inside seemed to be for Tsi-Li’s pleasure. In the center sat a large flat rock, though Aku couldn’t imagine why. The walls were decorated with feathers of every possible color, tied to suggest avian bodies and wings dangling from the walls.

“I’m proud of my little collection,” said Tsi-Li. “Not every bird on Earth is represented here, far from it, but I’ve gathered my favorites. The ones with bright plumage appeal
to me especially.” Aku wondered if that was because Tsi-Li’s feathers were a gray-brown that could serve as camouflage. “These feathers are from peacocks—you’ll notice I have quite a few. Spectacular, aren’t they? A bounteous bouquet of blues and greens.”

He pointed with one wing to an entire side of the room in different colors. “These are the feathers of parrots and cockatoos. Those dazzling whites you see, ornamented with gold, yellow, and reds, are the cockatoos. I revel in the purity of that white, rarely matched on Earth.” Now he pointed to the largest panel in the room. “Parrots are among my favorite members of our avian family. Notice how this background of green feathers shows off the other colors, which are deliciously flamboyant. I’d wager you’ve never even seen some of these bright shades. Fuchsia, who would not relish such a bold hue? Rose, doesn’t it seduce the eye? Peach, azure, aquamarine, amethyst, which is one of my favorites, carmine—isn’t that fabulous?—cinnabar, I love that name, coral, magenta, I could go on and on.”

Aku was afraid his great-grandfather would. Dread was coiling tighter and tighter in his guts.
Which of us is going to die?

“It’s time. Be seated, please.” Tsi-Li gestured at some contraptions none of them had even seen. “Sit!” Tsi-Li said with a smile, and planted himself on one of the contraptions. “They’re called ‘chairs.’” The three human beings tested them out. Their host slapped the big flat rock. “This is called a table.” The guests eyed each other oddly.

Tsi-Li jumped up and went to the cooking room. “First, we have something special to drink.” He passed out horns of liquid. “This is a drink called champagne. Like your corn juice, it is fermented, but from grapes. In fact, it’s fermented
twice, so that it bubbles. See if you like it.” He sipped from the horn with his bird beak.

The guests copied their host and exclaimed, “How wonderful!” “Terrific!”

Shonan said, “Why haven’t we ever heard of this drink?”

Aku thought,
My father is damned cheerful, considering
.

“Well,” said Tsi-Li, “it’s known as the nectar of the Immortals. We keep the secret of making it to ourselves.”

The great owl served roasted acorns, then corn mush, then long, green onions sizzled half dark, and last the buffalo roast. Before each course they quaffed a horn of champagne.

Shonan said, “I’ve never had such a marvelous meal.”

Oghi chimed in with his own compliment.

“I’m glad you like it,” said Tsi-Li, an eyebrow arching.

Aku couldn’t enjoy a thing. His eyes, his thoughts, his feelings—all were on Shonan.

When they finished the slices of roast, they downed another horn of champagne. Tsi-Li said, “My friends, are you feeling strange at all?”

“Woozy,” said Shonan. He seemed happy about it.

“I like it,” said Oghi.

“Champagne does make your mind tilt a little. One day we will give human beings the secret of making it. Consumed in small quantities, it’s enjoyable. It can even make people sing and dance better. And romance better. I wonder if I’ve given you a little more than is ideal. Tell me, Shonan, are you able to answer questions?”

“Always,” said the Red Chief.

Ada
, thought Aku,
why are you pretending?

Tsi-Li nodded to Shonan. “I think I’ll start on another tack. Aku, Ohgi,” he said, “you saw what hell is.”

The two looked at each other.

“You saw and then showed me,” Aku told Oghi.

“Both of you saw fully,” said Tsi-Li. “I joined Tsola and traveled along with the two of you.”

Aku was taken aback. Someone else was in his mind. He felt a low flame of anger.

We Immortals do as we please
, said Tsi-Li in Aku’s head.

Aku flinched.

“It’s all right, Grandson,” said Tsi-Li out loud.

Aku gave him a wan smile.

“As I say, both of you saw what the punishment of the Darkening Land is.”

“Yes,” said Aku, “endlessly reliving whatever scared you in life.”

“Not the bad things that did happen,” said Ohgi.

“Clever, isn’t it?” said their host. “Even demonic.”

He turned the yellow globes of his eyes on Shonan. “You saw none of this.”

“What? The screaming and whining were horrible. Beyond horrible. Disgusting, too.”

“Yes, but you didn’t actually see what the spirits were afraid of.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Ada,” said Aku painfully. Shonan didn’t seem to notice.

Tsi-Li regarded the Red Chief. “I want you at your best. Let’s take a few minutes of sight-seeing to help you toward sobriety.”

Aku wondered what the fancy word meant.

The great owl got up, stood on the table, and said, “Follow me. Just jump.” He flapped upward, a swirl of a hole opened in the solid ceiling, and Tsi-Li disappeared through it.

The three people gaped at each other. Shonan stood up
with a what-the-hell attitude, stepped onto the table, held his arms high, jumped, and disappeared. He dived upward into solid earth.

Oghi did the same.

Hesitating, then wobbling, Aku followed along.

They found themselves high in the branches of the giant cedar, the biggest tree in the world, the Tree of Life and Death.

“Don’t worry if your stomachs are queasy,” said Tsi-Li. “You’re way up in the air and you’re tipsy. But you can’t fall from here, I promise.

“So,” said the Great Owl, “look around at the world.” To the west, which lay in half shadow, rolling hills gave way to prairies, which stretched away forever. A liquid sunrise lolled on the bald summits of the mountains to the east, leaving their steep, timbered sides dark in shadow. The sky above them, horizon to horizon, was the innocent color of a robin’s egg.

“Exquisite, isn’t it, that hue?” said Tsi-Li. He lowered his eyes to the earth that rolled away in all directions. “Exquisite world, in fact. I’ve always been impressed with Thunderbird, that he gave such a beautiful world to the creatures of mortality. But then he’s the master of the world above, and I only of the world below.

“Never mind all that, though,” the great owl chippered on. “What do you see on the branches of this magnificent cedar tree? Do you see our company?”

They all looked hard.

“I don’t see a damn thing,” said Shonan, “except cedar leaves.”

Tsi-Li waited.

“Ada, don’t you see?” ventured Aku. “There’s energy on the branches here and there.”

Tsi-Li’s sun-yellow eyes brightened. He waited.

Oghi added, “The same energy we saw down below. These branches are full of wraiths.”

“Spirits,” said Tsi-Li. “Here reside the spirits of the dead, those who have earned their emergence back to the world. They are waiting for venues of birth, women’s bellies to swim into and then out of. They are people waiting for their corporeal forms.”

Aku was amazed. It seemed to him, now that the sun was above the mountains and the Tree of Life fully lit, that the branches were spinning with energy, human potential.

“What do they do,” said Aku, “to earn this … rebirth?”

“You already know.”

“Learn not to let fear trample them.”

“Close enough. They’ve learned
some
of what you say.”

“How much?”

Tsi-Li shrugged with his wings. “It’s my call. Let’s just say that I am the master of the knowledge of life and death.” He waited. “Have you seen enough?”

Aku breathed in and out. “I’d just like to sit here a few minutes and look and … absorb it all.”

Tsi-Li nodded. They all sat in silence. Finally, Tsi-Li said, “Ready?”

Aku nodded.

Tsi-Li said, “This bit is scary, but just jump. Dive, straight down.” He did it himself, wings folded back. In an instant he disappeared among the branches.

“Okay for a bird,” said Shonan.

In his human form Aku dived. His body disappeared just before the branches hid him from view.

Oghi and the Red Chief leaped head down. Abruptly, they sat at the table in Tsi-Li’s central room.

Amazingly, Salya lay by the fire, wrapped in robes.

Aku leapt and opened the door. Outside was no Koz, no Yah-Su, nothing but roots and dust.

“Where is my friend?” said Aku, his voice trembling.