Shadows in the Cave (27 page)

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.

“Reborn?” said Aku. “You think that’s what happened?”

Shonan said, “That’s just speculation. All of this is what you think you see.”

Aku and Oghi looked at each other. The Red Chief hadn’t seen, he had no way to know.

Oghi tapped his fingers on the stone floor. Finally he said tentatively, “If you master your fear, I mean, if you don’t let your mind panic, maybe you go back and start a new life.”

“Maybe if you do it enough times,” said Aku.

“We don’t know,” said Oghi.

Tsola said in their minds,
Only Tsi-Li has the mastery of the knowledge of life and death.

“But there’s nothing here to be afraid of,” said Aku aloud.
They’re already dead.

Shonan said something. Oghi said something back. They traded more words. Yah-Su watched, apparently relaxed. Aku heard none of it because he was listening to Tsola in his mind.

None of the above
, she said again.

What do you mean?

You always have a choice whether to be afraid, or take a chance and go after what you want. It’s the eternal struggle. Which is stronger, your desire to kiss the girl or your fear that she will turn away? Which is stronger, your desire to have a child, or your fear that the child will die or turn into a whirlwind of troubles? Your desire to sing a song beautifully? Or your fear of sounding bad?

Aku mulled on that and decided to throw something into the conversation. “Once Tsola told me, ‘It’s not death people are afraid of. It’s life.’ ”

“Talk, talk, talk,” said Shonan.

From behind them a voice said loudly, “I think you clowns need some help.”

It was an alligator.

Call me Koz,” he said.

He was as long as three men were tall. The mouth looked big enough to swallow a deer whole, and the teeth sharp enough to shred it for stew. He appeared to be grinning. Luckily, he was a dozen steps away.

Koz said, “I’m the boss down here. The top-dog predator of all Earth in charge of hell, whaddya think of that?”

All four of them were tongue-tied.

“Don’t have the gift of gab, I see. Okay, I’ve come to make you an offer—with, natch, the permission of the big owl himself.”

He grinned, showing his teeth horribly. He seemed tickled at himself.

Shonan decided to deflate him. “Why do you talk funny?”

“I’m jiving in from a different time, which we Immortals can always do.” He looked into their uncomprehending faces.

“Never mind, back to business. You are looking for Salya, your daughter”—he pointed his snout at Shonan—“and your sister.” He indicated Aku. “Here are the words you’ve been hoping to hear. I know where she is, I can take you to her. And I’m glad to do it.” He waggled his tail like a monstrous puppy enjoying himself. “For a price.”

Shonan found his tongue. “What do you want?”

“One of you. You want to take someone out of the Underworld? No problem. All you got to do, aside from satisfying Tsi-Li, is to leave someone behind. Any one of the four of you stays down here with me, I don’t care which.”

“You’re a monster,” said Shonan.

“An alligator,” corrected Koz. “And the boss of the Underworld.”

Shonan raised a knife.

“What are you, a jerk?” Koz flicked his tail sideways and knocked Shonan’s legs out from under him. The Red Chief splatted to the stone. “Pay attention. I told you the big owl sent me to help you.”

Raising onto his elbows, Shonan said, “I don’t know if we need a helper like you.”

“Whatcha gonna do without me? You gonna walk this whole place? If you stayed down here long enough to breed a hundred generations, which it don’t look like you got the broads to do, all of you and your descendants couldn’t walk enough of the Underworld to find one this person.”

“Why should we trust you?” said Shonan, getting up.

“Hey,
don’t
trust me. But here’s the news of the day. I know where your daughter is, and you don’t.”

The four adventurers stared at the alligator.

“We’ll talk it over,” said Shonan.

“Be my guests,” said Koz.

They huddled and talked softly, with the incessant din of the condemned to cover their discussion.

“We don’t have any choice,” said Shonan.

The other three nodded.

“I am willing to make this sacrifice,” the war chief went on.

“I am not willing to lose my father,” said Aku. He was surprised at the heat of his own voice.

Yah-Su and Oghi started to say something, too, but Shonan held up a hand.

“Why don’t we talk about this later, quietly, when we have time?”

“Talk about who’s going to sacrifice his life?” said Aku.

“Yes.” Shonan regarded his son. “Dying isn’t the worst thing. Living like a coward is.”

He turned to Koz. “Offer accepted,” he said, “on the condition that you actually find her for us.”

“Then off we go,” said the alligator in a perky voice. “The short way or the easy way?”

“The short way,” said Shonan.

“Every hundred years we get a visitor here, and he always says, ‘the short way.’ ” He shook his head as if to say,
Oh, brother.
“Regardless, down here, any company from outside is a bit of fun. Follow me.”

He started off. “You know, this place, vast as it is, tunnels in every directions, cracks in twice as many directions, lakes, rivers, everything you can imagine and a thousand times bigger, it’s not as complicated as your brains. All these people in here, or the lost spirits of people, they’re lost in their own heads. Have you ever seen the inside of a brain, all those little tiny blood pathways everywhere, more trails than there are on Earth, unbelievably complicated? No, you’re mortals, so you wouldn’t. Take my word for it, your brain is much bigger than the entire Underworld, and much worse to be lost inside of.”

“Enough,” said Shonan.

“Let’s go. It’s your asses.”

Koz told them to keep the lamps out, save them for when they really needed them. Shonan, Oghi, and Yah-Su followed Koz by his chatter. Above, Aku winged from perch to perch
and watched with his owl eyes. It was an eerie and uncanny scene. A dark brown alligator led human beings and an owl through an environment as hostile as anyone could imagine. It was totally dark, the kind of dark that disoriented you and made you think everything was an illusion, invited you to populate the darkness with all your worst imaginings. Dark as madness.

Aside from the fears engendered by the darkness, there were actual drop-offs, slides, climbs, rivers, and lakes. By far the worst of all was the inconceivable pandemonium of human misery, wraiths yowling, yelling, wailing, shrieking, sobbing, moaning without end.

It seemed to Aku it must be the greatest affliction he would ever face, wading through this testimony of woe. No, second greatest, he reminded himself. He couldn’t allow himself to think consciously,
The sacrifice of your father.

Koz’s jibber-jabber was a godsend. Not only “Watch your head there” and “a bit slippery here” but chitchat about the amazing things he’d seen people do. “People, to me, are the most curious creatures ever invented. I know what goes on up there, you know. All us Immortals know without even having to look in your direction.

“When Thunderbird sent you to a different world and slipped mortality in with you—now
there’s
a nasty bit—he must have temporarily lost his mind. The mischief? It boggles the imagination.

“So there’s death, it’s waiting. Rebirth, yes, you know that, and it takes some sting out of death. So you carry on through your days on Earth frozen stiff by another fear, living. The one big gift, your chance to jump over the moon, and you’re boo-hoo scared of it. Whatever you’re doing, the song in your mind, it’s, ‘Be careful now, you might get hurt. You might mess up right in front of everybody.’

“Well, as you see, you pay for playing scaredy cat. Listen to your comrades, oh, ain’t they sufferin’, same in death as in life—ain’t that a hotsy paradox for you?

“Oh, the chorus of suffering.” He started dancing while he walked and got a chant going—“Illness, old age, hunger, thirst, war, drowning, lightning, sea storms, childbirth, attack by bears or panthers, floods, fire, cold, and the worst bugaboo of all—embarrassment. Oh, what a multitude awaits you, every part of it a little reminder—
things might go wrong!

“And the way you obsess. You remember the quarter moon you were sick, or limped from a cut in your foot, not the twelve and a half moons you felt fine. You remember the baby that died, not the six brothers and sisters you’ve got. You dwell on the great-grandparents who died, not the ones still ticking, or the four grandparents and two parents you still got. Brother, you human beings, you are something to watch.”

He let a moment of silence hum, and all four of his followers got nervous.

“I tell you what, though, there’s a favor mortality does you guys that is really something. Sometimes you sneak around some way and get past your fear. I don’t just mean warriors going into a fight—”