Friday in Summer

I hadn’t realised how scared I was that we would have to do something to stop Coles hurting Janice. That’s why I was so relieved to find her sitting like a river nymph in the waterfall.

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing when Jasper and I arrived at the triple waterfall. We tried to keep a good distance between ourselves and the two men, but hurried when we heard Browne’s call a little while before. In the streaming water I glimpsed the well-remembered shape of Janice’s face, chin jutting forward, water making her look a part of the rocks below the falling water. I couldn’t see any of the rest of her, just her face. There was a hint of her shape behind the water, sitting, hugging her legs to her chest. I called her name quietly and she appeared with the water falling around her neck like a white feather boa. She looked unhappy and I wondered what Hamish had been up to while I was away. He is such a user. Which is a part of why I was not prepared to let him forget that we were in danger because of his actions once he joined us again.

I followed Janice as we walked further up the river, in single file, silent. Janice and I were saturated, but as we walked our clothes and hair dried. I had noticed this anomaly from my previous swim. Back home, I would be looking for a towel and a change of clothes, but here the water dropped off and out of our clothes.

Hamish called out: ‘We’ve left footprints. If they get down before dark, they’ll know where we are going.’

‘Only the direction we are going.’ I said into the air behind me. ‘Is there any reason they’ll know where we’re headed?’

‘I don’t know where we’re headed. I’m just doing what I’m told. Hopefully the destination will be clear when we get there.’ He fell back as we navigated a rocky bank that came down to the river’s edge. We rounded a bend and were finally out of sight of the tributary where our hunters had gone looking for us. The river was becoming noticeably narrower and meandered more over and around the grey stones on the riverbed.

Jasper set a good speed, and it became necessary to pay attention to where we were putting our feet. I wondered to myself what would happen if we slipped and fell. We’d be healed, but would it be immediate? Would there be pain? I didn’t think I wanted to find out.

A few bends in the river later, it became obvious what our goal was. Ahead a massive cliff of something like limestone jutted into the bed of the stream, no longer a river. At the base of the bluff, a round cave had been formed by the emerging water. The word ‘karst’ came to mind from my preoccupation with rocks when I was ten. Karst formation. If it was limestone, the terraces behind the cliff would have been formed by glaciers moving in the distant past. The cave wasn’t big. If we were going in, it would have to be single file.

‘I’m not very good with caves, Dodge.’ Janice had stopped when she saw the cliff. She spoke quietly. ‘I don’t like all that dirt on top of me.’

‘It may not go far.’

Hamish came up behind us. ‘Cool. I didn’t know there were caves here. I wonder how different it’ll be here to the Overland.’ He stepped around us and made his way to the entrance. Jasper was already there.

I took Janice’s hand and gave it a squeeze. She kept hold of it as we walked towards the cave. The bluff was a combination of white and black faces, weathered over a long period of time. Small patches of tussock grew from sections where dirt had settled, but these petered out as the rock became precipitous.

Walking up beside the stream bed we had to enter the water at one stage to go around a fallen rock of limestone that was taller than any of us. It had been there a long time, I assured myself. The debris from the weathering of the cliff-face had formed into banks either side of the stream entering the cave. As we moved closer, I saw that I had been misled: the cave entrance was a lot bigger than I had thought from a distance. It was almost a perfect circle with a diameter of at least five metres, as though a massive white bowling ball could fit perfectly in the entrance.

By the time Janice and I arrived at the mouth of the cave, Jasper had disappeared into the entrance where the water left an edge of stone that could be walked on. Hamish had waited, exploring up the outside while we made our way to the entry. He turned and looked at us approaching while he stood, one leg resting on a ledge of the rock face. His expression darkened as he looked at our hands, then his face went blank.

‘I don’t want to worry you, but Coles is about a hundred metres back. Browne isn’t with him. Whatever we have to do, we better be quick.’ He came down to the stream and without further ado went in. We could see him walking on the ledge, and then a curve in the cave swallowed him.

Janice gave a shuddering sigh and dropped my hand. ‘Ok. I can do this.’ And she marched into the cave. I followed.

It was dark very quickly once we were around the corner, but it never truly became pitch-black. I was sure the equivalent of this cave stream in the Overland would have been a lot darker, and we would have needed torches to see anything. There were no glow-worms, it just wasn’t black. Not yet, anyway. The walls of the cave were smoother than I had seen any other cave face. It looked as though water regularly, at some stage of the river’s life, smoothed the edges of the walls from top to bottom. The colours in the limestone looked white, or where it was wet, black, but I noticed specks of green in some parts where the water kept the rock wet.

After about fifty metres, the cave began to get noticeably narrower, and we had to walk in the water. It should have been cold with melted snow, but it wasn’t. By the time we had caught up with Hamish, the roof was a lot closer to our heads. Janice ahead of me gave a small scream as a drop of water fell onto her shoulder. Sinkhole above there. I thought to myself. Hamish turned to her and gave her a comforting hug. I made no comment aloud or to myself.

Jasper had stopped at a narrowing of the cave. He gave a soft bark. One of you test the way. I will have to swim if it is deep.

Hamish came forward and carefully stepped into the water at the base of a large segment of the limestone that had fallen into the stream. We couldn’t climb over it, so would need to squeeze ourselves between the edge of the rock and the cave wall. The opening was a good half a metre wide at its narrowest point above water. The water rushing through at the base of the gap turned out to be up to Hamish’s waist when he lowered himself in.

‘Gee, I’m glad this water isn’t cold.’ I’d been thinking the same. ‘I think the water must be getting under the rock as well. It’s not as swift as I thought it was. But be careful. Jasper, I don’t think you’ll be able to swim. It’s too fast.’ He turned away from us and took another step. ‘Shi…’ He disappeared from view before the expletive was finished.

Janice screamed. Jasper barked and dived in. I didn’t hear what he said, too busy pushing past Janice. I went into the water as well, hastening towards the place in the gloom where I thought Hamish had disappeared. Jasper was swept past me. I stepped aside and let him return towards Janice. I let my feet feel the smooth bottom of the cave as I came closer to the last place we had seen Hamish, pulling myself forward against the force of the water.

I had just felt an irregularity, a drop in the floor of the cave, when we heard, with relief, Hamish’s voice. ‘Ok. You’re not going to like this.’