Cold spread down his side, where she had been, like butter.
He turned his head.
“Come!” As she sat, her hair writhed toward him. A handful of leaves struck his face.
He sat too.
But she was already running, legs passing and passing through moon-dapple.
He wondered where she’d got that scratch.
Grabbing his pants, he stuck foot and foot in them, grabbing his shirt and single sandal, rolled to his feet—
She was rounding the rock’s edge.
He paused for his fly and the twin belt hooks. Twigs and gravel chewed his feet. She ran so fast!
He came up as she glanced back, put his hand on the stone—and flinched: the rock-face was wet. He looked at the crumbled dirt on the yellow ham and heel.
“There…” She pointed into the cave. “Can you see it?”
He started to touch her shoulder, but no.
She said: “Go ahead. Go in.”
He dropped his sandaclass="underline" a lisp of brush. He dropped his shirt: that smothered the lisping.
She looked at him expectantly, stepped aside.
He stepped in: moss on his heel, wet rock on the ball of his foot. His other foot came down: wet rock.
Breath quivered about him. In the jellied darkness something dry brushed his cheek. He reached up: a dead vine crisp with leaves. It swung: things rattled awfully far overhead. With visions of the mortal edge, he slid his foot forward. His toes found: a twig with loose bark…a clot of wet leaves…the thrill of water…Next step, water licked over his foot. He stepped again:
Only rock.
A flicker, left.
Stepped again, and the flicker was orange, around the edge of something; which was the wall of a rock niche, with shadow for ceiling, next step.
Beyond a dead limb, a dish of brass wide as a car tire had nearly burned to embers. Something in the remaining fire snapped, spilling sparks on wet stone.
Ahead, where the flicker leaked high up into the narrowing slash, something caught and flung back flashings.
He climbed around one boulder, paused; the echo from breath and burning cast up intimations of the cavern’s size. He gauged a crevice, leaped the meter, and scrambled on the far slope. Things loosened under his feet. He heard pebbles in the gash complaining down rocks, and stuttering, and whispering—and silence.
Then: a splash!
He pulled in his shoulders; he had assumed it was only a yard or so deep.
He had to climb a long time. One face, fifteen feet high, stopped him awhile. He went to the side and clambered up the more uneven outcroppings. He found a thick ridge that, he realized as he pulled himself up it, was a root. He wondered what it was a root to, and gained the ledge.
Something went Eeek! softly, six inches from his nose, and scurried off among old leaves.
He swallowed, and the prickles tidaling along his shoulders subsided. He pulled himself the rest of the way, and stood:
It lay in a crack that slanted into roofless shadow.
One end looped a plume of ferns.
He reached for it; his body blocked the light from the brazier below: glimmer ceased.
He felt another apprehension than that of the unexpected seen before, or accidentally revealed behind. He searched himself for some physical sign that would make it reaclass="underline" quickening breath, slowing heart. But what he apprehended was insubstantial as a disjunction of the soul. He picked the chain up; one end chuckled and flickered down the stone. He turned with it to catch the orange glimmer.
Prisms.
Some of them, anyway.
Others were round.
He ran the chain across his hand. Some of the round ones were transparent. Where they crossed the spaces between his fingers, the light distorted. He lifted the chain to gaze through one of the lenses. But it was opaque. Tilting it, he saw pass, dim and inches distant in the circle, his own eye, quivering in the quivering glass.
Everything was quiet.
He pulled the chain across his hand. The random arrangement went almost nine feet. Actually, three lengths were attached. Each of the three ends looped on itself. On the largest loop was a small metal tag.
He stooped for more light.
The centimeter of brass (the links bradded into the optical bits were brass) was inscribed: producto do Brazil.
He thought: What the hell kind of Portuguese is that?
He crouched a moment longer looking along the glittering lines.
He tried to pull it all together for his jean pocket, but the three tangled yards spilled his palms. Standing, he found the largest loop and lowered his head. Points and edges nipped his neck. He got the tiny rings together under his chin and fingered (Thinking: Like damned clubs) the catch closed.
He looked at the chain in loops of light between his feet. He picked up the shortest end from his thigh. The loop there was smaller.
He waited, held his breath even—then wrapped the length twice around his upper arm, twice around his lower, and fastened the catch at his wrist. He flattened his palm on the links and baubles hard as plastic or metal. Chest hair tickled the creasing between joint and joint.
He passed the longest end around his back: the bits lay out cold kisses on his shoulder blades. Then across his chest; his back once more; his belly. Holding the length in one hand (it still hung down on the stone), he unfastened his belt with the other.
Pants around his ankles, he wound the final length once around his hips; and then around his right thigh; again around; and again. He fastened the last catch at his ankle. Pulling up his trousers, he went to the ledge, buckled them, and turned to climb down.
He was aware of the bindings. But, chest flat on the stone, they were merely lines and did not cut.
This time he went to where the crevice was only a foot wide and stepped far of the lip. The cave mouth was a lambda of moon mist, edged with leaf-lace.
The rocks licked his soles. Once, when his mind wandered, it was brought back by his foot in cold water; and the links were warm around his body. He halted to feel for more heat; but the chain was only neutral weight.
He stepped out onto moss.
His shirt lay across a bush, his sandal, sole up, beneath.
He slipped his arms into the wool sleeves: his right wrist glittered from the cuff. He buckled his sandaclass="underline" the ground moistened his knee.
He stood, looking around, and narrowed his eyes on the shadows. “Hey…?” He turned left, turned right, and scratched his collar-bone with his wide thumb. “Hey, where…?” Turning right, turning left, he wished he could interpret scuffs and broken brush. She wouldn’t have wandered down the way they’d come…
He left the cave mouth and entered the shingled black. Could she have gone along here? he wondered three steps in. But went forward.
He recognized the road for moonlight the same moment his sandaled foot jabbed into mud. His bare one swung to the graveled shoulder. He staggered out on the asphalt, one foot sliding on flooded leather, took a hissing breath, and gazed around.
Left, the road sloped up between the trees. He started right. Downward would take him toward the city.
On one side was forest. On the other, he realized after a dozen slippery jogs, it was only a hedge of trees. Trees dropped away with another dozen. Behind, the grass whispered and shushed him.
She was standing at the meadow’s center.
He brought his feet—one strapped and muddy, one bare and dusty—together; suddenly felt his heart beating; heard his surprised breath shush the grass back. He stepped across the ditch to ill-mowed stubble.
She’s too tall, he thought, nearing.
Hair lifted from her shoulders; grass whispered again.
She had been taller than he was, but not like…“Hey, I got the…!” She was holding her arms over her head. Was she standing on some stumpy pedestal? “Hey…?”