Jahrra reluctantly pulled her eyes from the veil of water falling over the cliff and scanned the rest of the beach. She smiled broadly when she noticed the pock-ridden shelves of rock that littered the shore, imagining what kind of sea life might be lurking within those pores.
“Jahrra! Are you going to sit there all day ogling those tide pools or are we going to go down there?” Scede called from behind.
Jahrra turned and saw that her friends had moved to the outskirts of the clearing where the creek made its final curve before falling over the cliff. They were already off their horses and were in the process of tying the reins to nearby branches. Jahrra gently turned Phrym around and walked him over to join them. He nickered lightly in disappointment. She jumped from his back and walked him over to where all the other horses stood.
“Don’t worry, I won’t leave you here for long,” she said, patting his cheek.
“Who wants to go first?” Gieaun called from the edge of the cliff. She was staring over the side with a look of dread on her face.
“I’ll go,” Jahrra volunteered.
After several minutes of careful scooting and clinging along the cliff wall, and after receiving a plethora of scratches and bruises from the rocks and brush, Jahrra, Gieaun, Scede, Mahryn, Rhudedth and Pahrdh finally made it down to the beach.
“That was fun,” Rhudedth said facetiously, picking dead vegetation out of her hair.
The tiny pebbles littering the beach radiated the mid-day heat from the sun, so the group of friends decided to make use of the abiding water. Jahrra sat down on a nearby rock and took off her deerskin boots, promptly rolling up the legs of her pants while Gieaun and Rhudedth followed suit. The boys joined them and in no time the six companions were running through the surf, kicking up salt water and laughing merrily.
“Quick, let’s jump through the waterfall!” Gieaun shouted.
Mahryn led the way as they ran towards the cascade of water. Each of them darted through it several times, screaming as the chilled water cooled their sun-baked skin. After they grew tired of chasing each other around the shore, they stopped and sat in the shade to catch their breath.
“I’m worn out, let’s go look for starfish,” Rhudedth suggested after awhile.
“Oh, I want to see the hermit crabs!” Jahrra said, forgetting about the cool water splashing down upon her feet.
For the next several minutes, the children foraged among the slick, algae-covered boulders searching for urchins and anemones. Scede found a very large hermit crab, big enough to fit in his opened palm, and Jahrra, Mahryn and Gieaun found several orange starfish.
“Hey, I have an idea! Let’s play tag!” Rhudedth piped up after looking at what felt like the hundredth sea snail. She was standing in the shallow water holding up her green skirts, the pale crystal water swirling around her ankles.
“Good idea,” Gieaun said, returning the hermit crab she was playing with to its tide pool. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything else.”
“Tag! You’re it!” Rhudedth reached out and roughly poked her cousin, then took off in a flash.
“Hey!” Mahryn rubbed his arm where she’d jabbed him and watched as everyone scattered away from him, laughing.
Jahrra ran through the waterfall in order to avoid Pahrdh, who was the next to be tagged ‘it’, and then paused to rest as he took off after Scede. She bent over and put her hands on her knees, shivering a little in the cool shade of the rock wall that towered above her.
Deciding that the water provided a sufficient veil to conceal her, Jahrra took the opportunity to look for a good place to hide later when they would play hide-and-go-seek. As she scanned the beach she noticed an obvious depression in the wall of earth further down several feet from where she stood. Jahrra stood up and moved closer to the shore, curious to investigate this strange landmark she hadn’t noticed before. It appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel, carved into the small rock mountain forming the point. The tide happened to be just low enough to reveal a strip of solid ground running under the archway. The space beneath the land bridge was probably twenty five to thirty feet high, and Jahrra had a sudden urge to see where this new discovery led.
“Jahrra! What are you doing, Scede is going to tag you!” Gieaun called out to her friend.
Jahrra turned her head just in time to see Scede flying at her. She reacted quickly and was able to dodge him, sending him careening into the waves.
“Come see what I’ve found,” she said, acting as if no one had just tried to tackle her.
“Oh great, Jahrra has found something,” Gieaun said to Pahrdh and Mahryn in a knowing tone. Jahrra finding something always meant trouble.
“You’re just trying to trick us into getting tagged!” Rhudedth yelled good-naturedly.
When Jahrra started walking towards the opposite end of the cove, however, the entire group slowly made their way over.
“Here we go again,” Gieaun groaned.
“What have you found now?” Scede asked, still dripping from his tumble into the ocean.
“Look,” she said, pointing off to the left. “The beach continues on under that ridge. Let’s go see what’s in there.”
“I don’t think so,” Gieaun said uncertainly.
“There can’t be much, can there? What harm could it do in checking it out?” Rhudedth offered lightly in Jahrra’s defense.
“You’ve never been on an adventure with Jahrra, have you?” Scede asked boorishly, shaking his dark hair out and splashing them all with water.
Jahrra shot him an annoyed look.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Pahrdh put in for Jahrra. “Who knows what we might find?”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll find pirates’ treasure!” Mahryn said sarcastically, thinking about his childhood days at the coves with his cousins. He dropped his eyes quickly and blushed when he caught Jahrra’s irritated glance.
“I’ll go first if it’ll make you feel better, Scede,” Jahrra said in a mocking tone.
“Sounds fine to me,” he sniffed.
As the group entered the depression in the wall, they discovered that the arch was really a series of several tunnels zigzagging through the solid rock.
“Alright, we’ve checked it out,” Scede said shortly. “The path is obviously longer and more complicated than we thought. It’s like a labyrinth! What if we get stuck in here and the tide rises?”
He was right; the cave was more convoluted than Jahrra had thought. It had five different tunnels branching off in five different directions.
“How about we explore for fifteen minutes, then we can turn back,” Jahrra pleaded. “We’ll leave a pebble trail so we won’t get lost.”
Gieaun and Scede knew that Jahrra would go on without them even if they refused, so they reluctantly agreed to look around for awhile, grumbling as they did so. They were all very curious, however, despite their apprehension.
Jahrra led her friends through the tunnel directly in front of them, the one that eventually curved off to the left. The passage was cool and somewhat suffocating with the muffled echoing of the churning ocean playing against their ears. Five minutes later Jahrra, Gieaun, Scede, Pahrdh, Rhudedth and Mahryn stepped out onto a small secluded beach that was riddled with tide pools.
“Wow!” piped Rhudedth. “Look at those!”
She ran over to the closest tide pool and peered in to get a closer look at the brilliant life within. There were anemones painted in vivid color combinations Jahrra had never seen before, and some of the sea stars, in the deeper pools, were simply enormous, close to four feet across.