The Ancient One (7 page)

Then Kate realized that the ledge behind the waterfall could once have been connected to the ledge under their feet. There was a small crevasse dividing the two, about six feet wide, which dropped two hundred feet straight into the churning waters of the canyon. But for that gap, the two ledges seemed to be the continuation of a single outcropping that ran like a belt around the outside of the crater cone. She noted also that if the sun were even a little higher in the sky, the ledge behind the falls would probably not be visible, for the angle of sunlight would make it blend in with the background.

Then, the words of the legend came floating back:

Enter at the start of day
Dawn’s first light will show the way.

“Yes,” said Aunt Melanie, reading her thoughts. “That is the Gate into Lost Crater. Until I found it again last week, it hadn’t been used by anyone for over five hundred years.”

Kate was awestruck. “You’re not serious,” she protested. “Who would be crazy enough—even five hundred years ago—to try to walk on that ledge?”

Aunt Melanie patted her chest. “I am. You can watch me do it, before you follow.”

She then stepped closer to the crevasse. Reaching beneath a dense tangle of shrubbery on the side of the ledge, she pulled out a wooden ladder only slightly longer than the width of the crevasse. It was difficult for her to lift, especially given the treacherous footing, but at length she succeeded. Then, as Kate watched in dismay, she crawled closer to the crevasse, planted the base of the ladder on the edge, and let the ladder fall across the gap. The ladder crashed to the rock ledge on the other side, making a primitive bridge.

“But Aunt Melanie,” Kate protested, listening anew to the crashing roar of the waterfall as it poured countless thousands of gallons into the canyon below. “One little slip and you’ll die! Are you sure you want to go this way?”

The white head nodded.

“But,” tried Kate again, “even if you can get in this way, do you really think you can convince a whole team of loggers to go back home? What if they refuse?”

Aunt Melanie crawled back from the slippery edge, lifted herself to her feet, took again her walking stick. She stood erect, but she seemed small and frail against the backdrop of the falls. “I don’t know,” she answered. “All I know is I’ve got to try.”

She approached Kate, turned her around, and unzipped the blue day pack, removing a small painted drum. Kate recognized it as the one she had seen so often resting on the living-room windowsill, and her heart longed to be there right now, curled up safely with Aunt Melanie by the fire. The drum’s tan-colored hide was decorated with images of boldly drawn animal faces, all in black. Seating herself on a rounded rock, she motioned for Kate to come sit beside her.

Reluctantly, Kate obeyed. Her head was spinning with doubt about the whole idea of entering the crater, especially this way.

Then, apart from the din of tumbling water, Kate heard another sound. Using only the tips of her fingers, her face angled toward the luminous ledge behind the falls, Aunt Melanie had started tapping the drum. Striking with a light but firm touch, in no particular rhythm, she seemed to be listening to something far away—a special beat, perhaps, or a melody Kate could not hear.

Aunt Melanie’s fingers searched for the hidden rhythm, until finally a regular pattern took hold, one that coincided with the splashing and crashing of the great waterfall. Slowly the drumming swelled into a complex sculpting of sounds. Deftly swishing and sliding across the hide, her hands danced eerily on the drum. At last she raised her voice, chanting some mysterious words that made no sense to Kate. Of these words, one that sounded like
halma-dru
was repeated many times.

When finally the hands came to rest, Kate could still hear the echo of drumbeats in the moist air around them. Her concerns, for the moment, had dissipated. She looked up at Aunt Melanie and said, “That was beautiful.”

Aunt Melanie’s lips curled into a half smile. “The Halami way of asking for good luck.”

“What does that word
halma-dru
mean?”

“That’s hard to explain. It’s a kind of blessing, and it means something like
May your spirit be one with the spirits around you
.”

“Wasn’t there a line in the legend about spirits?”

Nodding, Aunt Melanie said, “And the Halamis meant more than just human spirits. They included animals, trees, air, water, and soil as well.”

She replaced the drum in the day pack and zipped it closed. Ignoring Kate’s worried expression, she regained her feet and slid the walking stick under her belt. Gingerly, she moved to the very edge of the crevasse. She positioned herself at the spot where the ladder met the rock outcropping, overlapping by only a few inches, her hands gripping the ends of the poles. With a brief glance behind her, she started to crawl slowly across the ladder, placing her knees and palms on the crosspieces. The ladder bent visibly beneath her weight.

Kate, her fears reawakened, approached the crevasse. She grasped the ladder in her hands, steadying it against the rock, so that the repeated crawling motion didn’t work it over the edge—taking Aunt Melanie with it. Against her will, she looked down. All she could see was a billowing cloud of spray from the falls exploding against the rocks far below.

“I’m over,” called a voice. Kate raised her head to see Aunt Melanie standing on the opposite ledge, pulling the walking stick from her belt. She beckoned, saying, “Your turn now.”

Remembering how the ladder had sagged, Kate shivered at the thought of what her own weight might do to those creaky wooden poles. She glanced from the ladder to Aunt Melanie and back again.

“Come, Kate,” shouted Aunt Melanie. “I’m going to need you.” Then she added, “Don’t look down. Just keep looking at me.”

Clenching the poles with all the strength her hands could muster, her neck craned to keep her eyes on Aunt Melanie, Kate moved cautiously onto the ladder. The deafening roar of the falls shook the very marrow of her bones. She placed one knee on the first rung, then slid the opposite hand forward, then moved her other knee, then the other hand, again and again and again.

A sudden plume of vapor slapped her face. Without warning, one knee slid sideways off the ladder. Kate’s heart pounded rapidly and she froze, grabbing the ladder so tightly she drove splinters into her palms. She was looking down, deep into the crashing depths. Her ears buzzed. The words
through the Gate of Death unknown, Death unknown, Death unknown
echoed inside her head.

This is it
, she thought, even as she slowly raised her knee and planted it back on the ladder.
I’m going to die. Right here, right now.
The buzzing in her ears grew louder, obscuring even the roar of the falls, as she forced herself to push one knee forward, then a hand, then the other knee. Slowly, haltingly, she crawled, her heart banging against her chest until she thought she would burst.

Finally, another hand clasped her own. Aunt Melanie, kneeling on the ledge, pulled her by the wrists from the ladder onto water-blackened rock. Kate fell forward into her arms.

“First time’s always the hardest,” said the elder.

Kate, however, saw no humor. “First time’s going to be my last.”

Standing up, Aunt Melanie moved closer to the edge. With a grunt, she hauled the ladder across the crevasse.

Kate, her head still buzzing, merely watched. Slowly, she rose to her feet, in time to help her great-aunt stash the ladder behind a thick knot of wet roots and branches. As they finished, Aunt Melanie touched Kate’s nose with her finger and said simply, “
True of heart
.”

Kate merely shook her head. She observed silently as Aunt Melanie turned to face the dark cavern behind the falls.

Mist billowed about the shadowed entrance. The line of the ledge, now barely visible beneath the tumbling water, seemed to disappear in a jumble of foam and spray. After a moment of deliberation, Kate began to follow Aunt Melanie along the ledge, placing her feet carefully on the wet rock. The ledge narrowed severely as they came nearer to the falls.

Turning sideways, their backs pressed against the wall of vertical rock, the pair moved cautiously into the gap under the waterfall. Kate’s toes extended past the lip of the ledge, feeling the vibration of water pummeling the rocks below. Water splashed at her from all directions, drenching her completely, and the constant crashing grew steadily louder. If she could have turned back, she would have. But she wasn’t about to desert Aunt Melanie now.

Slowly, she made her way along the outcropping, inching to the right with small sideways steps. Before her she could see nothing but the great waterfall, arching over the ledge like a giant curtain, thundering endlessly. Behind her, the sheer face of the crater rose precipitously, and she tried in vain to find handholds for her fingers to grasp. Spray was everywhere, but she dared not raise her hands to wipe her eyes lest the motion throw her off balance. Tight filtered through the watery curtain only dimly, shifting and glinting on the black wall of rock.

Despite the peril, she found herself appreciating the smoothly cut surface of the ledge. So perfect was it that it almost seemed to have been carved by intelligent hands. Perhaps the Halamis had maintained this as a secret trail so many centuries ago. But how could anyone have hammered this ledge out of the rock? Unless, of course, they knew how to fly. No, she concluded, this had to be the chance product of endless amounts of water and endless amounts of time. Nothing more complicated than that.

At that moment, her right shoulder bumped into a vertical wall. She looked down at her feet. The ledge had come to an abrupt end. It met the new wall in a clean, impassable corner. Worst of all, Aunt Melanie was nowhere to be seen.

“Aunt Melanie!” she cried, hoping against hope that her great-aunt had not tumbled to her death in the cataract below. But where else could she be?

Frantically, Kate scanned the black wall of rock above and below her, spray splashing in her eyes. There was no way out, except the way they came—or over the edge into the falls.

Angrily, she kicked the back of her left heel into the rock wall. To her surprise, no solid rock met her toot. Angling herself slightly, she bent very carefully, feeling down the flat rock wall behind her with both hands as she dropped lower.

The fingers of her left hand suddenly curled over the lip of a large hole. It was as high as her waist, quite rounded, its base aligned with the surface of the ledge. A tunnel.

Bending lower, she squeezed into the entrance. Then she discovered something strange: Rising from the rock was a row of perfectly carved miniature steps, half the size of normal steps. They ascended gradually into the tunnel from the narrow ledge.

As she crawled into the tunnel, she encountered a tiny but persistent stream of water flowing out of its upper reaches. The stream splashed down the steps, then plunged over the ledge, a dwarf version of Kahona Falls. She puzzled again at the miniature steps; they were far too small to be of any use, even to a diminutive person like Aunt Melanie.

Yet she must have gone this way, Kate assured herself. She must. Peering ahead, she could see a single pinpoint of light at the far end of the tunnel. A prickle of doubt ran through her. Aunt Melanie could never have climbed through to the other side so quickly. Perhaps the falls took her first, before she could even cry out in warning.

Then in the shifting light, she spied a small object resting on the uppermost step. Reaching for it, she recognized the round shape, the clear plastic wrapping. It was a piece of peppermint candy.

Kate clutched it and pushed it into her jeans pocket. She crawled deeper into the tunnel, climbing upward toward the light. As she placed hands and knees on either side of the streaming water, she wondered whether water had made this tunnel. Or perhaps it was made by something—or someone—else, someone who required small steps.

Upward she crawled, not knowing what lay ahead. She knew only that this was indeed the Gate of Death unknown.

VII:
D
EADLY
W
ATER

Clambering out of the tunnel, Kate stepped into a world of pervasive whiteness.

Fog was everywhere, licking at her face and the back of her neck. She held out her arm and could barely see her own hand. The mist felt strangely warm, like steam rising from a hot bath.

“Aunt Melanie,” she called, surprised to hear her own voice magnified by the fog. “I’m here.”

No answer came. Kate stepped forward, her feet crunching on a surface of small stones. She reached down to pick one of them up and found it as light as a handful of popcorn. Bringing it close to her face, she saw hundreds of little holes dotting its buff-colored surface, making it seem more like sponge than stone.

“Aunt Melanie,” she called again, fighting back the growing fear that something was wrong. Maybe she had taken false comfort from the peppermint on the step. Maybe it was merely left behind from an earlier trip. Or Aunt Melanie might have emerged from the tunnel only to meet some unexpected danger. She squinted, trying in vain to see through the omnipresent shroud of fog.

“
Where are you
?” she cried, an edge of panic in her voice.

Listening for a response, she heard nothing but the faint trickle of water entering the tunnel and a distant clap-clapping, like waves beating against some faraway shore. Then she heard another sound, a rushing, moving sound. Could it be the wind swirling about the crater? Yet she felt no wind. Sniffing the air, she sensed a slight smell of sulfur mixing with the mist.

“Welcome,” said a voice, so close it made Kate jump.

A shadowy shape emerged from the fog, stepping toward her. It was not very large, and one hand grasped some kind of shaft or stick.

“It’s you!” she exclaimed. “I thought you’d disappeared.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” replied Aunt Melanie, her tone somewhat distant. “I didn’t mean to vanish on you.”

“It’s all right,” said Kate. “I should be used to it by now. Where did you go, anyway?”