Lindsay Buroker - Torrent

So that was what all the flashlight waving had been about.

“That’s the most promising feature?” I asked.

“Actually, no. I can see… I don’t know. It might just be some natural caves, but I bet you’ll be interested.”

“Interested enough to warrant standing in freezing cold water?”

“I think so. There’s enough headroom for walking.”

I leaned back, facing Temi. I considered how fragile our duct tape rope was-it would be easy for someone to come along and cut it. I wasn’t sure about climbing back out again without it either. If Simon jumped, he might be able to reach the bottom of the hole, but those smooth stone walls didn’t offer any handholds.

“You want me to stay up here?” Temi asked.

“Would you? I’ll leave my bow in case… in case.”

“Because the handful of times I shot one as a kid will serve me so well if a monster blazes out of the trees,” she said dryly.

“You can use the staff as a club if you have to.” At her skeptical expression, I added, “You can serve a tennis ball at a hundred miles an hour, right? You ought to be able to crack a monster on the head hard enough for it to see stars.”

“A hundred and thirty-two,” she said.

“What?”

“My fastest serve. It was a record, actually.”

“There you go. Add some adrenaline to that, and you should be quite lethal with a club.”

Temi eyed the bow, perhaps trying to decide if it had as many nice merits as a club, at least insofar as blunt instruments went. “I’d rather have a fire extinguisher.”

“We’ll add that to our arsenal in the future. Given the suspicious smells that come out of Zelda’s air conditioning vents, the ability to put out fires might come in handy one day.”

“I heard that,” Simon called up from below.

I left Temi my pack as well as the bow, in case she got hungry and wanted my munchies. “We’ll be back shortly,” I said with a parting wave.

Now that we knew there weren’t rushing rapids or anything else dangerous below the hole, I climbed down the sticky duct tape rope without help. It was darker than expected at the bottom-Simon had moved farther down the river with his light. I hissed when my feet hit the cold water, the damp chill penetrating my shoes immediately, and I almost yanked them out again. I knew the river flowed out of that lake and wasn’t glacier water, but it was a degree of cold I could only appreciate when the outside temperatures read in the 100s.

Simon was moving farther away, clearly drawn by something, so I gritted my teeth and dropped the rest of the way into the water. I managed to keep from cursing, but only because I remembered those two riders were around there somewhere. And also because Simon was doing this in his socks and sandals.

I pulled out my flashlight and let go of the rope. Smooth continuous stone lay beneath my feet rather than small, shifting rocks and pebbles. I slipped within the first two steps. Copious amounts of flailing kept my head from going under-barely-but I had to bite back curses again. I groped my way to the nearest wall to brace myself. Damp cool rock met my fingers. The lack of vegetation growing out of the cracks made me wonder if the passage flooded regularly. Hopefully not while intrepid explorers were visiting.

With one hand on the wall and one gripping a flashlight, I waded after Simon. He’d disappeared around a bend, though his light reflected off the slick walls, guiding me forward. The darkness soon grew oppressive, with the water particularly black as it flowed around me. I couldn’t see a thing under it and had to hold back a squeal as something brushed past my leg. When I jerked away, I slipped again. Only my hand on the wall kept me from pitching over backward.

“Just a fish,” I whispered.

I glanced back at the hole in the ceiling, at the beam of daylight flowing down from it, and was reassured by the presence of the rope dangling there. We could slosh back and climb out of the river anytime we needed to.

As I continued on, the ceiling rose, and I ran my flashlight along it. A few bats hung from roots that had found their way through the rock, the tips dangling a few inches down from above.

Simon hadn’t gone around a bend, I saw as I walked farther, but into a cave. Not a cave, I realized with a start. A cavate , a manmade cave dwelling. A row of them lined the wall, the openings about three feet wide, four feet tall, and a meter above the water level. The walls around the entrances appeared to be sandstone, with layers of granite above and below.

The discovery floored me, and I forgot about the icy water and other dangers. Arizona possessed cavates aplenty, with a whole mess of them over in the Verde Valley, but they were high up on cliffs, not underground.

I scrambled for the largest entrance, pausing only to touch a few old blocks, part of a masonry wall that would have once made the entrance more of a frame than a doorway. Once inside, I found myself in an oblong space about fifteen feet long with openings to other chambers on each side. The entry room was tall enough to stand in, though Temi would have had to duck. There weren’t any furnishings remaining or, at first glance, evidence of habitation. My first thought was that looters had been through, but it might be simpler than that: any time the river flooded, it would clean out the interior. What would have prompted people to scrape out dwellings down here? Hostile neighbors, I supposed.

“Amazing,” I whispered, turning a full circle. “I wonder if any archaeologists are aware of this spot.”

If the other rooms were as bare as this one, there might not be many clues left, but the simple existence and unique placement would raise a lot of questions. The answers might be somewhere within the complex.

I walked across a flat floor made of a rock and plaster aggregate to poke my flashlight into one of the side chambers. A bedroom most likely, though it was as devoid of remains as the main room. It was interesting though that the original floors were visible, that they hadn’t been coated with silt from floods. If these cavates were as old as the Verde Valley ones, they’d date back to the 1300s or 1400s. Without artifacts to offer more solid clues, I’d only be guessing. People might have come along much more recently and emulated the style.

After exploring a few more rooms, I was heading back to the entrance when Simon jumped inside, almost startling the pee out of me.

“You gotta see this,” he whispered, then scrambled back out again without waiting for me to ask questions.

If I hadn’t hurried, I would have missed seeing him duck into another cavate, three holes down. There was enough of a ledge that I could make my way to it without stepping back into the water. I shivered though, with my sodden jeans clinging to my skin. The air temperature was cool down here, far chillier than the sun-warmed forest above.

“Simon?” I asked.

He wasn’t in the main room, but three doorways opened in the walls.

A hand thrust out of the one in the back. “This way,” he whispered.

That whisper was telling. He must have found sign of the riders we were following rather than some interesting relic he wanted to share.

Keeping my flashlight beam toward the floor, so its glow wouldn’t travel far, I crept after him. He stood in a small room with a depression in the floor that would have been used as a fire pit; a hole in the ceiling must have served as a smoke vent. The decor wasn’t what held Simon’s attention though. In the far back corner, a hole dropped away, a steaming hole.

“All right,” I murmured. “That’s not normal.”

Simon knelt and prodded the edge, turning wide eyes toward me. “It’s hot .”