Alexander Pererva - The Cup of Galfar. Alderosa's Daughter

“Well, what do we do now?” inquired Allie.

“I believe we need to go back,” Lemonade suggested half-heartedly.

“But Corgy is there. She is probably waiting for us, unless she has set out on a chase,” said Lu.

“I shrank her,” Allie interjected modestly.

“You did… what?” Lemonade asked in astonishment.

“Remember that chair in my room? That’s what I did to her.”

Allie flung the viamulator, which she had been firmly gripping in her fist, into the air. And now she saw that all of the disks, including the blue one, were tightly pressed together and made up a solid cylinder. Therefore, there was no light coming out of it, that is, it was turned off. Allie looked at the monkey, concerned. But she was sitting on a rock, resting her head on her hands, as sound as a bell.

“How are you feeling, Lu?”

“Just fine, what can be wrong with me?” the monkey answered carelessly, but was suddenly suspicious: “Why are you asking?”

“That is why!” Allie showed her the viamulator that was off.

Lu stared at it for a few seconds, but when she realized what was going on, she yelled out happily and hugged the cat.

“Yippee! This means something is changing in me for the better, if I can do without this thing now.”

“Don’t be too hasty,” Lemonade reasoned with her, “it might be just the cave.”

“It might be,” Lu the happy monkey refused to stop, “but a fact is a fact.”

“All of this is well and good,” interrupted Allie, “but we should think what we’ll do next.”

After a short counsel, they decided to turn back.

They set out and made their way around the rocks and ice pillars. After a few minutes’ walk they turned a corner and saw a solid rock wall. The tracks disappeared into it, but there was no tunnel or passage in the wall.

“I was expecting something like that,” Lemonade said with a mixed feeling of satisfaction and despair.

“What do we do?” Allie patted the cold rough surface of the rock and looked at her companions, perplexed.

It was rather cold in the cave, and, despite her warm clothes, the girl was beginning to feel it. Seeing that, Lu turned to Lemonade:

“Kitty, dearest, please let’s find an exit, or else we’ll freeze to death here.”

Lemonade looked at the stuffed plush monkey dubiously, but didn’t argue. He turned his head this way and that way, sniffed the air and, telling them to wait for him right there, disappeared behind the closest ice pillar.

“What do you think would’ve happened to us if we’d gone further?” Allie asked the monkey.

“I don’t know what would’ve happened to me, but you probably would’ve ended up like me a while ago.”

“Lu, do you remember how it happened? How did they turn you into a toy? And why a toy?”

“No, I didn’t. But Lemonade’s story about what he heard from Corgy made me think. Remember, when she talked about your parents, she mentioned a shell and a ‘noose’ or something, if Lemonade told it right. And then, the way Corgy called me ‘transported’. So, I think I know what it’s about. Then it’s easy to explain my transformation…”

But then Lemonade appeared, and Lu stopped mid-sentence.

“Well, what did you find?” Lu and Allie exclaimed together.

“I think there’s a way out. Follow me.”

Lemonade led the girls down a path only he knew. For a few minutes it was easy to walk on the even floor of the cave. Then they had to climb over piles of rocks and go around huge boulders. But the hardest thing to do was to climb up a rock to a small crevice that opened up pretty high in the cave wall. The climb was steep, and the uneven surface of the rock was iced over. Lemonade flew up the wall easily. Lu, strangely enough, also turned out to be a nimble rock-climber. But Allie had a hard time. She had to plan out her steps very carefullyin order to avoid slipping and falling down. Several times her foot slipped on the icy rock. It seemed that she was close to falling, but then the girl would miraculously pull herself up and continue the climb. Finally she made it up to the crevice. It was completely dark, but now she knew that she could use the viamulator as a flashlight, and she didn’t hesitate to turn it on. The crevice was very narrow, too narrow for two people to pass by each other, and sometimes the walls were so close together that Allie had to squeeze through sideways.

“Lemonade,” Allie asked, feeling anxious, “are you sure that we are going the right way? Is there really a way out ahead?”

“There must be. I feel a stream of fresh air.”

That’s when Allie realized that she had been feeling a light cool breeze on her face for some time now. “So, I didn’t imagine it”, she thought with relief.

Meanwhile, the walls of the cave almost closed in, and the only way forward was to crawl on the floor through the hole that opened at the very bottom. Lemonade and Lu didn’t have to crawl, but Allie’s progress was slow. Fortunately, she didn’t have to crawl for a long time, otherwise she’d not only have torn her jeans, but also skinned her elbows and knees on the sharp rocks on the floor. The passage ended a few feet ahead, where a large boulder blocked the way. Its edges were not completely flush with the walls, and there were broad gaps on the sides. Gusts of cool air burst into the crevice through the gaps with a low humming sound. Sometimes the gusts were stronger, and the hum sounded more like whistling.

Allie put her hand on the boulder and felt it move slightly. She tried to push it, and it clearly made a little lunge forward.

“Well, guys, I think this is the exit,” Allie turned to Lu and Lemonade. “Let’s push.”

They leaned on the boulder together. It gave way and then suddenly lurched forward and downward. None of the three friends expected that, and they tumbled after the boulder into the dark.

***

There was a real storm outside: the wind was howling, the rain was beating down heavily, from time to time blinding flashes of lightning, orange and green, pierced the darkness, and then peals of thunder shook the sky and the ground. There was a burning smell in the air.

Allie had tumbled down a rather steep rocky slope and was now on the ground, clutching the branches of some kind of bush. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt by the fall – her Dad had trained her well for all kinds of emergencies, and, while falling, she’d been able to draw her knees up and roll into a ball. None the less, she still had a couple of bruises on her arms and legs.

But it wasn’t the bruises that troubled the girl at the moment. Lu and Lemonade were missing. Allie tried to call them, but her cries were drowned by the rain, wind and deafening thunder. The lightning strikes came with surprising regularity: first green, then orange, and then green and orange again. It looked as if someone had turned on a gigantic strobe light up in the sky that accompanied the violent melody of the storm.

Allie kept holding on to the bush with one hand and covered her face with the other, and then looked around. the flashes of lightning were brief, but she managed to see that she was lying at the foot of a mountain the top of which was covered in thick, low stormclouds. The slope was less steep towards the bottom, there were trees growing there, and further down she saw a real forest. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t see Lu or Lemonade anywhere near, but she did notice something alarming: from time to time here and there rocks rolled down the hill. Most of them were small, but some were large enough to cause trouble. Allie realized that it was unsafe to stay there any longer. She let go of the bush and carefully climbed down to the trees. Catching her breath under one of them and trying to call the cat and the monkey, the girl made her way towards the forest. Lu and Lemonade might have taken cover there.