Crisscross Moon - 17. Chapter 17

17.

"You think there are spirits in this place?" he asked when we were back in the sun.

"I'm not sure spirits exist... except in people's minds. Though our ancestors seemed to think they were everywhere. Spirit of the trees... Spirit of the rock..."

"Do you think there are spirits of dead cave dwellers?"

I didn't want to insult him. "Well, if that's what you've been hearing all your life... And if you've been thinking pretty intensely about it... And if you're in the cave and have a few beers and then go to sleep... There's a pretty good chance you're going to dream..."

"That's not what I meant."

I looked at Cory. "You don't seem superstitious."

"I'm not... I'm a doctor... Almost."

"There are superstitious doctors..."

"I'm not one of 'em."

"Then you're not gonna see spirits."

I'm not sure he was happy about that. But we found our way back to his car, drove to my house, ate, found everything we needed, packed, and got back to the cave before it was dark.

"Does the park ever close?" Cory asked as we unloaded the car.

"The hiking trails do. But you're allowed to camp overnight."

"In the caves?"

"Yeah, but not the cliff dwellings. They're historical."

"How come there's no lodge?"

"It's never been that kind of place. It was created as a wilderness area. Technically, it's a national forest, not a park. People call it a park 'cause it's easier. And there are towns near enough by. But many people come here just so they can sleep outside."

At the house, Cory hadn't said anything when he noticed I was taking my rifle again. Now he said, "I thought bears couldn't get in the cave."

"They can't. At least, they shouldn't be able to... not the big ones. And we can easily scare away the small ones. But that doesn't mean we won't run into bears on the trail. They're more active at night."

"Then let's get where it's safe," he said. And we were soon settled back in the cave. Once there, we searched for the rest of the evening. But it was kind of hopeless. Cory was looking for something my family would have noticed or which they'd managed to miss for over a 100 years. It wasn't going to appear just because he wanted it to.

"Do you think it's possibly down near where everyone goes to the bathroom?" he asked at one point.

"That's polite."

"Yeah, well..."

"That doesn't keep you away. It's not like there's a lot of smell."

"No. The cave seems too cool for that."

Still, we carefully searched that area.

"You're sure people couldn't dig?" he asked me afterwards. "Could they've sealed up the stream?"

I toed the stone floor with my boot. "You try digging in that... And we could bring in drills and a jackhammer. But a 1000 years ago, people didn't have those."

"What about a 100 years? What if the water level had gotten too high, and the cave was flooding? Would they have sealed the stream off?"

"They'd probably just quit using the cave. Depends on what it was being used for. A 100 years ago, people weren't hiding here anymore."

"But what if... like you said... there was a mine? What if a stream was flooding that?"

"I told you... there aren't any near here."

"But what if they were exploring for one? Or found a potential mine... only it was filled with water."

I had to admit Cory was thorough. But I persuaded him that if there had been a stream in the cave, and it had been closed off, the miners wouldn't have been very careful. They would have just slopped concrete into it. Besides, the cave entrance was pretty narrow. If miners had dragged their equipment through it, there would have been signs.

Cory finally didn't object to all that. So we flopped on our sleeping bags, drank some beers, and studied the shadows my electric lantern threw on the walls. But once you've seen a couple hundred feet of shadows a couple hundred times - and shadows on rock don't really change and they aren't very memorable - we turned off the lantern and lay in the dark.

"Be a great time to tell ghost stories," Cory suggested.

"You know any?"

For a moment, he was quiet.

"Not any good ones," he admitted. "You?"

"I can recite 'The Raven'... and some fairly obscure Victorian poetry. That always scared me on tests."

"I'm lousy with poetry."

"It's what my Master's is in."

He laughed at that. "Yikes."

I laughed, too, but I wasn't about to bore him with poetry. "I guess... when you're raised on a massacre," I said, "everything else pales."

"Yeah... kind of."

"And I never liked ghost stories. The scary ones really scared me... And the others seemed dumb."

"Maybe we could contact the spirits... Or try to..."

"Ask them to show us the stream?"

"Something like that."

He seemed to be joking.

"I thought you were gonna dream about spirits tonight," I told him.

"Probably... But I'm not depending on them to give us directions."

I laughed at that, and Cory joined me. Then for a while we said nothing. "Maybe we're doing this wrong," he finally suggested.

"How?"

"Maybe the cave isn't the best place to start. I mean, once we admit this is the right cave... that it's got to be for so many other reasons..."

"It does seem a good choice..."

"Well, once we go with that but admit we're not finding anything else... And we've really tried..."

"We have."

"Then maybe we should start looking for the stream."

For a moment, I was confused. "I thought that's what we were doing..."

"We are," he allowed. "But even you said a stream doesn't appear in only one place. It starts somewhere and goes somewhere else."

"Unless it's really magic."

"It can't be. That goes back to something else. If this really is oral history and not just some idiot legend, then something has to be real. There has to be a princess... Has to be a warrior. And there has... or had... to be a stream... And the princess and warrior had to do something with it."

"She swam in it."

"Which means it was real... so we should be able to find it... or what's left of it..."

"An old stream bed could be pretty well buried..."

"But what if the stream's still active? What if it runs just outside the cave?"

"There're plenty of streams around here..."

"Then let's start looking at them tomorrow. Let's start with the nearest ones... the ones that come closest to the cave... Let's see if there's a hidden entrance. Can we do that?"

"Sure... I'm not a geologist, and I don't have any special equipment... But I know the area fairly well, and it's not very hard to find streams..."

"Good," Cory decided. Then he seemed ready for sleep. "'Night," he soon told me.

"'Night," I said, but I wasn't ready to turn in. I couldn't stop thinking about the stream. At least, I couldn't stop thinking about the magic part. Maybe it was called that for the same reason the warrior was called "handsome" and the girl was called "princess." Maybe it was just part of the legend. Or maybe there really was something special about it.

Maybe that's why a 1000 starving cliff dwellers couldn't follow the princess into the water. Or maybe it had nothing to do with her being a princess. Maybe it had to do with her knowing something about the stream. Or maybe one person could swim in the stream but a 1000 couldn't.

I thought about that, and I thought about Cory. He seemed to be sleeping beside me, but I wasn't about to turn on the lantern to find out. Though I was beginning to admit something about him that I hadn't really denied before. Even in the dark, or maybe especially in the dark, when I was only listening to his voice, he kind of fit the category of handsome warrior. Noble knight. And he was on a quest.

Still, I wasn't even close to being a princess, and I didn't have any sort of magic powers. So I wasn't going to do anything about it yet.

(continued)