The Legend of Valtera: Chapter 18
Prea sliced through the frigid cove, arms and legs propelling her toward the waterfall. As she swam closer, the spray from the splashes blinded her temporarily. Diverting her path, she crossed to the wall and ducked behind the plunging veil. The light of the moon barely penetrated beyond and Prea was left wrapped in darkness, the splashes all she could hear. Her eyes scanned the rock face for any irregularities, her hands grazing every inch she could reach. There was nothing unusual and her feet didn’t find anything either. Prea examined the wall above her as she worked hard to remain above the water.
Still she noticed nothing.
Her eyes turned down; she hadn’t checked under the water. Prea took a deep breath and descended under the surface. Blackness encased her and a quick jolt of fear shuddered through her. Positioning her front facing the wall, Prea swam down, her hands groping in the darkness. She was almost out of breath, making the turn towards the surface when her hand met no rock. She lost her balance and her stomach bumped into the wall.
Surprise, excitement and fear set her heart galloping within her chest and her lungs cried out for air. She turned, pushing off the wall and shooting to the surface. Breaking through, she gasped in fresh air, filling her empty lungs. After a few more breaths, she dove down again, pushing faster until she reached the anomaly.
Her hands followed the edge of the hole, creating an image in her mind. It was a rather large opening; big enough for a person to fit through. She continued to explore. Every time she came up for air, she dove down again pushing farther into the unknown. It wasn’t just a hole or an underwater cave, but a tunnel, just as she thought. It took multiple trips before she managed to break the water’s surface inside the mountain. Prea climbed out of the water and hesitantly walked farther into the tunnel as her eyes tried to adjust to the complete darkness.
Kael! Prea had completely forgotten about her companion. She flung herself back into the water, swimming as fast as possible through the tunnel before rocketing to the surface. She came up outside of the waterfall and saw Kael splashing towards her in the water.
He had come for her. He was flailing around, but he had come for her.
“Prea! Prea! Heaven and earth, Prea. I thought you were dead.” It was clear that he was not comfortable in the water. She moved towards him, grabbing him by the hand.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Prea pulled him along back to their little camp on the shore. They both lumbered out of the water, catching their breath and pulling on their dry clothes.
“What did you find? You were gone for so long and I couldn’t see you. I got worried, but I…I hate the water,” he confessed. “I wasn’t going to just stand here and do nothing. I ran in before I could talk myself out of it.”
“I could tell.” He gave her a warning look. “And you still came in after me. There’s a tunnel beneath the waterfall. It’s just black down there, hard to see, so I was going by touch. It’s not very far down and the underwater part of the tunnel isn’t that long. You can make it with one breath. The tunnel continues on land; I got out and took a few exploratory steps. It looks like it goes all the way through under the mountain.”
Kael was quiet through her speech and his face held no emotion. She couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking or feeling.
“What’s wrong?” Prea ran through the possibilities in her head and took a guess. “Is is the water?”
“No, it’s not that. Well, not just that. I had a bad experience when I was a kid, fell into a river near my house and got pulled under by the current. I almost drowned and, by the time I resurfaced, I was a ways downstream. I’ve hated the water ever since.”
“What is it, then?” Prea asked. Racking her brain, she could come up with only one other option. “It’s the tunnel.”
He nodded and sat on the ground, leaning back against a tree. “I’m not sure if I can do it. I spend most of my time traveling through the woods and, even though there’s lots of trees, I don’t feel trapped. Walking through Colter with all their buildings so close together almost caused me problems. A narrow, dark tunnel…I’ve never done that before.”
Prea understood. Fear was a tricky thing; it could be good and protect you or it could be bad and limit you. Prea wouldn’t let fear limit her on this journey, not while Carr’s life was at stake. But she didn’t want to force him to do something he didn’t want to do.
Kael said nothing and avoided her gaze. She saw him second guessing his decision.
“You can always turn back if you want to, you know that,” she said with complete sincerity.
“I don’t want to turn back. I’m not leaving you to do this alone.”
“I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do.”
Kael stood in a flash and grabbed her hands. “Prea, let me make this perfectly clear. No one, no one, can make me do something I don’t want to do. I am my own man and I make my own decisions. I’m coming with you.”
“All right.” She slipped her hands out of his grasp and attempted to compose herself before speaking again. “All right. I’m thinking we should get some sleep now and then we can enter the tunnel in the morning when the sun is out. That way it won’t be so dark under the water.”
“Sounds fine to me.”
Sitting down again, Kael laid back against his pack and closed his eyes. Prea did the same, wilting to the ground from exhaustion. She knew water was a powerful element and it had stripped away all of her energy as she moved through it. Her body was heavy, her mind was unable to focus and her head sunk onto the top of her pack, sleep quickly overcoming her senses.
* * *
Morning came quickly, the brightness of the sun causing Prea to wake. She walked over to the shore and watched the showering water disguise the entrance to their secret tunnel. Her pulse was thudding away, the anxiety of traveling through the black tunnel starting quickly in the sun’s rays. She wasn’t any more comfortable with the idea of being trapped in a narrow tunnel below the mountain than Kael was, but she wouldn’t have time to focus on her own fear when Kael’s would probably be worse.
She turned back to look at the man sleeping on the hard ground. He appeared younger in sleep, the sweet face of a boy, not a man. She had this urge to go over and push the hair off his face.
In a perfect world, this would be Carr’s future. He would wake up, still a young boy, but with a long future ahead of him. He would grow, become a man and live whatever life he wished. She hoped he would grow to be like Papa and Leal and Kael. A good man with love and values and passion. But most importantly, a man who still believed in hope.
Kael sat up and Prea was so consumed with her hopes and dreams, she didn’t even notice. Her vision faltered a few minutes later and she blinked multiple times before refocusing on her present. His blue eyes stared back at her, returning her own watchful behavior. Neither moved, both just watched. He had caught her staring and he wasn’t going to break the silence first.
“Hi,” Prea breathed out.
“Good morning.”
“Any second thoughts?”
“No. I told you yesterday that I wasn’t leaving you. I meant it.”
“Okay. When do you want to do this?” They were midway up the mountain and Prea had no idea how long the tunnel was or where it came out on the far side. They would have to rely on faith for this part of the journey.
“We might as well get it over with as quickly as possible.” They were too nervous to eat, instead they gathered up their belongings in silence.
“Here’s how we’re going to do this. I’m going to take my pack and bring it through the tunnel and leave it there. Then I’m going to do the same thing with yours. Then I’ll come back for you and we can go together. Are you all right with that?”
A nod was all she received in response.
She didn’t bother to strip down this time—all of their belongings were going to get wet so it didn’t matter if she was wearing them or not. Prea grabbed her pack, dragged it to the water’s edge and slowly entered the cove. When the water reached her chest, she set out pulling the bag behind her. Prea was struggling when she reached the splashing waterfall, working hard to negate the bag’s pull beneath her.
A deep breath in and she dove, kicking fiercely, feeling for the tunnel’s entrance. Finding it, she scooted in and swam hard until she reached the surface. Rolling the bag onto the dry rock, she pushed it further into the darkness before turning back. She made it to shore and took the same trip with Kael’s pack before returning for the last time to retrieve Kael himself.
He was already knee deep in the water when she came up for air in the middle of the cove. She swam towards him as he walked further into the water to meet her.
“Are you ready?” Prea held out her hand.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Kael said, clasping Prea’s outstretched hand as she led him deeper and eventually they reached the waterfall.
“Now I’m going to take you down to the entrance so you can see how far it is. Then we’re just going to come up again. All right?”
“Yes.”
Prea grabbed his hand as they both took a deep breath and descended. They reached the entrance quickly and Prea watched Kael’s face closely before she signaled and they swam back to the surface. “How was that?”
“Fine.”
“So the underwater part of the tunnel is about the same distance as the entrance is from here. Do you think you can make it that far?”
“Sure.”
“When we get down there, you should go first. Keep your arms out in front of you and kick hard. I’ll follow after you. It should be over pretty quickly.”
“Good.”
One. Two. Three. Deep breath. Dive. Tunnel. Kick. All went according to plan. When Prea broke the surface in the dark, Kael gripped her hands and hoisted her right out of the water. She fell into his open arms and, for a few moments, they just held each other in the darkness, the air wet and cold, their clothes dripping on the floor as they tried to control their shivering. Prea pulled away, trying to make out his face in the black hole they had found themselves in.
She leaned over, searching for her pack on the ground. “Let’s get started. It’ll be slow going, but we should make it through within the day. How are you feeling?”
“Like I just said goodbye to the sun for the last time and I’m going to die down here,” Kael said melodramatically.
“So you’re fine then. Good, let’s go,” said Prea, smiling in the darkness.
She took a leap of faith and stepped into the black. Any words spoken echoed against the rock walls, as if hundreds of people were stationed along the length of the tunnel. There was not a stitch of light and their eyes never adjusted to the darkness.
Kael was extremely quiet as he walked beside Prea. Too quiet, she thought, reaching out in the shadows to where his hand should be and finding a clenched fist instead. Not a good sign. If they had been in the light, she was sure his knuckles would have been ghostly white from the pressure. She took his hand in both of hers and slowly unfurled his fingers, feeling the half moon marks his nails had dug into his palm before lacing his fingers with her own.
“Just breathe, Kael. Deep breaths. Focus on my voice,” Prea began soothingly. “I have a lot of experience with these kind of situations. You see, Carr has these coughing fits every now and then. For the most part, he’s a healthy and happy kid. But sometimes, the coughing starts and he can’t make it stop. And then he panics because he can’t breathe. I was there the first time it happened and I’ve been there every other time. You just have to breathe.”
“I can’t. The walls…they feel like they’re shrinking, stripping the air away, suffocating me. What if there isn’t an end? What if we get trapped?” Kael exclaimed, his voice rising with fear and anxiety.
Prea was so focused on Kael that she forgot to pay attention to her feet and where she was walking. She tripped and, still holding his hand, stumbled in the darkness, reaching out with her free hand in an attempt to brace herself for impact. Her perception underground was skewed and she didn’t realize the tunnel wall was closer than she thought. Luckily she was able to use the wall for balance rather than falling all the way to the ground.
As soon as her hand touched the rock, something magical happened. The darkness receded a tiny bit as the stone above them began to emit a faint gleam. It was as if stardust had been painted on the ceiling, capturing the glow of light and locking it in place until it was called upon. Prea was utterly amazed and paused, everything else forgotten.
“How is that possible?” Kael asked, astonished. This journey thus far had been an adventure, but he still had his doubts. He believed in Prea, if nothing else, but this first display of the otherworldly had him wondering if he should reevaluate everything. What if she ended up being right, all along? About everything?
“Well, it could be some unknown mineral or type of rock – or it could be something that Aylin and Ciro did long ago when they were here.”
“It doesn’t matter. At least we can see a little better.”
Time passed, whether it be fast or slow; they had no way of telling. Prea was sure they had made good progress and, somehow in this dank underground world, their clothes had finally dried. Kael’s anxiety had lessened since the tunnel had lightened, but the two remained hand in hand for the rest of their time under the mountain.
Finally there was a brightness in the distance and the air was fresher as they came to the other side of the mountain, relief washing through them. The sun was still visible, only beginning its descent in the western sky, but their eyes couldn’t handle the sudden brightness. Standing in the tunnel’s southern opening, they squinted down into the vale below, waiting for their eyes to adjust so they could see what lay before them.
