Another Experiment, Part 6 – The Cave

Down we go, then. That was inevitable.

You fashion another torch. It had better be warm down there, given the ruin you’ve not made of your shirt. Steeling yourself, you haul open the trapdoor – it is heavy, thick wood bound in iron that seems even stronger than the main doors to the tower. Your fingers slip as you try to lower it closed carefully and the door crashes loudly back into its frame. It is like a thunderclap, and you wince both in pain and frustration. If anyone, or anything, is listening for you out there in the mountains, they certainly know where you are now… to say nothing of anything that might be down here in the cellar. You push the heavy metal bolt across, locking the world out… and yourself in.

The guttering torchlight reveals more stairs, and you pick your way down cautiously. The stone is worn, but not unduly so, and unlike the tower above this stairwell is walled on both sides, rather than being open on the inside to whatever basement lies below you. The steps spiral down in the same curve as above, though – you are very much still within the tower.

You press on. After a few revolutions of identical grey stone, one of the iron sconces in the wall turns out to still contain an unlit torch. Its oil is long dried, but the cloth wrapping still catches, and you climb on with a little more confidence and a much steadier light.

You turn and turn for what seems like forever – what seems like far too many stairs to lead to any ordinary cellar – before the stairwell ends in another door. It is closed, and the door itself, though old, is just as strong as the trapdoor above. With nothing else to do, you push it open carefully, and step through.

From a photo by Julian Hochgesang (Unsplash)

You were expecting a dark cellar, disused, and, knowing your luck, with something unpleasant already living there and waiting for you. You were not expecting this. Before you, yawning, so wide and tall that you can barely make out the walls and ceiling, is a cavern that could swallow a small city. Stalactites the size of buildings dangle above the mirror-smooth surface of an impossibly vast lake, dark and deep beyond imagining. From where you stand, a series of steps – not natural, but deliberately hewn from the dark stone – lead down to the lake’s shore, where what seems to be a cluster of buildings sit, next to a small jetty. And you can see all this, because your paltry torchlight has been augmented by the pale glow of a strange, beautiful lichen that clings to the walls in great vein-like strata, branching and joining in an infinite pattern as bright as the stars in the night above you.

It is a wonder the likes of which you could never had dreamed, and the sight of it invigorates you. You bound down the steps – then slow to a careful walk, the rapping of your boots echoing sacrilegiously from the cavern walls – past tall and silent statues draped in hooded stone robes. Looking back, you can see tunnel-mouths in the cavern wall behind you with doors of their own. Where might they lead? How many entrances to this place are there, hidden in these mountains and even beyond?

There are indeed buildings at the bottom of the stairs. They are completely empty – not even a stick of furniture or the crumbled corner of a tapestry remain in any of them, and you search thoroughly. Whatever might have lived here is long, long gone. The complete lack of sound, save for your own breathing and movements, is eerie.

But at the jetty, there is a boat. It is larger than the one you took down the river, broader and more stable. There are oars, too, but an instinct makes you first toss a scrap of wood from your torch into the lake-water, sending ripples coruscating out. You watch closely. Though the surface of the lake appears still, the wood floats slowly away, out towards the centre of the lake, and whatever might lie at the other end of this huge cavern, too far away to see. You will not, you realise, need to row just yet. Though it is made of wood and clearly very old, the boat is in perfect condition, varnished and sealed to perfection.

Nothing has changed in this place for a very long time, you realise. Nobody has been down here. Nobody has so much as breathed this air.

There is only one way to go.

You climb into the boat. You settle your pack at your feet and, using one oar, push off the jetty into the water. You make a few desultory strokes at the water, but the hidden current has you quickly, and you stow the oars to simply let yourself float on. You smile to yourself. Twice in two days, you think. I’m making a habit of this. But this boat is not pursued by bandits. You have supplies, you have the means to stay warm. You might have no idea where you are going, but at least this time you will not be helpless when you get there.

You settle back in the boat, and let the current bear you on, by the light of false stars.

And that’ll do for this instalment, I think. I’ll pick this up again sooner than last time; it’s a fun exercise for me and it seems like you lot enjoy it too!

Thank you to everyone who threw in a vote on the outcomes, and everyone who just read on and enjoyed. We’ll have to wait and see what happens next…