The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle (6 page)

“A sane idea, I thought you said,” Simon said to Ike as he leaned over the stone wall at the end of Deacon Street and squinted down. The sun was out now, and the gorge in its ice drapings and fresh snow was a blaze of reflected light. Nobody was in sight besides themselves. In any other season, this strip of parkland between the gorge and the back fences of people's houses would be busy with walkers. Now it was an arctic waste, snowy and deserted.

“Go down there?” Ammy leaned over beside Simon. “We'll kill ourselves!”

“It's totally safe, if you have the right equipment. Like mountain climbing. Take this.” Ike put a ski pole in her hand and gave another one to Simon. “I'll use the hiking pole. There's an easy path to the bottom —”

“Yeah, straight down!” Ammy waved her pole in an arc.

“— and the cave itself shouldn't be hard to reach.”

“You knew about this cave?” Ammy looked along the gorge, northeastward, towards the spot on the opposite cliff edge where they'd been standing last night.

“I'm pretty sure it's the one I picked out this morning, from the other side. C'mon.” Ike climbed over the wall and started down a steep path cutting slantwise down the face of the cliff. With one hand he grabbed hold of the cedars that grew between the rocks, and with the other he jabbed the hiking pole into the ice.

Well, if Ike could do it.... Simon followed him. The veil of snow gave an extra slipperiness to the ribbons of ice that twined between the rocks and the tree roots.

“Ammy?” he called back. “You coming?”

“Yeah.” She sounded breathless.

Simon nailed his attention to the next two feet of path. Ike's head bobbed in the edge of his vision below. From above and behind came sounds of irregular breathing, thrashing cedar boughs, and steel on ice.

“Halfway down!” Ike called. Another couple of yards, and Simon started to relax.

Then Ammy yelled, and the yell swept closer. “Ike!” Simon gasped. “Watch —”

Something hit him behind the knees.

Ten seconds later, Ike picked himself up and nodded up at the cliff. “There, we're down. Not the way I planned,” he said, bending to pick up his hiking pole, “but it wasn't so bad.”

Ammy struggled to her feet and rubbed her hip. She said nothing, which Simon thought was ominous.

“Next time you mention ski poles,” Simon said, unfolding himself from the ground, “I'm going to go home and lock the door.”

Ike uncased his digital camera and checked it over. “No harm done. Ammy? You okay?”

“No!”

“You look okay. Let's head on out.”

Travelling along the flat rocks at the base of the cliff was easier than climbing down, Simon found. You slithered and slid and fell down a lot, but at least you couldn't fall far.

The climb to the cave turned out to be the easiest part of the expedition. The cave mouth and the rocks below it were sheltered by the overhanging top of the cliff and almost completely free of ice. The rough layers of stone and the scrubby cedars, deeply rooted among the rocks, gave plenty of handholds and footholds.

Ike was the first to climb level with the rock apron in front of the cave mouth. “Hey!” he yelled. “Something's been here! Look at the evidence!”

A minute of breathless scrambling, and the three of them stood together on the ledge in front of the cave, all crowded against the cliff so as not to mess up the evidence. The entrance to the cave was about three feet high and wider than it was tall.

“Funny kind of tracks,” Simon said.

They were looking at a trail of scuffed footprints leading from the bare rock inside the cave and across the snowy ledge to the cliff, where it disappeared. One or two of the prints were clear. Somebody with long nails on his feet, Simon thought. His
bare
feet. An image flashed through Simon's brain: a man with huge bare feet and toes with long talons, like a gigantic lizard. A chill ran down his spine. He stared at Ike, and Ike stared back at him.

Ammy, who had been very quiet, ducked down and peered inside the cave. Then she dropped to hands and knees and crawled in.

“Don't mess anything up!” Ike called after her.

“Ike,” Simon said, “it snowed this morning. These tracks, whatever they are, can't have anything to do with last night.”

“I thought of that. They must be the second wave.”

“Of?”

“Intelligent dinosaurs, obviously.” Ike had his camera out and was taking pictures. “What else could have made those marks?”

Simon studied them. “So you're thinking...”

“UFO.”

“You're serious?” With Ike, it was sometimes hard to be sure.

“I wasn't at first.” Ike's freckles stood out sharply, the way they always did when he was scared. “I mean, I was, but not seriously. But now it all hangs together. Don't you think?” He clutched his camera. “The blue flare with no known cause. Ammy with half her brain sucked out. That alien artifact she found.”

“What? Oh, that ring.”

“And now this.” Ike waved at the strange tracks. “If a gigantic lizard didn't walk there, what did?”

They studied the tracks. “Grizzly,” Simon said, after a moment. “We looked them up last winter for that science project on habitats, remember? Their footprints have that kind of long, almost human shape.”

“I
see
!” Ike beamed at him. “Only...” He frowned. “No good. No grizzlies around here. They're all out west.”

“Look, if you can believe in gigantic lizards —”

Ike whooped. “I got it! Soccer shoes!”

“Sure, the cleats!” Simon laughed. “No, wait! Crampons. You know, you've seen the people who go climbing here. Crampons are those pointy steel things they strap to their boots.”

“But those look like bare feet.”

“Um ... moccasins?”

“That would be it, then.” Ike sighed. “I feel a lot better. Not that I really believed in the gigantic lizard theory.”

“Right.”

“Only, how come the trail starts in the cave?” Ike peered into the opening, where Ammy had disappeared. “Where'd our guy come from?”

Simon nodded at the cliff, where the tracks stopped. “You've got it the wrong way round. He must've climbed down from above, went in the cave, was in there while it snowed — which covered up his first tracks — came out, and climbed up again.”

The pink was back in Ike's cheeks. “That makes sense. Sometimes your brain works pretty good, Hammer! All right, where's Ammy? I want to test that artifact.”

“Ammy?” Simon bent to look into the cave. You couldn't see anything after the first couple of feet. “Ammy?”

No answer. He called again, louder. Nothing. “How deep is this thing?”

“Well, if aliens are using it as a rendezvous —”

“Ike!”

“No idea.”

“Got a flashlight?”

“Sure.” Ike rummaged in his parka and pulled out a key ring with a folding knife and a finger-sized flashlight
on it. He detached the flashlight and gave it to Simon. “You lead.”

§

The cave was deeper than it looked from the outside. Just when it started getting really dark and Amelia was thinking about crawling back out, a dim light appeared. Ice crunched and gleamed under her hands. Space opened above her. She stood up.

“Huh!” she said. The air whispered back at her. It sounded bigger than it was, too. But aside from that, it was a disappointment. No measureless caverns here, no bottomless pools. And no stalagmites or stalactites, unless you counted the icicles hanging from the ceiling.

Amelia stood on a rough, ice-slicked floor in a bottle of rock. It was about ten feet across at the bottom, narrowing to a jagged crack of brightness high above, where two rock faces leaned together.

That crack, she realized, as her eyes adjusted to the dimness, was the reason she could see at all. Up above in the park there must be a heap of rocks with a gap in the middle. That also explained the icicles and the ice on the floor.

It wasn't even a secret cave. People had been here before. They'd scratched initials and hearts and rude words into the rocks. Right in front of her, on a smooth
patch, someone had used thick purple marker to print: “R U ANYONE YET?”

“Who knows?” Amelia said to the wall. Her voice bounced back at her from all around. “Knows ... knows ... no...”

An echo, in this little cave. Now, that was cool. “I'm me!” she declared. “So there!”

“Me ... there ... me ... air...” muttered the echoes. Amelia laughed, and touched the wall with her gloved hand, and turned to go.

Blue light tugged at the edge of her vision. She swung around.

Down the rock face she'd just touched hung a gauzy blue curtain. No, not gauze. It was light: blue light, first pale and vague, then brighter, more definite. Now it was a tall rectangle with an arched top. Its blue was the rich colour of a clear evening sky the moment before true night closes in. Or a sapphire with light shining through it, which Amelia recognized because her mother had a small one in a pendant.

She backed away until her head hit the slanting rock on the other side of the cave. Her vision darkened. Bright motes swarmed across the darkness.

When her sight cleared the blue rectangle looked even more solid. Like you could actually touch it, if you dared. Intertwining ridges, like the stems of ivy, covered the surface. It could have been a door, only there was
no handle. Or a window, because it looked like a slab of glass, with the blue glow behind it, only you couldn't see through it.

“Hey, guys!” Amelia croaked.

In the time it took to draw another breath, the image changed again. The blue glow seeped away like water sinking into sand. Patches of dark rock seeped forward. Another breath and, whatever it was, it was gone.

“Aha!” Ike said. “She remembers! It all comes back!”

Simon played the flashlight's thin beam over her face. She put up a hand to shield her eyes. She did look pretty stunned. “You all right, Ammy?”

“What can you remember?” Ike demanded.

“No. Yes. Nothing. I...” She closed her eyes. Then opened them. Speaking quietly and precisely she said, “I don't remember anything. From last night. I
saw
something. Now.”

“Yes!” Ike punched the air. “Oh, wow! Listen to the echo!”

“It was blue. It was the same colour as that blue light last night. It was tall and like a door, with a curve on top. It was right
there
.” She pointed at the cave wall. Ike stepped over and felt the wall.

“A door to another dimension!” He nudged Simon. “That would explain how the light got brighter and then faded. It was the door, opening and closing. That's perfect!”

“You're playing,” Ammy said, still in that small, precise voice.

“Of course not!” Ike turned on his most endearing grin. “I'm totally serious.”

“You're playing. I'm serious.” She pulled off her gloves, stuffed them in her pockets, and swept her hands over the wall. “It was right here!” She slapped the rock. “I just touched it, like that, and there it was.”

“Ammy, take it easy.” Simon pulled her sleeve. “I think I know what you saw.”

“I saw a
door
.”

“Well, maybe it looked like that. There's a hole up above, right? Some sun shone down the hole and over the rocks.”

“That wasn't just a bit of sun. Sun isn't blue.”

“Look, Ammy —”

“It's Amelia!” There, she was back to normal.

She pushed past them and crawled out of the cave. Ike and Simon followed. The snow-reflected light out on the ledge was blinding. Ammy turned around at once and started lowering herself down over the lip of the ledge.

“She's right, y'know,” Ike said. “Sun isn't blue. Besides, we all saw the blue light last night. And there wasn't any sun then.”

“So what caused it?”

“UFO, obviously.”

“Ike, seriously.”

Ike sighed and thumped his hiking pole on the ledge. “There's nothing in there that could make a light like that. I'm out of ideas. What do
you
think?”

“I think we need to investigate. We need special equipment. A Geiger counter, maybe. It'll take some work.”

§

The climb back up to the park at the end of Deacon Street was slower than the trip down, and much less exciting, which was the way Simon liked it. Once up top again, the first thing they did was walk back along the clifftop path to the spot above the cave.

“To confirm my theory about the footprints,” Simon said, “we'll find the place where the guy took off the crampons.”

Ike was already uncasing his camera.

They found the place on the cliff edge where the footprints appeared in the snow. But there were none of the dragging marks you'd get where a person had
hauled himself over the edge. And no welter of marks where a person might have kneeled down or hopped on one foot to remove the crampons. No boot tracks leading away, either.

It looked just as if the person, whoever he was, had climbed the cliff and stepped onto the snow at the top without the help of a rope or even hands. And then walked away on his little steel points.

“This I've got to show my dad,” Ike said, patting his camera case.

The trail led to a cedar hedge at the back of some-body's yard and disappeared through a gap at the bottom. It had left a trough scooped in the snow. “The marks go on past that house,” Simon said, pulling his head and shoulders back.

Without having to discuss it — even Ammy seemed fascinated — they trotted along the path to Deacon Street, then around the block. Then stood, groaning, at the sight of neatly cleared sidewalks and salted road. They walked up and down the street on both sides, but the trail was lost.