Visions (2 page)

THE CAVES

The high Sierra valley cupping the town of Crosley was untouched by the recent gold rush, but was gouged deep, having been scoured out to bedrock by an ancient relative of the crystal clear river now flowing there. Tributaries had emptied into the ancient one, and now there were hanging canyons lined with slate and quartzite cliffs dropping down into the town from both sides, making the mountains seem larger than they really were, and providing a spectacular view for the townspeople.

It had been exceptionally hot in the summer of 1880, and this day was no exception, dry and without wind, and now after the sun had set and a full moon risen the air was suddenly cool so that people went out on their porches to sip drinks and watch the night. In one canyon well east of town there were no porches, only a tangle of rattlesnake infested underbrush, and nettles beneath fir trees clinging tenaciously to steep rocky slopes glowing in moonlight. On the north wall of the canyon, barely within view of the scattered kerosene light of Crosley, a broad, pegmatite seam ran vertically between slate platelets on both sides, filled with crystals formed by mineral saturated waters of a distant past. Water and wind had carved the rock, gouging shelves, depressions and holes into cliff faces as if searching for an artistic theme. Halfway up the seam, a bear-sized hole disappeared into darkness, surrounded by rock gleaming yellow.

Suddenly, the hole seemed to move, growing larger, then drifting to one side.

A dark figure emerged from the hole, moving carefully like a shadow along shelves only inches wide until it reached broad, horizontal slabs of grey slate, blending into the background and effectively disappearing from ground view.

The figure settled itself on smooth rock, back against the wall, and sighed deeply, for it had come to watch a beautiful night. Peaceful. A second sigh of contentment followed the first.

Genetic wisdom of countless generations radiated from amber eyes gazing serenely upon the scene. Long, brown hair, with a reddish tint covered a massive head, flowing down to the nape of a muscled neck and covering the sloped forehead above heavy brow ridges. A full beard had been recently trimmed and decorated with streaks of blue and red mud which clotted in otherwise smooth hair. Thick lips, painted with ochre, were visible within the beard-forest, nostrils flaring in a broad, arched nose sucking in lungfuls of cool night air. The hands were thick, massive palms and stout fingers capable of the finest articulation and now folded together limply on drawn up knees. A man, yet different, so different that the slant-eyed black-haired nomads had never settled the valley, had fled the terrible visions given to their shaman by the strange inhabitants who had arrived long before them. But now the Others had come, and they did not see The Visions.

The big head turned slowly towards the hole going deep into the rock. A shadow within a shadow was there at the entrance, then moving cautiously across the narrow ledge. He had felt her presence long before she reached the top of the tunnel, and now, sensing her fatigue and fear of losing balance in such a high place, he projected to her a feeling of confidence, exhilaration and awaiting love at the end of the short journey. She was smaller than he, with tiny feet making the traverse easier, and in a moment she was with him. They embraced when she had seated herself, and he touched her again with a love feeling, marveling as usual how she retained so delicate a beauty at such an advanced age. She smiled at The Vision, noting the way he always enhanced her good features and eliminated the poor ones. His mind was the perfect mirror, reflecting only the best.

“Anka, I hesitated to disturb you, but the children were restless before sleep and wanted to have a story about the days in the valley. You hide yourself well; this was the last place I thought of.” Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth in precise articulation of the old language, for she was also an Elder, and Keeper of The Memories.

“You worry too much as usual, Tel. I come here only to watch the night and smell the trees, and obtain relief from the noise below. I’m getting too old for it.”

“The children?”

“Not so. I enjoy watching their faces when I take them to the places of our youth, but it is impossible for them to sit still, and they insist on chattering away in the new tongue, asking questions, wanting to put a name on everything, making jokes. Can’t they take anything seriously? I show them the way things used to be, the way things can be again for them. How will it be if they walk about marveling at common trees and animals? They’ll be discovered, and then what? Weapons and torches? A trek across the mountains to avoid those with fears so easily aroused? The Hinchai spread everywhere, infecting the world, living apart from it. They do not have The Memories.”

“They are our cousins, dear heart.”

“Yes, but it is difficult to accept. They have come another way.”

“Yet you have made the decision to be one with them. Oh Anka, how can you be so grumpy on such a night? And don’t you think that down there, near the lights, right now, there are others watching the sky and feeling the cool breeze? Perhaps cuddling?” She snuggled up to him, draping an arm across his broad chest.

“No use trying to arouse me. I’m getting too old for that, too,” he said, giving her a toothy grin.

“Teasing again!” She slapped his shoulder hard, then snuggled close again. “All I want is to keep you warm out here. You’ve been sick.”

“I’m fine, now; you don’t have to be my mother.” He didn’t tell her about the horrible, bloody mass he’d spat up earlier in the evening, and how when he breathed it felt like something was loose inside of him.

“What else can I do? Our children are grown, and you’re the only baby I have left.”

Anka glared at her in mock anger, but before he could touch her she reached out with her own love feeling that made his heart quiver and loins stir, and then her hands touched him there as well. “Ah, the wind and the sky lights make you young again tonight,” she said, eyes bright with anticipation.

He seized her, but gently, pulling her around so she was straddling him, and he was instantly inside of her, thrusting hard as she wrapped strong arms around his neck, pulling his face to her withered breasts. He wanted her so much, feeling her passion and her need and wishing to satisfy her, but again he could not. As quickly as it had become hard and proudly erect, his organ was limp and he could do nothing more to revive it. He ceased his thrusting, feeling old and ashamed, burying his face against her shoulder as she caressed his neck and back. His breathing was now a wheeze, and there was a dull ache low in his back. Face against his chest, Tel could hear a rattling sound from deep inside him.

“My love,” she said, squeezing him tightly, “you keep me young, but I’m getting cold out here. Can we go in now? I told the children I’d find you for them, and now it’s my sworn duty to bring you back.”

“If you insist,” wheezed Anka.

“I do.” Tel stood up, then inched her way back along the ledge, fearful as always of the long fall to the rocks below. Anka followed closely behind, his breath escaping in gasps, head spinning by the time he knelt to squeeze through the narrow entrance to the tunnel leading below.

“The trail grows narrower each year,” she said.

“The trail is the same. Perhaps your feet are growing larger.”

“From chasing you,” she said, holding out a hand to guide him through the entrance.

The tunnel sloped severely for several yards so that they crouched in a duck-walk position until the rock was reasonably level and the ceiling high enough for standing. The walls and ceiling were lined with crusts of tiny quartz crystals, clear and white, but streaked with the yellow of citrine and purple of amethyst. The floor was worn smooth by countless footsteps of those who climbed upwards to see the sun or the moon, smell the sweet scent of pine, hear a bird, or stick a tongue out in falling rain, for except for the great vent carrying hot air, smoke and body odors directly to the top of the cliffs, this was one of only two entrances to the caverns.

They spiraled downwards on a gentle slope, squinting ahead in dim light of torches placed in the walls several meters apart, acrid fumes of burning sap stinging their eyes and nostrils. The noise was faint, at first, growing steadily louder until they could hear individual voices, especially those of the children playing some kind of hiding game. Odors of cooked food and sweaty bodies wafted through the tunnel, along with faint, sweet smoke of hard wood fires. Anka scowled as senses once again saturated, and then ahead of them a shadow raced along the walls, squealing. A pubescent girl, naked and long-legged with blonde hair tumbling in a tangled mass down her shoulders, came around a corner and nearly ran into them. She stopped short, seeing Anka and Tel, her generous mouth spreading into a smile that showed delicate, even white teeth.

“They’re back!” she shrieked, startling both Anka and Tel, and then she raced back down the tunnel.

“They’re back! They’re back! She found him!”

Anka put a hand over his pounding heart. “Spirit of the world, my heart might explode. Catch me.”

Tel laughed. “Dear Baela, always running. Her spirit is our youth, my heart.”

“She looks like a water lizard, and runs like one.”

Tel frowned. “She, and the children like her are the true immortality of the Tenanken, my heart. Not us.”

“I know, I know, but appearances must count for something. She should cover herself, Tel. She is not a child anymore.”

The tunnel ended at last, and they stepped out onto a flat shelf overlooking the great bowl of the main cavern thirty meters below them, a vaulted ceiling rising sixty meters above their heads to a single fumarole going up hundreds more to the outside world. The cavern was round, over a hundred meters across, a series of concentric shelves dropping down into the bowl until at the bottom there was a large, flat area worn smooth by community meetings and ceremonies. The spiral of shelves began where they stood, and ahead of them raced Baela, spreading the word that Anka had returned.

Children of all ages cascaded down from rocky shelves, spilling into the bottom of the great cavern where the eldest Keeper of The Memories would take them once again into the past. Most were clothed in shirts and pants brought to them by Pegre, but all had cast aside the heavy footwear for the moment, and were bare-footed before him. The only connection to the past was visible in the elderly, sitting high above the babbling throng, wrapped in heavy robes and dozing after a satisfying meal.

“Already we are as the Cousins,” said Anka. “I do not see Tenanken here, but something foreign.”

“You see their clothing, and ignore their hearts and minds,” said Tel. “All are Tenanken, even the Cousins, but we have The Memories, dear heart. You give us that.”

“And after you and I are gone, who will be Keeper of The Memories? Where are the Tahehto faces among the young? Where are the heavy features promising remembrance of the ice days, and the great sea, and the long trek south? I see only Hanken features, and a future for the mind touch, but without memories what will there be to tell? We have lost all examples of ancestral purity, Tel. We have become Hinchai.”

“Dear heart, the gifts come and go, and the bloods of Tahehto and Hanken are in all of us. You rely too much on appearances. It is a curse of The Memories you bear. Now go to the children who await their favorite teacher.”

“Very well,” said Anka wearily, “but it is an effort tonight.”

“The strength you need will come to you as it always does,” said Tel. “Besides, they will not go to sleep without some kind of story, and it is you who have given them the habit. Go, now, so we can
all
sleep!”

“Enough!” grumbled Anka, and he shuffled off along the spiral shelf with an expression of painful resignation on his face while Tel grinned after him. In retaliation he took his time getting there, stopping to share a greeting with each family unit perched on the shelf, for even the adults were gathering to share The Memories, and he loved being the center of so much attention.

Tel settled herself at a tunnel exit near the top of the great room to cool in the gentle breeze from outside, watching her mate of two generations move ponderously downwards while the children scrambled aside to make a path for him to the center of the gathering place. He held himself with great dignity, though she knew his knees ached when slowing the descent of his bulk, and it had become so bad he occasionally allowed himself to complain about it.

Tiny hands reached out to touch him as he followed a winding path into the center of the gathering place. Anka enjoyed cuddling with Tel and close relatives, but was ordinarily not a toucher, preferring to express himself most intimately with the Mind Touch, and finding the grabbing and pulling by the children an irritating distraction to his thoughts. But he was careful to hide such feelings, for this would hurt the children terribly, and he knew he could not bear to do that.

He allowed them to grab at his beard, but their hands were gentle. They withdrew a little when he reached the center of the gathering and carefully lowered himself into a sitting position, and then they were rustling and bustling about, jostling each other to try to get as close to him as possible. As movement subsided, he found himself facing Baela at such close range he could see his face reflected in her amazingly blue eyes. He made the sign for quiet, and all movement ceased in the cavern, even to the high shelves where the elders sat dozing in the flickering light of exhausted cooking fires, stomachs full of meat and vegetables taken in during the bountiful summer.

Anka looked up at Tel, and she smiled, and then he closed his eyes, reaching out to slow the heartbeats of all around him, drawing from them all anxieties that might interfere with their vision experience. He held this posture for several moments, sneaking a look once to find the children relaxed, hands folded peacefully in their laps, eyes closed and chins up to look inward where he would meet them. Far above him, a faint snore was interrupted rudely by a sharp jab from an elbow, and then it was quiet again.