Chapter 3: The Cave of Wishes

Skinner finds more to his mountain . . .

 

Chapter 3: The Cave of Wishes

Torrential rain drove them deeper into the cave. Skinner frowned, ducking as a crash of thunder deafened him for a moment. A stream had formed, running from the mouth of the cave into the yawning tunnel that ran into the heart of the mountain.

“Stupid storm,” Skinner swore. “Well, Socrates, what do you think?”

The wolf huffed as though in answer.

“Down, eh?” Skinner nodded. “Well, wondered for a while . . .”

He picked up a torch and put it into the fire he had kept constant for the past month. Summer had gone by, swift and beautiful. Skinner thoroughly enjoyed it, finding a new exuberance with Socrates as his companion, his best friend—his only friend outside his own head. Though loneliness came around occasionally, he found it much more bearable with the wolf around.

For his part, Socrates seemed to benefit as much from the relationship as Skinner. He gained weight with the steady diet they managed together. They saved each other during several encounters with bears and wolves. Skinner suspected that Socrates had once been with the pack that ambushed him early in the autumn. The pack had hunted Socrates down and surrounded him while Skinner was away foraging mushrooms. Skinner returned in time to save him, but both were bruised and battered by the encounter.

“Come on,” Skinner led the way into the tunnel.

Socrates hesitated, but another blast of thunder startled him into a loping walk. Skinner picked his way carefully down. He kept away from the stream, expecting it to grow as the rain went on. They continued for what seemed miles before Skinner stopped. He stood still, listening for the thunder but hearing none.

“Well?” he looked to the wolf. “Shall we stay here?”

Socrates whined quietly. Skinner grunted and continued his way downward. “Be a rough trip back up . . .”

“. . . unless we find another tunnel.” Skinner watched the flame of his torch drift with a new draft of air. He searched only a moment before finding another stream flowing down from a smaller tunnel. He crouched and followed, adjusting his bow on his shoulder and shifting the load on his back.

“Got a good feeling about this one,” he told Socrates.

This new tunnel was rougher as well as smaller. It was also steeper. Skinner struggled up the narrow tunnel, grateful that the floor was only polished in the center by the stream running down it. He pushed on, lighting another torch and leaving the first behind.

“How far,” he panted, “do you think this goes?”

The way grew steeper. He struggled harder, pushing on with the sudden urgency born of claustrophobia. He checked less often to be sure Socrates could manage the climb. The wolf was nonplussed.

Finally, the tunnel leveled out and turned to the left. Skinner guessed this to be the south, but was not positive given the changes of direction and lack of markers. They went only a few hundred feet when the torchlight fell against a wall of rocks obstructing the tunnel.

“Fine!” Skinner cursed raggedly. “All this way . . .”

He sat cross-legged on the ground and breathed deeply for several moments to calm himself. Using meditation techniques he had learned from an article he had written for a university class, he centered himself. Centered in a light trance, he collected himself, released the tension built up from claustrophobia and frustration.

“Well,” he looked at the torch flame. “Looks like there’s a breeze coming through there. How ‘bout we dig awhile and see about getting out of here.”

Socrates whined thinly.

Skinner got to his feet, stuck the torch in a natural recess a few yards from the rockslide, and began to clear rocks away. Socrates lapped up some water before lying down and falling promptly asleep. Skinner muttered something about evolution and opposable thumbs while continuing to labor at clearing a hole in the landslide.

Light seeped through from the other side as Skinner’s second torch flickered on its way to exhaustion. He redoubled his efforts. By the time his torch died, Skinner had moved enough earth and rocks to crawl through to the cave beyond.

He pulled himself through and surveyed the area beyond. A large cave with a sloping, arched ceiling was faintly lit by a high, thin crevice on the mountainside, through which weak light was filtered by vines and other vegetation.

Skinner turned back to his tunnel and widened the hole enough for Socrates to join him. Socrates squeezed through and immediately loped off to investigate the vermin scents in the new cave while Skinner sat on a small boulder and rested.

“Guess I should have brought more torches . . .” Skinner mumbled, turning to look around and finding the light too weak to illuminate details. He shrugged and moved to the crevice in search of dry materials with which to make a fire.

Socrates returned with a large hare as Skinner stoked his fire to a comforting roar. He dropped the hare delicately at Skinner’s feet and looked at him expectantly. Skinner dressed it out with practiced ease and made a spit with his spear and a couple cane spikes he kept in the quiver with his six arrows.

He scraped the hide clean as their dinner cooked, then squeezed the gut empty to dry for later. His clothing by now consisted completely of animal hides sewn together with dried gut and tendon. The smell offended him constantly for the first few weeks, but he made a habit of grinding fragrant plants into the hides and drying them in the sun frequently enough to keep the scent from becoming nauseous.

“What do you think, Sox?” Skinner asked his companion as he wolfed down the hare. “Shall we make this our home? Just two guys roaming the wilds . . .”

He lowered his voice as the cave echoed eerily. Settling in, he mumbled something about reconsidering the matter, but only after a good nap. He arranged his quiver, which he had sewn completely from rabbit fur, under his head as a pillow and went to sleep.

Strange dreams woke him hours later, but he could not recall their content. He sat up for several minutes, disoriented and trying to grasp something just beyond his reach. Conceding the point, he finally rose to revive the fire from its dull red coals.

“Let’s see where we are, shall we?” he kept his voice lower than usual, wishing to avoid the eerie echoes.

A few minutes later he stood at the north end of the cave, staring aghast at the smooth wall. The wood brand he was using for a torch sputtered and flared as the flame burned to a pocket of sap, pulling him out of his shocked reverie. He moved closer and held the flame higher.

“I’ll be . . .” he whispered, gaping in wonder at strange, archaic pictoglyphs painted on the wall. They were decidedly angular, with strokes and lines tilting in a way Skinner decided must signify left-handed authorship.

“Socrates,” he called. “Come take a look at this. What do you think? How ancient?”

The wolf loped in from the crevice and sat silently by him. He reached down unconsciously and stroked its head, comforted and grounded by the warm fur beneath his palm.

“Looks like we are definitely not alone,” he mumbled. “Be nice if I had more light.”

Three orbs of light appeared an arm’s length over his head. He gazed up at them, blinded and mesmerized by their soft glow. He looked back at the wall now. It was evenly lit, the dancing shadows of firelight overpowered by the spheres. He chuckled madly for a moment, thinking himself raving again.

“Will you look at that, Sox,” he patted the wolf. “Do you think . . .”

He imagined the lights moving up. They moved. He willed them to glow brighter. They brightened. He played with the spheres for an hour, willing them here and there, experimenting with his newfound power over them.

“Seems I’m raving after all,” he told the wolf, who snapped at the lights as Skinner moved them close enough to annoy him. He stared balefully at Skinner.

“Hmmm,” Skinner mused. “What if I wanted some pure water?”

A small depression in the stone floor filled with water, creating a pool of clear, glittering water. Skinner hooted and crowed and danced around the pool.

“Check me out, Soxy!” he crowed. “I’m a wizard!”

Socrates huffed his reply in a way Skinner understood to be exasperation. Skinner looked at him, locking eyes and staring into the depths of the wolf’s oddly feline, aqua colored eyes. Though he had always put more stock in animal intelligence than most people he knew, Skinner was suddenly certain that this wolf understood him completely.

“You’re not a mere wolf, are you?” Skinner knelt and rubbed Socrates’ ears affectionately. “Welcome to the cave of wishes, my friend,” he told the wolf. “Seems the will is the way here.”

W          W          W

Weeks later Skinner had stocked the cave to a comfortable level with nuts, herbs, and what vegetables he could find on the south side of the mountain. The flora and fauna here were different from his other cave, which he named Solitude West.

During the rains, which grew fiercer and more frequent with the wane of autumn, he worked flint, chert, and other rocks into tools to replace those left in his previous residence. He experimented constantly, sometimes wasting hours in pursuit of failed projects, and nearly as often learning new ways to work stone or finding new stones to work. His skill improved. He found a growing sense of pride in his workmanship with each later tool. He soon found a particularly hard stone he was able to shape to a point and work with a bow made of rabbit gut and hardwood to use for a drill. He used the drill to hollow wood and stone for numerous purposes, delighting constantly in his discovery of new skills as well as uses for his tools, rudimentary as they were.

Night after night he stared at the markings and pictures on the wall, trying to decide if they were intended to impart meaning. They seemed to be arranged, but he was uncertain of the sequence. Pictures of strange birds and open circles created a leitmotif throughout. The arrangements of lines and colors hinted at a written language, but its sense evaded him.

“Guess I should have gotten my Master’s in symbology instead of poetry, eh, Socrates?” he grumbled to the wolf. “Or maybe cryptography?”

He puzzled over the wall all winter. The cave protected them from the howling winds and the feet-deep snows, but cold seeped through the stone. Skinner kept his fire blazing and thanked his lucky stars that he had been so aggressive in collecting furs and pelts throughout the autumn. Early on, he had to convince a rather large black bear that this cave was no place for the bear to hibernate. Socrates saved his life again in this encounter; Skinner returned the favor later during a hunt.

It was midwinter before Skinner thought to explore the rest of his cave. He kept himself so busy puzzling over the north wall that he had forgotten the rest of the cave entirely. A sudden incursion by large lizards from the north side of the cave startled him, and he went, spears in hands and luminorbs orbiting his head, to investigate. While Skinner did so, Socrates jumped at the chance for sport and chased down one of the larger lizards.

“What have we here?” Skinner said, his voice filled with childlike wonder. His eyes brightened and his cheeks rose with the biggest genuine smile he had worn since awaking in the forest.

He stooped to a jumble of articles strewn among several human skeletons. His eyes went immediately to a cylinder ornately carved and sealed with a silver clasp. He recognized it as a scroll case, though he had never actually seen one in person. He reached out and picked it up to inspect the carvings, which were very similar to the glyphic mural on the north wall.

He looked around surreptitiously to be certain there was no one around before opening the case. He tilted the case and slipped out the scroll within, smiling jubilantly as it came out intact. Settling down to sit cross-legged on the cave floor, he pushed something out of the way and opened the scroll.

“Same language . . .” he muttered, studying the age-faded series of glyphs and markings. He turned it this way and that, trying to figure which way the strange language was oriented.

When it finally occurred to him that he could orient himself to the scroll by comparing it to the wall, he slid it reverently into its case and started back across the cave. Something glinted in his orblight, and he grabbed it before heading over. It turned out to be a faceted stone affixed to the head of a long wooden staff. Skinner blew dust off it and strode back to his fire with the scroll case in his left hand and the staff in his right.

“Well then,” he said, seeing Socrates standing proudly over the remains of a four-foot long lizard. “Fresh meat. Very good. Have a look at this, will you.” He held the staff up, showing it as proudly to the wolf as the wolf presented the lizard to him.

The staff was made of a pale, luminous wood capped with ornate end pieces. Its headpiece was fashioned of sculpted, dark metal centered with a faceted jewel as big as one of Skinner’s fists. The strange metal was shaped into a circle of three stylized flaming birds, their wingtips forming sharp points he supposed were meant to enhance the staff as a weapon. The jewel was deep and rich, but seemed to prefer multiple hues to a singular color—something like his own June birthstone, alexandrite. Skinner found the butt of the staff to be nearly identical to the headpiece but without the gemstone; the wings swept upward to create points, hinged to unfold from the staff to offer more points.