Inside the Mountain

The entrance to the cave system was lower down the north face, where the rocky slope gave way to a jumble of large boulders. Between two of the biggest boulders was a gap just wide enough for a person, and beyond the gap was darkness and a slow cool breath of air coming from inside the earth.

They put on their head torches and went in.

The first cave was large. High ceiling, wide floor, the walls orange and brown and grey in the torchlight. Their footsteps echoed. Somewhere water dripped with a slow regular sound like a very patient clock.

Nora had been in caves before on school trips, the kind with guided tours and electric lights and a gift shop at the end. Those caves had felt managed and safe, the wildness taken out of them. This was completely different. This cave had no lights and no tour guide and the darkness at the edges was absolute. It pressed against the circle of her torchlight like something solid.

Stay close, she said.

I am close, Felix said. He was right behind her.

The path through the cave system was marked with small cairns, piles of flat stones balanced on top of each other, which Grandpa Ren\'s notes had told them to follow. Someone had been placing those cairns for years, maybe decades, keeping the route clear for walkers who knew to look for them.

They moved through three connected chambers, each one different. The first was wide and low. The second was tall and narrow, a crack in the mountain, and they had to turn sideways in places to squeeze through. The third was the most beautiful thing Nora had ever seen.

The ceiling of the third chamber was covered in stalactites. Not just a few but hundreds of them, hanging down like stone fingers of all different sizes, and where the torchlight hit them they glittered with tiny points of white and gold. The floor was smooth and damp. In the centre of the chamber was a shallow pool, perfectly still, its surface reflecting the stalactites above so that it looked like looking into a sky made of stone.

They both stopped without discussing it.

Felix turned his torch off.

Nora turned hers off too.

In the complete darkness the cave felt enormous. Much bigger than it had looked in the torchlight. Bigger than anything. Nora could hear Felix breathing beside her, and the dripping water, and nothing else at all. No wind. No birds. No cars or voices or any sound from the world above. Just the mountain around them and the dark.

Nora, Felix said quietly. His voice sounded different in the dark cave, rounder somehow, softer.

Yes, she said.

I think I understand why Grandpa wanted us to do this.

She waited.

He could not come, Felix said. But now we have been here. So in a way he has too. Because we will tell him about it. Every part of it.

Nora reached out in the dark and found her brother\'s shoulder and gave it one quick squeeze. He reached up and patted her hand once, the way he used to when he was very small and did not have the words for things yet.

She turned her torch back on.

The stalactites glittered above them.

Come on, she said. Let us find the shepherd\'s hut.