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Jack never gets my human cultural references when they come from movies or TV shows. Sad really, because that’s where most of my humor originates. Someday, I’ll chain him to the floor and force him to watch every Monty Python production ever filmed. And a bunch of other stuff too. Someday.
The soft ethereal song I’d been hearing since we entered the boathouse got louder and the water brightened. Any further complaint died in my mouth when I leaned over the edge of the weathered planks. Two ghostly forms floated in the gloom below Spot, solid black eyes bulging from pale faces. Feathery white tails flicked in and out of view in the murk below.
"Cave naiads?" I whispered.
Describing them is beyond my meager vocabulary. Otherwordly, fluttering, undulating beauty just visible beneath the surface. Everything but the naiads faded into the background, my thoughts suspended in a starburst trance. Their song charged the very air. I felt it on my skin, in my ears, to my core. Parts of me I’d thought nothing could touch vibrated. I was immersed in a fantasy, stunned and calm, and I didn’t want it to end.
My frequent emotional shifts normally give Jack whiplash. I know because he complains about it a lot. But not tonight. When I feel like this, he says I’m tasty. Maybe that’s why he’d insisted I come along.
“Yep.” He’d given me time to bask, but finally confirmed that these were, indeed, the long-awaited cave naiads.
Jack pushed the man into the water.
I didn’t flinch. This was my flex – acting as if stuff like this didn’t faze me. “How many gloopy potions you got?”
“Just the two so far. Training him's not easy. Short attention span.”
Bubbles and thrashing reduced underwater visibility to zero. When it cleared, everyone was gone. I could have watched the graceful movements of the naiads for hours. Their absence left me feeling sad and empty, and I didn’t know why.
Jack turned toward the shore and said, “Overland route is this way.”
“Do I need –”
“Gear's already down there.” He extended a light on an elastic cord. “Have a headlamp. Just in case the walls aren’t bright enough.”
I grabbed the ohshit bag anyway, and stomped after him. “You’re being even less forthcoming than usual.”
“Am I?”
“It’s folk like you what cause unrest.”
Chapter Four
I gracelessly followed Jack down a barely-used gamepath, cedar branches and shrubbery catching on my t-shirt. He never stumbled, silent feet moving forward and broad torso avoiding everything I ran into. Sometimes I think the whole of existence moves around Jack, and I’m the only entity refusing to be sucked into orbit around him.
The time we’d spent training me in non-human medicine on his home planet of Mul-Apin, courtesy of a gate outside of Austin, had changed things between us. I’d originally been educated as a human ER doctor, accustomed to acting fast and orchestrating from the driver's seat. Now, I was slower to question, more likely to follow his lead. Mostly because I was tired of ending up looking like a twat. As the main purveyor of medical care to the hidden, non-human community of Central Texas, my learning curve had been steep. Jack had been my guide. Sometimes my Virgil, sometimes my Beatrice, we'd moved through all the levels of heaven and hell together.
Earning each others’ trust hadn't been easy – on either of us – but the Herculean effort had been entirely worth it. He'd never admit it, but I knew our partnership was one of his most cherished accomplishments. It was certainly mine. The community at large was adjusting more slowly to my presence. The non-humans from Mul-Apin (whether born here or immigrants) called themselves Inners. Humans are Outers. We hadn’t quite decided what I was yet.
The path ended at a boulder fall next to a small limestone cliff, typical Hill Country terrain. Jack pulled out a little fob and one of the boulders disappeared. It didn’t hinge open or roll up, it was simply gone. High tech gadgets showed up with alarming regularity, even more strange given the Inner community’s propensity toward seasons, nature, and balance. It gives me access to insanely cool medical gear though, so I don’t look at the teeth on that horse.
The limestone of Central Texas houses an extensive cave network, but according to Jack, the section we were entering had never been seen by human eyes. None that lived, anyway. It wasn’t my first time to walk where no human had ventured before, but it never failed to impress. Feeling special is a nifty sort of high, but one that I’d learned comes at a cost.
I peered into the passageway which should have been darker. “What’s the catch? Spiders? Ankle-biting cave gnomes? Psionic rocks that’ll try to convince me I’m suffocating?”
“Such a pessimist. Who hurt you, Otter?”
“Seriously, what’s going to try to kill me in there?”
“Nothing will try to kill you. But we have to follow the crickets.” He grinned, like that should make me happy and totally answer my legitimate question.
Now I wished I’d brought Galli, the alien feline who thought I was her mother. She could hunt the shit out of some cave crickets. Jack pulled a mesh cage from his backpack. It was filled with faintly glowing, white, cricket-like creatures, climbing over one another, clicking and thrashing their feathery antennae toward the cavern entrance. He placed the enclosure on the ground, and turned to me with his hand on the door clasp.
“When I let them out, we have to keep them in sight. They’ll head for the main cavern, getting brighter on the way down. We follow. Grab that twine there.” I picked up a stick with thick twine wrapped around it. One end was tied to the wall just inside the door. “I’ll lead, but don’t lose sight of me. And don’t drop the twine. We’ll need it to get back out.”
This was a bit too minotaur-esque for comfort. “What happens if I drop it?”
“Do not do that.”
