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There was little color. Browns and greens from the various trees surrounding us, shades of grey from the rocks underfoot. Ahead a maple had held onto a few of its golden leaves and they shone all the brighter for our drab surroundings.
“Do you see?” he asked, pointing off to our right. There, some ten feet away, was the stream, tumbling its way down the side of the bluff. Beside it, across the water, was the mouth of a cave, a dark maw, a patch of blackness amongst the brown and the green.
Our destination, though it might take us directly to hell.
Cavemight not be the correct word. This was more like something miners might have made, stacked rocks framing the opening and a small, cleared area in front of it. Reaching it would require a scramble, but no worse than what we’d already covered.
First, though, we had to ford the stream. “Where do we cross?” I kept my voice low, the hush of the place dampening my eagerness. Something about that dark opening chilled me even worse than the persistent drizzle.
“Come.” Rafe swung his can and set off, aiming our route downhill. We reached a coppice of large shrubs, their leaves a dark glossy green. With one hand, Rafe traced the perimeter of the cluster, and I followed him. We came to a place where the stream narrowed, gurgling happily through a large rock and a giant, jagged stump. Without a pause, Rafe leapt from one side to the other, and with a lot less confidence, I did the same.
My boots squished in the muck on the other side and for a moment I thought I might fall back. Pride kept me upright. We reached the cavern and, following Rafe’s lead, I stopped at the edge of the clearing.
The darkness at the mouth of the cave seemed to bow out, a convex shadow, as if it would suddenly erupt and cover the land. I glanced around for something large I could hide behind if that ever happened.
“Put him in here two weeks ago,” Rafe murmured. “Do you feel it?”
I did, an undercurrent of tension that spoke to powerful magic.
“We can go in.”
The soft dirt in front of the cave was undisturbed, no footprints, nothing to indicate something had been moved. There were no footprints, not even the ones Rafe had presumably left when he checked yesterday. “You rake that smooth every day?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are no footprints leading into or out of the cave. None at all.”
“So?”
I tightened my plaid scarf. “You said you went in there yesterday to check on your father’s body. Unless you flew in, you should have left prints.”
His body radiated tension, though he didn’t speak for a long moment. “Let’s go inside. Maybe you’ll see something I missed.”
Interesting turn of phrase. I stifled a rude chuckle. Rafe crossed the dirt, leaving five clear prints. I waited to see if the ground would magically smooth itself before following him. It didn’t. I looked for other signs, broken branches, anything out of place, and though I was far from an expert on forest life, all seemed as it should be.
Gathering my courage, I crossed the little patch of dirt and stepped into the darkness.
And it was very, very dark. “Rafe?” My voice came out close to a squeak. “Where’d you go?”
“Here.” His voice was soft and perversely comforting.
I set off a witchlight. The darkness pressed against the light till it illuminated a circumference of just a few inches. “Rafe?” I whispered.
“Here,” he said again, this time so close it made me jump. I reached out blindly and took hold of his arm. “What is this place?”
“I made it when he died. We needed a place for him, you see, and the Mother said she would watch him here.”
TheMother? “You used earth magic to make this?” No wonder it squashed my witchlight.
“There is only one magic, though there are different ways of understanding it.”
This was neither the time nor the place to dissect magical definitions. “Where is Martin?”
He moved further into the cave, with me hanging off his arm like a limpet. We’d gone several feet when he stopped again. “Here.”
This deep my witchlight had no more radiance than a distant star. I couldn’t tell where he’d pointed or what we might be looking at.
“And is he there? All I see is darkness.” I asked, figuring Rafe might have methods of observation that I could not access.
