Water: The Mermaid Legacy Book One. Natasha Hardy

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      Chapter 6

       Escape

      I woke when I had no more air left, gasping and fighting my sleeping bag.

      My surroundings didn’t help soothe me. I was in the open, with those ancient trees leaning over me. The early morning light filtered through a confetti of leaves. Only when I saw Luke and Josh still scrunched into their sleeping bags, mops of hair the only resemblance to humanity in their cocoon-like state, did I begin to remember where I was.

      In the morning light the menace of the dream dissipated slightly. The valley was breathtakingly beautiful.

      Despite the freshness of the early morning, I decided to take a “shower” under the waterfall. Slipping on moss-encased rocks, I wobbled my way around the pool to the waterfall. The upward spray from the falling water chilled my skin as I steeled myself for the shock, and stepped into the sheet of water. The icy needles of the water completely took my breath away as I stumbled backwards, turning instinctively away from the bladed water.

      Gasping and blinking I found myself behind the waterfall. The rock curved away from me, smooth, damp and mottled with moss. Birds darted behind the protective screen of water to their nests higher up the cliff face.

      All of these details registered only as side information as I gaped at a dark slash in the rock framed by ferns. It was positioned so that unless you approached it from exactly the right angle, it would have been invisible, blending perfectly into the rock face.

      I inched my way toward the cave, curiosity winning over the instinctive fear that gripped me. From the opening, the water-filtered light only reached about half a metre into the cave, the floor of which was dark and damp.

      A strange acidic musty smell seeped from the cave, and I shivered, fear and curiosity playing an uncomfortable tug of war as I considered going in alone.

      Fear won.

      Inching around the waterfall, I splashed my way back through the shallows to our camping site, dressing quickly and rekindling the fire for coffee as I decided how to tell the boys of my find. They woke slowly, stretching, scratching and yawning, finally dressed and eating breakfast after what felt like an age.

      “I was thinking we should go and explore the cave behind the waterfall after breakfast,” I suggested, watching their confusion with smug satisfaction.

      “Er… what cave, Alex?” Luke eventually asked.

      “The hidden cave behind the waterfall,” I repeated.

      “You mean the hollow the cliff makes?” Josh enquired.

      I shook my head, watching their confusion over the rim of my cup.

      “I could show you?” I suggested, grinning at them.

      The flip side of the waterfall was cool and damp, the light diffusing into dappled patterns on the cliff face.

      Picking our way over the slippery rocks, I led them to the wall of ferns that hid the opening to the cave. Luke and Josh stood gaping at the four -metre high opening before rushing back to the camp site to get the equipment we’d need to explore it.

      Luke took the first step into the musty darkness, the morning light quickly becoming a faint flicker as we moved across the pebble-littered floor.

      A few paces in Josh stopped our procession and suggested we use our torches to try to gauge the cave’s dimensions. Three beams of light bounced around the walls revealing a large circular front section, which stretched out into darkness away from the entrance, our torch light fading as it failed to reflect off any solid surface.

      Josh had turned his beam to the walls of the cave a few metres to our right and started walking towards the walls of the cave.

      “What is it, Josh?” I asked, picking my way forwards to follow him.

      “There’s something on the rock over there.”

      On the wall of the cave, distinct reddish-brown markings could just be made out.

      “They’re paintings,” he exclaimed excitedly, his beam sweeping over the wall.

      Stick insect-like rock paintings covered the wall in what, at first, appeared to be random chaos. We’d all studied Koi San paintings as part of the compulsory syllabus at school, and there could be no mistaking the distinct spidery scrawl of these drawings.

      “There’s a story here,” murmured Luke, his head cocked to one side as he squinted at the wall. “All of these people are running in one direction.”

      I looked at the paintings again, the haphazard depiction falling into place as I worked out which bit of them was the front, and which the back.

      “They don’t have any weapons on them either and there are lots of children,” murmured Josh.

      My heart dropped as I focused on the smaller more delicately drawn sketches, some of them being carried by the adults.

      “The СКАЧАТЬ