Water: The Mermaid Legacy Book One. Natasha Hardy

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      Chapter 7

       Falling

      It had taken us a surprisingly short amount of time to explore the cave, probably only about an hour or so. Morning still hung fragrant and slightly misty over the valley, wrapping the plants in a delicate fabric of dew drops.

      “So? What do you think?” I asked the boys.

      “It’s definitely a picture of the missing tribe,” Josh replied.

      Luke rolled his eyes as he started packing up the campsite. Josh and I joined him as we discussed what to do next.

      “Let’s explore the valley a bit more,” I suggested, the tingling sensation of the unexplored still rippling through my veins.

      There was magic here; the trees, the water, everything about this place pulsed with intrigue. The story in the cave paintings was more than enough to convince me that something strange had happened here, something that modern day science couldn’t quite explain. Those people had survived a terrible battle, and they hadn’t survived without some sort of outside help.

      The images of the dancing people below the funnel bore testament to that.

      The boys weren’t as convinced.

      “The cave stick figures left this place,” Luke argued. “Surely we should look upriver? Maybe that funnel was a passageway of some sort, you know like a…” He searched for the right description. “A cave tunnel.”

      Josh and I looked at each other and then back at Luke doubtfully.

      “Yeah, I watched a documentary on caves, and tunnels like that one are common,” he continued, getting excited now. “I know there are more cave paintings at the lower Injisuthi cave upriver, maybe the story continues there.”

      Josh was nodding. “That’s a great idea, Luke, these people obviously liked to depict what was going on. It makes sense that they would carry on drawing wherever they ended up.”

      Even though their argument made sense, I didn’t want to leave the valley. I walked over to the turquoise pool while the boys planned our route to lower Injisuthi cave, watching as the sunlight danced through the crystal-clear water creating patterns.

      The dream from the night before kept pushing its way into daylight. The pool looked as inviting and beautiful as it had when I’d been skipping and playing in it in my dream the night before.

      I was too afraid to swim though, the breathlessness and weight of the water as it engulfed me, those arms pulling me under, too vivid to ignore.

      Instead I satisfied the desire to get into the water by trailing my fingers through it instead, half listening to the boys as I did so.

      Halfway through their conversation, at the edge of my consciousness, I thought I heard the faintest of whispers, as if a few people were discussing something very far away. I couldn’t make out specific words, and the more I concentrated on it the fainter it became.

      “Guys, can you hear that?” I interrupted them, wiping my hand on my shorts.

      They stopped talking and listened. There was nothing.

      “What was it, Alex?” Luke asked.

      “I… I thought I heard talking,” I replied, beginning to doubt myself as the absence of human sound reverberated loudly around the valley. “Sorry, must have been an echo,” I amended as the boys went back to their planning.

      I began trailing my fingers in the water again, playing with a dead leaf that was floating on the surface.

      A few minutes later the whispered voices returned. A little more distinct this time, although I still couldn’t make out any words.

      “Come here.” I called the boys over, excited and a bit freaked out. “Can you hear that?”

      They moved closer to me, straining to hear something. This time the voice remained as distinct as before, but only to me. Both Luke and Josh heard nothing.

      “We’d better get going,” Josh said, throwing a concerned look in my direction.

      “Yeah, it’s a couple of hours’ hike to the next cave,” Luke agreed.

      I didn’t miss the “she’s losing it” look that passed between them. As much as I wanted to stay and investigate the whispered conversation I was convinced I’d heard, I wasn’t about to do it alone.

      We began the climb up the steep sides of the valley soon afterwards, leaving behind the ancient leafy coolness and walking into the baking morning sun.

      Frustration and disappointment mingled with relief as two sides of an equal argument wrestled in my mind. It wasn’t just that what we’d found alluded to the continuation of that ancient tribe; I felt as though there was something specific that I was meant to find in that valley, and I’d skirted around it, maybe even touched it very briefly, but there was no resolution. I was leaving as ignorant as I’d arrived and that frustrated me.

      And then the memory of the dream would resurface and I couldn’t move fast enough to get away, because whatever had helped those poor terrified women might not have been friendly after all.

      We walked for what felt like an age at a ridiculous angle, using the roots of the old trees to pull ourselves up, the effort reducing us to silence.

      Quite suddenly the ground evened out onto a softly undulating plain of waving, golden-green, ripe summer grasses, interspersed with spiky aloes and unexpectedly beautiful flowers. The roar of the waterfall was crystal clear after the muffled closeness of the valley floor.

      Grunting and using sign language to stop us Josh heaved air into his lungs, hands on his knees. I plopped onto the grass next to him, cheeks pink and hair wet with sweat.

      “The cave we’ll spend tonight in is just over that ridge.” Luke pointed to a black scar of cliffs in the distance. As we neared the beautifully formidable heights shaded in grey and black, we discussed how best to tackle them.

      The hill crouched in front of us, brooding. It wasn’t nearly as steep as the valley walls we’d climbed earlier, but it was steep enough. About three-quarters of the way up rain had washed the soil away to reveal the earth’s skeleton. Black rock, jagged and angry, framed the horizon, beyond which a bright blue sky formed a contrasting backdrop to the searing unrelenting heat of the African sun.

      The boys politely suggested a longer and easier way round.

      “Won’t we find more cave paintings on them?” I asked.

      “We might, Alex, but they’re really tough to climb and we don’t have the right equipment.”

      We carried on walking for what felt like hours, taking a seemingly endless and exhausting well defined trail that took us around the side of the cliffs and eventually along the top of the ridge.

      Had I been more alert СКАЧАТЬ