have to. Leave me when you have to, but not here.” His eyes drew in with concern. She could tell he still wasn’t convinced. “If you found water somewhere far, you’d have to come back here to bring it to me. This way, I’ll be closer. I won’t be any trouble, I promise. I’ll busy myself taking some more shots.”
He rubbed his hand roughly through his hair and down his thickly stubbled jaw. Finally, he threw up his hands in surrender. “Okay. Let’s take our stuff with us. If we find the way out, we won’t have to come back for it.”
She smoothed out one of the discarded granola bar wrappers. “If anybody comes looking for us from this direction,” she tore the wrapper into several thin strips, “we’ll leave these to mark our way.”
Chance left her briefly to drop a marker in the spider room by the opening they’d chosen to follow. He was only gone for a couple of minutes, but they seemed interminable. She didn’t realize she’d held her breath the whole time until she let it out when she glimpsed the tiny beam headed back her way.
The tunnel wasn’t large enough for them to move abreast. Chance crawled in front, his body blocking most of the light.
Kyndal concentrated on his grunts and his breathing. They tethered her to reality in this surreal landscape, kept her from crying as her movements jarred pain loose from every sinew.
Is this the way a baby feels moving through the birth canal? She found comfort in that thought. They were moving through a birth canal and would emerge back into the world at the other end. Tunnels always had light at the end of them, didn’t they?
This one didn’t. When they finally broke into an open space, Chance scrambled to his feet and helped her to hers.
She clung to him, fatigued and unable to hold her balance as blackness whirled around her. A wave of nausea swept through her, and she convulsed in a dry heave.
“Oh, baby, don’t. Please don’t.”
The desperation in his voice rallied her strength. She contained the lurches to her stomach and swallowed until the spasms passed. “I’m okay now.” She leaned her head against his chest. “I just got up too fast. I’m really tired.”
“Rest a minute.” Chance supported her with one arm as he flashed the beam around the cavern. Although not as large as the one they’d fallen into, this one had more stalagmites and stalactites than they had seen anywhere else in the cave. Like teeth lining a giant mouth.
The odd, bumpy growths were evidence of some type of water activity years ago, which Kyndal found reassuring. The openings littering the wall gave her comfort, each one promising a way out. She took a relaxed breath and pushed off from Chance, planting the toe of her injured foot firmly, showing him she’d regained her balance.
“I’m going to get some shots in here while you explore those doorways.” She hopped over to the nearest knee-high “molar” and settled beside it, busying herself by assembling her camera.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Chance’s voice was once again smooth and composed.
She nodded.
“I won’t be far.”
Time passed quickly as she lost herself in shot after shot. The limestone growth served as a firm support, steadying her and acting as a prosthetic leg under her knee. The pain in her head and back eased. Perhaps standing up helped the blood flow. But she tired quickly and had to sit much of the time. Sometimes she became aware of Chance’s shuffle in the background, and sometimes she became aware of the silence.
Darkness made for a strange working environment. She often gave in to it and shot intuitively with her eyes closed. The abstract angles and shadow play gave a dimension of hollowness and emptiness she’d never considered capturing before. It spoke volumes—like the white space of a poem. The results pleased her.
With her eyes closed, she didn’t see the beam of light or hear Chance approach. Luckily the camera strap was around her neck when his hand touched her shoulder and she jerked around. He caught her hand as she steadied herself. His quick intake of breath focused her attention on the beam of light shining on her hand.
When he’d grasped it, a ridge of skin had been forced up on the top, starting below her middle finger and reaching to her wrist. It stayed put, hadn’t smoothed back down like it should, looking like a worm had made its habitat under