his news had changed the value of the child's death. The cavern was dark; the temple had fallen.
She remained like this for a time. I watched her, not knowing whether to fear her or pity her. My head was burning and my heart still beat in the rhythm of the drum. I heard, as if from a great distance, the sound of a woman weeping. I went to her, my head on fire. When she looked up, her eyes vague and unfocused in the torchlight, I think she saw me. I don't know.
When she stood, I returned to my mother's side. While the woman was arranging the blue robe around her daughter's body, I checked my mother's splint. It was inadequate, but I could see no way to improve it.
I used another strip of cloth to knot my mother's hands together. Kneeling, I ducked into the circle of her arms and hoisted her piggyback, leaning forward so that her body fell against mine, stumbling as I clambered to my feet, but catching myself before 1 fell. The woman was lifting her daughter's body, staggering a little under the burden. She slung the awkward bundle partly over one shoulder, so that the child's face, still painted blue and smeared with blood, looked back at me. In her other hand, the woman carried the torch. I followed the light of the bobbing torch as she trudged away from the pool.
She walked slowly, stopping now and then to adjust her burden, to rest, to get a better grip on her torch.
The flickering light of her torch showed me the way. Occasionally, a bat flew over us—a rustle of wings and a burst of high-pitched chittering. I listened to our footsteps, to the faraway musical tinkle of water falling into a pool, to my mother's shallow breathing. My mother grew heavier, but the woman stopped frequently, and whenever she did. I rested by leaning against the cavern wall. The girl's dead eyes watched me over the woman's shoulder.
The smell of incense hung in the air. Sweat trickled down my back and my jeans clung damply to my legs. The stone beneath our feet was glossy, worn smooth by the passage of many feet. Once, I slipped and smashed my knee against the floor, a new throbbing ache to add to the pain in my feet and hands. I tried to ignore the pain and watch where we were going. Was this the second large room filled with stalactites or the third? Had I been trudging through the darkness for hours, days, weeks, or years? It didn't matter. My mother's breath rasped past my ear and I could still walk. That was all that mattered.
My mother was very heavy. I thought about laying her down on the floor and lying beside her to rest for a while, but the torch bobbed on ahead of me and I did not stop. My footsteps had taken up the rhythm of the drum, a steady beat that matched the pounding of my heart and the soft sighs of my mother's breath passing in and out.
The barriers were down. The anger that had surged forth to make me scream at my mother and pound my hands bloody against the rocks was still with me, but it had changed. The first wild surge had made me scream; now I felt a strong steady current, more like the movement of the tide than like a crashing wave, or maybe like a big slow river, strong and smooth and winding as a serpent. It carried me along like a boat on the tide. The water was dark and murky, and I could not see beneath the surface. But I had to flow with the river; I could not resist it.
The great river washed me along, washed me clean of sin, washed me in the blood of my own hands, washed me through dark tunnels and caverns into a dead end. Then the torch winked out; the woman was gone. A dead end.
I lowered my mother to the floor and sat beside her. Her hands were dark and swollen where the cloth strip had cut off circulation. I loosened the strips and rubbed her hands to warm them and make the blood flow. I closed my eyes, grateful for the rest.
I heard a bat fly overhead, but I was not listening to that. I was listening to the soft hooting of an owl somewhere in the darkness outside the cave. I was smelling