“Did it lead into something like this?” Yana asked, glancing about her with the wonder and sense of welcome she always felt in a Petaybean cave.
“Not directly, according to granddad’s notes, but he didn’t have as much chance to explore as he’d liked, since he was busy doing what he could to make it easier on the animals Intergal decided would adapt well to this climate.” Sean gave a snort at Intergal’s needless arrogance “Grandmother located the hot springs at Kilcoole and went looking for others, with my father strapped to her back to hear him tell it, and my oldest auntthe one my sister, Aoifa, was named foreither on a sled or strapped to a curly-coat’s back. Grandmother really liked a decent hot bath every day and took one no matter how far she had to tramp to indulge herself.” Sean grinned nostalgically, as he had been a part of those forays. “I know she taught me how to swim …” He glanced quickly at Yana and winked. “My father and his two younger brothers found and mapped many of the caves we now know and use. I think I learned their whereabouts before I learned to spell.”
“What happened to all your relatives?” Diego asked, rather amazed that anyone could have so many.
Bunny tried to shush him, but Sean shook his head. “What else? My younger uncles joined Intergal, and my father continued his father’s work as I continue his.”
“And the other Aoifa?” Diego was persistent.
Sean drew his brows together. “We never did find out. She went off on one of her solo tripsshe did a lot of hunting with her track-cats. About a year later, someone found the fur and bones of one of the cats, but we couldn’t tell how it had come to die. That was all we ever found of her.”
When they made camp for the night, Diego went off into what Bunny was beginning to call his “creative trance.” His lips moved now and then and odd sounds blurted out, but he offered no performance. One respected a singer’s concentration.
They traveled two more days, steadily downward, past lakes bordered by strange shapes, some like trees dipped in silver or gold, leaves, flowers, and all. Occasionally a mist would rise to accompany them, flowing around their feet as they moved and then, as abruptly as it had risen, disappearing. Twice they had to find their way to the narrowest parts of rushing rivers and, with Sean throwing the hook and line to some high point, swing over to the farther shore.
The fourth day down they came to a thick barrier of fallen stalagmites and stalactites, jumbled willy-nilly on top of each other like unstacked firewood. Sean recognized this from Fingaard’s description as the cave-in area. Beyond was a boom and a whooshing that suggested that the sea might have flooded in after the collapse. Sean and Diego tried to work their way over and around the various broken pieces, hacking occasionally at the molded limestone. Only Diego’s quick thinking kept Sean, in the lead, from tumbling headlong into the dark waters held back by the obstacles they had managed to pass. For a long moment, while Diego recovered his breath at Sean’s near escape from a dunking, Sean looked out across the waters, searching for some glimmer of a distant shore.
They vaguely heard the shrill voices of the women and Nanook’s odd snarl.
“We’re all right!” Sean yelled, cupping his hands, and his cry reverberated. Then he looked chagrined when they both heard the thunder of a rock slide. “Most likely an ice calf,” Sean said in a moderate tone. “Let’s get back. They’re not in trouble, but something’s upset them.”
They found the others near one of the rock piles at the outer edge of the cave. Yana stood, hands clasped behind her back, looking down, her face bleak.
“Nanook found it,” she said, nodding to where Bunny was kneeling over some object. Yar a stepped aside so that Sean could see the sobbing girl, who suddenly prostrated herself in a paroxysm of grief to touch with shaking, tear-wet fingers the heel of a booted foot. The sole of another stuck out from under a boulder of ice. Scored across the ice in all directions were the ruts of the claws of Gonish the track-cat who had vainly tried to dig the man out of his tomb. Frozen blood, still red, stained many of the deeper grooves.