“How long to the sea?” asked Ornery, somewhat fretfully.
“Long enough to get there,” came the fading voice.
Sometimes they felt that their escorts went away, for a kind of vacancy occurred, as though some essential component of the environment had gone missing, though where anything could go in this dim world, they could only guess. There were folds and cracks in the tunnel walls, and the tunnel constantly changed direction, and any of these irregularities might hide a way in or out just as they concealed the roosting places of many small creatures that plunged out into the air or down into the river, luminous forms that approached and receded, glowing parasols of light, soaring cones, winged diamonds, both above and below, as though air or water made little difference to them.
Three long sleeps into the journey, they became aware of a hushing sound, like the roar of their own blood in their ears. This very gradually grew into a soft roaring that grew more thunderous with every passing breath. If they had not guessed what caused it, Questioner would have told them. The sound was quite unmistakable, she said, for she had heard waterfalls on a hundred planets and water always sounded like water. By the time the little boat thrust up onto a sandy shore and tipped them out, unfolding into a flat blade of rubbery flesh that slipped away under the water, the roaring was loud enough to make conversation difficult.
“Now what?” shouted Ornery, who had been content to sleep the time away, curled in the end of the boat, dreaming of far shores and strange sights. Sailors, so he had told Mouche, learned to sleep whenever and wherever they could.
“You cannot dive the falls; for you the stairs,” cried the voice from the darkness. “We have put a light.”
The familiar hugeness swelled out of the water, a shiny dark mound that turned its pale, spherical eye across them then receded toward the falls. Within moments, it was gone, the guides were gone, and they three were alone.
“Light?” suggested Questioner. “Where?”
They found it hidden behind several broken shards of lava tube, the pieces nested like pieces of a giant cup, curved up against the wall, a glowing crystal set within the arch, illuminating the top of the stairs to the left. After taking a few moments for comfort’s sake and redistributing their packs, they stepped past the light and onto the stairs. Falling Green had not said endless stairs, though there was no end in sight.
Questioner lit their way as they variously clomped or danced or leapt downward. Here and there the sidewall opened to admit both the roar of the waters and curtains of flung spray, from each of which they emerged deafened and wet through. Finally came a roaring window near the bottom of the falls, where Questioner leaned through to light a great cauldron of boiling foam leading to a short stretch of glassy river, and then to a lip of stone over which the water poured unbroken into darkness.
They paralleled the level stretch of river, finding more stairs beside the lip of the fall. The next opening was a long way down, far enough down that the roar of the basin was reduced to a soft rushing, and again Questioner leaned out to light the water. The smooth pour shone with greenish reflections, utterly silent. Within the glassy flow moved pallid shadows that twisted and spun within the cataract, moving with the water into some unguessed at basin below.
Mouche made a noise that was almost a moan. “I dreamed this,” he said in a helpless voice. “I dreamed this!”
“Well, Mouche,” said Questioner in a chilly, admonitory voice, “I am sure you believe so. It is all very mystic and dreamlike, and though I can be sensitive to the moods and impressions such places evoke, I try not to give way to them. When dream is most attractive, then is time to be alert and practical, for it is then we are most in danger.” She gave him a keen and penetrating look.
Mouche swallowed painfully. He didn’t want to be practical. Every step in this journey took him either nearer to his dream life or farther from it, into new and treacherous territory, and he could not tell the difference.