Seeds of Time (14 page)

The coast deserted, they hurried down the winding path to the beach. Delaney ran up to join them as they came up to the rock wall.

“It's dark in there all the time,” said Brodie as they walked, “so I've got some stuff we might need.” His heavy-looking backpack was draped with all kinds of equipment that Darrell could not identify. He had also brought a couple of headlamps, and he handed one to Darrell.

“That's a funny looking flashlight,” she remarked. “Why is it on a long strap like that?”

Brodie laughed and showed her how to strap the lamp to her head.

“It keeps your hands free while you're spelunking.”

“While I'm ... what?” Darrell asked in surprise.

“Exploring a cave. You can get more done if you're not holding a flashlight.”

“Oh, yeah. Okay. Right.” Darrell slid the small flashlight she had brought into the pocket of her jeans.

Brodie had to take off his backpack to squeeze through the crevice. Darrell handed the pack through to Brodie and followed Kate inside. The light creeping in from outside was so dim that they both immediately switched on their headlamps.

Kate gasped as they squeezed through the crevice in the rock, her scowl replaced by a look of awe. “This place is incredible!” They shone their flashlights off the
walls as they looked around. “I don't know ... Brodie, if you weren't such a fossil geek, we could be spending our time doing something fun instead of hanging out inside this cold cave,” she teased.

Darrell smiled to herself. She suspected Kate might really be interested after all.

“Who're you calling a geek, tech head?” Brodie shot back. “At least we're outside, getting some fresh air, instead of stuck in front of a screen somewhere, surfing the net for computer games.”

Kate laughed. “This place
is
pretty cool, actually. I'm glad you brought me.”

“Oh no!” Darrell closed her eyes.

Brodie was by her side in an instant. “What's wrong?”

“This flash on my head is making me really dizzy. Every time I move, the light flicks and wavers.”

Brodie laughed, relieved. “I thought there was something really wrong. It's okay. If it bugs you, turn it off. I'm used to wearing one and I can keep my head pretty steady. Until it gets really dark, you can follow mine.”

“I'll wear it,” said Kate. Brodie helped her strap it on, and Darrell pulled the flashlight back out of her pocket. Brodie shouldered his pack, and they set off slowly deeper into the cave. The last time she had been here, Darrell she had been alone, and surrounded by complete darkness. With her friends beside her
and no fear of pursuit, the trip to the back of the cave seemed to take no time at all.

As they walked, Brodie told them something of the strange underworld they could see with the erratic bounce of light.

“Caves are usually formed by the work of water over thousands of years. A few are the result of earthquakes, and some are formed as a result of lava pushing to the surface from deep underground. This cave is so straight and true,” he said thoughtfully. “It doesn't really seem like just a fissure in the rock or an area eroded by water. It reminds me of a lava tube. I'll have to check that out,” he muttered to himself.

Kate interrupted his reverie. “We need you to do more than just talk to yourself, Brodie,” she said, her tone sharp with anxiety. “You're the expert here.” She looked around with some trepidation and touched the rock wall of the cave gingerly. “Is it safe to walk down through this cave? What if there's an — earthquake, or something?”

Brodie laughed. “We would be in just as much trouble above the ground in this area of the world if there was an earthquake, Kate.”

Darrell frowned. “That doesn't really reassure me, Brodie.”

“Or me,” piped in Kate.

He smiled and shook his head. “Well, don't think of it too much then,” he said. “Life is full of surprises.
Let's just hope that an earthquake doesn't choose now to hit this part of the coast, okay?”

The inside of the cave was starting to feel familiar to Darrell, and she noticed the rock outcropping where she had hidden her backpack on the day of her fateful voyage. Delaney led the way as the walls opened up near the rear of the cave. Brodie shone his headlamp around so that they could have a good look at the place, and Darrell tried to increase the illumination by adding the beam of her own light.

Kate looked around with wide eyes. The glint of minerals shone out as the light from the headlamps bounced off the rock surfaces. She reached up to run her fingers along the cave wall. “This really is something else. Thanks for bringing me in to see it.”

“Wait ‘til you see the stars of the show,” Brodie remarked, and he began to look for the symbols on the wall with his headlamp.

Delaney's tail wagged a black shadow that rose right to the ceiling of the cave, which had taken on a whole new character with the light of Darrell's flashlight. Most of the way it followed a rough run straight down into the rock, but near the end it widened out into an area that could have been a large anteroom. The ceiling of the cave suddenly lifted high above Darrell's head and she could hear the distant sound of dripping water. Images swirled in Darrell's mind from the last time she
had been in this place. The sick worry she felt about Luke and his family returned and lodged firmly in the pit of her stomach.

Brodie gave a low whistle, and the girls walked over to his side. He had found the symbols on the wall and was examining them closely with his light. Two symbols glowed a dull red in the wavering light, beside another, tree-shaped, which could just be made out as a soot-blackened smudge. Darrell brought her flashlight closer to the smudge, and in the more direct light, the shape of a tree appeared out of the dark. It was rimmed with the faintest trace of red, like a line of old blood, delineating the sooty symbol from the rocks behind.

Darrell peered at the symbols through the erratic light of their lamps.

“What do you think they mean, Brodie?”

Brodie looked puzzled. “I've never seen anything like these symbols before,” he said slowly. “They're clearly extremely old, and drawn in a really primitive fashion, but ...”

“But what?”

He looked at her and shrugged. The light from his headlamp careened around the walls of the cave. “Usually cave paintings take the form of animals, or hunters. They were a means to record success and failure before people could really write. They were the first way history was written or drawn for people to remember.
When I looked at these before,” he continued, “I could see right away they were
not
cave paintings. They just don't look like anything I've ever seen painted by the indigenous people of this coast. That's why I think they're glyphs or runes.”

“What do you mean? Is there any difference?”

“They're kind of similar, actually. Runes were sort of a rudimentary alphabet used by early Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian people. Often they're used to symbolize the occult these days. Y'know, hex signs and that sort of thing. Glyphs are like hieroglyphics, the sort of picture story symbol that the Egyptians used.”

He looked closely at the symbols, his nose almost touching the red pigment. Kate's jaw dropped as she looked at the symbols, and she exchanged a glance with Brodie.

Kate found her voice first. “What
is
this place?”

“I just don't know. These things look like a cross between glyphs and runes, but not like any cave painting I've ever seen a picture of. And look at this.” He gestured to the symbol on the end that resembled a tree.

“What is it?”

“It's a different colour than the rest of them. The other two are reddish, like they were painted on with ochre, which was a common substance used in cave paintings. They're in the shape of a sword and a face or a mask of some kind. But this one shaped like a tree
seems to be made of charcoal or something. It's really hard to see on the rocks in the dark. It looks like it's been burnt on with a brand, but of course that would be impossible. It's weird, but last time I was here I remember this tree looking much redder. I could see it more clearly on the wall, anyway. The charcoal was singed around the edges but the tree itself was the same ochre colour as these other glyphs.” His voice trailed off.

Darrell looked closely at the symbol. She could see it was in the shape of a tree, but it was completely blackened and very difficult to see against the dark cave wall. With a ghost of remembered nausea, she thought about the glowing tree symbol in the cave near Mallaig and about how she had watched the glyph she looked upon now fade from glowing red to black, like a fire burning to ash when she returned from the past. She instinctively stepped away from the wall, hands tightly clasped behind her back. Could these symbols be the key to a doorway to the past?

Suddenly Brodie turned and grabbed something out of his pack.

“What are you doing?” Darrell cried.

Brodie looked determined. “I'm going to take a sample of both these substances.” At Darrell's shocked look he said, “Don't worry, it'll be so tiny no one will ever notice. I'll be careful not to harm the symbols in any way.”

“NO!” Darrell's voice rang out through the cave. “Don't touch them, Brodie.” She began to babble. “I can't explain why but it's really important ... just ... just don't touch them.” She frowned and muttered to herself. “I need to think about this for a while. I don't know what to do!”

Brodie gave Darrell a puzzled look and then turned back to the symbols. He reached up with a tiny scalpel-like instrument that he had pulled out of his pack.

“Don't worry, Darrell,” Brodie said quietly. “I'm very careful and I take things like this very seriously. I wouldn't do anything to hurt the glyphs.”

Darrell shook her head in disbelief. Brodie stood, unharmed, in front of her.

“Are you ready to go back to the school?' he said with a grin.

“I am,” answered Kate, and turned to leave.

Darrell was baffled. Brodie had touched the symbols on the wall. Delaney was curled up on the floor of the cave near where she herself had fallen. If her time travel experience had really happened under these same circumstances, why was Brodie still standing above her and grinning? Her mind reeled with unanswered questions.

Darrell rose to her feet and stood in silence for a moment, staring at the symbols in the wavering light.

Kate stepped over beside Darrell and gently traced the outline of the second symbol: the shape of a knife or
a sword. She turned and looked at the others, with her hand resting lightly on the rock face. Her eyes were huge in the lamplight. “I've never seen anything like these glyphs ... or symbols ... or whatever you call them. You've found something really important here, Brodie.”

Brodie leaned forward for a closer look himself, his hand on Kate's shoulder.

“What do you make of
this
?” he said, excitement in his voice. As Darrell bent forward to look more closely, several things happened at once. Delaney stepped between Darrell's legs and she nearly fell. Darrell grabbed Delaney by the collar and clutched at Kate's shirt to break her fall. Kate teetered and bumped heads with Brodie, causing both headlamps to go out.

“Hold on, guys,” breathed Darrell. “I think ....” There was a loud bang, a snap, and then silence. The earthen room was dark again, and empty. Brodie's backpack slowly tipped over and settled itself on the sand.

Darrell lay on her back in the sand, feeling like she had just been through a tornado. Unlike the previous journey, which had taken place entirely in darkness, this time she opened her eyes to a dimly lit cave. She watched the colour slowly fade from a glyph on the wall. It was charred around the edges, in the shape of a sword, but still held a reddish glow. A river of emotion rushed through her. It had happened again ... somehow. But this time, she was not alone.

She turned her head and gazed over at Brodie and Kate, lying flat on their backs in the sand. They both looked pale and unconscious. Darrell felt a sharp knife of fear slice through her stomach. She had learned from past experience not to try to move too quickly, but she was determined to find out the condition of her friends. As she rolled over onto her side and lifted her head, she
saw with relief that Brodie was blinking, his eyes unfocused and bleary.

Darrell stood up. She staggered over to the other two and dropped to her knees between them. A heavy woollen skirt of rich purple billowed out around her legs. She ran her hands over the fine texture of the cloth, but nausea gripped her again. Rummaging in her pocket, she brought out a handful of unwrapped candy. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of it and examined it carefully, then popped one in her mouth. She thought for a moment about Luke's aunt, and shivered. Brodie groaned and she put a mint into his hand.

“Here, Brodie” she said. “Take this and put it in your mouth. I think it should make you feel better a little sooner.” Brodie groaned again, but he did as Darrell instructed. Within a few moments, he was struggling to sit up. The two looked anxiously at Kate. The short red hair framed her face, and her freckles stood out clearly against her pale skin.

“She hasn't even opened her eyes yet,” said Darrell, with worry in her voice. Brodie turned his head to look quizzically at Darrell's strange appearance, and opened his mouth as if to speak. Darrell looked back at him bleakly. Brodie seemed to make up his mind and closed his mouth abruptly. He crawled across the cave floor to Kate and peered at her through the strange red glow that lit the cave.

“She's coming around now,” he said, relief on his face. “Just give me a mint. I'll slip it in her mouth and maybe it will make her feel a bit better. It seemed to help me.” He took a small peppermint from Darrell's hand and pushed it between Kate's lips. She gagged and started to cough.