radiance persisted- along with that maddening rattling clink.
Kit pushed himself along with one hand on the wall beside him, stumbling towards the distant glint of light. After a few dozen steps the light seemed to grow brighter, showing grey-white from an unknown distance ahead. The sound was moving that way too, it seemed. Then again, perhaps the source of the plink-clink emanated from there. Given the reverberating nature of the cave, there was no way to tell. He shuffled forward, holding the glow in the centre of his vision. The shimmering radiance grew accordingly larger and brighter until Kit realised he was looking at sunlight reflected off the stone sidewall of the passage ahead.
A few more steps carried him to the place where the tunnel twisted sharply to the right. Kit rounded the corner, and the light grew brighter. He worked his way along the uneven floor, scrambling over rocks and loose rubble. Up ahead, the passage turned again. The plink-clink sound stopped.
As he rounded the corner, he saw the cave mouth. Brilliant white streamed in through the irregular opening. To Kit’s light-deprived eyes it was like looking into a blazing furnace or a miniature sun. He squeezed his eyes shut; then, putting his hands over his face, he allowed the light in a little at a time until his pupils had time to adjust. He looked again. The opening was still there, still ablaze with radiance, and sitting in that warm sunlight was the unmistakeable, larger-than-life form of another cave lion; looking more than anything like a grossly oversized housecat, it sat on its haunches, licking a forepaw the size of a soup bowl.
Kit was already in midstep and could not stop himself in time. His foot came down on a loose bit of rock, which tipped and skidded under his weight. The resulting clatter startled the beast, and it turned its head towards him. Seen entirely in silhouette, the animal appeared smaller than the one the hunters had killed earlier in the day-a young one, perhaps-but still big enough to fatally maul Kit with a single swipe of its rapier claws. Kit could not see the creature’s eyes, but it was looking right at him. He held himself perfectly still in the hope of being downwind, of being invisible in the darkness. The cave cat simply watched him for a moment, then rose.
Slowly, slowly, Kit bent down and felt on the floor for a rock. Sweat beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck. His sweaty hand closed on a ragged stone, and he gripped it tightly. At least he would not go down without a fight.
He straightened again.
The cave lion took a step towards him, and Kit drew a breath and shouted. He ran forward, screaming like a crazy man. The big cat halted, turned tail, and fled. As it leapt from the cave opening, Kit glimpsed something in its flash of movement that almost made his heart stop: the cave cat was wearing an iron chain. As the beast bounded away, the chain swung out. Standing in the cave mouth, Kit saw the trailing links clearly in the light. The end of the chain struck the rocks- clink-plink, clink-plink.
Time telescoped. How long had he been with River City Clan? How long since he had seen a fully evolved human being, conversed in a modern language, worn real clothes? His mind reeled as he tried to place himself in an altered perspective, for Kit knew this cat; he knew it from another time and another place, another reality. This cave cat was the property of the thugs known as the Burley Men. This cat had a name: Baby. And the last time he had seen Baby, that chain had been in the hands of a Burley Man named Mal.
Stunned, Kit hurried to the cave entrance and looked out. The gorge was gone, the snow vanished, and winter with it. Instead, he gazed out on a scrubby green hillside. The slope fell away steeply, and at the bottom far below, he saw the cave cat streaking for the wide silver arc of a river and, just beyond the river, a two-lane blacktop highway.
CHAPTER 13
Sunrise was Cassandra’s favourite time of day in Sedona. The air was fresh and cool from the previous night and the sky pale pink, the rising sun still hidden from view behind the rim of towering red rock stacks that formed the horizon in every direction. Cassandra put the key into the ignition of one of the small white utility vans, started the engine, and eased out of the parking lot of the King’s Arms motel. There were few cars on the road, and she made the familiar drive out to the dig site in good time. She pulled into the site staging area and parked behind the mound of rubble bags so the van would be less visible from the highway.
Taking her hat, sunglasses, and camera, she tucked the keys under the vehicle’s rubber floor mat, cracked the windows, and left the van in the little shade provided by a small canvas awning attached to the sorting shed. She shouldered her day pack and wove her way through the excavation potholes and trenches, moving towards the escarpment shielding the deep arroyo known as Secret Canyon. She breathed in the morning air, heavy with the scent of sagebrush, and fell into an easy rhythmic stride, enjoying the crunch of scree beneath her thick-soled boots. Cass had come dressed for action, wearing her good, well-worn hiking boots and thick socks, her long- sleeved chambray shirt, her lightweight cargo trousers, and the oversized cotton scarf she used as a sun shield. In her day pack she carried two litres of water; a margarine tub full of raisins, peanuts, M amp;M’S, and dried cranberries; a tube of factor 100+ sunscreen; a folding knife; her emergency first-aid kit with snakebite accessories; and lightweight travel binoculars-everything she needed for a desert assault. If what happened today was at all similar to what had happened the evening before, she would be ready. In any event, she wanted to take some pictures and write some notes, to begin documenting the phenomenon. When her father arrived later in the day, they could sit down together and design a more thoroughgoing investigation. First, however, she intended to test her theory that the phenomenon that Friday called the Coyote Bridge was actually a spacetime anomaly connected to or embedded in the physical landscape of the earth.
After speaking to her father, Cass had gone to bed, but was way too keyed up to sleep, so she spent the night online researching such things as shamanistic flight, soul travel, and astral projection. Most of what she read as she sat in bed hunched over her laptop was incoherent blather-a mixture of New Age tripe and bizzaro fantasy- but she found enough level-headed material to convince her that what she had experienced the day before was not a dream, vision, or mental aberration such as a hallucination or some kind of hysteria. The violent storm, sudden and short-lived; the weird vertigo; the abrupt arrival in a foreign place-these were, apparently, more or less common features of the phenomenon, attested to in many cultures and times. Some writers ascribed mystical significance to the experience and others were quite workaday in their appraisal.
Moreover, while many outlandish claims and explanations were offered, and there was very little agreement among people with startlingly divergent orientations to life-some exhibiting an extremely loose grip on reality-Cass was able to tease out a few common threads: a belief that travel to other dimensions or parallel realities was shared by many different cultures in many different ages, and that such travel was not only possible, it was a practise that could be taught, learned, and mastered. The author of one intriguing article- a woman with waist- length white hair who went by the name of Star Eagle-offered the observation that not only were specific locations on the landscape important for Shamanic Flight, but the specified locations were time sensitive; that is, the would- be flyer would be most likely to achieve success if he or she embarked at sunrise or sunset. Dawn and twilight were the best times to fly, she said.
Hardheaded scientist that she was, Cass would have written off all this as so much malarkey and mumbo jumbo. If not for her own firsthand experience the day before, she would have consigned astral travel to the loony bin along with rainbow worship, crop circles, and almond-eyed aliens. Yet something had happened and, whatever it was, she could not ignore it. Like a good open-minded researcher, she had come prepared to test and document her discovery, however unsettling; plus, she wanted to have something tangible-a few photographs, at least-to show her father.
She walked easily through the desert, enjoying the stroll among the cacti and creosote bushes with the almost giddy sensation of a little girl on Christmas Eve, that flutter in the stomach and a feverish anticipation. When she reached the arroyo she paused for a moment to take a few snaps of the Secret Canyon entrance, still deep in shadow. She could feel the night-cooled air issuing from the mouth of the gorge, wafting over her and dissipating. The darkened opening yawned like a cave and seemed somehow forbidding. Cass hesitated, taking a few more pictures. Finally, as the rising sun cleared the ragged hill line to the east, spilling light across the valley, she drew a breath and whispered a simple prayer: “God, don’t let me break my neck.” She put her arm through the dangling strap of her pack and stepped into the canyon, adding, “Also, please, oh please, don’t let me get lost.”
