Duckling Ugly

'Marisol,' I said, growling it out like it was a foul word.

'You still think about her, and all the others, don't you?'

'Sometimes.'

'Well, don't! I never think about any of them?not at all. Because I am not Tuddie anymore, and you don't have to be the Flock's Rest Monster!'

'Tell it to the mirrors!'

I realized I was shouting, and I looked down, even if he didn't want me to. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'It's not you I'm mad at.'

'So who are you mad at?'

'I don't know. Everyone? No one? God?' I reached up the sleeve of my dress to blot my tears. And the fabric got stained, not just with tears, but with a spot of yuck still oozing from my popped zit. 'Let's just go back,' I said, disgusted. 'Picnic's over.'

But he didn't move. Instead he said: 'I know something that'll help your acne.'

'No, you don't,' I told him. 'Nothing can help it. Believe me, I've tried everything.'

And then he whispered, 'You haven't tried this.'

Aaron got up and began to climb higher up the steep, rocky slope behind us. 'C'mon,' he said. 'It's not far.' Then, when I didn't move, he said, 'Or are you just gonna sit there and feel sorry for yourself?'

That got me moving. Like I said, I didn't like to wallow in self-pity, and here I was doing just that. 'Okay,' I said, 'wait up.'

After only about two minutes of climbing, we came to a deep crack in the mountain face. I could feel warm air rising from its depths and smell earth, like in the first moments of a rainstorm. This wasn't just a crack in the stone, this was the mouth of a cave.

Aaron stepped into the darkness, but I hesitated. Standing in the stark daylight, I couldn't see him in the cave ahead of me, but I heard his voice coming from inside. Now, without seeing his face, just hearing his voice, I truly recognized him as the boy I once knew as Tuddie.

'I can't force you to follow me,' he said. 'You have to come because you want to.'

Want. There were a lot of things I wanted right then. Too many to put into words. I was a big empty bucket of want.

'You've trusted me this far,' he said from the darkness. 'Will you trust me a little bit farther?'

There was something important about all of this. Then it oc­curred to me that being at the mouth of this cave was no coinci­dence. Whatever was down there in that cave was the reason we came all the way up this mountainside for the picnic. M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.

I felt like I did when I stood in my room, before my mirror, daring myself to tear away the sheet. Spelling the words in my head always helped move me forward. D-E-C-I-S-I-V-E.

One step more, and I entered the mouth of the cave. D-E-S-T-I-N-Y.

I reached into the darkness, felt Aaron grab my hand, and he pulled me out of the light and into the bowels of the earth.

15 The cauldron of life

We lingered in darkness for a moment, then I heard the whoosh of a flame, and I could see his face again, lit in orange flicker­ing light. In one hand he held a torch.

When my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the cave, I could see a narrow slope leading deeper into the mountain. He didn't speak as he led the way down.

'What's down here?' I asked.

'Best to see for yourself.'

We went through one cavern after another, and when I thought we had reached the bottom, there was yet another deep, winding pathway taking us farther down.

'Stay close to the light,' he said when I started to lag too far behind. 'There are things living down here.'

'What kinds of things?'

'They don't have names?but they won't come near the light.'

I tried to imagine what could possibly live here beside bats and rats, but my imagination hadn't prepared me for the 'things' Aaron was talking about.

We rounded a bend, and only for a moment I saw it scuttle up a wall and out of sight. It looked something like a koala, with soft, furry eyes, a small snout. . . and eight spidery legs that clung to the wall as it scurried away I groaned slightly. Seeing that was more information than I needed, and from that mo­ment on I stayed as close to the light as I could possibly get. Even Aaron seemed frightened by it, but only slightly?or maybe he was only being brave for me.

'No one's ever been hurt by the things down here.'

'Always a first time,' I told him.

The caverns, which began as empty stone chambers, slowly be­gan to change their nature the deeper we got. Massive stone for­mations, almost bonelike in shape, stretched from floor to ceiling around us. Stalagmites grew from the ground like jagged teeth, and stalactites dangled from above us like limestone icicles. They all shimmered like they were covered with diamond dust, reflect­ing Aaron's torch in every color of the rainbow. The fear I had when I began our descent was slowly replaced by wonder.

Finally, we reached the most magnificent cavern of all, and Aaron doused the torch because he didn't need it anymore. The walls themselves were glowing, giving off a strange light as bright as moonlight on snow. It was hot and humid here; my clothes stuck to my body, and yet it wasn't an unpleasant sensation. The air hung motionless, smelling like mint and eucalyptus and cin­namon wrapped together in a rich earthy peat. Miss Leticia would have liked this place.

Aaron spoke in a whisper, but here the softest voice sounded loud. 'Abuelo says God needed a cauldron to brew up creation, and here it is. We call this cavern EI Caldero de Vida?the Caul­dron of Life. After He was done, God might have cast the caul­dron aside, but it's never entirely empty.'

We walked forward into the cavern. The floor was covered with moss greener than the grass in the valley. I couldn't imagine anything green growing down here, about a mile down, and yet it did.

'Take off your shoes,' Aaron said.

As I remembered from my days in Sunday school, that's what Moses had to do when he approached the Burning Bush. 'Why?' I asked. 'Is this holy ground?'

Aaron shrugged. 'Maybe.' Then he smiled. 'But I just like the feel of the moss on my feet.' He was right about that. Once I took off my shoes, it felt like I was walking on plush green velvet.

'Abuelo believes the earth itself is a living thing, and this is where its soul lives.' Looking at this place, I could see why the old man felt that way.

'Do you believe that?' I asked.

Aaron thought about the question and, rather than answering, said, 'Abuelo is sometimes very crazy, and sometimes very wise. It's hard to figure out which is which.'

We stepped forward across the massive domed cavern. In the very center, hanging from the ceiling, was a single stalactite, ta­pering down from the roof and coming to a pinpoint about ten feet above the floor. It was glistening wet, and I got a shiver, be­cause it reminded me of something, and I didn't know what. I stopped walking, but Aaron gently took my elbow and urged me forward.

I slowly approached the great glistening stalactite. The only sound now was the squelch of my feet against the soft moss and a rhythmic drip of water. Suddenly it occurred to me what the sta­lactite reminded me of.

An uvula. That strange dangle of skin at the back of your throat.

Beneath it was a stone formation growing from the cavern floor. It looked like a pedestal widening into a basin, like a bird-bath just a foot or so wide, full of water. Moisture had collected on the stalactite, and every five