So far, there had been no predators or other unpleasant surprises during their time on the island, but they still kept an eye out for the unusual, as nature had a trick of catching the unwary in a very unforgiving way.
Two days travel took them to the first sign of snow, little patches of it unmelted where it had fallen in the shadow of a rock or gully, and where the sun hadn’t quite reached it.
‘There you are! Hard Water.’ said Kel, pointing triumphantly, and then running over to the patch of snow with Moss hard on his heels.
‘I wouldn’t call this hard water, Kel. It’s more like soft white water, and very cold. Now this is hard water.’ he said, braking off a small icicle which had formed on the edge of a rock, but soon dropped it as the chill bit into his fingers.
‘If we go any higher, we shall become like that hard water, stiff and cold, so where shall we go now?’ asked Kel, shivering slightly, the hairs on his body all stiffened out, trying to conserve heat.
Before Moss could answer, or a joint decision be made, the matter was taken out of their hands.
Unnoticed, a large black cloud had swept in from the sea, and they could see the sheets of rain descending from it and drenching the plateau below.
All three looked around for shelter, Jay being the first to signal she had seen something. Pointing up the slope to a sheer rock face which barred their way, a dark hole promised the chance of shelter, if they could get there in time.
The mad scramble for the cave caused much laughter later on, but at the time it was deadly serious, as the rain had turned to snow at this altitude, and felt very cold indeed.
All three rushed into the cave entrance as a single body, taking it in turns to brush off the considerable amount of snow which had already coated their back and shoulders.
‘I don’t like that stuff,’ Jay said, snuggling up to Kel for warmth, ‘I like the warm down below.’
‘Me too.’ the other two responded in unison.
They watched, fascinated, as a thick blanket of snow quickly built up outside the cave, and changed the entire look of the landscape.
The snow storm passed as quickly as it had come, but the clouds grew blacker and more menacing, until the first flash of lightning and the resounding crash which followed, made them jump several paces further back into the cave.
Several more strikes followed in quick succession, and they soon lost their fear when they realized that the lightning was consistently hitting the rocks some distance away.
Peering out from the entrance, Moss was the first to notice that the strikes were being attracted to a series of shiny spikes which seemed to have grown out of the very rocks themselves.
‘Why don’t they burst into fire like the trees did back in the forest?’ he asked no one in particular. But no one knew.
Kel made the next discovery, but not its significance.
‘Look at that, the last strike came down and then went sideways, as if the shiny spike wanted to be touched by it. And there’s another, doing the same thing.’
‘I’ll bet they were made by the giants before they went away.’ Moss said, a real note of confidence in his voice. ‘Perhaps they could collect the sky fire, and use it for something.’ he added, but without the firmness of his former statement.
Little did they know how near the truth they were.
It was ironic, and very sad in a way, that the three were witnessing man’s last and most successful attempt yet to harness the power of nature without creating an overwhelming amount of pollution and problems for future generations.
The lightning attractors had been made from the finest materials available, and consequently had stood the test of time, drawing the huge amounts of energy deep down into the mountain where it was stored and converted into a more useful and manageable form.
The energy conversion and storage system had carried on working flawlessly ever since man’s greed and hatred of his fellow men had caused nation to rise up against nation, both rattling their sabres, and neither willing to back down.
Eventually, someone coughed or sneezed in the wrong place, and because things were on such a fine knife-edge, it all got out of hand, and mankind, as such, was no more after the time of the Great Lights.
The lightning ceased to crackle and roar around the mountain top, the clouds lightened, and finally drifted away, while the Greater Sun came forth and bathed the whole area in its warm and comforting rays.
They stood outside the entrance of the cave, soaking up the gentle warmth, and feeling better by the minute.
‘Can we see how far we go into the cave? asked Jay, and that surprised them both.
‘Don’t see why not,’ Kel answered, ‘I don’t want to use the light pot unless we really have to, as I can’t replace the magic powders given to us by Mec, but we could go in until it is too dark for us to see.’
When they had stopped shivering, the little group turned and went back into the dark opening. There was a fair amount of debris, small stones, leaves and the odd few twigs lying about just within the entrance, but as they went further in, it became evident that the smooth stone floor of the cave had been cut from the living rock, and was obviously not an accident of nature.
Their eyes adjusted to the falling light level as they went deeper into the side of the mountain, but they sensed that they couldn’t go much further. They were just on the point of returning to the outside world because it had become too dark to see safely what lay ahead, when the titanium quartz lamp switched itself on, having detected the presence of a warm body
