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“Would you look at that….” Kweku whistles as he crawls in after me. “It really is huge.”
I don’t reply, too busy craning my neck around to take in my surroundings. No wonder Keita assured us the cave was sizeable.
I turn back to the entrance, where the others are now wriggling in one by one, aided by the mounds of dirt Britta continues slowly and stealthily to move, Li and Ixa by her side. “Will we have any problems entering any other parts of the cave system?” I ask, gesturing to the still relatively small opening, which Katya is just now struggling through. “For her especially?”
Keita shakes his head. “She’ll be fine,” he replies when she finally makes it through. “That should be the smallest space we encounter.”
“I hope so,” Katya grumbles, signing so Keita can understand her.
You’ll be fine, he signs back swiftly. Promise.
Katya nods, but her eyes are still doubtful. Not just about what Keita said but about him as well.
There’s a strange air around Keita now, a brittleness almost. And it’s coupled with heat that pours off him as if from a furnace.
He grunts. “We’ll be safe here. The caves look like hills from above, so no one suspects they’re here, and even if they did, no one would ever come here—at least, no human would.”
I nod. This portion of Gar Fatu was once a common route for deathshrieks journeying to the N’Oyo Mountains to worship the imprisoned goddesses. That’s the very reason Gezo sent Keita’s family here: to put them in the deathshrieks’ path.
That said, Keita heads for the back of the cave. He doesn’t even check to see if the rest of the group has made it through safely.
I follow worriedly after him. “Keita, wait,” I call, concerned. “Britta and Li have to seal the entrance.”
The pair are just now extracting themselves from the entrance, which has flattened back to its previous state, obeying the call of their gift. They also manually rearranged the vines outside as best they could before they entered. “There,” Britta announces, dusting off her hands. “It’s not perfect, but it should fool all but the keenest eyes.”
“Well, here’s to hoping Melanis’s hunters have much worse eyesight than they do hearing,” I sigh, turning back to Keita.
I’m not surprised to find he’s already made it to the other end of the cavern. “Everyone get moving,” he says brusquely to the group as he bursts into a run. “We have half a day to get there, and the jatu are already in the lead.”
Nodding, I follow behind him, picking up speed. From here, it’s a race all the way to the summer house.
After all, we have a kelai to find.
* * *
The rest of the cave system remains as bright as that first cave, even when we travel deeper into it, crossing over an underground river using a long-abandoned bridge whose stones are so stylistically carved, there’s no way it was made by nature. Between the sunlight streaming in from those tiny holes in the ceiling and our ability to see almost as well in the dark as we do in the light, it’s easy for my friends and I to navigate even the darker, gloomier areas of the cave. The entire time, we maintain a swift run, an easy feat for us. Back in the Warthu Bera, we used to do it for hours every morning.
“Think some ancient civilization lived here?” Adwapa asks, not the slightest bit out of breath, as she peers at the soaring walls around us, which have what look like cleverly hidden windows embedded in them all the way up to the ceiling.
“Without a doubt,” Acalan says, his voice loud and excited now that we’re in so deep, there’s no chance Melanis can hear us. “There’s those sun-holes in the ceiling and then the windows as well. But none of it seems human made,” he muses, squinting. “I don’t see any stairs, so how did they get up there?”
“They flew,” Keita says curtly. When we all turn to him, he continues: “Aviax used to live here. Some other creatures too. I would look at the carvings they left on the walls when I got frightened.” Then he falls quiet. “I looked at them a lot. Especially when the deathshrieks searched the mountain.”
My stomach twists as I realize what he’s saying. The horror he experienced. “Oh, Keita,” I whisper, hurrying toward him. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be only nine years old, parents just slaughtered, and to have to hide in these caves as groups of deathshrieks mad with bloodlust searched the area above him, their shrieks splitting the skies.
Worse, it sounds like he was here for quite some time, much more than the day or so he initially told me. I can’t tell if it’s that he doesn’t truly recall, or that he doesn’t want to let on—not just to me and the others but to himself—how terrifying the experience truly was.
One of the things Keita hasn’t been able to change, even after all our time together, is his need to always be the protector—even if it’s just himself he’s protecting.
He runs faster, a deliberate attempt to evade my touch. “We have to keep moving,” he says brusquely, doubling his pace. “Can’t dawdle and risk the goddesses sending more pursuers.”
“Or worse, losing Deka’s kelai,” Acalan adds, following after him.
As I sigh, keeping pace with them, a soft footstep falls beside mine: Belcalis’s. “Think he’s going to be all right?” she asks quietly, her eyes on his back.
Somehow, I’m not surprised she’s the one who’s asking. Belcalis may be solitary by nature, but she and Keita have become close in the past few months. More so than anyone else in the group, the two are brutally practical—sometimes, even to the point of being callous, like White Hands so often is.
I shrug. “I don’t know. This place, it’s filled with all his worst memories.”
