Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.28 Irregular verbs and a forbidden cave

With a resigned expression on her face, Erin got up from her seat and walked up to the blackboard. Unsurprisingly, she did not fare any better than Dorothy had before her. With a sense of impending doom we watched and listened. Needless to say, the Welsh girl was getting sent to talk to her tutor, too.

I fervently hoped that I was not going to be called up myself, at least not today.

Every time Ms Mallet's gaze slid across our panicked faces, as she was making the decision which one of us would be next, I was convinced that this time around she was going to pick me for sure.

As it turned out, I was lucky.  I witnessed Debbie Turner, Jessica Burns and Carol Mellon getting called up and failing to conjugate a French irregular verb I did not recall ever having heard of before.

My classmates and I breathed a collective sigh of relief when the unannounced little exams, as Ms Mallet preferred to call them, were over. I resolved to invest some effort into memorizing the conjugation of the second list of irregular verbs.

During first intermission, the girls discussed what had happened.

"Perhaps you should not have mentioned that part about how the French ought to start speaking English rather than their own weird language, Dorothy," Eleanor kindly suggested.

Dorothy scowled. "As far as I remember it was you who started that line of argument."

"Did you know that Ms Mallet comes from France, herself?" Barbara Lane asked.

"No, I didn't." Dorothy shrugged. "But it figures, doesn't it?"

"Why do the French always have to be so bloody sensitive about everything?" Carol Mellon mused. "Why can't they act reasonable and pragmatic like say, the English?"

Walking across the yard, Nancy, Natty and I couldn't help but overhear that telling little scrap of conversation among the four 'rich girls'.

Nancy grinned, then pointed towards the lawn. "Look, there's Erin." She waved. "Hi there."

The Welsh girl was sitting under one of the huge oak trees, looking less uncomfortable than one might have expected after having had that talk with her tutor.

"Hi guys. Why don't you come over here and join me?"

We lowered ourselves onto the ground next to Erin. Then I remembered something.

"Actually, there's something I wanted to show you. It's a kind of map, I think." I handed Erin the map I had taken from the Pyrtar's apartment. "There's stuff written on it, we think it is in the old Welsh language. You do read and speak Cymraeg, don't you?"

"Yes, I do." She bent over the map and proceeded to study it intensely. A few times we heard her laugh.

"What?" Natty finally asked.

Erin looked up, smiling. "This is kind of funny. Also, it does not seem to make much sense. Are you sure that it's a real map?"

"Not at all," Natty conceded. "I thought it looked more like the kind of made-up map they use in fantasy novels. But what do those labels say? Can you translate them?"

"Well, that little house over there is labeled 'The Hayloft', for instance. Could be the name of a tavern or something, of course. And that collection of trees down there is labeled 'The Grove'. Not very imaginative, I'd say. Or here, 'The Divide'. Whatever that's supposed to mean."

Erin shrugged. "Anyhow, those little pictograms are looking real cute, aren't they? All those little trees and hills and rivers. I wonder what that thing here is supposed to be, though." She pointed to what looked like a tiny grid of short lines near the bottom of a small hill. "There is nothing like it attached to the other pictograms of mountains on that map. It almost looks as if ..." She broke off and frowned.

"Wait a second!" she exclaimed. "Oh my God! I think I know exactly what that is, and where it is located."

She had our full attention now.

"Really? What is it?" I breathed.

"I can't be certain, of course. But if I am correct, this is close to Mount Fernyr. You know, the mountain we climbed a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I'd say that's supposed to be Fernyr, over there." She indicated a pictogram of a mountain.

"How do you know that it's Mount Fernyr?" Nancy asked, sounding more than a bit skeptical.

"That takes a bit of explaining." Erin smiled. "See, before I got enrolled at St. Albert's, I used to visit my grandma every summer during school holidays. I would hang with the other kids in the village. We'd go swimming in the lake and explore the multitude of caves that existed in the hills near Mount Fernyr."

She smiled. "Of course we were strictly forbidden to enter those caves, because of the risks involved, but that never kept us from mounting expeditions and hunting for treasures in those dark caverns underneath the hills. We'd stumble upon the weirdest stuff: discarded old bicycles, casks of wine turned sour long ago, empty bottles of beer, old mattresses and whatnot."

Natty laughed. "You guys must have had a load of fun."

"We sure did. However, there was one cave we could not enter. The largest one of them all. It had been closed off by fitting a huge iron grating to the entrance of the cave, preventing anybody from entering. The iron grating served as a kind of gate: there were hinges attached to the rock, and there was a lock. We thought it was grossly unfair that we could not explore that largest of all the caverns. We used to call it The Forbidden Cave."

I grinned. "The Forbidden Cave. Sounds mysterious."

"Yes, doesn't it? The odd thing was that no-one seemed to know who it was that had closed off that particular cave, or why they had done that. The grown-ups claimed they had no idea who was responsible for that. There were rumors that the cave contained some sort of top-secret military installation. But nobody had ever seen any military types in the area."

"Sounds weird," Nancy admitted. "Anyhow, so you think these grid lines here on the map refer to the iron grating at the entrance of your Forbidden Cave. And you are saying it is located near Mount Fernyr?"

"Yes, that's right. Remember that small road we took that led us to the base of Mount Fernyr? If you take a left turn about half a mile before you reach that point, you arrive right at the entrance of The Forbidden Cave."

"I guess we could ask James to drive us there, next time we spend a weekend at your place, Nancy," I mused. "It might be interesting to have a look at that cave."

"Sure, we could do that," Erin agreed. "But basically it would be just a huge waste of time. See, you can only stand there and look at the iron gate. There is no way to get into The Forbidden Cave. So actually it would be pretty boring and pointless, I guess."

"Maybe so," I admitted. "Still, I wonder what that map is for. I mean, is it meant to show the route to that cave? And if so, why? What is hidden inside?"

It was a question none of us could answer.

**************************************

A / N :  Thank you for reading and sticking with TE 101 up to this point, and please consider adding your comments or voting if you are so inclined.