Walking away hadn't made it any less painful. The knowledge of Harry's death had dragged along with Tilda, as if it were tied to her by a chain. For the first day of the expedition she'd tried keeping her mind clear, wiping it of all regret, sadness and culpability. She was no longer at Cragside, so the affairs and events of that place no longer belonged to her. She was a new person, out in the wild - a Tilda unsullied by what had come before.
It hadn't worked. Perhaps for a couple of hours she had been diverted by the novelty of being beyond the borders of Cragside and by the landscape they'd found themselves in, but then it had all rushed back, stronger than before, worse than before. The inescapable question that had haunted her all the previous night, which had forced her to consider joining Eva's little escapade in the first place. The question that punctuated every one of her thoughts.
Did I kill Harry?
She hadn't dared utter the thought to anybody else, for fear that they'd simply confirm it. Or, worse, attempt and fail to convince her otherwise. Nonetheless she was sure that they were all thinking it, each of them: Eva in her analytical, logical way; Rufus embellishing it with some kind of dramatic emotive twist; Ramin unemotionally prodding at the morality and consequences; Robin making it worse by being kind while secretly judging. Erik, at least, would keep an open mind, or be otherwise distracted by a passing insect. But, then, he didn't understand what was going on at the best of times. He wouldn't know what death meant.
Not that any of them were experts. It hadn't happened before.
The gaping maw of the cave beckoned them in but Eva had paused at the entrance, peering into the darkness. Tilda leaned over her shoulder. "What's in there?"
"I can't see a thing," Eva said. "It's so dark."
"There's a light there," Tilda said, pointing at the blinking red dot, set back into the cave. "Might as well go check it out." She pushed past Eva and walked into the darkness, with false confidence at first and then with increasing apprehension. Beyond the immediate surroundings of the entrance the light dropped away to nothing, to the point where she couldn't see her own feet in front of her. The ground felt level, though, and smooth, so she took one step a time towards the blinking red light. It took perhaps twenty tentative steps to reach it.
Reaching out, Tilda gingerly felt around the small light. It was a button, about the size of her palm, set into a larger surface about waist-height, which felt perhaps like it was made of metal. Certainly not rock or anything natural - it was far too perfect in its texture. As her fingers brushed over the button, the red light blinked off and didn't come back.
"The light's gone off! I think it's a button, should I press it?"
"Probably not!" called Robin. "We don't know what it does!"
Tilda looked back towards the glowing oval where the others were stood, silhouetted against the outside. "It's not like it's going to open up a trapdoor underneath me, guys."
"I'm coming in," Eva said. "Keep talking, I still can't see a thing."
"I'm over here," Tilda said, speaking loudly. "The ground seems pretty easy to walk on, so don't worry about tripping over yourself. There's some kind of smooth surface here. A desk, maybe?"
Eva's hand rested on Tilda's shoulder. "It's really dark in here," she said, needlessly.
"Are you afraid of the dark, Miss Rationality?"
"Maybe. Where's the button?"
"Just here," Tilda said, taking Eva's hand and moving it to where the blinking light had been. "But it's not flashing anymore."
"Did you press it already?"
"Nope. It stopped flashing all by itself."
"Well, here goes."
There was an audible click as Eva pressed the button. They both held their breath.
Entirely nothing happened.
Looking back at the entrance, Eva raised her voice. "Anybody good at lighting a fire?"
*
It rapidly became apparent that the writer, philosopher, six year old and scientist were not. Tilda confessed immediately to being not only inept at practical activities, but also entirely disinterested. Fortunately the eager, earnest, quiet Robin soon revealed his survival qualifications.
"Harry taught me a lot," he said, somewhat under his breath, as if he were unsure whether mentioning his name was permitted. "He was always good at this stuff."
"I hate the past tense," Rufus muttered. He looked round at them all. "What? He's gone, what, a couple of days, three days, and that's it. Past tense. History. No more new stories."
Robin and Eva went off to find suitable wood from the nearby trees, while the rest of them found mostly comfortable perches on the crumbling rock and stone that surrounded the cave entrance.
"Maybe it's not quite that simple," Ramin mused, in the way that only he could muse. Tilda thought about standing and walking off to find Eva, but decided that staying and ignoring him would be less effort. "I've been thinking a lot about this."
"Surprise, surprise," Tilda said, smiling wickedly at him.
Ignoring her, Ramin continued. "Maybe we all have two deaths. Once when we physically die, and then another, much later, when our name is no longer spoken. When we're forgotten."
Tilda snorted. "One death not enough for you, Ramin?"
He shrugged. "It's just something I've been thinking about."
"If that was supposed to make us feel better," she said, "it was way wide of the mark." She looked down at the ground. "Death is just death. No different for us than it is for, like, a deer, or a boar, when we kill them for food."
So much for ignoring him.
It was Rufus' fault for spouting off as usual, overflowing with words as he always was. Or Robin's, for mentioning Harry in the first place. Did she want people to not even mention him? Would that be less painful? Or would that hasten Ramin's second death?
Uttering a frustrated sigh, she got to her feet and paced back and forth, glancing down the ramp to the cave entrance, then up the hill to where Eva and Robin had ventured.
Erik cleared his throat, as he sometimes did when he was about to attempt being older than he was. "Is Harry going to be back when we get home?
Letting out an anguished shriek, which shocked her probably more than the others, Tilda walked away, angry at herself for the show of emotion and biting her lip to distract her face from the tears that she could feel welling up. She could hear Rufus talking quietly to Erik, presumably trying to explain to him the horrid reality.
Tilda wished she was still six.
At that moment Eva and Robin returned, a bundle of dry twigs tied together with a twist of vine. "Here we go!" Robin announced.
A couple of minutes later they had a functioning torch, blazing away in the early evening light.
They entered the cave as a group, Robin in front, wielding the torch. It immediately became clear that it was not a cave.
The ground was a smooth floor, not earth or rock but a synthetic material. The walls were similar and not unlike the walls of the Temple in texture and appearance. There was a layer of dust everywhere and vegetation had encroached into the space through the ajar entrance but otherwise the space was oddly pristine, save for animal footprints dotted about.
The button was blinking red again.
"Did anybody notice when it started doing that again?" asked Eva, approaching it. As soon as she neared the pedestal upon which it was fixed the blinking was extinguished once more.
"It doesn't like us being close to it!" Rufus said triumphantly, as if he'd noticed a detail which had eluded the rest of them.
"It looks like the Temple button," Erik said.
The rest of the room was featureless, as they discovered when Robin moved around the space, casting his torch about to illuminate its corners. "There's a door here," he said, though there was no handle or way of opening it.
They stood examining the indented, rectangular shape. It was recessed into the polished wall and was just as featureless. Ramin thumped it with his fist a couple of times. "It feels pretty solid," he said, shaking his hand.
"Blinky light!" shouted Erik suddenly, pointing. The button had indeed returned to its slow, red pulsing. The little boy broke away from where they stood by the door and ran over to the button. He reached up - being a little short for where it was mounted - and pressed down on the button. The red light did not vanish; instead it remained, no longer blinking, glowing evenly in the dark. There was a series of distant clicks and clunks, then the ceiling erupted in beams of light, momentarily blinding each of them.
The door they were stood next to slid open, disappearing into the wall. A corridor beyond opened up, lights switching on even as they turned their attention towards it.
Erik jumped in the air and clapped. "I did it!"
Tilda looked at the small boy, then at Eva, who returned her gaze. Eva's face wasn't one of excitement, but of concern.
OK, so maybe there weren't many answers this week. Next week is only a week away, though! Thanks for reading - please do comment and vote to let me know what you thought of the chapter. :)
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