PenWomanShip

"Give me a little more slack . . . there's a ledge here and . . . yes, it opens onto a horizontal passage."

As Wil slowly fed out more rope, a muted thump indicated that her boots had made contact with the ledge.

"Okay, I'm down. It looks like . . . hey, Wil, there's a light down here. This passage comes out at a place that lets in light! I thought we were too far down the side of the mountain to find an outlet here. I'll have to crawl through on my belly. Just keep letting the line out slowly and I'll yank twice if I need you to pull me back."

"I don't know, Ari, I kind of think we ought to wait on the others to get up here and check out the vertical before you go on."

"It's not dangerous at all - just a flat crawl with plenty of room and fresh air at the end. I can smell it. I want to see where the sunlight is coming from."

The red and white rope began to pull through Wil's hands, slowly at first, and then with a swish.

"Whoo-ee!" Her voice was much fainter, now. Wil leaned into the dark hole and strained to hear. "Holy Cow, Wil, this is great! I'm outside in a clearing, somewhere, I just don't know where! You gotta come down here! Get the others and come on down. Bring your compass. I'm unhooking the rope. Pull it back!"

"No! For God's sake, Ari, don't let go of your rope!"

The rope went slack in his hand, and he began to frantically pull it up, yelling, "Ari! Ari, are you there? I can't hear you anymore! Ari! Answer me!" No sound came back to the top.

Within minutes, two other couples joined him. Wil already had Ari's red and white rope coiled on his belt and his blue and white rope tied off to a stout tree, ready to descend. Immediately, equipment was unpacked, more ropes were tied off, carabineers were attached and Wil and Jeff began the descent into the vertical shaft where Ari had disappeared. Jeff was ranting as he went.

"The first rule we agreed on was not to go into a new cave alone! What is the matter with that girl? And then she takes her damned rope off! Has she got a death wish or something? Never again - you hear - NEVER is she coming with us. That is if we even find her!"

"Okay, but shut up! I need to be able to hear," Wil interrupted impatiently.

The damp silence was only broken by the sound of pebbles being disturbed by their descent and the occasional drip of water somewhere in the darkness.

"Okay, I'm on the ledge," Wil informed the others a minute later. "You've got about ten more feet to go, Jeff." He turned the light on his hard hat down to illuminate the ground where Jeff would need to put his feet. "Gotcha! We're both on solid ground," he called back up to Robin, Rick and Gail. "I see the crawl space she was talking about. I'm going through. Jeff, wait here so you don't lose contact with me." With that he was on his stomach and pulling himself through the passage on his elbows. Ari hadn't been exaggerating when she'd said the passage looked safe. There seemed to be no danger whatsoever. That fact worried Wil more than anything else.

The light seemed to be just over the next small incline. At the top of it, Will felt his body suddenly tilt forward and pick up speed. He came to the end of a small, muddy chute in a pool of water. He sprang to his feet, although the water only reached halfway up his calves.

Looking around, he saw the pool trickling away into a creek. The banks of the creek were only about two feet high and led up to a wooded area about ten feet wide. That, in turn opened out into a clearing where sunlight bathed the yellow buttercups and a mild breeze ruffled the trees' leaves. He was startled by Ari's angry voice and turned to see her leaning against a solid pine not far from his left shoulder.

"What's the big idea, Wil? Why did you leave? You scared me to death! I was going to give you about ten more minutes and then find my own way back to the cars." Her face was flushed and angry.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Ari. I didn't go anywhere. One minute I could hear you talking to me; the next you let go of your rope and disappeared. You must have walked out of hearing-distance when you took your rope off."

"I didn't walk anywhere, Wil. I was standing just about where you are when your voice just faded out on me. I wondered what happened." She gave him a suspicious glance, as if she didn't quite believe he was not putting her on.

"Well, I can hear you, Wil," asserted Jeff from the darkness. "Is she there? How about crawling out here and giving me room to take a look."

"There's plenty of room, Jeff. Just crawl on through," encouraged Wil. "First, make sure that Rick and the girls can still hear us."

"We can hear you two guys just fine," called Robin, "but who are you talking to, Wil? Is Ari down there?"

Ari and Wil exchanged a puzzled look.

"Yes, of course she's here. Are you guys telling me that you can hear me, but can't hear Ari? She is talking just as loud as I am."

Silence; and then . . .

"Watch out and move over, I'm coming through," said Jeff.

A moment later Jeff came sliding - face first - through the opening. He stood up and said, "Have you both been standing here the whole time?"

Wil and Ari nodded.

"Well, that's strange, I could hear Wil but I couldn't hear Ari. Hey, you guys! Can you still hear me?" he called out to Rick and the girls.

"Loud and clear," answered Rick.

"Can you hear me?" yelled Ari at the top of her lungs.

No answer.

"Hey! Gail, Robin, and Rick, I asked if you could hear me," she shouted again.

No answer.

Ari splashed into the water and put her head near the entrance.

"Can you hear me?" she called out again.

"Will? Jeff? Are you still there?" came Gail's voice.

Ari grabbed Jeff's arm and said faintly. "They can't hear me. What's going on, Jeff?"

"Ari! Ari, we hear you!" called Rick. "Are you okay?"

Ari let go of Jeff's arm and put her head right into the opening. "Yes, I'm fine! It's beautiful down here! Stop horsing around and come see for yourselves."

Again, there was no sound from above. Then Robin called down, "Where did Ari go? You guys quit teasing right now! This is not funny and we're wasting time!"

The three at the bottom looked at each other strangely, then Wil handed Ari the rope that was still attached to his waist and said, "Say something, Ari."

Ari looked ready to cry. "I hope you're having fun," she called out, "but I am over this game."

"What are you talking about, Ari," Rick's voice sounded as if he was out of patience.

"Hey you guys," shouted Wil, "it seems that you can only hear us as long as we are touching something that is still connected to you. You can hear Ari when she is holding one of our ropes or touching us. She isn't going anywhere - the only difference between when you say you can hear her and when you say you can't hear her is what she's actually touching at the time."

After a minute, Gail responded. "I don't see how that's possible, Wil. Sound waves don't work that way. One of you guys come up and let one of us come down."

"Okay," agreed Wil. "I'll take my rope off and give it to Ari. You pull her up and then come down. Bring an extra rope with you, for me."

He uncoupled the carabineers that held his rope and attached them to Ari's harness. Then he called up, "Okay, she's ready. Pull her up!"

After a second or two, Rick's voice floated down.

"Let us know when she's ready, Wil."

Wil shrugged and spread his palms out. Ari said, "I'm ready, Rick."

The rope began to tighten and Ari used her hands and feet to guide her body back up the chute toward the horizontal crawl space.

Jeff and Wil said nothing until they heard Robin speaking to them from the chute.

"Here's your rope, Wil. Tie it on and let's get out of here."

A little while later, over trail mix and bottled water, the six friends began to talk.

An uneasy silence had come between them all since they exited the cave. Distrust, as thick as fog, separated them. They had all started out the day as friends: some had shared friendship for years. Others were newer to the group. They had all felt comfortable in their acceptance by the others; relaxed in their sense of belonging. That had all changed in the cave. Now Gail, Robin, and Rick sat close together, shooting wary glances at Ari and Wil. Ari threw her backpack down a short distance apart from the others. She looked close to tears as she jerked her water bottle free of the backpack. Wil and Jeff avoided eye contact with the others, but seemed somewhat solicitous of Ari and each other. Jeff offered Wil some yogurt-covered nuts, but when he reached out to pass them to Ari, she shook her head.

However, his gesture seemed to open the floodgates. She wiped her sleeve across her eyes surreptitiously and spoke in a bored-casual voice. Only the slight redness around her eyes and the trembling of her lips belied her attempt to make light of the situation.

"All right, I admit, that was a great practical joke. I had no idea you guys were planning anything. Did you already have the cave scoped out before Wil and I supposedly 'discovered' it? I really felt as if I had fallen into a black hole or alternate dimension or something." Her voice choked a little and she cleared her throat nervously.

Gail and Robin exchanged a look and then both turned toward Rick, as if electing him spokesman for the group. He took his cue uncertainly.

"I don't know what this is all about, Ari, but I think you're the one with all the answers," he said, a bit defensively.

"Me? I have no answers! I was down there yelling my head off and you guys were - well, it was like you weren't even there! I was by myself! You guys were all together; I was the one - literally - left out in the dark!" Ari's anger was boiling over, now.

"You wouldn't have been by yourself if you'd followed the rules we all agreed on," interrupted Gail. "No one was supposed to go into any cave without a partner, let alone an unmapped cave!"

Ari stood up and looked angrily down at Gail.

"So this was a punishment? You guys thought you'd scare the hell out of me because I disobeyed the rule?" Her voice grew louder. "What gives you the right? Who do you think you are - the Spelunking Enforcers? Nothing gives you the right to play a mean and dangerous trick like that on any other member!"

Robin stood up facing Ari.

"Wait a minute, Ari, that wasn't what she said," began Rick.

"Hold it a minute," interrupted Jeff. "Before anybody goes off the deep end about what they think someone else did, let's get a clear and honest understanding of what just happened down there, okay?"

Everyone sat back down again, albeit with some angry and suspicious shuffling.

"Thanks," said Jeff. "Now, can we all promise that no matter what happened or didn't happen, we will tell the absolute-no-kidding-truth, and no one will attack anybody else verbally? Does that sound agreeable to everybody?"

Ari was crying openly, now, but she nodded her assent along with the rest of the group.

"Okay, I'll go first," volunteered Jeff. "Ari, I didn't collaborate with anyone else to trick or tease you. I can only speak for myself, but I don't think any of the others did, either. When we got to the cave, we couldn't hear you." He looked around at the others for confirmation.

"No," confirmed Robin, "We didn't pretend at all. We answered when we could hear you, but we couldn't hear you all the time."

Wil spoke up.

"I saw and heard - or didn't hear - from both sides, you guys. There wasn't any pretending to it. When I went down there, Ari was standing right next to me, but until she touched the rope, or me none of the others could hear her. It was like the rope that was leading back to the surface was carrying the sound waves. You saw that, too, didn't you Jeff?

Jeff thought for a minute.

"That is what it seemed like to me," he admitted finally. "I've never heard of an instance where sound waves behaved like that, though. I mean, sound does travel through air, and if you could hear Wil or me one minute, but couldn't hear us without physical contact with the rope - I'm not a scientist, but that seems very screwy to me!"

"Well," suggested Gail, "you can't hear someone that you are talking to over the phone unless they are speaking into a receiver that's attached to a wire. Maybe it's like that."

"No, think about it, Gail," prompted Wil. "A telephone system isn't like a plain piece of rope. There are a few more complex elements to it - switches, electronic connections, that sort of stuff."

"What about the old two-tin-cans-and-a-string phones we used to make when we were kids?" asked Robin, "Those were just regular string."

"Yeah, but you had to talk right into the can, and besides, they never worked that clearly," Rick reminded her. "This was like extremely clear or," he waved his hand in the air, "non-existent."

The others nodded, and a thoughtful silence fell over the group.

"You know," said Ari, "I'm still trying to figure out where that passage could possibly come out. I mean we're halfway down the mountain, and - to the best of my knowledge - there aren't any big valleys or crevices that would let in light like that."

"I'm sure your dad knows about it," answered Jeff. "It's not like you could fail to notice an area that big if you lived your whole life here. Didn't you say that he used to go spelunking when he was in college?"

"Yeah, he's the one that got me started," confirmed Ari. "When Mom left, Dad and I used to take long walks through the woods and stuff. It was his way of handling the stress, I think. I was only about eight at the time, but he always asked if I wanted to go with him." After a minute she added, "He said I'd already lost one parent; he didn't want me to feel like I'd lost him, too."

"He's always talked to you about pretty much everything," observed Wil. "It seems strange to me that he never mentioned a cool place like that - especially if it has strange effects on sound and stuff."

"Who knows," conjectured Robin, "Maybe that's why he didn't talk about it: He didn't want a bunch of researchers coming out here and destroying the peacefulness."

"Or maybe it scared him, too," suggested Gail. "Maybe there's some kind of danger in there."

"It sure didn't look or feel dangerous to me," volunteered Wil. "It looked and smelled and felt like a corner of land in a national park or something - you know - like pristine wilderness."

"I'd like to go back down, but I think the only sensible thing to do is ask Mr. O'Donovan about the place, first," Jeff stated. He looked around for confirmation from the others.

"Dad should be home today," said Ari, hoisting her backpack on to her shoulders. "I told him we were taking a day off from studying for finals to rejuvenate in the woods and look for more caves. He said to stop by and eat supper with him when we finished." She seemed to have regained her normal, easy-going disposition. "Wil, did you get my rope?"

"Mm-hm," he said, "We can sort things out later. I'm pretty anxious to talk to your dad and maybe still have time to come back before dark."

"Right," said Rick, "Let's grab our stuff, leave a marker and go."

Harry O'Donovan listened quietly as the young people described the vertical shaft and the open meadow that lay beyond the crawl space. His eyes twinkled when they tried to explain the strange way that voices traveled - or didn't - up through the shaft.

"It's behind the big rocks that mark where the stream comes out of the mountain isn't it?" he asked. "Near a pin oak tree with a piece of burlap tied around one of the branches way up high."

A look passed between the others.

"We didn't really notice any burlap, sir," said Wil. "There is an old oak tree right there, and the rocks that you're describing. You know this place, don't you?"

Harry O'Donovan leaned his head back on the chair. His eyes were closed and he began to laugh silently. He laughed and laughed until the youngsters were exchanging frightened glances.

"Daddy, what's the matter? You know where we're talking about. Tell us what's so funny about it," said Ari. "You're beginning to scare me, Dad."

Mr. O'Donovan reached out to take Ari's hand and tried to pull himself together.

"It's alright, honey," he gasped out. "I just never expected - it never occurred to me that you might be the one to find that place. Maybe everyone just gets one chance."

"What are you talking about - one chance?" asked Ari.

He got up and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser on the front of the refrigerator and walked around the big country kitchen for a couple of minutes. Robin and Gail edged their chairs a little closer together. Jeff cleared his throat, nervously.

Finally, Mr. O'Donovan sat back down in his high-backed chair and looked at them with clear eyes. He set his glass down on the table resolutely, but his hand shook as it drew away.

"Okay, here it is," he began. "I did find that place many years ago. I was just a little older than you - about twenty-five. Your mom and I had been married less than a year. I was out with her and a fellow I knew - just walking and planning. The fellow was a surveyor. Your mom," he said to Ari, "didn't really like living out in the 'boonies' as she called it. This land had been in my family since - well, since a regular person could afford to buy a hundred or so acres. We had been planning to develop it. We were going to put in a couple of neighborhoods, sell lots, and share the tax burden. I didn't want to completely leave the place, so we had worked out a compromise: I'd keep about half of the land - here around the house - and develop the rest. With the proceeds, we'd be able to set up a trust to pay the taxes and live modestly. I'd still work so we could have the luxuries that we both wanted, but your mom could stay home and rest assured that the future was secure."

He paused to take another drink of water.

"Well, I saw the opening - just like you described. We had some heavy rope with us and I took the opportunity (while there was a big guy up there to hang on to the rope) to climb down and take a look. We were afraid there wasn't a solid enough foundation to build houses or roads on, you see. I was completely unaware that any place like that existed on this land. When I came back up, we tried to locate where the tunnel came out. I mean it obviously led to the surface somewhere, because you can look up and see the sun. For hours, then weeks and months I searched. I even hired a man with a helicopter to fly over and do an aerial search. It just wasn't there. What's worse, I couldn't find the shaft again. I had marked it by tying a burlap sack to the oak tree, but to save my life, I could not re-locate the entrance."

A long sigh came from him. Wil and Rick shifted nervously in the silence.

"At first, your mother helped me search. She had seen me go down, so she knew there had been an opening. After a while, though, she got it in her head that it was just a temporary gap in the earth that most likely caved in and disappeared. Since nobody else had seen the meadow, and we couldn't locate it after that, she stopped believing in it. Can't really blame her; I'd have been hard pressed to believe it myself, except I was there."

He pulled a little stone out of his pocket. It was a rounded river-rock about as big as a quarter. It had a red cast to it and tiny flecks of mica that caught the light as he turned it in his hand.

"I picked up this rock out of that stream you fall into. Whatever else I know, or don't know, I am sure I was there. Eventually, your mom got tired of me being out on the hillside and nothing ever changing. Said that if she was going to search for something that didn't exist for the rest of her life, it might as well be the perfect husband," he chuckled. Reaching out a hand, he wiped a tear from Ari's face. "Don't blame your mom, kiddo, everything she believed lined up with the facts. If just one person out of the whole world believes that something exists and there is no evidence to prove it, I don't know if any person could have kept on believing in it."

Wil cleared his throat. "It really exists, sir. I don't know why you couldn't find it before, but we can find it now. I - I marked it real good. If you'll be willing to go back with me, we'll prove it."

"We can't get there before dark tonight, Wil," said Gail. "We'll have to try again some other time."

"My marking was clear enough, son," said Harry O'Donovan. "It still hangs there in the tree. It was the opening that disappeared. That's what I meant by 'maybe everyone just gets one chance'. When you go back, it'll be gone. Now you kids get on back to campus and get some sleep before finals tomorrow. Don't worry about the dishes. I'll clean them up."

Rick and Gail stood up and reached for their coats.

"He's right," said Robin, "we'll have to postpone the rest of this little adventure until after finals. I'm going to ride back with Rick and Gail. Do you want to ride with us, Jeff?"

Jeff hesitated. "Y - yeah, I guess so. I sure want to come back and try again, though. Is it okay with you, Mr. O'Donovan, if we come back another time?"

"Sure, sure, Jeff, you can come back another time or two, but I don't want you wasting your life searching for the cursed thing." He patted the boys on the shoulder as they left, then turned around to face Wil and Ari.

"You two had better hit the road, too," he said. "Whatever happened has already happened. You won't prove anything by searching for that hole in the ground tonight. I'm glad you got to have the experience, though. You can't imagine how glad I am!"

"Yes, sir, we'll go on as soon as we help you with the dishes," said Wil, pulling Ari up from her chair. "But you should know something: You know how we said that we had to be touching something that was attached to the outside for us to hear each other? Well, when I came out through the horizontal crawl, I tied Ari's red and white climbing rope to a tree by the stream and brought the other end out with me. I tied it around another tree at the top and pulled. It was still attached at the bottom."

Harry looked at his daughter and Wil with comprehension and hope dawning slowly - like sunshine in his face…