With one blink, I realized that I’d awakened alone beside the trail. Furi had disappeared. I lifted my head and suppressed a groan. Every muscle protested as I climbed back on my feet. I scanned the clearing and the narrow path where we had dropped to the ground in exhaustion.
I found the moon and judged the night to be half spent. Surprising, because it meant I had slept an hour beyond my typical interval, having done so soundly, and so exposed to night predators.
The white light of the moon shed itself over the dark relief of the forest, volunteering itself as a live witness. It’s light, a testimony against the forests’ veneer of harmlessness. I believed the moon, but although the Spirit Garden delivered me to the lap of the jorogumo demons, I took heart. I didn’t expect the jorogumos’ cooperative strength. They were too jealous of one another for that. A lone demon, I could overpower, certainly with Furi’s help.
I filled my lungs and pressed my way into the black recess, cautious not to call out, and awaken additional demons who might attack me before I could reach the one who was luring Furi.
The forest was alive with echo, scratch and hiss, but a vacuum of light. I couldn’t see, but felt the tremors of waiting, and feeding, alternating with feeding and waiting that lurked within that hollow of black and purple. Something stirred, and I raised my hands, catching hair and flesh. And then a great shriek of violence and a lashing of hands against mine. And then Furi fell into my arms, screaming in a waking dream, “She’s a demon! A demon!’
“Furi, Furi! I have you!” I shook her and called her from the fog that had enveloped her.
She stopped struggling. “Where are we?”
“You were walking in your sleep. You returned to the forest.”
She gasped, “I saw a woman!”
“A jorogumo! She was entrapping you—and ultimately me. We have to go now, before she can reach us again!”
“She was so, so—real.”
“Deadly real,” I whispered. “Can you run?”
We pressed on, and this time, when we finally passed through the arched border of the trees, we didn’t pause. We continued our upward climb over the pass.
Adrenalin and the haunting idea of a jorogumo goading us upward, against wind and the groaning weakness of flesh and bone. And when Furi began to tire, I unburdened her of her bedroll. At last when she could go no further, I lifted her up onto my back and carried her for a stretch.
* * *
A day and a night passed before we ascended the height of the pass. I watched the miles and the shape of the range transform as we ascended their heights. And at last, the shape of the land formations I knew emerged, and I saw that we were close. I nodded to Furi to wait for me while I left the trail, climbing up a rough cliff. As I cleared an overhanging ledge, I saw it.
We had reached the caves.
I descended again and found Furi nursing her swollen and blistered feet. “We’re not far away now. You cannot see the cave from here, but it lies behind that bulge in the rock face. Do you think you can make it?”
She couldn’t answer audibly, but stood and began her way up the rock face, determined to make an attempt.
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“My people were climbers, but your people are not. Let me carry you.”
“I can make it,” she insisted. “Let me try.”
I had little choice but to relent. Carrying another person up so sheer a climb was near impossible, even for me. I climbed up ahead in hopes that I could lower a rope and lift her up over the bulge. Slowly, she forced her body up to the craggy volcanic surface of the rock, but her muscles trembled and melted into throbbing deadweight. No matter how she might will them to climb, they refused to continue. She could hold herself immobile for a little while, but eventually, if I didn’t hurry, she would lose her grip.
I transformed and scrambled up the remaining length of the climb, desperate to find a rope waiting at the top of the ledge. Quickly, I anchored the rope on a boulder and lowed the knotted section of down the rock face.
At last, she latched on and I hauled her up by inches, finally clamping my palms over her sweat-bathed arms and pulling her safe into the cave recess. She collapsed against me, both of us could no more than breathe. At last, I took her by the shoulders and shifted her upward a half inch to rest snugly against my chest.
There we rested, Furi cradled in my arms in defiance of the mortal danger she meant to me. We had never been quite this close. My breath escalated rather than steadied. My pulse galloped against my lungs, but I bent my head and closed my mouth over hers in not only a kiss, but the relentless extraction of a promise.
* * *
After surmounting so many natural barriers to its doorstep, the mouth of the cave opened wide and welcoming, flanked by a heavy, round wooden door, stabilized by a groove cut along the threshold. The door was not only well constructed, but ornamented with a skillful carving of a river landscape.
I set to work at the mouth of the cave, making a small fire. Once it was lit, I dampened some oil cloth and tied it to my staff for a torch, lit it, and we entered inside.
This place was the cave of our ancients—not only Earth Kumo immortals, but all the immortal beings who passed life intervals upon this region of the earth. And they always left records of their days, and more. Knowing other immortals would come, they had carved out a civilized habitation for them. For us.
We stared at the refinement all around. Domestic comforts of every kind. Tatami covered rooms. Carved shelves. tables of stone and hardened earth. A water basin. A proper kitchen. Someone had perfected the ventilation by a system of thin grooves, carved in the rock.
Furi stared in awe at the sight of such marvelous industry, no doubt marveling over the patience and skill it had taken to accomplish all this. But she didn’t know what was coming.
We crept through a narrow tunnel that opened up into a broad natural cavern. At its mouth, Furi gasped as the torch’s glow cut the darkness and the cavern shimmered in glittering reply. The walls throughout the vast expanse were jeweled with crystals. Amethyst. Gypsum. Quartz.
Fitted between the stones, on shelves in the rock walls, stood volume upon volume of hand-bound histories.
“This is the library?” Furi could scarcely catch her breath for surprise. She pointed to a column of shelves. “The histories are set into the wall between the mineral deposits.”
I lifted the torch to examine the spines of the histories. The copies dated back several thousand years from our time.
She reached and pulled a book from the shelf. “Look at it.” She hugged the volume to her already exhausted body. She could hardly hold it, and I helped her lift it back atop a shelf.
“All true,” I whispered, “Within this cavern we had no politics to offend. No ideology to conform to. The great indulgence of a secret library is perfect honesty. You will never read anything more faithful.”
She caressed the spine on the shelf. “Where are my mother and fathers’ journals?”
“They were more recent than these,” I said, examining the shelves. “It may take some looking.”
Most of the spines were neatly labeled with ancient characters. I found the volume, even while Furi stood awestruck by the sight of the cavern. “I could never have imagined a place like this.”
I let my gaze drop. “I should have brought you here at once.”
“Yes. But you have at last. Thank you.”
I wordlessly reached for the volume and surrendered it to her.
She shook her head and pressed it back against my chest. “Read my father’s account to me.
* * *
I began reading, but it wasn’t long before Furi asked me for privacy. I thought I understood. It was her first real introduction to her father and mother, and whatever literary barriers she might encounter due to her lack of formal schooling, she needed to struggle through them alone.
I left her the light and crept back to the front of the cave, finding my way with my fingers on the polished rock walls. I stretched and ate a little dried fish and rice cake before lying down upon my bed and returning to the memory of Furi’s mouth against mine.