sit down on your bottom to slide off this small drop into the darkness below.’ A stifled gasp from right behind her suggested someone had sat down too quickly and hit the wet spot on the cavern floor.
She raised her voice a little. ‘It might be time to turn that headlamp on. Shine it on your feet, not into the eyes of the person in front, or into their faces behind you when you turn your head.’
This was all the fun stuff but she knew that most of the tourists behind her would be stamping down the claustrophobia of being in a small tunnel space underground with someone in front and someone following them.
It was lucky Raimondo was at the back because the others might forget how much space he took up. Not something Faith could forget, though for a different reason.
She paused at a fork in the path and waited for everyone to catch up, then pointed at a magnificent curtain of rock.
‘That veil of rock is where hundreds of years of dripping water have formed a bacon-rind-shaped rim of curved ice that divides the ceiling.’ She remembered enthusing about that to Raimondo all those years ago.
She shook the thought off. The beauty truly did make her astonished every time. Lifting her chin, she pulled her imaginary cloak of confidence tightly around her again. ‘Ahead are more joined stalactites to reach towards stalagmites and if you look over here there’s a magnificent column that stretches from floor to ceiling. What a gift of nature—that took thousands of years.’
The reverence was back in her own voice because, despite the man at the end of the line of tourists, every time she came down here she shook her head in wonder. Which was why she still marvelled that Dianne actually paid her to savour this subterranean cathedral she loved so much.
They’d come to one of the tricky spots. ‘This opening’s narrow—be careful not to scrape yourself here.’ This was the point she had wondered if Raimondo would have difficulty with sliding through.
He seemed even bigger than when she’d met him before. Hard to imagine but true. More wedge-shaped. Toughened and toned. Muscled and honed. Hopefully not so broad that he’d jam in the crevice like a cork in a bottle—but she had a contingency plan for the others if he did. Not so much for him. She stifled an evil grin. Tsk, Faith, she admonished herself.
Still, there was another, less accessible exit for emergencies, and nobody had ever really been stuck.
Yet.
She waited.
Tried not to hold her breath.
Her heart rate picked up as she heard the subtle crunch of rock fragments in a long agonising squeeze, then he pushed through into the small cavern they were all standing in with a slight rush. Close fit.
Her breath puffed out.
He was fine. Bet that made the sweat stand out on his manly brow though. She smiled.
Then frowned at herself.
Another tsk. Not nice, Faith.
This was unlike her and a measure of how much that grim visage of his had affected her equilibrium.
Stop thinking about him.
‘We’ll edge down this rock face now. The path narrows so please don’t touch that glistening rock there,’ She shone her headlamp at the shimmering silver wall. ‘It has beautiful fragile crystals so you can take photos and admire it, but it will become disfigured if you accidentally touch it.’ She watched them and saw with satisfaction how they all leaned the other way to protect the wall.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Almost there.’ There were a few Hail Marys behind her and she stifled a laugh. The shy quiet man had turned out to be a Catholic comedian. You had to love him.
Finally, after another ten minutes of winding and uneven descent, she stepped into an opening with a sloping floor. It spread out into a wide cavern and she heard the sighs of relief to be able to spread out a little. The distance narrowed between roof and floor and she resisted the urge to duck her head. Enough of that soon enough.
‘If you shine your lights down towards your shoes you’ll see you’re standing on red sandy soil.’
All lights tilted downwards and there were some comments of, ‘All the way down here. Wow.’
‘So, we’re here. You’re standing on the bed of a river from thousands of years ago, stretching away in two directions.’
She let that statement sit in the silence as the others thought about that and shone their headlamps around. ‘As you can see with your lights…’ and that was all they could see with, as no other light could penetrate this far into the cave ‘…there’s a line of white rocks marking off a section of the cave. Also, in front of us, a circle of the same stones to protect an area of new stalactite formation.’
She crouched down and even now she could feel the excitement as her heart rate sped up with the wonder of all this subterranean world so far below the surface. ‘See this—’ She pointed out the new holes burrowing into the dirt in the centre of the circle.
‘Every drop is making the hole larger and eventually it will form a pencil of creation.’
She breathed out and those standing next to her murmured their own awe. This was why she loved these tours. When she felt the connection from others at the opportunity to see something so few people had.
‘If you look across from us—’ she angled her head and the light shone on the roof ‘—hanging from the low roof like eyelashes, those are thin tendrils of tree roots that are searching for the water that left eons ago, but the moisture remains and even though the roots don’t touch any water the filaments absorb moisture from the air.’
Someone said, ‘Amazing.’ She smiled in their direction.
‘There’s no natural light—the creatures who live here are small, without eyes, their bodies are see-through, almost like albino slaters.’ She crouched down and drew an example the size of a cat in the red dirt with her finger.
Her comedian said in the darkness, ‘That looks too big for comfort,’ and laughed nervously. Several other voices murmured.
Faith grinned. ‘Not drawn to scale.’ She pointed out a tiny white beetle-like creature on a tree root. ‘But if you see one of them in front of you when you’re crawling, please scoop up a handful of dirt and shift him aside.’
The young woman next to Faith who’d changed into jeans said in a small voice, ‘You say we are crawling?’
‘Yep, we’re sliding under that overhang on our stomachs, using our elbows, for about thirty metres, but it opens into a small cavern after that.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said in her lilting accent, ‘I can stay here and mind the bags?’
Faith looked at her and noted her pinched nostrils and darting eyes. ‘Perfectly fine. We’ll only be about ten minutes’ crawl away, though you mightn’t hear us because the riverbed bends a little. Then it opens into another cavern where we can sit up. We’ll be gone for about thirty minutes by the time we spend ten minutes there as well as crawling there and back. Will you be fine with that?’
She
