"Yeah, I hear you ... and you should be.” Josh's voice, by a trick of the subterranean acoustics, sounded as if he were just beneath the lip of the cave's opening, and startled Paul into falling back. “By the way, I'm gonna kill you when you get down here, you sonofabitch."

  Paul's relief was so profound that tears welled in his eyes and he hastily wiped them away with his sleeve. “Where are you? I can't see you from up here."

  "I'm about ten feet south, I think, of my ruck ... and the snakes. They seemed to want to stay in the sun, which is fine by me. When the pulley snapped and the rope whipped up against the lip, it swung me clear of them ... at least for now. It's the only luck I've had today ... the pulley broke some of the fingers on my right hand, Paul."

  Paul understood this to be bad news indeed; it meant that Josh could do very little in his own rescue. “That's okay,” he answered, attempting to sound sure of himself. “How many feet is it, do you think, from the cave opening to the floor?"

  A slight pause followed this question, as Josh calculated. “Thirty, give or take a few feet."

  Paul trusted Josh's judgment in this matter ... he was always the better climber. “All right then, we've got plenty of rope here. Can you unhook yourself?"

  "Yeah, right, I'm gonna untie and let you pull up the rope. That would be real intelligent."

  Paul knew he deserved that, but sighed with exasperation nonetheless. “Listen, Josh, if I wanted to leave you, I'd just untie my end and drop it down the hole, dismantle the tripod, and go home."

  There was another pause as Josh digested this piece of obvious truth. “That's what you were gonna do, wasn't it?"

  "Yeah,” Paul replied honestly. “Yeah, it was."

  "My fingers are broke, I told you. I don't know if I can."

  Paul could hear the pain and fear in Josh's voice. “Josh, I won't leave you, I promise. Just stay in your harness and send the rope up."

  After a few moments, Paul could feel vibrations in the woven fibers he held, then Josh called out, “All right! It's free.... You better not leave me, you sonofabitch. I'm still gonna kick your ass when this is all over!"

  Paul began to haul the line up and coil it at his feet. Once he had Josh's end he quickly routed it over the top crosspiece of the tripod and left several feet to dangle over the hole. The other end he secured around the bole of an old-growth oak that leaned over the shale-covered clearing. He knew their rope to be one hundred feet long, which was just enough, with a little extra, he hoped, for his purpose. Returning to the tripod, he carefully rigged the dangling line beneath his armpits, cursing himself for not having brought any of his own gear, and knelt down once more.

  "Josh, what are the snakes doing?"

  "Nothing much ... waiting for you, probably,” he answered with a lame attempt at humor.

  "No, seriously, have they moved at all? I'm thinking they might move with the sunlight.” Paul glanced up at the sun edging its way into the western sky. The day was getting on.

  "Yeah,” Josh called back excitedly. “Yeah, I think they are. They've moved away from the pack some."

  "That's good,” Paul said. “'Cause I'm going to drop a big coil of rope down there and I don't want to rile them up too much."

  "Oh shit ... wait, wait, let me get a handful of rocks or something.” Paul could hear Josh scrabbling amongst the stones with his good hand for missiles. “Okay, go ahead."

  Reaching beneath the tripod and across the two-foot aperture, Paul tugged the heavy coil to the edge and let gravity pull it in. This was followed by a muffled thump and a slight tug on his chest. Without waiting, lest his nerve fail him, Paul seized the rope that dangled opposite him and gave it a good tug, satisfying himself with the corresponding pull on his armpits, and began to lower himself into the snake hole. As he sank into the darkness, Josh began to yell. “Jesus Christ, Paul, you've really stirred ‘em up! They're going everywhere!"

  From his lofty vantage point, Paul could now see the beam from Josh's helmet lamp swinging wildly about the cavern floor, and just discernible beneath his friend's wild shouts arose the dry, rasping murmur of hundreds of scaled bodies intertwining and disengaging simultaneously, in menacing petulance.

  "Josh,” Paul called out. “Don't move around! Stay where you are and throw rocks at those that come near you! They'll settle down in a few minutes and go back to the sunlight."

  Paul could see Josh with his back against the cave wall, futilely chucking stones with his uninjured left hand, but as he was right-handed, his efforts were having little effect other than to gain the snakes’ interest. Each rock that landed amongst them received several cursory strikes. Paul, dry-mouthed and sweating profusely, continued to lower himself, hand over hand, to the floor of the cave. Now that he was much closer, he thought these reptiles to be copper-heads, but wasn't sure ... Vanda would have known at a glance; she seemed able to name every creature that crawled, swam, or flew. “Josh, settle down and try not to move your feet ... they're attracted to the vibrations in the earth ... that's how they hear you.” Vanda had taught him that, as well.

  As Josh's light whipped from side to side, Paul made out a possible solution. “Josh, there's a big rock to your left. Just ease over and step up onto it."

  Like a small child at an adult's command, Josh did as he was bidden, sliding his feet ever so carefully as he edged along the wall, and hooting like an owl at each movement on the ground around him. With almost comic exaggeration, he took a slow, giant step up upon reaching the rock and placed one booted foot on top; then with a final hoot, snatched the other up to join the first. Once he was sure of his balance, he aimed a sickly, frightened grin up at Paul and then froze into spelunking statuary.

  As Paul hung suspended ten feet above the surface of the cavern, the serpents did, indeed, begin to lose interest in the previous commotion and began to make their way singly and in writhing knots back towards the waiting patch of late-winter sunlight—a thousand crawling exclamation marks coalescing into a rustling heap of drowsy venom. Fortunately for Paul's plan, that saving ray of warmth steadily, if almost imperceptibly, moved further into the recesses of the cave and drew the cranky reptiles with it. Paul resumed his descent and gingerly placed his feet upon the earth. Without untying the rope, he softly walked the short distance to where Josh perched like some lonely, subterranean lighthouse.

  "Come on,” he whispered. “Let's get you the hell out of here."

  Placing a trembling hand on Paul's shoulder to steady himself, Josh stepped carefully down and allowed himself to be led to where his backpack still lay. Once there, Paul unrigged himself and quickly and expertly tied a bowline knot in the end of the rope and clipped the carabiner on Josh's harness through the loop.

  "All right, then,” he said, giving the line a slight tug. “Josh, I'm going to haul you up, but you're going to have to help even though you've got a busted paw. Here's how it will work: Using your good hand, you pull with me each time I say ‘Heave.’ In between, release while I hold down here, and reach up for another handful for the next heave. Got it?"

  "Yeah,” Josh answered uncertainly. “But what about you?"

  "Once you are up top, drop your end back down to me; I'll tie myself off and haul myself back up the same way I came down. Nothing to it."

  Josh looked dubious. “You think this is going to be easy?"

  "No,” Paul answered truthfully. “No, I don't."

  "Who's to say I won't just walk off and leave you, once I get out? You'd deserve it."

  "Here are my car keys so you don't have to walk all the way back to town,” Paul said, fishing them from his pocket and making to hand them to the other man. “You can just tell Vanda we got separated down here and you couldn't find me. That should make you both happy."

  Josh studied Paul for several moments, then roughly folded Paul's fingers around the keys with his good hand. “Just get us out of here before those snakes get curious again; I'll straighten your sorry ass out when we get up top."

  Paul pocketed the keys, then took a good two-handed grip on the rope. Josh did the same with his left hand. “Ready?” Paul asked. Josh nodded. “Heave!” Josh rose several inches into the air. “Ready ... heave!” Another few inches were attained. Inch by straining inch Josh began to ascend. With sweat running freely into his eyes and down his ribs, Paul wondered if he was truly up to this task; even if he was able to get Josh to the surface, he now doubted he would have the strength remaining to haul himself out afterwards.

  He needn't have worried, for when Josh was only about ten feet from his starting point, they both became aware of a new sound that now seemed to have entered the snake lair. Josh noticed it first and called down, “What's that? You hear something, Paul?"

  Paul, grateful for a chance to rest, belayed the rope and listened. In the echoing silence there was something—a faint, repetitious ping, the sound of a pipe expanding with the heat or contracting with the cold. Paul threw his head back and peered upwards. “Josh,” he began, then was cut off by the squeal of fatigued metal unwillingly assuming new form. With a great clang of alarm the tripod surrendered its only useful shape, tossing Josh back into the darkness in rebuke. The cavern floor received him with even less ceremony, driving the wind from his lungs with its unyielding soil, while from behind them the dry agitated hum of shifting scales filled the darkness once more.

  * * * *

  After graduation, the three of them had simply returned home to the small city nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains where they had all grown up. Paul had found it remarkable, and somewhat mysterious in a pleasant kind of way, that Vanda and he had never crossed paths during those early years. She had attended public schools, he had attended the parochial schools of his diocese; she had lived in a blue-collar enclave surrounding the now defunct mills, he had been brought up in an old, leafy, upscale suburb; she had spent her first two years of advanced schooling at a community college, out of financial necessity, he, and Josh, of course, had gone straight to university out of high school; whereas he had been thoroughly indoctrinated in his Catholic faith, she was vague on the subject of religion and checked “No affiliation” on the few forms that requested such information. Everything about her, in his eyes, was spontaneous and her own; as unlike the carefully prepared Paul as he could want. She was the wildness that he unconsciously sought on his and Josh's many journeys into the great forests and mountains yet could never release within his own soul.

  It amused and pleased him that she had, for his parents’ sake, agreed to be married within the Catholic faith, which required out of religious necessity that she be baptized in the same. Even the months of instruction that preceded this sacrament drew not one word of complaint. If anything, she had appeared to devote to it the same studious inquiry as she had her primitive-cultures courses, though with a bemused tolerance that was sometimes coupled with astonishment at some of the more esoteric “mysteries” of the Church. Yet, for Paul's sake, and more importantly his parents', she had submitted cheerfully enough. Her only rebellion had been her insistence that the wedding Mass be celebrated out of doors, and in her choice of colors in bridal wear. These expressions of herself had delighted Paul, and he didn't care a penny that her conversion was less than genuine.

  However, as to her father's absence on the day of their wedding, and indeed, as to his disappearance from her family altogether, her candor disappeared. It was the only subject that Paul could not draw her out on. Though in Paul's eyes Vanda was often mysterious, as all natural creatures are, it was only in the matter of her father that he glimpsed a furtive side of her personality, and it troubled him as a limp in a pet might worry its owner—the suffering animal cannot speak and explain the source of its pain, therefore the loving master must carefully knead its muscles and bones and probe its paws until the source of discomfort is discovered and relieved. He did so with wine one night.

  It was after dinner, towards the end of their first year of marriage, as they lay curled together on the living room sofa. The night air was soft, as it sometimes is in early spring, laden with the scent of honeysuckle and the warming earth, and playing over their naked bodies as it billowed the curtains gently to and fro. They were on their third glass of wine, celebrating the end of a work day for no other reason than they were young and still in the first blush of their love. Paul lay snug against his young bride's backside, his arms wrapped tightly round her. “Do you ever miss your old man?” he had asked softly.

  He was answered with an immediate tension in Vanda's body, and silence. He could feel her withdrawing from him and regretted the question but could not call it back. Then, after what seemed a very long time, she had replied in a quiet, level voice, “Of course I do, Paul, he's my father. Every girl needs a father."

  "Yeah,” he had said just as quietly, desperately thinking of how to continue the exchange he had encouraged.

  But she had slid from his arms like mercury and padded across the bare wooden floors towards the bathroom, supremely indifferent to her nakedness and all the more magnificent to Paul because of it. Then she had turned and faced him, her only adornments her ever-present bangles, necklaces, and jangling earrings, and said, “He wanted to be more than just a father, Paul."

  "Oh,” was all he could think to reply, as he did not understand her meaning; and with that she had withdrawn into the shower.

  He awoke in the small hours of that night with his heart beating like something caged and furious within his chest, and turned to his wife. The shadows of branches outside their window played restlessly across her glowing skin in the moonlight and Paul had reached out a hand to touch her, then held it back in pity. He had not wished to wake her and have her see his face, for he had come upon the meaning of her earlier statement in the black depths of a dreamless sleep and would not have her see the horror and pity he feared might be mirrored there. Instead, he had lain back on his pillow once more and waited for his heart to slow its pace, and knew that he loved Vanda all the more for having the strength to create herself into the lovely, free-spirited woman that he so adored, in spite of her father's unnatural attentions and the stain of darkness that must surely dwell within her as a result.

  * * * *

  Josh lay groaning and clutching his rib cage with his good hand; the light from his helmet lamp a will-o'-wisp playing restlessly on the thin rocky shell that separated Paul and him from the lighted world above. His companion's face appeared above him, grey and etched with lines of strain and fear. “You've killed us,” Josh informed him through gritted teeth.

  Paul knelt beside him and, uncharacteristically, seized his hand. “I'm so sorry, Josh. I'm so sorry. I haven't been thinking right. Ever since I found ... did you bust a rib?” he asked, suddenly aware of Josh's labored breathing and grimacing face.

  "Yeah, I think I did. But never mind about that now; that's the least of our worries. Help me over to those rocks before they find me lying here."

  "They” had been drawn by the impact of Josh's fall, and as Paul's head whipped up in alarm, the sound of their approach was made all the more sinister by the stygian darkness that lay outside their faint circle of light. With a gasp, he heaved Josh to his feet, ignoring his moans, and the two men shuffled as silently as they could toward a heap of rubble that lay at the foot of a nearby wall. As gently as he could in their haste, Paul helped Josh up onto a large, flat-topped boulder, and quickly joined him. Breathing hard, they looked back to the spot where the rope still dangled beckoningly in the dimming illumination of Josh's lamp, and became aware by degrees that the floor was no longer flat, but heaving and alive. “Jesus Christ,” Josh breathed.

  "They'll go away,” Paul promised, only half believing it himself. “They're just irritated with the commotion. They'll go back to the sunlight; they have to ... for the warmth.” He glanced back hopefully to the patch of sunlight that had lain at the back of the cave, and found that it had wandered to the cavern's limits, and would soon begin to climb the far wall where the snakes could not follow. The sun was rapidly descending in the winter sky and both men shifted closer to one another in the gathering chill and gloom.

  "How much longer do you have on those batteries?” Paul asked, meaning the miner's lamp.

  "Not long,” Josh replied tonelessly. “An hour, maybe."

  "Any spares?” Paul persisted.

  "Yeah,” Josh answered. “Right over there,” he pointed at the backpack smothered in reptilian life. “Wanna get ‘em?"

  They fell into silence.

  After a while Josh spoke again, “After you found what, exactly?"

  Paul answered immediately, his thoughts never far from the discovery that had inspired their current circumstances. “The pregnancy test ... it was positive. She's going to have your baby."

  "My...” Josh began, then started to laugh; the echoes flying back and forth in the darkness.

  "If you keep that up, I'll kill you for sure, and right now.” Unseen by Josh, Paul fingered the hilt of the survival knife he wore on his belt.

  "No, no,” Josh began, winding down. “Not me ... not mine ... no way!"

  Paul turned a miserable face toward his friend. “Oh, and why's that?"

  "Had ‘em snipped, that's why. I've been neutered!” Josh began to cough with a liquid sibilance; caught his breath and resumed. “No way I was gonna get snagged into marriage and kids. That's not for me ... never will be. Besides all that, I've never made it to first base with her. If we're gonna be truthful, and we may as well at this point, I would have if she'd have let me. She makes me a little crazy, I guess, always has really, but it never happened, Paul. So, if you wanted to kill me for being a bad friend with impure thoughts, then I guess you've got me dead to rights, but if it's for this baby, then you've got the wrong man."