They filed out and attacked the outside entrance. The work went quicker this time, because they were able to work from both sides at once. By late afternoon they had doubled the width of the entrance. The ever present mountain breezes were already gusting into the first cave and through the door of the second.

  Mindik threw his pick to the ground and wiped his forehead.

  “We’ve done enough. Let’s go in.”

  Unfortunately for group morale, it was a full hour later before Mindik, holding his lantern in one hand and a large burning torch in the other, walked once more down the five-foot swath that provided a pathway through the second cave. The air quality had definitely improved, and he sniffed appreciatively.

  Better. Much better.

  He was the only one sniffing appreciatively. His team no longer felt tolerant about their leader’s standards toward air quality. They pushed ahead of him this time, past the stalagmites and stalactites as if the massive rock formations that had awed them the first time they saw them didn’t even exist now. They did stop and wait at the opening into the third cave, but not without shuffling feet and an undercurrent of mutterings.

  Mindik knew why they were annoyed with him. After all the hard afternoon work, even after saying, “Let’s go in,” which got everyone excited, he had decided they should bring a torch to the third cave.

  Nobody had wanted to make a torch. They had their lanterns. Why take the time and trouble to gather dry tree branches and lash them together? Besides, even though this was a low mountain, trees didn’t grow on Slopes. It was too rocky. In order to make a torch it would be necessary to trudge down to the woods at the very base of the mountain, gather wood, bind it together, and then trudge back up. Obviously the whole thing was a waste of time, Mindik’s team had argued.

  When their leader had insisted, they’d given in, but they hadn’t been happy while making the torch, and they still weren’t happy now the job was done.

  “Ridiculous,” a voice sounding a lot like Doser’s grumbled.

  When he caught up with the others at the entrance to the third cave, Mindik put his lantern down and switched the torch to his right hand. Flames shot two feet into the air as he threw the unpopular implement into the third cave. Before it landed, while it was still in the air, the brightly burning flames shrank to a sputtering one or two inches.

  He asked quietly, “Do you see that? The air is still not very good in there.”

  His group quit muttering. Doser nodded shamefacedly.

  “We’ll go in, but we won’t be able to stay long,” Mindik told them.

  This time he led the way. The third cave was immense with floors sloping downward toward the inner depths of the mountain and irregular walls opening up into tunnels and small three-sided rooms. The explorers spread out eagerly. Exclamations echoed as they ran about, but coughs and retches ricocheted off the walls too.

  Five minutes after they’d entered, a young man wandered between two rocks into an enclosed alcove and staggered back vomiting.

  Regretfully Mindik called a halt.

  “We’ll widen the opening into this cave too. Then we’ll wait until the breezes from outside have had a chance to clean up the air. After a few days we can try again.”

  “But Mindik, I found an entrance into another cave, a fourth one,” one of the young men pleaded.

  “Where?” asked Mindik breathlessly.

  “It’s in the back wall’s left corner where the floor slants steeply down. I almost fell, and the opening is wide enough I could have slid straight through it. We could go in with no widening work—only the air’s bad,” the explorer admitted reluctantly.

  Mindik stared toward the dim back of the cavern. He felt the pull of the new cave as much as anyone else, but he was the one in charge and he had to do the right thing.

  He set his face and insisted, “A few days of fresh air will make a big difference. Some of us will stay and work on the entry to this cave. The rest of you, I believe, have supper duty.”

  A loud groan emanated from the three people whose turn had come to fix supper, but Mindik reassured them, “We aren’t going any further today. We’ll widen the door and leave.”

  A young woman on supper duty said sympathetically, “Dear me, how boring. Want to change places?”

  “Out,” Mindik ordered with a smile, glad the group’s mutinous spirit had vanished. Groans and moans were easier to manage. The supper crew left, trying to ignore the smirks on the faces of those who got to stay.

  Finally the widening work was finished.

  “Good job. This will get a strong air current going. I can already tell a difference,” Mindik exclaimed, examining the door to the third cave one last time.

  The seven members of Mindik’s team laughed loudly and talked faster than usual that night. They sat together at supper, wearing the dirt of their day’s labors with evident pride.

  “You ARE going to wash, aren’t you?” Pesom asked Doser.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” he answered vaguely.

  “Tonight,” she suggested and glanced sideways at Botan, her eyes twinkling in the old way.

  Botan grinned. This was better. This was like old times.

  “Find any more fossils, Pesom?” he dared to ask.

  She answered sprightly enough, “No, but I think we might tomorrow. We reached some promising places. What about you? Find anything?”

  “No, but I feel the same way you do. We might tomorrow. It’s the explorer in us, don’t you think? We’ll always find something the next day.”

  “Yes, it’s the way an explorer feels, I guess,” she said.

  “Sure it is. We make a good team, you and me and Mindik,” he assured her.

  “What wonderful news!” she snapped.

  Pesom was not beautiful. Her nose was a bit too large, and her brown hair tended to scatter haphazardly about her face, but Botan had never cared. Beautiful women made him nervous. Pesom’s eyes had always glowed with kindness, and he much preferred kindness to beauty.

  Pesom’s eyes were not glowing with kindness now. She scowled and jumped up so quickly she almost fell. He reached out a hand and steadied her only to have her snatch her arm away.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted turning her back on him, and Botan sighed.

  What had he done this time?

  R

  Deep in the bowels of the mountain, in the small chamber at the end of the interlocking cave system, darkness still reigned, as it had reigned ever since the mountain was formed. There was no noise, nothing to disturb the quiet of centuries. The two boulders, taller than they were wide, still leaned heavily against a wall. Everything was as it had been for years upon years—except for one thing.

  The air had changed.

  Without warning one of the boulders moved. Slowly, impossibly, it moved upward until it no longer leaned against the wall. When it stood upright, a grating sound came from it, and the other boulder moved upward in its turn.

  For a long time the boulders stood motionless. Finally thick slabs detached from either side of their bases and they started moving again, but this time they went forward, out of the small chamber.

  No breeze from outside had made it to the small chamber. Not even the strongest gust of wind could have traveled through all the twists and turns of the caves above them. The change in the air was barely discernible, but it was there, and it brought memories of a world the boulders had not seen in hundreds of years. It reminded them of warm sunlight that felt good on cold stone. It reminded them of the living quick-movers they hated, but it also reminded them of food.

  Now they were awake, the Stone Walkers were hungry. They had not eaten during the years they had spent underground. An earthquake had trapped them, cutting off the openings to the outside world so completely even their great strength had not been able to force a way out.

  Earthquakes had come and gone since then, but none of them had aroused the big boulders. Silently they had leaned against the chamber wall and waited. They had not minded. They were stone and stone could wait; however, the time of waiting was now over.

  The Stone Walkers were walking again.

  R

  “Tomorrow, I’m going back into those caves,” Mindik confided in Pesom and Botan, who were lounging near him on one of their mornings off. The other explorers had scattered in their usual small groups over the mountainside.

  “It’s been a week. I’m surprised you haven’t gone sooner,” drawled Botan.

  “Five days,” Mindik corrected him, “and don’t think I haven’t wanted to. I might have dared the bad air, but when you have the responsibility of a group, you have to be more careful.”

  Botan and Pesom agreed, and Mindik fell silent. He appeared completely relaxed as he sprawled in the sunshine, but his mind was busy. Mid-morning, after the breezes have strengthened, he had decided when a group of explorers ran out of the woods at the base of Slopes and yelled up the mountain’s side.

  “What now?” groaned Pesom.

  She couldn’t understand the explorers’ words from that distance, and she was certain Mindik couldn’t either, but their gestures were quite clear.

  The rapidly waving hands said, “Come and see what we’ve found. Come right now as fast as you can!”

  Mindik sprang up as if running down the mountain on their morning off was exactly what he wanted to do. Botan followed him willingly enough. Pesom followed.

  “This had better be worth it,” she complained.

  Mindik kept going as if he didn’t hear her, which was entirely possible considering his one-track mind, but Botan turned about, facing her.

  “Are you all right, Pesom?” he asked.

  “Yes, why?” she snapped at him.

  “You, uh, don’t seem yourself these days,” he explained fumblingly.

  “Last time I checked, I was me,” she announced smartly.

  Botan’s face reddened before he continued down the mountain and Pesom wanted to run away and hide in some very private secluded place, but it wasn’t possible. Someone would see her wherever she went and come to check on her, which would only add to her frustration level. There was nothing to do but follow Botan again.

  She had snapped at more people over the past few weeks than the rest of her life put together. It was horrible. Pesom didn’t like treating people that way. She knew why she was doing it too, but she didn’t want to admit the reason, not even to herself. Instead she passed the blame. It’s this mountain. Slopes of Death indeed! I don’t like it.

  Unexpected tears bunched at the corners of her eyes, and Pesom dropped behind everyone else so she could wipe her eyes without being seen. By the time she reached the woods, the group was already out of sight, though they hadn’t gone far. She could still hear them.

  “The first body’s over here,” someone was telling Mindik and Botan.

  “This doesn’t sound good,” Pesom mumbled.

  The group had gathered around a small body on the forest floor when she caught up to them. Reluctantly, she pushed her way to the front.

  A squirrel lay dead before her.

  That wasn’t odd in itself, but the squirrel was lying in an odd position. Its legs were stretched out as if they were busy scampering up a tree, while its mouth was opened as if it was chattering in a frenzy of excitement. Everyone had seen living squirrels with their legs stretched out and their mouths open. The Stalli Mountains abounded with the little animals, and they were almost always scampering and chattering excitedly.

  Pesom loved watching them jump between trees and clamber along thin branches that didn’t appear capable of holding up air, much less a small brown or blue-gray body. Some people thought of squirrels as pests, but she had always liked them. She stared down at the dead squirrel, one of the blue-gray ones, and thought about touching it but held back. Poor thing.

  Mindik didn’t hold back. He knelt beside the little body and picked it up. That’s strange, thought Pesom. The squirrel’s legs and neck stayed in exactly the same position.

  “It’s stiff,” an explorer exclaimed.

  “Well, it is dead,” another explorer offered by way of an explanation, but Mindik disagreed.

  “It’s not just stiff; it’s petrified,” he said slowly, wrapping his knuckles against it to prove his point.

  Pesom heard the dull thud along with everyone else, but she didn’t understand.

  “Petrified animals wouldn’t be lying on top of the forest floor. When they died long ago, something covered them so they hardened instead of decaying,” argued Botan.

  “Yes, I know,” muttered Mindik.

  Pesom knew that tone of voice. Mindik, the explorer, knelt in front of them now. He wasn’t thinking of the poor squirrel dying; at least he wasn’t thinking of it in the same way Pesom was. He was wondering how and why and what.

  “Even its fur,” he was saying when someone shouted a short distance away, “Here’s another one.”

  Pesom didn’t want to go. She thought she might get sick to her stomach if she saw another dead animal, but she didn’t want to shirk her duties as an explorer.

  Following the others to the second site, she saw the body of a groundhog lying on the ground. The groundhog was a little larger than the squirrel and as wide as it was tall. These lazy creatures lived throughout the Stalli Mountain Range, their golden fur blending beautifully with the golden tree trunks. Ground hogs waddled when they walked and were totally harmless. They never even pretended to fight, preferring to hide in their holes if threatened.

  This guy had not made it. He lay on his side but even so, his front feet stretched forward in as much of a running pose as the fat little animal could make. His back half had been crushed flat.

  True to her prediction, Pesom felt nauseous.

  Mindik picked up the groundhog and commented, “Stiff again and since both animals were lying on top of the ground without noticeable decay, they must have died not long ago.”

  Pesom had cringed when Mindik raised the body, but its back didn’t drip gore as she had feared. It stayed as stiff as the front part.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Botan objected.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Mindik agreed.

  “Maybe they ate something poisonous that caused stiffness,” suggested Doser.

  “Maybe,” Mindik muttered, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Have you noticed the bark on the tree over there?” he asked.

  No one had.

  Leave it to Mindik to observe every detail of a situation, thought Pesom, trying to control her stomach.

  “Something’s cut a foot-wide swath deep into the wood,” marveled Botan.

  Mindik nodded, but his eyes were now roaming over the ground. Pesom followed everyone else’s example and examined the ground with Mindik, but she didn’t spot anything of significance. The forest had no underbrush here, only loose stones everywhere as the mountain prepared to heave itself up and assert its dominance over mere trees.

  The dim ringing of a bell interrupted further investigation.

  “Lunch!” proclaimed the group in unison.

  Obviously nobody else’s stomach was having problems with their recent discoveries.

  Food always bound explorers together. Their meals highlighted what were often long uneventful days. The group hurried out of the forest and up the mountain. Mindik moved less eagerly than the others, but he walked with them all the same.

  He stayed quiet during the meal. Toward its end he called Botan over and gave him some kind of instruction. Pesom saw Botan ask a question, listen carefully, and give a grunt of assent.

  Disappearing briefly into their supply cave, he reemerged with his backpack and strode rapidly down the mountain.

  R

  “Chera,” someone called.

  The young man had dashed out of Parsleyville’s large archival building as if he were a child getting out of school. He stopped mid-dash.

  “Fredos arisht, Cherry. How are you?” he asked affectionately.

  His brother’s fiancée always looked happy, but today she was positively beaming.

  “Blessings on you, Chera. I’m fine. I’ve written another letter for you to take to Mindik.”

  “Another one,” he groaned with a pathos assuring anyone listening that he had received tragic news. “You know I don’t have a supply horse, don’t you?”

  “Silly boy,” she responded, laughing at him and then added in a low voice, “I haven’t written nearly as often as I’ve wanted to.”

  Chera dropped the pathos and stared hard at her.

  “I would dump him if I were you,” he advised solemnly.

  “What? Never!” she sputtered and brightened again. Nothing kept Cherry down long. She had one of the most optimistic personalities Chera had ever met.

  Pretty too. Mindik’s crazy.

  Out loud he said, “You know, don’t you, that everyone thinks you and I ought to get married.”

  “What?” she asked again, laughing merrily.

  He explained, “It’s our names. Chera and Cherry sound like a couple, don’t they? I’m thinking Chera and Cherry sound like something Keshua himself has put together.”

  “I’ll tell Mindik,” she threatened.

  He countered, “I’ll beat you to it. In four or five days, I’ll be through with this research and good riddance. I’m sick of it!”

  They said their goodbyes, and Chera hurried toward home. He had to eat lunch quickly or he would be late for the archery lesson. Shooting arrows provided Bumbly Bell with her only opportunity to get away from home, and he guarded the outing zealously for his friend. She was showing progress too.

  At first her arrows had wavered in the air and hit everything within ten feet of the target except for the target itself. When she’d finally managed to hit the target’s face, Chera had whooped so loudly his father and older brother had come and cheered along with him. None of them had cared that the triumphant arrow hung from the hem of the cloth, five inches away from the outer blue circle.

  “When you hit the yellow center circle, Mom will cook you a special award dinner. We’ll invite your aunt and uncle too,” Chera had said magnanimously.