THE SERPENT AND THE CATHEDRAL
2,475 feet below the surface
There were no more black-smudged arrows marking the winding passageways. Milo felt the absence was logical enough; the path now rarely split, and even then only one of the forking tunnels was ever large enough to fit through. He first tried keeping his backpack in front of him, shoving it along ahead, but eventually found the sensation too confining. Duck told him to instead tie the bag to one foot, leaving it to trail behind as they descended.
Duck still marked each intersection, but the action now felt perfunctory, even illogical. Milo had learned cave life demanded as much ritual as the strictest monastery. Every knot tied, every meal cooked, every lightbulb, battery, carabiner, rope, and camera went through a liturgical checklist before use. Back at the camp, Dale had attributed the methodology to Darwinism—as apostates rarely survived heresy, so too did cavers seldom survive mistakes in such a hostile environment. But instead of ten roughly equal commandments, there was just one law to rule them all . . . Thou Shalt Not Succumb to Summit Fever.
“Summit Fever is all about getting there, with nothing left to get you home,” Dale had explained. Didn’t matter if you’d just found Blackbeard’s treasure or a trio of mermaids. If your air tanks were down by a third, if you’d gone through a third of your juice, a third of your flashlights, a third of your food, of your water, your physical strength . . . it was time to turn around and go home. Never make that final push for the peak, the deepest chamber, the final sump at the cost of your life. Better to come home to your family and try again next year.
Silence clung to the foursome as the passageway opened up, becoming smooth and tubular, with easy, gentle bends. They could stand up now, and Milo appreciated finally getting off his raw knees and stomach. The passageway descended for another quarter mile until the muddy floor dipped below the glasslike surface of still waters. Milo stooped down and brushed his fingers against the rocky shore of the newfound underground river. A mineral crust had developed around the edges of the river like the last ice retreating in spring. The water level hadn’t changed in decades.
“Well, boys,” said Dale, surveying the water’s edge. “Looks like we’ve hit our first proper sump.”
“What’s that?” asked Milo, well aware that he was the only person in the group in need of an explanation.
“Sump? Just means an underwater passage,” said Logan. “We’ll probably wade it for a while, see if the ceiling stays above water. We may hit a point where the whole tunnel is submerged. If it’s a quick dunk, we’ll swim under it to the other side. If not, they’ll need to use dive gear, leave the rest of us behind.”
“They used to blow ’em up in the early days of caving,” said Dale, first to slosh into the shallow waters. “Let ’em drain out. On the other hand, tribes worshipped them—their shamans believed they were the delineation between our world and the next.”
Duck waved everyone back. “Let’s rest for a bit,” he said. “We should eat. Then I want to seal everything in our bags up tight, especially if the river gets deep. Everybody needs to stay sharp—the moving water will make every natural hazard twice as gnarly.”
“Fair enough.” The fragile mineral concretions crunched under Dale’s feet as he retreated.
The group waded downriver for what seemed like hours. The structure of the tunnel reminded Milo of an abandoned Parisian sewer, almost man-made in its eerie symmetry. Logan explained how the limestone below them was flecked with copper, giving the waters a greenish, serpentine appearance. Milo decided he didn’t mind his waterlogged feet, not even when the waters rose above chest level; the fact that he could stand upright was comfort enough.
They swam the final section. Milo dog-paddled, his sealed, buoyant backpack awkwardly holding him up as his helmet bumped and rubbed against the rocky ceiling above. Eventually the passageway widened again, allowing the cavers to swim into the cold, open waters of an unthinkably large chamber.
Dale dipped his head and took a mouthful from the subterranean lake. “It’s pure,” he said.
“It’s filtered through a half-mile of earth,” said Logan. “Cleaner than any bottled water in the world.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Milo. “I saw Logan take a bath upstream.”
“I heard that,” grunted Logan from behind.
“This way,” Dale said, leading the explorers to the side of the massive expanse. Milo followed, his feet touching the smooth stone bottom and dragging himself free of the lake and onto a low, sloping rock. He couldn’t get a true sense of the scale from their echoing voices, knowing only that the chamber was surely gargantuan.
“Wow,” said Milo, and not for the first time.
“I hope you appreciate how special this is,” said Dale as he stretched out on the rock to rest. Dale’s intense headlamp beam was still too weak to reach the length of the chamber. “A cave with this many large-scale rooms—it’s truly unique.”
“He’s right,” added Logan. “Quite the rare bird—I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything like it before.”
Dale pulled out another road flare, lit it, and hurled it as hard as he could toward the center of the room. Improbably, it landed atop a truncated stump of a stone column, the molten white core of the blood-red fire illuminating the chamber like the Eye of Sauron.
Squinting against the flickering light, Milo found himself at the edge of a primordial cathedral, its stalactite-dripping ceiling three hundred feet above. The triangular room narrowed at the far end to a pipe organ of a hundred massive stone columns of various thicknesses, the largest of them stretching from floor to ceiling.
Most of the chamber was flooded, but rocks, having dropped from the ceiling in eons previous, formed disorganized huddles of pews. Most notable was the statue-like edifice before the pipe organ, a towering figure not unlike an angel. It loomed before them with outstretched stone wings, a single, lamppost-sized crystal formation pouring from its heart to the waters below.
Logan and Duck abandoned their packs to explore the perimeter of the chamber, beginning in opposite directions from the mouth of the serpentine river. Milo waded into the subterranean lake and began to swim, transfixed, toward the ancient edifice. Reaching its foot, Milo took his most powerful flashlight from his pocket and placed it at the base of the crystal. Instantly, the entire column glowed to life with an intense yellow light, harsh and distinct. A billion metallic imperfections sparkled within. With Milo’s flashlight giving life, the edifice gained the distinct appearance of an angel holding a flaming sword, simultaneously colossal and beautiful and frightening.
Logan and Duck met at the pipe organ a few minutes later, neither having discovered a passageway out of the cathedral chamber. They again departed in opposite directions, this time slowly picking along a patch of wall and diving to the bottom of the shallow lake, probing through the clear waters with flashlights, searching for an exit.
After a long time, Milo withdrew his flashlight from the base of the crystal, and the flaming sword once again faded, the natural statue now a hulking shadow above him.
Logan was first to return to Dale and the packs, Milo following not long after. Duck still worked tirelessly, disappearing beneath the surface over and over as the other three watched.
Eventually, the cave guide turned and slowly swam the length of the chamber between the pipe organ and the flat rock, approaching the waiting party.
“I don’t see any other passages,” called out Dale. “Is it a dead end?”
Duck climbed out of the waters and collapsed onto his back. It was the first time Milo had seen him tired, out of breath—but the guide smiled broadly.
“I found an exit,” he said. “There’s a submerged passage underneath the columns—should we swim for it?”