Outside the cave, the wind was rising with the darkness, its eerie whistle matching the Oracle’s warbling chants. The men heard a jagged rustle at the entrance. It was the sound of Abna Calca pushing one of the heavily laden mules through the hole. His brother dragged the other. Both carried bundles of wood. All the men, except Pearlbinder, were instantly on their feet. The Kid blew on the ashes, sending cinders back into his own face.
“Be at ease with this bounty. We know not how long we’ll be imprisoned here,” Tarrant called out before Follett had a chance.
The Calcas let go of the animals and tried to move their arms in their frozen coats, which cracked with frost. Then they silently walked over to Pearlbinder.
Abna took off his hat with some difficulty and said softly, “We let Sophia go in sight of the tree line, where we found this wood. There were some signs of recent habitation nearby.”
Pearlbinder nodded and stared into the flickering fire and at the frenzied activities around it.
“There was even a broken hutch,” said Owen, his eyes fixed on his shoes.
“Bind the tents together and seal that gap,” shouted Follett.
The men worked frantically for an hour, stitching the heavy, dense material and tying it with strips of leather. When they were finished, it looked like the flayed skin of some mythical beast.
“Looks like a sunfish,” said Tarrant.
“A what?” asked the Kid.
“Sunfish. I seen one from the deep sea beached on the isle of Għawdex.”
“What the fuck does thee talk about fish and sons?”
“I say there is a semblance here.”
“I says thee talks shit.” The Kid laughed.
“Enough of this, get that freezing breech sealed!” bellowed Follett. And all the men took an edge of the heavy canvas mass and dragged it toward the gap in the stone. They forced it into the crevice until the wind was gagged and the cold held its breath. The damp wood was now blazing, and the flames gave forth a generous glow. The men unpacked pots and slabs of dried meats and began preparing the first hot meal they had had in days. A tide of well-being rose in the cave; even Tarrant and the Kid’s animosity had declined.
The flickering light of the fire sealed the conversation, washing away all remaining questions and answers. The men pulled their sleeping sacks close to one another, in a circle around the blaze, and started to crawl their way into sleep. Outside, the wind reached a new pitch, the heavy loose snow flinging up into a stampeding whiteout that seemed a million miles away.
Days passed without time, the flickering hours recorded only by the expenditure of firewood and victuals. Months and hours slid through each other without any sensible exchange. The storm outside continued, seemingly gaining momentum.
The Oracle had remained mute or drooling, but, charged and swollen with Pearlbinder’s sins, it began to fill the cave with its unbidden voice. No longer in random outbursts of oblique messages but in a song, or something close to one. It sang with the wind, matching its timbre and pulse, swaying between the bass of its hopeless moan and the crescendo of its sustained unearthly whining. It sang in union and descant, and all the men fell into a fathomless sleep and dreamed a dream that did not exist. The Oracle sang all through what must have been the third night, because when it was over, day existed again outside. There were tiny holes in the high ceiling that let in spider-thin threads of light, which slivered in the eerie intermittent glow and swam above the dismal slumberers. The fire had finally died out in the freezing cave; the still air was full of chilled, static smoke and weak illumination. The men gradually awoke to this vision and to the cold and to the ebbing of the Oracle’s voice. The storm had blown itself out. Follett was first to grab hold of the canvas, quickly followed by the others, who wanted to breathe clean air again. They tugged at the frozen shape, which refused to move; the mass had frozen solid, ice and snow rammed into every space behind it. The Calcas brought their axes and tried to cut it into pieces. But the iron-hard bung ignored their might and their blades, sounding like a sullen bell when their axes skidded off its unyielding rigidity.
“Check the other vent,” shouted Follett. Tarrant picked up a shovel and went to the other side of the cave.
“It must have been an ice blizzard,” said Owen Calca.
“How long will it take to thaw?” asked Alvarez.
“It won’t” came the answer nobody wanted to hear. “Not until the spring. The wind must have changed direction and became vicious. Must have been cascading against that entrance night and day.”
“Cascading and freezing,” added the other Calca.
Tarrant returned with a dented shovel, shaking his head.
“We are all fucked!” said the Kid.
And Pearlbinder began picking up the few remaining bits of wood and discarded twigs.
“How much food do we have?” Follett asked Alvarez.
“Less than a day’s worth of heavy rations.”
Then the spidery beams of light went out as the storm returned.
Inside the cave, the temperature had dropped below zero, and only one lamp was burning, its whale-oil stink giving off impossible recollections of the sea. The contradictions disturbed even the violent equilibrium of Follett’s savage band. Nobody spoke; they were saving their energy, and besides, no one had anything to say. The angel of death was nearby and made of ice. Then a scratching started somewhere at the back of the cave in the total darkness. The men tried to look at one another and saw only the shadows that hollowed each man’s features. Everyone was present in the tight group, which meant the noise was being made by someone, something else. Pearlbinder unsheathed his scimitar, and Tarrant lifted the lamp higher. The Oracle’s crate was open and lying on its side. It was empty.
Follett snatched the lamp from Tarrant’s hand and rushed toward the scratching, almost running into the solidity of the cave wall’s leaping shadows.
“Find it!” he bellowed.
Three of the men followed him more slowly. Follett now had his face and the lamp hard against the stone.
“It’s coming from inside,” he whispered.
“It can’t,” said Pearlbinder. “It’s a solid mass. I saw that days ago, when we had some daylight and the fire.”
“Listen, man,” said Follett, stepping back to allow the others to witness the truth of what he had just said.
“It is. It’s in there,” said the Kid.
Then the wall giggled.
“It’s the fucking horror. It’s got inside.”
From a stick, rags, and oil, Tarrant quickly made a flaming torch, which he brought to the perplexed men. The giggling was growing more intense, and echoing. Alvarez started hammering on the stone with the blunt end of an ax, the sound announcing a great hollowness on the other side. All the men started pounding and hammering the stone wall, until, with his fifth blow, the Kid fell through. Tarrant thrust his spluttering torch into the devouring space.
“It’s a door. There is a door in the rock.”
Tarrant pushed against it, causing the door to fall inward with a resounding echo, illuminating the space within. The sound seemed to go on forever, climbing inside the dark hollow, which appeared to be a featureless passage once the dust and reverberations settled.
The corridor was ten feet high and as wide as three men standing next to one another. It had a slight upward gradient, and at the farthest point touched by the flickering light, they could see the Oracle rocking back and forth, laughing at the gawping men.
“How did it get here? It can’t walk,” said Alvarez. “And that slab of a door was closed.”
The questions traveled up the corridor, past the small dust-covered figure. Then it snuffed out all their queries as it sang, “ ’Tis the road to light. A star road made for thee.”
Follett ordered his men to retrieve all their possessions and saddle their horses. The riders gathered in single file behind Tarrant, who was already in the tunnel, holding his torch up and away from his horse’s head, ready to lead the expedition into the unknown. Pearlbinder put his saddle, swords, guns, and bags on Scriven’s mount.
“The dead man’s horse looks a bit bowed under your size and all that junk,” commented the Kid.
Pearlbinder ignored him.
“I wouldn’t ride no skewered man’s pony.”
Follett was now out of earshot of the Kid’s comments, but it did not stop the other men from blenching at the stupidity and danger of talking about the lost horse.
Only Tarrant put their feelings into words. “Thou shouldest keep thy mouth shut lest you get some of the same.”
The Kid made a gesture with his thumb, shucking his front teeth, and no more words were spoken on the subject.
The pace inside the tunnel was sedate, matching the unworldly quality of the stillness and the depth of the group’s ignorance about their predicament. They made four more torches with rags and the last of the oil, and the men prayed they would reach daylight and the exit before the torches died. But secretly, they knew they wouldn’t.