The Sentinels of Eden, Books 1-4

Chapter 33

Chapter 29

The boys took forever to get to us. Bane stumbled in looking somewhat flustered, although to his credit he tried to hide it. I was grateful that he was trying to give me some independence. He reached for my hand but I shied away, pretending not to have noticed. Bouncing past him, I moved to the low wall where Tessa was holding up her phone to show off our discovery.

‘No way!’ Bane’s deep voice sounded hushed and awestruck. His eyes drank in the series of cave paintings that coated the wall like ancient graffiti.

‘Incredible. They could be thousands of years old,’ Noah whispered.

Taking care not to touch them, I tried to decipher whether they had anything to do with Eden. At first I thought they were mostly hunting scenes, but then I noticed that the humans in the pictures were all injured. One had clearly stepped on a snake, one was drowning in a river, and one showed a man being chased by what looked like a giant emu.

‘The world’s first episode of Funniest Home Videos?’ I asked.

Tessa shook her head. ‘More like the first version of Dumb Ways to Die. These are warnings. Maybe for children?’

‘Check this one out,’ Noah breathed, pointing to a man and a woman standing on the top of a hill with their arms stretched up to the sky. A great flock of birds—thousands of them—were descending on a group of people who were cowering under their spears. There was a circle drawn around the hill, and the birds were attacking the people who had crossed into the circle, but there was another group of people just outside it who were left alone. The warning was clear.

Noah nodded thoughtfully. ‘Birds, huh?’

‘Could work, I guess. But it might attract a bit of attention,’ I said. We moved along to see if there were any more tips for us, and Bane stared curiously at one picture of a stark naked, brave-looking warrior. I said it looked eerily like him, making him blush and press his lips together. Then I made him put his hand up just in front of a hand stencil and laughed when the outlines matched perfectly. After an intense search, however, we all had to admit that none of the pictures looked like they were of a hidden paradise. Our ancestors must have had as much trouble drawing as we had writing about Eden. I wondered if the paintings meant that we were standing on some sort of sacred site, but decided it was more likely that they were simply a warning that we were close to one. Still, I felt a bit sacrilegious as I took some photos with Tessa’s phone so we could study the paintings better once we got home.

After that we were all too excited to just leave. After seeing both the sword and the ancient paintings, Eden felt real enough to taste. There had to be another way in. The chamber had two passageways leading from it, so we decided to split up. Noah and Tessa climbed down into another shaft, while I used the light from the sat-phone Bane had remembered to bring to lead him down a passageway just wide enough to wiggle through. It was difficult to concentrate on where we placed our feet and at the same time avoid low hanging rocky outcrops and stalactites.

Ancient water seeped patiently down from above, pooling in unexpected nooks and crannies, and sometimes we had to duck low and twist our bodies around awkwardly to get through. It was a winding route, which made it impossible to tell how far we were travelling, but eventually the tunnel widened again, revealing stalagmites laden with too much vanilla icing that kept trying to trip me over. Suddenly I was faced with a solid wall of glittering rock. How could such a wide tunnel end so abruptly? I searched above and below but I couldn’t find any other way through, so I moved closer to examine the wall for any small openings. A couple of metres away from it I felt a shiver go down my spine. It was as though something was moving through my skin and wrapping around my bones. It wasn’t cold or warm, it just felt like everything sort of shifted through me. For a long moment I just stood there feeling confused, trying to remember what I had been doing, like I had walked into the bedroom to get something but couldn’t remember what it was. I shook my head to clear away the fuzziness. The wall. I was trying to find a way through. I examined it from top to bottom in the torchlight but it really was a dead end.

‘I think that’s as far as we can go, there’s no way through here.’

Bane didn’t answer so I moved back to see where he was, again feeling the strange sensation as I moved away from the wall.

‘Bane?’

‘Lainie! Are you all right? Where have you been?’ He sounded frantic. To my immense surprise he was also behind me again. How had he managed that? He swept me into a crushing hug, startling me—he usually controlled himself much better than that.

‘I haven’t been anywhere! And of course I’m fine, you should know that too.’ I tried to peel him off me but he refused to let me go and I realised he was trembling. ‘Are you okay?’

‘You were right in front of me,’ he said. ‘But then the light went out and you disappeared. And I mean totally. I couldn’t even … feel you. I almost passed out from shock, Lainie. What did you do? How did you get behind me again?’

‘I was just going to ask you the same thing. All I did was examine the wall. How weird is that? Let’s see if it happens again!’ Did it have something to do with the odd sensation I had felt? I tried to check it out but Bane clung to me like a baby possum.

‘You’re not going anywhere without me. Not again,’ he stated flatly. His familiar scowl was back.

‘Seriously? I was only gone for a few seconds! There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Lainie, you’re not listening. I couldn’t feel you at all!’

Suddenly my heart was racing. Had I crossed the Event Horizon? The poor guy was really freaking out, which I couldn’t blame him for if he really had been plunged into sudden darkness deep below the ground, but nothing was going to stop me from checking it out again.

‘Hold my hand,’ I coaxed. ‘I’ll go exactly where I went before so you can see.’

Once again, about two metres out, I felt my skin tingle. I didn’t remember letting go of his hand but suddenly it just wasn’t there. The whole of him wasn’t there. I turned and felt the air. My fingertips tingled and I could feel a smooth wall of … something. Subtle. Like a fragile spider’s web, but with a sort of shiny, soapy texture. I stepped back through it and sure enough he was behind me again, examining the rock. He spun around as the link between us was re-established.

‘Cool magic trick, huh?’ I teased him, wiggling my eyebrows.

‘No. Not cool at all. Please don’t do that again.’ Extremely grumpy eyes met mine in a way that made him look a lot like his mum when she’d taken our class for recorder lessons in Year 3.

‘So you just crossed through it and didn’t feel anything?’ I asked. ‘Does it look the same on that side for you?’ I was intrigued. Obviously I had crossed into Eden but Bane hadn’t. Not that it did me much good since there was still no way through the rock.

‘Crossed through what? You left me with nothing but a few glow worms. I couldn’t see anything,’ he grumbled. ‘And even if I could, how would I know if it looks the same? I couldn’t see whatever you did.’

‘Everything looked the same as from here.’ We both studied the impassable wall.

‘But you were in Eden.’

‘Yep. And you couldn’t feel … me.’ My excitement came crashing down like a manna gum in a drought as I realised that we had the answer we’d been looking for. There was a way to break the link. To set Bane free.

He stared at me with wide pale eyes, but in the dim light I couldn’t work out what his expression meant. All of a sudden I felt like I was struggling to breathe. Conflicting emotions swirled around my chest and tied themselves into one giant knot that I couldn’t seem to get any air past. I turned away from him, unwilling to let him see the confusion I felt. I would not let him feel guilty when the time came for him to leave, not on top of everything else I had already put him through.

I started to head back down the tunnel, hoping he hadn’t noticed my hesitation. ‘We’d better tell the others,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound normal. He followed silently.

By the time we got back to the chamber with the paintings, Noah and Tessa were waiting for us and were eager to get going. Noah didn’t even ask to go back to copy what I had done with the Event Horizon, and he led the way out at such a cracking pace that Tessa asked him if he was feeling claustrophobic. I knew that wasn’t it. Something was making all my joints itch and I couldn’t quite pin it down. I tried to sense if there were any miners in the area, but everything was a bit hazy. When I slipped and whacked my hip climbing back to the surface, Bane begged me to slow down. I couldn’t.

When we got back to the first cave, we refilled the water drums and then rushed back to the river. Noah was so much on edge that he gave Tessa an irritated look when she started to lag behind. Someone was nearby. Two people, in fact, although only one was bugging me, and they weren’t together. We moved through the scrub like mythical pumas, and practically slid down the embankment to get to the canoe. Someone was approaching and I didn’t want the trespasser to see where we had come from. We threw the drums into the boat and Noah and Tessa paddled across while Bane and I melted back into the bush.

They had just managed to hide the canoe in a thick patch of ti-tree when Blue came bounding out from behind a cape wattle wagging her tail. She sat in front of Noah looking very pleased with herself and I smiled in relief. Noah visibly relaxed too and started to give her a tummy rub just as Nicole came stomping out of the bushes, looking smug.

‘Good girl, Bluey, I knew you’d find them!’ she exclaimed, throwing herself into Noah’s arms. Noah kept his face neutral but I could tell from the way he had his lips pressed together that he was tempted to throttle her.

I could feel someone else approaching, still a few minutes away, but I didn’t feel edgy so I figured it was probably Sarah. I would have to get used to what she ‘felt’ like.

‘Nic, what are you doing out here on your own? Does Mum know where you are?’ Noah asked. Nicely covered. As if he couldn’t feel his mum heading our way.

‘You’ve been out all night. I was worried!’ She glared at Tessa.

‘And so you decided to go out bush on your own to look for us?’ Noah admonished her.

‘Like you’ve never done that. Besides, I had Blue. And the phone. I would have called if I’d been in trouble, unlike some people.’

‘I did call. Mum would have told you if you’d asked, but you chose not to run this by her, didn’t you?’

She grinned at him, totally unashamed. ‘What were you doing out here, anyway?’

‘None of your business! Besides, we’re on our way back. I’m starving.’ He tried to distract her from asking too many questions, but it was never going to work.

‘What are the water drums for?’

‘Carrying water,’ he replied unhelpfully.

He picked one up and Tessa took the other. I winced in sympathy at the sight of them struggling with the heavy water drums, but we couldn’t help. I didn’t want Nicole to know Bane and I were there. Better to let her think Noah and Tessa had come out for some time alone, but Blue was standing by the edge of the river staring into the bushes where we were hiding. I closed my eyes and whispered at her to go away. She did, and I wondered if I could have made us invisible if it had been necessary to keep Eden hidden. That might have been kind of fun.

Noah, Nicole and Tessa started to head back along the riverbank, and I knew they would run into Sarah as she tried to catch up to her daughter. Knowing Sarah, there would be some serious consequences, and I almost felt a bit sorry for Nicole. Almost.

Once they were well and truly out of range we began the long trek home. I carried our backpack while Bane limped along beside me in one sock and damp boots.