She followed him, only once scraping her back on a dead trunk when nearby scuttling in the undergrowth spooked her. She gave a small cry, which brought Zach up short.
'OK?' he asked, playing the light over her face.
'Yeah, just got up too fast,' she said, unwilling to admit that she could be frightened by a mouse or vole.
'Not afraid of the dark?'
'Of course not.'
'Good. It's going to get much darker in a little while.'
A few steps further, and Zach handed her the torch, while he lifted away several leafy tree limbs, cut and artfully arranged as camouflage, to reveal a narrow cleft in the rock.
'It's a tight squeeze at first, but widens out quite soon. After about twelve metres, you'll be able to walk upright.'
'What is it? An old mine?'
'Cave,' was all he'd say.
The floor of the passageway was remarkably clear and unbroken, though it sloped steeply downhill, and Laura wondered whether somebody-Zach?-had removed any debris. A thick layer of soft reddish earth, fine and dry as sand, ran through her cupped hand like seconds in an hourglass. Laura wished she understood more about geology: what process had laid down these bands and swirls of sinuous colour on the walls? Murals that told a story in stone-surely an ancient story-if only you could read it. Soon after straightening, she paused to follow a particularly rich orange-and-madder striation with her fingertips.
'Iron oxide,' Zach said, 'and perhaps organic traces from the forest's leaf litter.'
'Beautiful.' Then she listened for a moment. 'Is that the sound of water?'
Again Zach's soft laugh.
After another three or four minutes, the tunnel narrowed again, and they came to an irregular belled opening, draped on the left from roof to floor with a cluster of opalescent pleats, which hung overhead from the mouth of what appeared to be a dark conduit far too small to explore. Laura ran her hand along the fluted surface, to assure herself that it was really stone, not supple folds of cloth. The sound of water was louder now, and a vaguely familiar smell reached her nostrils.
Zach turned and faced her, blocking the passageway. His head still grazed the arch, despite hunched shoulders.
'I'm going to switch off the torch. Wait right here till I say.'
She stared at him, suppressing her first twinge of uneasiness since opening her window. Perhaps he was just testing her trust in him. Or her nerve. She couldn't decide what annoyed her more-Owen's compliancy, or this high-handedness of Zach's. But she'd come too far to back down now.
He smiled as she craned her neck, trying to see past him. 'Hold on to the sides with both hands, and don't walk forward. There's a nasty drop ahead.' He waited till she put out her arms to brace herself, then extinguished the light.
'Remember, don't move,' he warned, his voice already receding in the darkness.
And the darkness was total. Within a few seconds Laura realised that the absence of light magnified her other perceptions, so that Zach's movements echoed around her, while the water flowed ever closer, closer. The air was warmer, too, and she had the feeling that a fine mist was softening her skin. A memory floated to the surface of her mind. That smell-Zach's hair, the first time she'd been near enough to notice.
All at once she understood what they'd been futilely explaining to her for years in maths about their beloved zero: nothingness was not simply an absence, but something real and solid and substantial. She could feel the darkness enclosing her like a caul, a second skin . . . drawing tighter . . .
What was he doing down there? Even simus couldn't see in the dark, could they? Though with those eyes . . .
Two or three clicks, followed by a skein of high-pitched squeaks at the threshold of her hearing. She dropped her hands, stepped forward, cried out.
'Zach! Where are you?'
'Damn it, Laura! Stay where you are! You're going to fall.'
Laura grabbed blindly behind her for support, and her fingers met with stone. She swallowed nervously.
'What was that?' she asked.
'Vampire bats. Don't worry, I've put out a saucer of blood. They won't come after you.'
It took her a moment to grasp that he was teasing, and a moment longer to regain her composure.
'Very funny,' she said dryly. 'How long is this going to take? I need a wee.'
'Two minutes. No longer, I promise.'
She wouldn't go so far as to claim they were the longest two minutes of her life, but they gave her plenty of time to imagine in glorious detail what she'd do to Zach once she got an opportunity, starting with Max's secret cache of itching powder. She'd reached the point of sponging it off and applying a soothing body lotion when she realised the direction of her thoughts. Quit that, she told herself firmly.
'Ready?' Zach called up to her.
'I've been ready since you started slinging pebbles at my window.'
'Then close your eyes and don't open them till I tell you.'
'As if it could get any darker,' she grumbled, but complied. Not just stupid, but barking mad.
Her eyelids reddened slightly, and she fought an impulse to raise them.
'OK.' His voice was suddenly directly below her. 'Have a look.'
After the darkness, even the low light blinded her. She squinted first at Zach, saw that he'd shed his jacket and pushed back his sleeves. Then gasped as her eyes swept the cavern, her vision clearing.
'Like it?' he asked.
She heard a strange note in his voice and glanced at him. Unsmiling, he gazed back at her with a face like a meticulously laid table-starched white linen, polished silver, hothouse flowers. As if he expected a Michelin inspector, someone who'd casually jerk away the tablecloth and then stomp on the wreckage. And deny the long-coveted star.
'Well?'
'Zach-' She took a deep breath.
'Yeah?'
'It's-it's the most wonderful gift anyone's ever given me.'
She would remember his smile forever. Which was an even a better gift, though she couldn't possibly tell him.
The chamber was lit by a lantern placed next to a gently steaming pool. An underground stream trickled over a canopy of glittering white flowstone, tinged with streaks of red and salmon and coral, and cockled at its lower rim. Laura peered up, but the stream's inlet was lost in the shadows near the roof. She wasn't good at such estimates, but at its highest point the cave had to be at least three times Zach's height. The roof dipped and rose erratically, with projections less like stalactites than whorled and tendrilled and scalloped frostwork, all pearly with minerals and condensation. The slowly drifting mist added to the sense of enchantment, so that for a moment Laura thought she must still be home in her bed, dreaming.
Zach extended his hand.
The descent from the cantilevered ledge on which Laura was standing wouldn't have been particularly tricky if it weren't for the deep fissures in the rock almost directly below, where catching a foot might mean a twisted ankle or nasty gash. The stone, for all its sumptuous appearance, was unrepentant, and in places sharp as knapped flint. She let Zach guide her, and was pleased to see the glint of approval in his eyes as she sprang without hesitation.
'Behind those toadstools you'll find a run-off channel for the stream. You can pee there, and change into your costume at the same time.'
'Promise you won't peek.'
'How else can I be sure you won't sample the fungus?'
At school he rarely bothered with jokes at all, and then only the sort which made enemies. And the formations did in fact resemble huge pale-grey puffballs, some waist-high, one as tall as she. With disappointing alacrity he fished their costumes from his backpack and went to strip by the pool. She watched him tug off his jumper. She watched him slip off his jeans. She watched in the trap of her own looking till the knobs of his vertebrae appeared; the vulnerable notched hollows of his lower back. He'd turned the tables neatly on her, damn him. Eyes now fixed on his 'toadstools', she picked her way over undulating mounds and depressions and crevices, at one point hugging a smooth apron protruding from the wall. Despite years of quick-change practice, she chose to dawdle, so that Zach was already lolling in the pool when she returned.
'How warm is it?' she asked.
'Hot.'
'How hot?'
'Ten minutes till hard-boiled.'
She snorted and slipped into the water at the spot he indicated.
For a while they were quiet, basking in the warmth, mesmerised by the play of lamplight over rock as fluid as the water which had shaped it.
'Are there really bats?' Laura asked.
'Yeah.' He pointed upwards. 'Clever creatures. Harmless.'
But if there were any in residence, she couldn't detect them.
'They emit sounds at a much higher pitch than you people can usually hear,' he added, noticing her scrutiny.
'You mean that simus have better hearing?' she asked after a short reflection.
'A wider frequency range.'
Her eyes were drawn to the tattoo on his chest. His lips thinned, and he plunged under the water, to surface with his back to her. He flicked back his long hair, smoothed it down with his fingers, and clambered from the pool.
'Don't stay too long, the heat will drain your energy,' he said, and disappeared with towel and tracksuit behind his toadstools. By the time he reappeared, Laura was seated on the lip of the pool, toes dangling in the water and shoulders wrapped in her towel.
'Are you hungry?' he asked.
She nodded.
From his backpack he removed a packet of sandwiches and a flask. He poured them some coffee.
'Sorry,' he said, 'I've forgotten an extra mug.'
Laura bowed her head to hide a smile. He wasn't the sort to apologise.
They split the sandwiches between them, passing the flask's steel screw-on cup back and forth. Too sweet for Laura's taste, but hot and delicious-no instant coffee for him.
'Do you come here often?' she asked, having spotted a good-sized plastic crate in a niche. How had he managed to lug it through the first section of the tunnel?
'Whenever I can.' He waved a hand towards the crate. 'I've even slept here for a night or two, on occasion.'
'A perfect escape.'
'For a while.'
Laura set her sandwich down next to her. There were so many questions she was longing to ask, but his mood was precarious. And she was ashamed of her ignorance.
'Why did you bring me here, Zach?'
He stared at her, then leaned forward. Laura held her breath, conscious of the tension in him. She was reminded of her granddad tuning his fiddle-a minute adjustment made all the difference between harmony and dissonance. Sometimes he'd make the strings caterwaul like a fight-primed tom, yowl like a cruising queen, while Laura giggled in delight. She had a good ear, she could still remember most of his tunes. And his peals of laughter, the time she'd turned the pegs without permission and doggedly snapped all but the lowest string.
With a lopsided smile Zach rose and made his way to the storage box, from whose depths he extricated a black oblong case, the kind that might contain a woodwind instrument.
If asked, she would never have imagined he'd settle on clarinet. Yet once he began to play, its rich liquid timbre suited him perfectly. He stood quite still, his eyes focused on an inner space. Mozart, she thought. There was no hesitation, no fumbling, no harsh notes. It became almost painful to watch him, and she closed her eyes and let the music slowly cocoon her in radiance.
And like a chrysalis suspended from a sun-glazed leaf, she shivered at each new breath, at each rise and fall of the melody. It welled from a source as far beyond her reach-and perhaps his-as the headwaters of light itself. How odd that deep underground, and with eyes shut tight, she could look at long last into the sun.
'The Adagio from Mozart's clarinet concerto,' Zach said.
Until he spoke, she hadn't realised that he'd stopped playing. She said with an effort, an immense effort, as though she were small once more and sleepy, very sleepy, and the room was thick with smoke and laughter and the voices of the fiddlers, and her gran was lifting her struggling from the settee, 'Play something else.'
He launched into a chortling Klezmer freylach, embellished with boisterous trills and a shifting tempo that didn't quite follow the beat. Soon she was laughing, then improvising aloud, their voices riffing and razzing and rollicking together off the walls and roof. He ended in an upwards chromatic run, punctuated by a slower staccato. She burst into applause.
'More,' she implored.
'It's getting late. Another time.'
She finished her coffee while Zach packed away his clarinet. When he came to stand by her with a proffered hand, she risked a question which had been itching for days like a new-formed scab.
'What about the boy? Have you found out anything?'
He dropped his hand, stowed the flask and the wrappers from their sandwiches in his backpack. Laura was learning to wait it out with him, rather like watching for a splinter to work its way to the surface of your skin.
He looked at her at last. 'Yeah, I've been given some information.'
'Will you go to the police?'
His laugh was short, and bitter as dock.
'But you can't just let him get away with it!'
'He won't.'
She rose to her feet and wrapped the towel more tightly around herself. She was beginning to get cold.
'What are you going to do?' she asked.
'Take care of it.'
'How?' she insisted.
'You don't want to know.'
'But I do.'
For a moment he studied her face, then shrugged. 'Since you've asked.' He folded his arms across his chest. 'When I finish with him, the bastard won't be abusing anyone ever again.'
'You can't mean-'
'Squeamish about full castration? I can just geld him, if you prefer.'
