10
Cave Rescue
The leaden sky turned to graphite, drawing an early evening to the fell. The vast canvas of softly burnished browns and sallow greens, washed here and there in purple haze, charred into coal-black silhouettes against the dying sheen of sky. And in returning night, the sudden, fleeting pad of the barghest on the narrow trail sent a call of black-faced ewes scattering up the harsh grass slope to sanctuary amongst the islands of heather and berry and wind-carved grit. A solitary resting grouse, disturbed by their startled flight, called out in alarm but the percussive diminuendo of its chant sounded hollow in the heavy air and failed to carry far. Silence settled on the moor.
Deep within the hill, in a blackness that could never ascend to the surface, Dai Genus drifted slowly upwards from the blessing of unconsciousness. For several minutes, his mind refused the memory of the fall; refused also the pain of his broken arm; and the lack of pain in his crushed legs. But in his return to full consciousness, reality's clamorous insistence grew too pressing and he could ignore it no longer. He lay tumbled upon hard rocks deep within the cave, his back broken. He was helpless; dying: not yet dead but already buried - and the unechoed sound of his sobbing spoke the smallness of his tomb.
Rain, at first gentle as the breath of angels, fell silently on the hills, wetting stone and leaf in preparation for the onslaught that would soon follow. Within an hour, the hills groaned from the striking rain. Had there been light - had anyone been watching - it would have shown the treacherous bogs of the watershed springing into new existence within minutes. Streams not seen all summer rushed down myriad channels of stone and moss, each one tumbling over ledges into anciently scoured pools and voicing loudly its unstoppable force; In such rain, the fell roared. Had there been light, it would still not have shown how most of that fearsome deluge simply disappeared, quietly, secretly, as it seeped and trickled and poured through the innumerable fractures in the hidden rock.
The fell's great roar was attenuated and modified by the depth of the cave and by the fallen rocks; Dai Genus heard no more than a faint hum, and not even that until he listened for it. It was the smell which first warned him of the new danger: the sudden onslaught of wet heathers, of sheep dung and stinking moss. That he could smell it, and could hear the sound which caused it, told him that the cave was not completely blocked; flood water would fill it in hours rather than days: he would drown long before he had the chance to die of his injuries.
The light that eventually and slowly indicated East was dismal. It failed to stop the rain. The thin clays and muds, the sometimes deeper peats, which coated the rock were sodden, waterlogged, seeping; they had taken their fill of the night's rain and as the new day's rain continued to press its demands, they could do nought but act as channels to the flow. Water trickled, slowly, steadily, into the cave's mouth, pooling deeply in the entrance. Far below, beyond the rocks, Dai Genus thought he felt a first drip from the cave's roof: water that had found the quickest route through the puzzle of crazy cracking in the mass of rock above his head; more would follow all too quickly.
"Come on, You!" a voice called, distant, very faint. Dai Genus could not believe that he had heard it; it was surely just a trick of his mind. The rocks behind his head shifted, tumbled, rolled across his legs. The air moved - more? - now; the small rock slide had given hope: he might just make a large enough gap and drag himself through. More importantly, it meant that his cry might be heard by whoever was out there - so he shouted, weakly at first, then with greater strength, greater purpose, more fear. The desperate yelling exhausted him and he stopped shouting. "You can do it," came the voice, louder than before: there was someone out there! Dai Genus tried to push himself up on his one good arm ... and felt running water.
The deep pool of rain water which had accumulated in the cave's entrance had been held back only by the debris of one summer. Dust, blown in by the swirling winds, gravel dropped from the roof, the roots of a few colonising plants, the rubbish from a thousand brief visits; it had been enough to dam the pool throughout the night but now it had given way at its weakest point - as all dams do, eventually. And with its weakest point gone, the dam soon crumbled and the pool emptied more than enough water to fill the bottom of the cave.
"Come on, ewe!" breathed Joachim, hooded against the incessant, pounding rain that caused the fell to roar like a Great Red Dragon in labour. "You can do it." And she did; with the heave of a last contraction, the untimely lamb slithered out, wrapped in its caul, to greet the watery dawn of its new life.
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This is one of the Tales of Joachim |
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Ink Amera |
(C) David 1/9/2007 |
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