as Luke and Josh doubled over with laughter, pointing at me and trying to breathe through their amusement.
“Alex,” Luke wheezed, “is that holy water? You all but walked on it to get out of there!”
Josh let out a choke of laughter at this comment, and staggered towards me, slipping on the glass-smooth rocks and ending in a tangle of limbs in the water.
“Something brushed against my leg,” I informed them with as much dignity as I could muster, as I lifted my chin and stalked off toward our backpacks.
“It’s getting late, let’s go guys,” I tossed over my shoulder.
The boys followed me, still giggling as we shrugged on clothes and packs ready to carry on hiking.
We retraced our steps out of the beautiful hollow, and started to climb the side of the valley to reach the plateau on top, which would take us to our first camping site – a cave the boys had heard of.
I was grateful when Luke and Josh’s playful banter was stunted by the steep climb. Finding nooks for the toes of my shoes and vegetation to assist in pulling me up the forty-five degree angle kept my head down and mind busy.
We stopped halfway up to catch our breath. The valley spread below us in varying shades of green and brown, the waterfall visible on our right, the stream on our left.
Something niggled at the edges of my mind, as we continued to climb, a thought as slippery as a fish.
It took me about five minutes to eventually catch it and when I did I stopped short, Josh crashing into me.
“What’s up, Ally Cat? You tired?” he asked playfully.
I was frozen, my mind racing, trying to explain what we’d all seen, and missed.
“Where does the water go?” I whispered, my eyes still glazed as I tried to make sense of it all.
“What?” asked Luke. He’d slithered down the steep path when he heard Josh’s exclamations at walking into me.
“Where does the water go?” I asked more insistently this time.
Both boys looked at me, and then at each other, their expressions puzzled.
“What do you mean?” Josh asked.
“The water from the pool, where does it go?” I was excited now trying to slot the pieces of the puzzle together. “Think about it. There is the waterfall, so it obviously flows from its source to the waterfall, then there is the river further downstream, but there’s nothing in between. Where does the water go between the pool and the river?”
Josh and Luke stared at me bug-eyed for a few moments before Josh turned, and half ran, half fell down the side of the valley.
Chapter 5
Waterfall
We arrived back at the pool in half the time it had taken to leave it, breathless and chattering excitedly as first one, then the other tried to make sense of the riddle.
Slowly scanning the dry boulder-strewn river bed for any hints as to where the water went once it entered the pool, the seemingly endless day was soon to disappoint as the sunlight faded rapidly into twilight.
I was staring into the now inky depths of the centre of the pool thinking about that strange silky something that had slid across my bare legs earlier. It had felt exactly like the sensation that always made my skin crawl during my nightmare, so it was with great trepidation that I overheard Luke and Josh talking about staying in the valley for the night.
“I really think we should keep going,” I interrupted them.
“Alex, it’s getting dark, and we don’t know this area well at all,” Luke replied.
“I thought you said lower Injisuthi cave was just around the corner?” I asked, fear making me uncharacteristically belligerent.
He nodded. “It’s about a five kilometre walk, and it’s really dangerous to keep going with the light fading like this. Even if we managed to get out of the valley without slipping, we’d have to spend the night on the exposed mountain above us. Even in summer it gets really chilly out there at night.”
There was no way I was going to convince the boys to leave the valley, so I helped them set the camp up. Once the fire was lit I began to feel a little better, although every audible sound above the roar of the waterfall still made me jump.
Dinner under any other circumstances would have left a lot to be desired. After a day of hiking, sun and scratches it was a feast!
Sipping warm sweet tea and munching biscuits Luke had had the foresight to scavenge, I breathed in the subtle wild scent of the bush at night, overlaid with the smell of the river, trying to relax.
Pale moonlight filtered through the trees turning the sand we were sitting on silvery white. The neverending rumbling of the waterfall and the tangy smell of woodsmoke prodded me towards sleep.
I half listened to Josh and Luke’s dissection of the latest rugby game, my mind skimming lazily over all we’d seen that day, and all the conversations I’d had with Luke and Josh before the trip began.
One particular question continued to niggle at me. If the fish-people did in fact exist, why were they so far from the sea and how had they got there? The boys probably didn’t have any of the answers for me, but I couldn’t resist steering the conversation towards them. A lull in the conversation provided me with the gap I needed.
“Josh, if they exist, what are they doing in the mountains?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I really don’t know, Alex. I just know that they have been here for a long time.”
“It’s a good question though, Al.” Luke engaged in the conversation meaningfully for the first time. “I mean, how would they have got here?”
“I guess they could have posed as humans and travelled with the early settlers,” Josh mused.
The conversation slipped from the fish-people to some of the stories Josh’s tribe had of the early settlers, leaving me no choice but to drop the subject. The boys didn’t seem to have any other nuggets of information for me anyway.
As the moon rose I snuggled into the rustling canvas of my sleeping bag, the boys’ conversation creating a melodic sing-song as their voices dipped and rose to the rhythm of the pounding waterfall as I drifted to sleep.
My dream that night was vividly clear. Lifelike in detail, but dreamlike in impossibility.
It started with the trees, each one calling my name in eerie, wheezy whispers, as if their ancient voices had been clogged with the spider webs of time. Against my will, I moved towards them, searching in the hazy green of the pre-dawn light.
Then beneath my feet was an icy liquid that sent delicious tingles up my legs as I walked. I looked down to see that I was walking on the surface of the turquoise pool. I remember being childishly delighted with this discovery, skipping and kicking the water, watching the spray glisten and swirl around me in crystallised slow motion.
I was so busy playing that it took me a while to notice the shapes beneath the surface of the water. At first they looked like brightly coloured fish. Their colours ranging through rainbow hues glinted in the bright sunshine. I reached towards them, but as I did so, they morphed into fish-people, grabbing my outstretched arms and pulling me down into the water.
Fear cold and metallic filled my mouth. My body wouldn’t move, and while inside I was screaming, my lips refused to part to let the sound out.
They smiled, beautiful angelic smiles as the water around them turned from clear turquoise blue to blood red as they pulled me beneath the surface.
Chapter 6