Morrigan kept her voice light and kidding, but she knew that there was a very real part of her that was constantly waiting for her friends to someday realize that she just didn’t fit in—no matter how good her acting abilities. Then they’d walk away and leave her alone with the voices in the wind and her unanswered questions.
“Morgie, baby, we like your weirdness!” Gena cried and flung an arm around her.
“That’s right. Without your weirdness we wouldn’t be the Core Four,” Jaime said.
“Which is why we’re here, following you into a batty cave when we should be shopping,” Lori said.
“Okay, enough with the bats,” Gena said.
A bell rang, reminding Morrigan of something that ranchers probably used a zillion years ago to call cowboys in to dinner.
“Three o’clock tour through the cave is leaving in two minutes!” a male voice bellowed over a scratchy loudspeaker system.
The girls exploded into activity as they shoved the leftovers in the picnic basket Mama Parker had packed for them and dumped the plastic plates, et cetera, in a nearby trash can. Morrigan grabbed the basket and hurried to put it in the back of Old Red, her beat-up Ford Escort station wagon. As an afterthought, she grabbed the little emergency flashlight G-pa made sure she kept with the first-aid kit, flares and blanket in the rear of her well-used car. She shoved it into her purse and jogged to catch up with the line that was already beginning to make its way around the gift shop and picnic area down some old rock stairs that would lead to the entrance of the main cave.
Morrigan felt a tremor of anticipation. This time she wasn’t just going camping in a forest, or hiking in some woodsy hills. This time she was actually going into the earth. She could feel the draw of it as surely as she could feel the change in temperature of the air around her.
Come… The word echoed in her ears.
“Morgie! Come on—over here.”
Morrigan realized she had been standing alone at the bottom of the stairs, gazing at the surprisingly ordinary-looking slash in the earth that was the entrance to the cave. She blinked and saw Gena waving at her from the shadows just inside the cave where she stood with Lori and Jaime, and the rest of the small group they’d joined. Morrigan shook herself and hurried to her friends.
Come…
The word enveloped her, as did the cool darkness of the cave. August in Oklahoma was always hot and miserable, and Morrigan instantly breathed easier, adjusting quickly to the more than thirty-degree difference. She drew another deep breath as she reached her friends and only half listened as the guide launched into a speech about the history of the cave.
It smelled incredible! Earth…rich, sweet and rocky. The scent filled her senses and made her feel excited and relaxed at the same time.
This is where you belong.
The words drifted through her mind and for once Morrigan didn’t run them through a sieve of good-thought/bad-thought where she would dissect it and struggle with it and try to figure out if it was something she should ignore or not. This time the truth in the words was too powerful for such laceration.
This is where you belong.
Unable to stop herself, she moved through the little group so that she could be the first one behind the guide to enter the bowels of the cave. The first to smell and touch and see everything. Morrigan’s soul seemed to quiver in excitement and she ignored the sounds of her friends trying to catch up with her.
“Okay, if we’re all ready, then let’s move forward as a group,” the guide was saying. “Please remember that the lights are on a timer system, so you’ll need to stay fairly close to me and together.”
How annoying! Like she wanted to be stuck with the herd? She was dying to explore this amazing place on her own. Irritated, Morrigan pulled her eyes from staring at the recesses of the cave, meaning to shoot the pain-in-the-ass guide a dirty look. Instead she felt her heart lurch with a little stutter-beat.
The guy was f-ing drop-dead gorgeous. And he was looking right at her like he could read her mind.
3
“Ready?” The guide spoke right to her, his brilliant blue eyes meeting her gaze. Morrigan nodded her head. “Excellent,” he said. “Oh, I forgot to formally introduce myself. My name is Kyle, and I will be your guide today.” Even though he seemed to be speaking just to Morrigan, several people in the group laughed and called, “Hello, Kyle,” while he turned his back to them and used a key to unlock a little metal box and flip a series of switches. Instantly, the cavern was bathed in white lights.
A surge of annoyance made Morrigan forget about the hot guide. The lighting was wrong. It was too harsh—too white—too impersonal. The inside of the earth should be illuminated with softness. With glowing rocks or sweetly licking flame…
“Jeesh, Morgie, quit staring and come on!” Lori grabbed her arm and pulled as she jostled past her.
Morrigan shrugged off Lori’s arm and moved ahead until she was at the front of the group again. The guide stopped not far inside the cave. They’d come to a room that was huge, littered on either side of the iron-railed trail with enormous sections of large, flat rock. Before the guide began to speak, Morrigan knew. “This is the deepest part of the cave.”
“You’re absolutely right!” Kyle smiled at her. Completely taking Morrigan off guard, she smiled nervously back at him. Until then she’d had no idea she’d spoken aloud the thought that had been whispered into her mind. Then she was further surprised to see Mr. Gorgeous Guide blush, like her smile had disarmed him, and turn hastily back to address the rest of the group. “As the young lady said, we are now at the deepest part of the cavern. From floor to ceiling it measures fifty feet, which puts us at about eighty feet under the surface.”
Young lady? Morrigan thought. He doesn’t look much older than me.
Beside her, Lori hugged herself and whispered, “It’s too creepy for words thinking about being eighty feet under the ground. God, talk about a deep grave.”
“No, it’s not like that at all,” Morrigan responded automatically, eyes scanning the magical place. “It’s not creepy. It’s beautiful and perfectly safe.”
Safe? Why had she said that?
Lori turned her attention to Kyle the Hot Guide. “Hey, Kyle. My friend says the cave is perfectly safe. What do you say?”
“Well, it’s not one hundred percent safe.” All the people in the group, except for Morrigan, shifted restlessly at this, so he added hastily, “Oh, you’re safe enough with me today. But the truth is that those huge slabs of gypsum that litter the floor around the entrance, and those there and there—” he pointed to giant clumps of rock off the side of the trail “—they all fell from the ceiling of the cave. The last time we had rock break loose was just this past December. Thankfully, the cave was closed for Christmas.”
“How do you know none of it will fall on us today?” Lori asked.
“We have monitors checking the ceiling daily. If anything is loose, we close that area of the cave. Nothing’s been loose since December.”
One of the middle-aged men in the group, the one with the big gut, snorted. “You’re, what, all of eighteen? Shouldn’t we check with someone else, like your boss, before we go any farther?”
Morrigan thought Kyle would blush and fidget, but was impressed when he turned a steady gaze on the old guy. “Sir, I am the boss, or rather the most senior member of the team here. I’ve been employed at the park for six years. Currently, I’m finishing up the fieldwork for my master’s in geology. Don’t worry, you’re as safe as you can possibly be.”
“Oh, well then…” The fat