Blood Wedding

“Fine. This place is worse than hell, then. Are you going to get us out of it or not? I’d just as soon not spend any more time here than we have to.”

Fargo sat up. His head didn’t hurt any more than it had before. It didn’t hurt any less, either.

He took his hands off his head and touched the ground. Molly had been right. It was more like coarse sand than rock, quite different from the floor of the cavern above them. He stood up. It took him a second or two to get his balance, and even then he felt a little bit unsteady.

“Does the ground slope?” he asked. “Or is it just me?”

“It slopes, all right,” Molly said. “I don’t know what that means, though. We’d better be more careful from here on out. The next fall might be a long one. There are a lot of caves down south of here, and some of them are supposed to have bottomless holes in them.”

“People say that about caves,” Fargo told her. “I don’t much believe it. How could there be a hole without a bottom?”

“Maybe there’s not, but I don’t want to be the one to find out if those stories are right or wrong.”

“We’ll be careful,” Fargo said.

He tried to decide whether to follow the wall or the slope of the ground. While he was thinking, he sniffed the air.

“Do you smell that?” he asked.

“I don’t smell anything. Is there a skunk in here? We aren’t around those bats, are we?”

“There aren’t any bats here. I smell water. Where are you?”

“Right over here. And I don’t smell any water.”

“Stay right where you are and keep talking. I’m coming over to you.”

Molly kept talking, mostly about bats, while Fargo made his way over to her. He took her hand and said, “Now, let’s go down this little slope. Slowly.”

“I hope you don’t think I’m about to make any fast moves. I might be big, but I’m not crazy.”

“Nobody think you’re crazy. Come on.”

Fargo tugged at her hand and shuffled his boots across the grainy floor, moving carefully down the slope, which went on for yard after yard. Finally Fargo stopped.

“Can you hear that?” he asked.

The slightest of noises broke the silence that hovered all around them. It was the trickle of water.

“You were right, Fargo,” Molly said. “There’s water here.”

“And I can use some of it.”

He pulled her hand again, and they went on toward the sound. After a few steps, Fargo’s boots sloshed in water. Fargo let go of Molly’s hand and knelt down, feeling around him. There was a shallow rivulet not more than two or three inches deep running through the sand. Cold water stung the cuts on his hands.

“There must be a spring down here,” he said, scooping water up into his hands.

“I can’t see what you’re doing, Fargo,” Molly said. “Are you going to drink any of that water? It might be poison.”

“And it might not. I don’t see how it could be, and I’m too thirsty not to give it a try. If I die, you can pass it up.”

“To hell with that. I’m as thirsty as you are.”

Fargo felt Molly kneel down beside him as he brought the water to his lips. It was cold and tasted as sweet as any water he’d ever drunk.

When he’d drunk his fill, he said, “Now, let’s get out of here.”

“How are we going to get out?” Molly said. “I don’t see any doors opening anywhere around here.”

“This water has to go somewhere,” Fargo told her. “We’ll follow it.”

“What if it just goes into a hole in the ground? What if it flows into some big underground lake? What if it just disappears under a wall?”

Fargo knew that any of those things was possible. But he said, “I think it must go out of here. Maybe it even goes to the river.”

“It’s just a trickle. I’m not even sure you can tell which way it’s moving.”

Fargo put his hand in the water and waited. It flowed slowly but definitely to his right.

“I can tell,” he said. He took Molly’s hand and stood up, bringing her along with him. “We’re going this way.”

It wasn’t easy to walk in a straight line in the total darkness. In fact, it would have been impossible if Fargo hadn’t kept right to the edge of the water, splashing his boot in it to be sure he didn’t stray.

They walked for a while and then had another drink and rested. Fargo could tell that Molly was tiring, but he was determined not to rest for long. He got back to his feet. He wanted to get out of the cave, if that was possible, and the sooner, the better. He gave Molly a tug, and they started walking again.

After they had been moving along for quite a while, Molly said, “Now I smell something. It stinks.”

Fargo smelled it, too, and he knew what it had to be.

“Bat shit,” he said.

“Bats? Oh, my sweet Jesus.”

“You should be glad we’re getting close to them,” Fargo said.

“They’ll get all over us. They’ll tangle in my hair. Why should I be glad?”

“Because the bats will have a way to get outside. If they can get out, we can get out.”

Molly thought that over for a minute. “I never thought I’d be glad to smell bat shit, but I guess I am.”

And then they walked head-on into a wall of rock.

15

They weren’t walking fast, so they weren’t hurt, though Fargo’s nose was a little flatter than it had been.