Chapter Twenty
In the morning, I watched her sleep. Her face in repose was beautiful and noble. With dark lashes, aquiline nose, soft lips and cheekbones to die for. Tawny skin the color of apricots but paler now.
Her body was long lines and lean; she was taller than me. The arch of her ribs as finely made as a thoroughbred racehorse, her breasts just large enough for my hands to cup. Her waist was tiny, her hips the hips of a runner with long, muscled legs and high insteps. She did not paint her toenails.
I was in wonder. I had masturbated in the privacy of my bathroom but I had been a virgin when I had met her. At least, so my programmed memories had inferred. Yet, I had not had ‘the talk’. I mean, I knew how it worked and all, but I had no idea it was like that.
“Could you move over?” She asked with a grunt. “You’re squashing me.” I blushed and she stared at me in confusion. “What? What did I say?”
“You…you –,” I stammered. “I –.”
“Hey. You saved my life and all, Lakan. It’s just sex. I don’t love you or anything,” she snorted. “Now, get up so I can go pee.”
I moved and yiked as all my hurts took that moment to remind me that they were still there.
“What’s wrong?” She asked sharply, gently rolling out from under me.
“I broke some ribs,” I muttered. “And my ankle.”
“Crap.” She managed to extricate herself from the hole and stood over me. The view took my mind off my own pain. “How the hell did you get down there with me?”
“Desperation. I slid in on my belly.” She could see the shallow scratches and abrasions on my stomach, knees and hands.
“Can you raise your arms?"
I did and although it pulled on my ribs, I held back my groans as she helped me out of the grave. Her eyes roamed up and down my naked body as I knelt on the edge. She turned me on my butt and slid me over to the remains of my fire before she jumped back into the hole to retrieve our clothing.
Once dressed, I felt less vulnerable but agonized over her previous statement. Worried about it more than the aches in my body. Her words had pierced something in my chest.
“You and Darren?” I asked painfully as her fingers probed my swollen feet.
“We’re fuck buddies,” she said briefly. My eyes widened in shock. “What? You’ve never heard of it before?” Her eyes rounded in sudden comprehension. “Oh my God! Were you a virgin? I didn’t know!”
She pulled my foot. I didn’t have time to scream before I passed out. It was only for seconds, when I opened them again, I was flat on my back and she was wrapping both ankles with a torn T-shirt. “One is broken, the other’s just a bad sprain. Your ribs – they might be cracked but I’m not going to mess with them. I could puncture your lungs. Better to leave them alone if your breathing is fine. Is it?”
“Is what?” I asked dazedly.
“Your breathing.”
“I guess. I’m doing it, right?”
“Look, you’re not going to get all goofy and stuff because we did it?”
“Rachel –,” I said softly.
“Never mind, Lakan. Look, it was just a way to thank you, okay? No strings attached. It doesn’t mean anything.” She walked off looking angry.
“It means something to me,” I whispered. She came back minutes later, saying that she was cold and cuddled next to me, murmuring that I felt like a furnace. After a few more minutes, she repeated it, touching my back.
“Lakan, your body temperature is higher than normal - are you running a fever? You’re hot, burning up in fact.”
I nodded. “I can regulate my temperature,” I said slowly. “That’s how my clothes dried on me and yours didn’t.”
She handed me her jacket which was still a little damp. “Can you dry this?” I hugged it to my chest and steam pooled off the damp denim. In seconds, it was dry although still wrinkled. She giggled. “You’re almost as good as an iron. How do you feel? Hot?”
I assessed my aches and pains and wasn’t surprised to see that the minor scrapes and abrasions were gone or that my ankles merely sore as if I’d only strained them. My ribs didn’t hurt at all and I wasn’t any warmer than normal.
“We have to climb out of here,” I said. “Unless you know of another way out of here that doesn’t involve swimming.”
“This sinkhole wasn’t part of the cave system our people explored and mapped. I haven’t a clue where we are or where we’ll come out.” She stared up at the bright blue sky without a hint of clouds. Judging from the angle of the sun coming through the opening, I guessed it was about noon. My stomach grumbled reminding me that my last meal had been too long ago.
“Too bad I can’t fly,” I muttered walking over to a patch of pear. Carefully, I popped off several leaves without disturbing either the large thorns or the small hairs that caused painful itching. Laid them in the coals and burned them clean.
The skins roasted and broke apart exposing the cooked meat inside. Rachel and I ate just enough to quiet the craving in our bellies - too much pear would give us cramps and diarrhea. Not a good thing in an environment that was hot and dry.
The sugar hit me like a shot of caffeine. I could feel it zoom through my bloodstream and I wanted to use that energy to finish repairing my wounds. But, I held off knowing that I needed to keep it to climb out of here.
Rachel had coaxed the fire back to life and made a torch out of a large branch of yellow lechugilla. With it, she explored the floor of the sinkhole. I studied the sides and found that my vision was just as sharp in the available light as if the place was lit up by Klieg lights.
Walking over to the south side of the walls away from the underground river, I thought I could make it part of the way up, almost to the rim. It was the rim that defied my climbing knowledge, it hung under like the inverted lip of a bowl - meaning I would have to hang from my fingertips and flip my legs backward over my body, head and hands to land on what I hoped would be flat ground. For all I knew, it could be the sides of a cliff or a mountain. There was no way I could carry Rachel out without ropes, pitons or a harness.
Rather than call her over, I let her explore on her own guessing that there was no other way out. I flexed my hands, shoulders, and legs, rubbed my palms through the sandy soil roughing them and thought how much easier this would be if I had sucker pads on my fingertips.
The route I picked out started with a large crack that had filled in over the years with fallen debris. I climbed over dead trees and branches, boulders and gravel, disturbing the bones of burros and deer.
It was easy climbing until the crack narrowed and became nearly vertical. Here, I had to ascend using the chimney technique, i.e. my back and feet holding me in like a cork. This required some great physical effort and my energy was quickly depleted before I’d reached the halfway mark.
It was then that I noticed how my fingertips stuck to the rock surface. On closer inspection, I could see fine depressions and pads where my fingerprints had been. I kicked off my shrunken tennis shoes and found the same sticky pads on my feet.
“Huh,” I said with a grin. “Spiderman has nothing on me.” With renewed enthusiasm, I continued climbing. Before I knew it, I was on the edge of the lip and my newly adaptive hands and feet carried me over with little effort.
Once on the outside of the rim, I stood up and looked around. Orange-tinted rose mountains and cliffs climbed and fell around me. Below me lay what looked like crumpled paper bags covered with the white icing of snow where wispy yellow grass poked their stem-heads through the blanket of white. Juniper trees dotted the landscape like green pimples on an acned surface. Desolate wasn’t the word to describe this landscape. Moonscape fits it better. I could see for miles and yet, I saw nothing that would help us. I still had no clue where we were or even what state we were in.
“Rachel?” I called down and leaned over the edge of the rim to see her standing in the center nearly 150 feet below. She looked frightened.
“How did you get up there?” she asked.
“You ever read Spiderman comics?” I returned grinning.
“No. How are you going to get me up there?”
I looked around. No coil of rope fell out of the sky at my feet, no ladders lying around and I couldn’t run down to the local Home Depot for supplies. I climbed down the mountain ridge to stand on the rocks at the base and spent the next hour searching for another entrance into the sinkhole. There wasn’t one.
By the time I had returned to Rachel, she had wedged herself into the chimney nearly to the same spot where I’d been stuck. Her voice was hoarse from calling me, she was nearly in tears and her limbs were trembling from exertion.
I climbed down quickly, maneuvered under her and held her against me using my body as a ledge upon which she could rest.
“You okay?” I asked in genuine concern.
“I thought you’d left me,” she gasped.
“Rachel, I would never abandon you,” I promised. “Can you climb on my back and hold on?”
“Lakan, you can’t carry me up, too! Your ribs!” she protested.
“Trust me,” I said softly and she nodded once. Climbing onto my shoulders took the last of her strength. I used the torn strips from my ankles to tie her wrists in front at my neck and bind her waist to mine.
Like a new parachutist bound to his instructor, I climbed back up to the rim. It wasn’t easy. Every muscle screamed for release and my tissues demanded more fuel and less strain. With gasping breaths and trembling arms, I barely made it over the top and collapsed in a jumble of limbs. Hers and mine. There was a definite limit to what my body could take.
The sky darkened. I thought I felt soft lips on my neck before my face hit the rocks.