My surroundings didn’t help soothe me. I was in the open, with those ancient trees leaning over me. The early morning light filtered through a confetti of leaves. Only when I saw Luke and Josh still scrunched into their sleeping bags, mops of hair the only resemblance to humanity in their cocoon-like state, did I begin to remember where I was.
In the morning light the menace of the dream dissipated slightly. The valley was breathtakingly beautiful.
Despite the freshness of the early morning, I decided to take a “shower” under the waterfall. Slipping on moss-encased rocks, I wobbled my way around the pool to the waterfall. The upward spray from the falling water chilled my skin as I steeled myself for the shock, and stepped into the sheet of water. The icy needles of the water completely took my breath away as I stumbled backwards, turning instinctively away from the bladed water.
Gasping and blinking I found myself behind the waterfall. The rock curved away from me, smooth, damp and mottled with moss. Birds darted behind the protective screen of water to their nests higher up the cliff face.
All of these details registered only as side information as I gaped at a dark slash in the rock framed by ferns. It was positioned so that unless you approached it from exactly the right angle, it would have been invisible, blending perfectly into the rock face.
I inched my way toward the cave, curiosity winning over the instinctive fear that gripped me. From the opening, the water-filtered light only reached about half a metre into the cave, the floor of which was dark and damp.
A strange acidic musty smell seeped from the cave, and I shivered, fear and curiosity playing an uncomfortable tug of war as I considered going in alone.
Fear won.
Inching around the waterfall, I splashed my way back through the shallows to our camping site, dressing quickly and rekindling the fire for coffee as I decided how to tell the boys of my find. They woke slowly, stretching, scratching and yawning, finally dressed and eating breakfast after what felt like an age.
“I was thinking we should go and explore the cave behind the waterfall after breakfast,” I suggested, watching their confusion with smug satisfaction.
“Er… what cave, Alex?” Luke eventually asked.
“The hidden cave behind the waterfall,” I repeated.
“You mean the hollow the cliff makes?” Josh enquired.
I shook my head, watching their confusion over the rim of my cup.
“I could show you?” I suggested, grinning at them.
The flip side of the waterfall was cool and damp, the light diffusing into dappled patterns on the cliff face.
Picking our way over the slippery rocks, I led them to the wall of ferns that hid the opening to the cave. Luke and Josh stood gaping at the four -metre high opening before rushing back to the camp site to get the equipment we’d need to explore it.
Luke took the first step into the musty darkness, the morning light quickly becoming a faint flicker as we moved across the pebble-littered floor.
A few paces in Josh stopped our procession and suggested we use our torches to try to gauge the cave’s dimensions. Three beams of light bounced around the walls revealing a large circular front section, which stretched out into darkness away from the entrance, our torch light fading as it failed to reflect off any solid surface.
Josh had turned his beam to the walls of the cave a few metres to our right and started walking towards the walls of the cave.
“What is it, Josh?” I asked, picking my way forwards to follow him.
“There’s something on the rock over there.”
On the wall of the cave, distinct reddish-brown markings could just be made out.
“They’re paintings,” he exclaimed excitedly, his beam sweeping over the wall.
Stick insect-like rock paintings covered the wall in what, at first, appeared to be random chaos. We’d all studied Koi San paintings as part of the compulsory syllabus at school, and there could be no mistaking the distinct spidery scrawl of these drawings.
“There’s a story here,” murmured Luke, his head cocked to one side as he squinted at the wall. “All of these people are running in one direction.”
I looked at the paintings again, the haphazard depiction falling into place as I worked out which bit of them was the front, and which the back.
“They don’t have any weapons on them either and there are lots of children,” murmured Josh.
My heart dropped as I focused on the smaller more delicately drawn sketches, some of them being carried by the adults.
“The question is, what are they running from?” I whispered. Josh and Luke swept their torches in the opposite direction to the running crowd.
“Over there!” Josh’s excited voice bounced around the cave as his beam of light picked up more red-brown marks on the other side of the cave.
“That’s a really strange drawing,” Luke mused as we made our way across to it.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, all the history we’ve learnt about these people says that they never took women and children with them into dangerous situations, they always stayed at home to keep them safe,” Luke replied.
“They had no choice.” Josh’s voice was strained as Luke and I joined him on the other side of the cave.
“What do you –”
Luke’s question was cut short by the violence depicted on this wall. Stick figures lay strewn in bloody abandon, arrows and spears protruding at odd unnatural angles. I stood agape, the agony and tenderness of the drawings causing tears to well in my eyes as each figure’s death told a separate story.
There was no repetition in this painting. Each figure had been individually painted, as if the painter or painters had wanted it recorded that these people were loved, and their stories would not be forgotten.
I wrapped my arms around my body and shuddered.
Josh swept his torch further down the wall as he led us slowly toward the beginning of the painted nightmare.
Hundreds and hundreds of darker brown, and bigger, figures brandishing weapons filled every available space. They were similar in posture, size and shape. We stood in silent awe, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the army depicted for us.
“It must be a picture of the Great Battle,” Josh whispered in the dark.
“The one you told us about when we were fishing?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Then that makes this place the scene of their mysterious disappearance?” Excitement and apprehension frothed in conflicting measures as my imagination carried me on a tidal wave of cave-painted images.
“Not necessarily.” Luke, ever practical, squashed the hope of a great discovery. It irritated me that he couldn’t just dream with Josh and me for a few moments, that he had to immediately return to logical explanations – where was the fun in that?
“It might be the scene of any battle,” Luke continued. “There’s no reference to anyone disappearing or of the people being turned into mythical creatures.”
“Oh come on, Luke,” Josh exclaimed. “Look at this battle scene and the survivors running away!”
“Exactly, the survivors ran away,” Luke argued, “they didn’t jump into pools of water and start swimming about, or disappear into thin air.”
Josh was shaking his head, taking a breath to continue arguing.
“We didn’t carry on looking farther down that side of the cave,” I cut in, trying to diffuse the tension, and pointing my torch