It was just before noon when Caroline and Phillip found the forest ending, a relatively short field of dirt and dying plants stretching before them before the elevation rose up into the mountains. Knowing there would be little opportunity for such things once they entered the caves, Caroline had taken a brief detour and found a fresh spring in one of the cleaner sections of the forest. After she and Phillip had drunk their fills, they managed to find a small grove of edible plants and mushrooms. It wasn’t much for Caroline, but the grove was large enough that she managed to take in enough mouthfuls to last her for at least a while longer.
“Luke is… in there somewhere?” asked Phillip uneasily as he and his sister stared into the dark mountain canyons before them, stretching up so high that Caroline almost forgot how large she was in comparison until the little boy on her shoulder spoke up. She nodded.
“I believe so, Phillip. And it’s our job to find him and take him home safely.”
“Do you think he’s okay?”
“I’m… I’m quite certain he is, yes, but we must find him soon, nevertheless…” said Caroline as confidently as she could, not wanting to appear upset before her little sibling. “We must be courageous, Phillip, just like the people in the stories.”
“I’LL keep us safe! I know ALL about monsters and everything!” said Phillip, leaning forward a little and tugging at his sister’s golden locks in excitement. Caroline giggled and began trudging across the field, her feet being forced to once again meet the hard, uneven ground. In about fifty paces, Caroline had crossed the field and stepped onto a plateau where the rock turned smoky gray color. As she placed her foot on it for the first time, her toes wiggling against it, she could instantly feel the icy sensation of the rock rushing up through her, and it shocked her. She leaned down to make sure she wasn’t just imagining it, and touched her fingertip against the freezing cold rock. Caroline had trouble imagining what could cause such a phenomenon, but there wasn’t time to ponder such things. She had a job to do. Bravely taking several more steps, Caroline and Phillip set off through a shadowy, black chasm in search of the cave entrance.
Despite the sunlight, the path through the twisting canyons and rock formations of the mountain range entrance was extremely dark, feeling more like late evening rather than midmorning to Caroline. After walking for less than an hour through the endless dark canyon passageways, Caroline stopped in her tracks as the ground went up a sharp incline. After several feet up, the black wall opened into a wide, circular opening leading into absolute pitch blackness. The entrance to the Black Mountain Caves, she was sure of it. There had been no other openings along the path, nor any forks in the road. The opening was surprisingly large, similarly to how Caroline had imagined it in her dream. It looked like it could easily fit her through it in a crawling position, which she was grateful for. Unfortunately, that didn’t save her from the fact that it was going to get very claustrophobic very quickly inside the dank tunnels once she and Phillip had traveled far enough. For once, she was grateful for the oddly and unnaturally stone-cold touch of the mountains; it would help counteract the muggy conditions in the cave’s deepest regions. Caroline stepped up the pebble-laden path, crushing solidified mud formations beneath her blistered toes, and crouched next to the opening, placing a hand just above the top rim to peer inside.
“T-That’s the CAVE?” gasped Phillip.
“Yes.”
“It’s… It’s really dark, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Very dark.”
“Do you know if there’s another side?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she answered, feeling it was best to be honest with him up front.
“Oh…”
“Courage, Phillip. Courage.”
“Right…” he gulped, burying his face in his sister’s hair and shivering. Caroline went into a full crouching position, very near to the ground, but placed a hand under her shoulder to catch her brother as he slid off of it. Without a word, she pinched him around the waist with her thumb and pointer finger and raised him back up and allowed him to roll gently off of her fingers and onto her right shoulder blade, where he could sit on the now-horizontal surface of her back. Not even struggling, Phillip continued hugging at her hair and watched as Caroline entered the darkness of the cave, swallowed almost instantly into the shadows.
The crawl through the tight quarters of the tunnel began to wear thin on Caroline’s mind very quickly. Her hair and back had become very damp from the dripping ice water covering the ceilings, as had Phillip just from where he happened to be lying. The taut fabric of the drapes wrapped around Caroline’s forearms, which she used to guide herself forward, tore after crawling for no more than half an hour, leaving Caroline’s bare forearms to be scratched, battered, and half frozen by the ground. Her legs and feet were suffering a similar fate, except in much less time because of the fact that her drapes were so tight now, they didn’t even drop below her knee. Caroline felt her massive big toes stubbed repeatedly, and she cringed at first, but after a while, she found a rhythm to stay in to ensure she just kept moving and ignored this. With the deep sense of unknown and claustrophobia setting in, not even Caroline’s deep and burning desire to save Luke would be enough to convince her mind to keep trudging onward eventually. She felt like she was under the ice in a frozen pond with her oxygen slowly depleting, the cool mist of her breath visible in the air if not for the darkness. The illumination of the cave entrance had disappeared a ways back, and Caroline was determined to not even turn around to check her progress. After moving forward steadily, her breathing becoming more labored, Caroline found some tighter turns in the tunnel, and had to use some clever maneuvering to get through.
Luckily for her, though, Caroline found that these turns contained the slightest of openings in the ceiling that allowed rays of light to come in from the outside world. To Caroline, they weren’t much larger than a pinhead and provided no real guidance through the darkness, but they were still comforting, as they were yet another realistic confirmation that her visions in her terrible nightmare were at least accurate representations of the cave tunnels. Caroline briefly wondered how she had been able to recall this information, but pushed it from her mind in favor of moving onward. With each motion forward, Caroline was forced to stretch her fingers out into the blackness, feeling for a possible turn or roadblock to ensure she didn’t crash into anything. With each of these stretches and with each successive step further into the gullet of the Black Mountain Caves, Caroline felt as if her fingers were going to be bitten off by the pitch darkness itself, a beast similar to the nameless one she had fought in the palace. But there was nothing she could do to stop this particular foe. No amount of application of her gargantuan strength would be able to prevent something from happening to her in this cave, or her brother, or perhaps even Luke.
Luke. Was he alive? Caroline had been trying her best to avoid this question, but she had to face it now, with no other objective in her mind other than to breath, and keep crawling forward in the darkness. Could he be alive? It was technically possible, Caroline noted. The icy confines of the cave held lots of water. It wasn’t salt water; so much of it had dripped down from the ceiling that it had covered Caroline’s face, and several had dripped through her lips and into her dry throat. It tasted sweet. Caroline had a feeling that water from either a clean river or a spring flowed just over the cave, allowing these droplets to fill the halls through the small openings. So, technically, she said to herself with a confident head shake, he could have drunk the water and stayed alive. There was no food to be found in the tunnels, but perhaps he had some on his person from the trip. Perhaps he had taken traveling clothes when they had set out that morning for the long trip, and was able to use them as a blanket to shield himself from the cold. Yes, thought Caroline. Luke is a very intelligent young man. If he was capable of doing it himself, all of this would have occurred to him and he would surely be doing all he could to stay alive in the hope of recovery or rescue. If he was capable. If he wasn’t dead. Caroline blinked, and couldn’t even tell her tears from the icy water trickling down her face from the drippy ceiling.
Another thought occurred to Caroline as she continued moving on, her fingers shaking almost uncontrollably as she reached forth again into the unknown. She had no idea how long the caves were, just as in her dream. For all she knew, Luke’s weak and possibly even dead body was lying just a few feet away from her. Or perhaps he was a mile into the cave. Perhaps ten miles. Caroline had no idea how deep the caves went, and from the look of the depth of the Black Mountains themselves, it could have been almost anything. It could take days of crawling, unable to stretch herself out and get a truly fresh breath of air, before finding Luke. She and her brother would have no food to eat, nor a place to actually fall asleep. Caroline had a feeling that she might be get some sleep if her body was drained enough of energy, despite the chilling touch of the rock, the soggy array of puddles, and the uneven and rough terrain. She could make it work, if needed. Luke would be found.
The thought of sleep, though, quickly brought around another thought, and instantly made her forget the hope she had just convinced herself of. Sleep. Sleep meant nighttime. And the next nighttime could very well find Caroline, at her current rate of growth, at a size so massive she wouldn’t be able to get out of the caves at all, even if Luke was found. Her body would become stuck against the rock. Caroline couldn’t even picture the unimaginable pain and fear. If she was unable to get out, growing and growing, she would simply get so large that the cave couldn’t hold her, and her own body would be essentially chewed up by the cruel, damp walls of the cave. She shuddered even more than she already was from the cold and sadness, resolving to not think on this any longer. She tried to move at an even faster clip despite the protesting of her tired limbs.
Occasionally, Caroline stopped for the briefest moment to raise a hand to her shoulder blade and feel it to ensure Phillip hadn’t fallen off. This wasn’t necessary most of the time, as she could feel her damp hair being tugged around, as well as his shivering body vibrating lightly against her back. After having crawled for what felt like over an hour, Caroline made her pit stop to ensure Phillip was still there. He was still there, but so violent was his shaking, that she couldn’t bear to leave him like that before continuing on. Wherever Luke was, she knew that he would insist upon helping the ailing Phillip first. Leaning her body against one wall and laying herself out flat, her legs stretched out completely for a rest, Caroline took hold of her shoulder and walked her fingers along her shoulders blades to find her brother, where he was resting just below her still-horizontal back.
Using the utmost care, Caroline wrapped her wet fingers around her brother’s shivering form, feeling great pain in her heart for how cooperatively he had put up with this terrifying on-all-fours trek through the caves to find a young man that had a very high probability of not even being alive to save. She was shocked by how cold he felt, and instantly began squeezing at his body against her damp palm to try and warm him up. Gripping him in a firm embrace in her powerful digits, Caroline pulled Phillip up to her face where they could hear each other better.
“Phillip?” she asked. “Phillip?” She knew he was conscious, as he had still been sitting up straight when she plucked him from her back.
“Y-Y-Yes?” he asked as naturally as possible, the stutter coming not from fear or nervousness but his voice wavering in the cold.
“Oh, Phillip…” she sighed, fearful for his wellbeing in the current conditions. “Are you… cold?”
“Y-Yes…”
“How do you feel?”
“I… I d-d-don’t know, C-Caroline. I feel very s-s-stiff…” he said, and Caroline had a feeling he had gone numb in most of his body from the cold.
“You… You poor thing. I’m so sorry about all of this.” She placed her other hand over his body in her cupped palm, rubbing her palms together with him sandwiched in between to create some friction and hopefully warm him up. She wrapped her fingers around him, applying just enough pressure to keep him as warm as possible without inflicting pain or harm. Caroline remembered when she had first started growing, feeling apprehension about treatment of her brother when he was taller than her knee. Now, he was small enough for her to cup into her soft palms, but she felt an odd calm as she worked to help her brother’s temperature rise. She felt almost as if she were working in the poor houses again, applying blankets to the cold and sick. Caroline felt no different now,though, than she had when trying to save a person of normal size. Even Phillip’s miniscule form and the potential to harm him didn’t scare her any longer. He trusted her, and she actually trusted herself now. Caroline felt herself almost as a supernatural force of the forests, swooping in, scooping up a dying child in her massive but practiced hands, and then saving him with the remaining reserves of warmth she had left in her body to give, imparting energy into him. “Please feel better, Phillip. Please… oh, you… you…” she cooed in an almost sing-song voice. “You… you little…” she mumbled, not knowing exactly what she meant. All she could use to explain it was her unearthly desire she had begun experiencing only moments ago just from picking up Phillip in the dark. She had to help the small life form that was clasped so trustingly between her fingers, this tiny, tiny boy that loved her so much because she was his protector. She couldn’t fail him in this moment of need.
“Hey. I’m not t-t-that little… not anymore. I’m g-g-growing up,” he said, with a weak little laugh that turned into a cough. Caroline couldn’t help but give a single chortle of relief and a deep sigh at these words. He didn’t sound altogether better, but already her brother was poking fun at her words, meaning he was at least improving.
“Perhaps, but you will always be to me,” she whispered softly, her words almost lost in the occasional drip of water in the winding caverns. “You always, always will be little to me.”
“W-w-why?” he said, weakly but with curiosity.
“I’m your big sister, Phillip. And as long as that continues being the truth, you will be my responsibility to protect. And I promise you… I WILL protect you, no matter what it takes…” she said, rubbing her cool fingertips over his chest. “I promise.”
“What a-a-about…”
“Please, don’t speak anymore. Conserve your energy. There’s nothing you need worry yourself about, Phillip. I’ve got you now, and I’m going to take care of you,” she cooed, placing a fingertip across his hair. “Are you still cold? Don’t speak, just nod your head for me.”
He did, his head actually shivering a bit, and she could feel it under her fingertip. She quickly drew her hand back in to continue squeezing him and running his body between her wet palms. She bit her lip, wondering what else she could do; after thinking for a moment, she had the solution. Caroline opened her fingers up, pulling Phillip closer to her mouth. Then, sucking in air, she breathed out as slowly as she could, allowing her hot breath to wash over his body. She felt him shiver for a second at the sudden temperature change, as well as the relative lack of oxygen in Caroline’s warm breath clouds, but it seemed to be working. As he was still using Caroline’s two soft hands as a bed, she could feel him shaking less and less throughout his body as she continued sucking in air, then breathing it out as slowly as she could before requiring more oxygen like the mouth of a colossal fireplace.
After several minutes of this, she felt his body stop shaking completely. She drew her hands away from near her lips to let him get some fresh air before closing her fingers protectively back around him. Already she could feel a difference in his temperature. “How about now?” she murmured quietly, not wanting to startle him.
“I feel much better now. Thank you,” he replied, the teeth chattering gone.
“Are you entirely sure?” she asked, massaging his legs with the heel of her hands just to make sure she had thoroughly warmed all of him. “If you need me to do more, just tell me, Phillip. Please.”
“I am all right now, Caroline, really. We must hurry!” he said determinedly, waving his arms in his sister’s fingers, wanting to continue on. Touched by his selflessness, Caroline raised him back up to her shoulder and placed him on her back again.
“I’m sorry it took me that long to notice how cold you were. If you need me again, whisper in my ear and I will do my best to help you. We will come out of this cave, both of us, well. Just like all of the adventurers we’ve read about.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Imagine the stories we can tell now. Imagine it, Phillip…” she said, raising her back up slowly again and continuing the steady crawl through the tunnels with revived confidence. “Just imagine what it will be like. We’ll be in our own stories, the pair of us, and our adventures.”
“Our OWN?” squealed Phillip with delight as he wrapped himself back in Caroline’s hair.
“Yes, of course. People will speak of us for all time to come.”
“Wow…” sighed Phillip, settling comfortably back into position. They were silent for no more than a few minutes, though, when something caught Caroline’s eye. It was another pinhead of light coming in from above in the ceiling, but it wasn’t the light. It was the detail it happened to strike on the ground. The spot wasn’t a sheer onyx rock formation like every other square inch of the caves was. It was a dark green, and it had no sheen like the waterlogged features of the tunnels. It was simply there. Caroline couldn’t even take a breath before she was crawling over as fast as possible, stopping herself over what she could now see, barely illuminated by the pinhead of light, was Luke, sprawled on the ground.
Lowering herself into a lying position for a closer look, Caroline felt a gasp forming in her throat and blocked it with her tight fist, but was unable to do a thing about the new waterfall of tears cascading down her cheeks. The sight of finally seeing Luke with her own eyes, in such a state of extreme vulnerability, was simply too much. Her breathing cut off in deep, throaty sobs as she struggled to collect herself rather unsuccessfully. Then, using her other hand, Caroline extended her pointer finger, and with the most tender touch she could render at her size, gingerly pressed her soft fingertip against Luke’s icy chest. A slow but determined pulse was felt inside his body, radiating up into the pad of her fingertip.