The Little Girl and the Cave

This story is inspired by a good friend of mine.

The bustle of the town square was muted by the sight of the woman: shabby and dishevelled, dried blood on her elbows and knees, torn clothes, and eyes - oh the eyes - that had seen terror.

“HELP ME!” she screamed.
“IT TOOK MY CHILD. IT TOOK MY CHILD. IT TOOK MY CHILD!” Shrieks of agony fell away into muffled sobs, as her voice cracked with the strain.

But the strange thing about this scene wasn’t the woman: it was that the bustle of the town square picked up almost right away like nothing had happened. Faces that were clouded over with concern cleared, and men and women unfroze and went on their way. The space that had formed around the weeping woman closed in an instant and she disappeared from view.

A little girl watched this scene from behind her mother’s slitted fingers. Curiosity and fear contended within her as she darted in and out of her mother’s shadow. But that was not all: was it a quiet anger, an unshakeable indignation at the callousness of the world that stirred within the child?

Who knew? But what did happen was that a grey pall settled over the town that very moment. That undefinable instant when the people collectively ignored the grief of a mother was when an unspeakable evil tightened its grip on the town.

Many years passed and the little girl was now in school. She was small, and thin, even for her tender years, but there was a look about her: a gleam in her eye, a straightness of spine and upthrust of chin that struck everybody who really bothered to observe her. Few did. The twisted machinations of school life, with its cut-throat popularity games, bullying and cruelty occupied most people's attention, and her diminutive form and terse nature helped her elude scrutiny.

It was to soon change though.

She picked her way through large cars parked in wide, tree-lined streets as she walked back home from school. The town was doing really well recently. Signs of wealth were everywhere: cars hummed and purred expensively, teeth gleamed unnaturally as beautiful men and women laughed rich laughs, and ate and drank fine things. The grey shadow tinged everything, but no one seemed to notice.

She was almost home, when she saw a little boy, about her size - which probably meant he was much younger - crying. Surrounded by a group of older boys, he bounced around from knee to knee begging for them to return his pen, which of course they didn't. The older boys laughed as they passed the pen around, just out of reach.

"STOP!"
The older boys looked up and smirked.
"Looks like this runt has a sister. Maybe she has a pen we can steal too?", said the tallest and biggest of the three boys, their leader, as primitive bullying hierarchies worked.

But then they really saw her. Trembling with righteous indignation, her body seemed to emanate a hot wind that struck them like a slap. She didn't say another word and she didn't need to, as the boys chucked the pen on the ground and sauntered away.

"It was a stupid pen and I got bored," the leader said too loudly.
"I have basketball practice," said one of the minions.

Shared tribulations forge the strongest friendships and so it proved for the little boy and girl. They didn't speak much but spent every moment that they could together. They walked along the edge of the woods that surrounded the town, sat by the lake and watched clouds pass by for hours and silently chewed through their food together during breaks at school. Days, seasons and years passed in serene satisfaction.

One day the boy didn't show up at school. The girl was surprised but wasn't worried. Then another day passed, and another, and another, and another and before she knew it, it was a week. He didn't have any friends but for her, so there was no one at school to ask. She had never met his parents but knew where he lived.

A quiet and non-descript sub-urban home greeted her as she followed the street signs to her destination. A distinguished looking man and woman were just locking up and leaving when she hailed them.

"Hello, I'm a friend of your son. Is he alright? I haven't seen him for a few days."
The parents looked at each other. It wasn't exactly grief but something like consternation that possessed them. Perhaps it was consternation that somebody had actually come for their son.

"He has been taken," the mother eventually spoke up.
"He has been taken by the cave."

Like the flick of a switch, an overwhelming rage possessed the girl. But she merely asked:
"Have you looked for him? How do you know?"

The parents looked at each other again.
"We just know."

"Aren't you sad for him? Don't you love him? If you loved him, you'd turn the world upside down looking for him. Are you even his parents?"
"DO YOU EVEN LOVE HIM?"

The rage she'd been suppressing burst out like a torrent, but it had absolutely no effect on the parents.

"Yes, of course we're sad. But, we always knew there was a good chance this could happen," the father said. The girl searched for a hint of doubt, a hint of crack in the smooth facade, but the father merely sounded confident and assured. If there was grief, it was a measured and practised grief, like that of a stage actor.

"It is the natural order of things," the mother added.

"The town has never been safer, never been more prosperous. We're sad, but we're happy that we have contributed to the foundation of this town."

"I'm young and I can have another..."

They stopped because the girl was gone.

She was dreaming of the town square again. The weeping woman was on her knees, hopeless and broken, but this time the view panned to the child peeping from behind her mother's skirts. As the town forgot the woman and went about its day, the child stepped out into the grey afternoon and ran towards the crying woman. Cupping her head in her tiny fingers, she consoled her and promised her that things would get better. As her own mother shouted after her, the little girl ran into the crowd, grabbing fingers where she could, and fistfuls of trouser cloth and skirt hems where she couldn't.

"Can't you help her? YOU'RE ADULTS. HELP HER!"

Indulgent smiles were only occasionally afforded her. Most just ignored her. Eventually her mother found her and took her home. But the light in the little girl did not die. It was faint and flickering but it was spunky: it fought the grey gloom not by threatening to burn it away but simply by the proof of its own existence. It held on to its own strength and believed.

And now, years later, in the moment of her greatest grief, in the moment of her utter helplessness, the light in the girl no longer flickered and sputtered, but shone bright and powerful like a beacon in fog. She wiped her tears away and vowed to end the monster in the cave.

School continued unchanged. Nobody noticed the missing boy - the playground antics and the petty dramas occupied everyone's attention, but something was different about the girl. She was still small for her years, still confident, but she wasn't quiet anymore. She paid attention to the social dynamics at school and rapidly climbed the ladder until girls began to whisper about her in envy, and boys vied for her. She made and discarded friends and boyfriends. This, of course, did nothing to diminish her popularity. She learnt to enjoy small talk and acquaintances in judicious doses. She was never short of company: they were all drawn to her like moths to a flame.

But she pined for the little boy who was lost to her. He was untouched by the shadow and saw her as she was. These people who surrounded her, they were grey and anonymous and noisy. She pined for her lost friend, but she needed the noisy moths then. Carefully and subtly she probed them for information about the legend of the cave. For something everybody in the town, every child, man and woman knew about, there was remarkably little concrete information to go around.

There was a cave in the woods, and there was a monster in the cave in the woods. Long ago, the monster had roamed free in their lands, wreaking destruction in its wake, murdering and killing beasts and humans alike, only stopping when exhausted. The exasperated townsfolk had tried everything in their power to destroy the beast, and perhaps even hurt it once or twice, but to no avail because it always returned, angrier. Eventually they struck a deal with the monster. They would no longer attempt to hunt the beast as long as it restricted itself to hunting only on specific days of the month and if it took no more than two people a month. The monster agreed, glad to never have to hunt and be hunted again, and in its satisfaction blessed the town with great prosperity and peace.

The girl sniffed at this. What a ridiculous story it was! Yes, clearly there was a monster of some kind in the woods, but the rest of the tale was bog standard myth-creation. The problem was that nobody seemed to know where the cave was. Every day, without fail, the girl walked by the woods that surrounded the town, hoping to sense something that would lead her to the cave, but she always came away disappointed.

The voice of her teacher snapped her out of her everyday reverie.

"Does anyone want to lead a hiking trip through the woods? Don't worry, we'll stick to the area by the lake, which is safe!"

A-ha, she thought and promptly raised her hand. The teacher's eyes seemed to glaze as they passed over her.

"Nobody? Nobody?"

Finally, a hesitant, tremulous hand thrust into the air. It was another boy, who looked baffled, as if his hand was doing something of its own volition.

"Thank you! This brave young man has volunteered to lead this expedition. You should all learn from his initiative and courage!"
The girl was used to this. Her small frame and pixie-like appearance meant that adults never took her seriously. She was a fragile and beautiful flower that should be cherished, but protected and hidden away from the world. She didn't usually bother trying, but this was a trip to the woods and perhaps she would find the cave.

As the days passed, the town got more sick. The grey pall that lay over the town seemed to curdle into a near black, like a thundercloud at ground level, never dispersed by the sun. Rheumy coughs rent the air wherever she went. People joked about pollution and global warming but the wealth and finery that surrounded them reassured them.

The expedition to the woods passed without event. Some children poked and prodded at mushrooms. The braver ones harvested ladybugs and laughed and laughed when they dropped them into shorts and blouses and the other kids screamed. The girl didn't sense the cave and sighed in disappointment.

"Hello!" It was an older boy's voice. The girl looked up.

It was a boy she had seen. He was in high school and he was pretty popular. She had often idly wondered about him because he was one of those fortunate ones who didn't seem to work hard for his popularity. He was reputed to be very smart, humble and gregarious, with a smile for everyone. Usually the ones who were smart and humble were the nerdy and awkward ones and were eaten for breakfast by the jocks and the divas, but this boy was also strong and athletic. The bullies left him alone. Why was he talking to her?

"Hey."

"You know, there's something wrong with this town. People are getting sicker by the day and nobody wants to talk about the monster in the cave."

The girl was shocked. How did he know? She stared at him, but the boy only smiled gently back. She swivelled around but there was nobody within earshot. The boy must have known that and only then approached.

"Oh yeah, everybody knows the legend. The town is lucky to have the blessing of a monster the whole world fears." She looked forward determinedly, refusing to make eye contact with the strange, forthright boy.

The boy smiled again. "It's OK. I know about your friend the monster took away. I know the pain it still causes you, and I know this because I lost my sister too."

At this the girl finally properly looked at the boy. His eyes were kind and his features mellow, but there was something about him... The grey mask that cloaked everyone she met, it seemed to only veil him thinly.

"I thought I had accepted my sister's fate as inevitable, like my parents, like my brothers, like my friends, but perhaps it wasn't as clear cut. When I saw you, I saw hope. I saw your hope."

It was nothing like the friendship with the little boy who had disappeared, but a quiet bond blossomed between the girl and the older boy. They didn't spend every moment together, but an unspoken thread connected them, a pure, shining band that was unsullied by the grey mist. The school wondered at this sacrilegious friendship: cliques in school were strictly demarcated by age, and a middle schooler becoming friends with a high schooler was like a student becoming friends with a teacher. The girl and the older boy didn't notice, or care, and their indifference only added to their mystique.

They often searched the woods together. It became a routine, and in their heart of hearts they stopped believing that anything would come of it. And like all the other momentous occasions in her life, something happened when the girl least expected it.

One day, in the dead of freezing winter, on her way back from school, she heard a group of junkies smoking and chatting by their SUVs.
"He's gone man. He's gone. He apparently found a path and he was high and he didn't realize, he walked right in."

One of them laughed, a powerful belly laugh that never seemed to end.

"The fool. At least a child will be spared this month then."

She sneaked closer and was practically in their line of sight, but again, her invisibility to adults approached magic. They just didn't see her.

"I heard about the path by the rock."

The first man spoke up. Even in the throes of his addiction, he sounded fearful.

"Every junkie knows that rock man. The path by the rock...", he stopped.

The girl heard him describe the rock and suddenly she knew which one it was. Immediately, she ran and ran until she found herself in front of a rock. It had to be this one. It was oddly shaped, like an oblong, and was otherwise like any other rock. It had to be this one. She looked around for a path, but couldn't see anything that stood out. If a druggie could find the path, surely she could. Frustrated, she stepped around the rock and began to walk downhill.

Presently she stopped. It was quiet. There were no crickets chirping anymore. The birds were silent, and the wind no longer rustled through the leaves. Recklessly she had wandered deep into the woods and finding the cave was now the least of her problems. She was hungry and cold and thirsty, and she didn't know which way led back home. The rage and adrenaline that had driven her so far disappeared like they were never there and she slumped to the ground crying. She was a little girl in a big, scary world. What was she doing?

And then there was a sound. It was a sound like the scratching of a dog's claws on rock, but larger, much larger. Were those bushes rustling? Suddenly, a weight pressed down on her, like a rock, and she couldn't breathe. The scratching sound came closer. Her breathing became raspy and strained and her eyes began to glaze over. A form resolved itself in the distance. Eyes gleamed like coals but she couldn't see clearly, she couldn't!

Even in that moment, the little boy who was her friend was never far from her thoughts. She thought of the monster ripping him to shreds; she thought of the monster taking children away and making mothers grieve like in the town square all those years ago, she thought of the monster making people worship it and ignore their own sorrow, and her indignation mounted. The pressure on her chest eased, and she could see clearly again. There was no monster in sight. She didn't know how she made it back home that night but somehow she did.

The next day she didn't go to school. Her parents were busy people and left for work before she left for school and returned home after she did, so they never even noticed. A suffocating terror enveloped her and she was paralyzed. She saw those gleaming eyes everywhere - in mirrors, in reflections in bathroom taps; she heard the scrabbling of a many footed creature in hallways, under the bed, in the stairwell. A hot fever ravaged her body and she shrivelled up into nothing.

A week passed, and the older boy showed at her house. He rang the bell repeatedly and finding no answer, burst in uninvited.

He saw her, purple with fever and emaciated, and briefly recoiled, but then his face softened.

"You found the cave, didn't you?"

She didn't say anything. Perhaps she couldn't. Unwiped tears cut streaks on her face through the dirt and sweat.

"Do you know why I came to you?"
"I came to you because I saw in you a fierce light that fought against injustice. I am smart, perhaps smarter than you are. I am more athletic than you are, I am older than you are, and I am more popular than you are. But you know what I'm not?"
"Brave," the older boy hung his head as he said this.

"I saw in you a power that refused to accept your station in life. So what if you're a little girl? You'd do what the adults wouldn't."
"So what if you're a girl? You'd do what the men wouldn't, what society says you shouldn't."
"So what if you're small in stature? You'd do what giants couldn't."
"You have a power that drew me in like a magnet. You have the power to end the sickness that afflicts this town."
"I have everything in life: I'm smart and popular, and I have greater social capital to effect change, privilege that can get people to listen to me. But it's useless, because I am useless. I have accepted the everyday as the normal, the mediocre even. The fire in me is long dead, if it ever burnt at all. But the one good thing I ever did is that I saw it in you."

She looked at him and something stirred in her. She finally realized that this boy - this beautiful, popular boy everyone adored - looked up to her. He talked to her not just because she was untouched by the shadow, but because he respected her for who she was. She was still terrified, still small and still a child, but she would end the monster once and for all.

Together they plotted how best to take on the monster. The fever receded in days. The older boy had a cricket bat, the girl had a tennis racket. They could steal some petrol from their parents, and lighters from the junkies. They collected lots and lots of firewood from the fringes of the forest, and painfully, meticulously carved them into sturdy torches that would burn for a while.

Meanwhile, the town began to be consumed by the grey fog. People wandered through the perpetual dusk with flashlights, coughing and retching, but smiled their polished smiles as they went about their day. This story crawled towards its denouement, but was it going to be a tragedy?

When the day finally came, there was a strange chill in the air. Rubbing their fingers for warmth, the boy and girl set off for the forest, with their makeshift weapons and torches. The boy, who stood head and shoulders above her, walked in front with exaggerated bravado, laughing at the mouse they were going to swat for good, and joking. She was silent, because she knew he was terrified, but she appreciated his presence nonetheless.

The oblong rock seemed to gleam in the twilight. The boy was no longer speaking, and the dense quiet of the forest encouraged silence. It was an effort to speak and doing so seemed to violate something sacred. They trudged forward in lockstep. She didn't remember the route she took last time, but she knew it didn't matter. Time seemed to slow and come to a standstill, and the silence grew heavier and more oppressive. Where was the cave? Where was the monster?

Suddenly she stopped. A black, invisible weight began to choke her into submission, but she was distracted by something else. Behind her, the boy - her friend - had slumped to his knees. His eyes were vacant, and blood dripped from his nostrils. He seemed paralyzed. Was he alive? She fought against the malevolent pressure, fought against it with all she had and made her way to the boy. He was whispering something, his lips moving just enough to make articulate sounds.

"I can't do this. I can't. I can't."
"The blackness. It is everywhere. It is so evil. What were we thinking? I can't do this."
"I can't. I... am ready to die."

She didn't say anything. She reached out and hugged his head to her chest. He looked up at her, and said:
"But you can do it."

Finally she saw herself as he saw her. The unquenchable fire that permeated her being was not a genetic aberration or a gift of God; it was the crystallization of her belief, her hope, her indignation and her rage at the pointless sufferings of the world and the helpless acceptance of its inhabitants. She had fought throughout her life to do what she was not allowed to do, or was told she couldn't do, and she had prevailed by the force of sheer will. And each time she had done that, she had stoked the fire in her that little bit more until it shone brighter than the sun itself.

He smiled, and closed his eyes. His face was calm and relaxed and shone in reflected light, a strange golden glow that cast off the shadow.

She turned and walked towards the cave that lay just beyond the line of bushes that had so terrified her the last time. An intense light erupted within the cave and all was still. He saw a creature crawl out, something naked and twisted, but it was so small and helpless that he only pitied it. Had there ever been a monster? Then the girl walked out of the cave. Only a slip of a girl, small and scrawny, with a straight back and an upthrust chin, so invisible that no one even saw her unless spoken to, so fragile that everyone thought she could do nothing, this little girl now shone brighter than a star, and had saved a town from an implacable evil. She was a giant and she was a force! Because she refused to accept what others told were her limitations, and because she refused with such vigour and unshakeable strength, nature bent to her will and made her a warrior for light. Whoever had said she was a little girl who was good for nothing?

As he slipped into unconsciousness, the light that now streamed through the canopy high above caressed his eyes, and the singing of a thousand birds touched his ears, and he smiled once again.