Page 3

But the time had come now. She reached up and touched the rock overhead, faintly slimy with moisture, and reminded herself that it was real, too. She actually was down here, and they were both dependent on her abilities and experience, such as they were. She told herself firmly that it was going to be worth it.

As she scrambled down the incline of the tunnel, the Boy following just behind her, she took a can of spray paint from her bag and put a bright yellow streak on the rock. She intended to do it all the way, marking their route so they couldn’t get lost. When far enough down, they’d sit and wait it out.

In a few hours time, the moon would be full and hanging in the night sky over the forest, like a yellow cheese spotted with bluish mould. Its reflected light would be beating down on the entire night side of the planet, its gravity pulling at the seas, its other, esoteric influences doing their own magic, magnetic fluxes warping minds and bodies, doing things nobody wanted to acknowledge lest they could not be explained. In a few hours, if she and the Boy had been outside, the moon would have been compelling them to Change, to sprout hair and grow snouts, to fall to all fours and go hunting for raw flesh and warm blood. But, deep underground, what would happen?

She hoped that, if only they could get deep enough, the shielding of the rock and earth overhead would dull the moon’s effects, would hide them from the call of the silvery orb in the sky, would allow them to retain their identity. If they could get deep enough – given time, and if the cave went deep enough.

There was only one way to tell, she reminded herself grimly, painting another yellow streak on the rock. The passage was twisting as it descended, now at an angle of perhaps fifty or sixty degrees, and constricting. She’d heard that there had been some exploration of this level, which meant that the it must be passable, especially since neither she nor the Boy was large. She just hoped that they could move fast enough to get down deep in time. Maybe the moon wouldn’t reach them, and they wouldn’t Change, and then...

And then, she’d asked herself. Then what? Would they be coming down here every full moon? Would she sheathe the house with lead blocks to try and duplicate the effect of the earth and rock overhead? How much lead would be enough?

"Steady on," she muttered aloud, stretching out a booted foot to rest it on a narrow ledge. "Let’s at least prove the theory’s valid."

"What?" The question came from behind her shoulder in an explosion of air.

"Breathe in deeply and calmly," she extemporised. The Boy was beginning to gasp, and she could detect the first beginnings of panic. "We’re quite all right, don’t worry."

"How much further do we have to go?"

"We aren’t nearly deep enough yet. I can still feel it. Can’t you?" She did feel it, in the prickling of her hair follicles, in the increasing pressure in her sinuses. It wasn’t unbearable yet, far from it, but she knew the moon was rising.

"Yeah." He was silent for a few moments. "Does that mean we’re just wasting our time?"

"We haven’t even scratched the surface," she said, annoyed. "We’ll have to get two, three times deeper, maybe more. Wait." The steeply sloping tunnel had suddenly almost flattened out and bifurcated. Both branches were roughly equal in shape and size, and she stood momentarily irresolute, looking from one to the other and back. "Which branch do you suppose we ought to take?"

"Toss a coin," the Boy suggested. "I have one somewhere."

"Thanks," she snapped, chose the right hand one at random, painting a crude arrow at the entrance. "Let’s not spend any more time dawdling."

The Boy said nothing. The passage was even narrower than the way down had been, but higher, so that the Woman could no longer touch the roof. From somewhere, seeping water had begun to drip down on them as they went, collecting to form a pencil-thick streamlet trickling between their feet.

"Do you feel whether the moon’s any stronger than before?" she asked at length. The rock was very wet where she touched it, and she pressed her boots into each foothold and crevice so as not to slip. "Be careful at that spot," she said, turning as far as she could manage to direct her lamp’s beam down at the slippery hump of rock she meant. "It’s dangerous."

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