MEGAN PRICE: Something old

The sun could never reach it, leaving it cold and dark. The water looked different, smelt of sulphur and earth, its surface as black as marble. I couldn’t even imagine what lurked below with sharp teeth and glassy eyes. Still I wanted nothing more than to get in. A place so old and untouched, a place I felt I wasn’t supposed to see. When I closed my eyes, I could only hear the drip of water falling from the rocks above me. The ones responsible for keeping the sun away. The lantern I brought was dying low and I didn’t have much time.

I looked at everything the light could reach. Plants I had never seen before flourished in the blackness, tiny white flowers lining the rock walls like a fairy tale. But as the lights wavered, it slowly turned to a place much scarier. I slipped off my clothes, a shiver climbing my spine. The air was damp and cool, like the belly of something with cold blood. I knew I was scared, I felt it tugging at me, but I also knew that the moment I left the cave, the earth would hide it away again. With goose bumps covering my skin I stepped closer to the water. It had never been rain or river, it had never seen trees or houses.

I stopped at its edge, staring down into the blackness, the low light of my lantern still. I couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t fear that kept me there, it was the purity of what surrounded me. A place that didn’t know the horrors of the world, that hadn’t been poisoned by humanity. If I stepped into it, if I let it run over my skin, it would be changed. I would have changed it. I sat on the rocky floor, looking down at my reflection in the still water. Perhaps I wasn’t the first one to find it. Perhaps it had touched flesh and bottles and cans lined its bottom.

But that’s not what I felt. I felt the weight of its age, the darkness of something with a soul. I wouldn’t be the one to change that. In what remained of my light, I got dressed again, feeling the warmth of my clothes return the blood back to me. I breathed in the air one last time, looked at the little white flowers and listened to the drips. And then I left it all behind. The earth would hide it away, keep it safe from the sun.

I would always remember the cave with a soul as old as time. Maybe it was a test, one I had passed or failed, maybe I would never know. I stepped out into the sun, but when I closed my eyes and looked into the darkness, I could still see the shadows of the lantern light. I walked the path, looking at the trees, hoping I could find it all again one day. But when I turned around, all the trees were different. The path had fallen away, disappearing beneath the underbrush with each of my footsteps. I closed my eyes and looked for the shadows, they were all I had left now. The earth had hidden it away, the forest wrapped its arms around the rocks, shielding it from the world around it. The sun cried at its failure and I knew I had passed the test.

* Megan Price is a self-published writer who lives in Trafalgar on the KZN South Coast. She has written numerous flash fiction stories, one of which won The Creative Writing Ink Short Story Competition in 2022. She has also written and self-published a number of longer short stories and has sold copies all over the world.

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