Chapter 38
The wind snatched back Maggie’s hood. Squinting against the sheeting rain, she stared at the cave. Its black, glistening entrance was arched like a church door.
“We need to get inside!” Liz yelled, beckoning for them to follow.
Maggie had left her torch in the tent. She wanted that bright golden beam in her hands—something to light up her way, steady her thundering heart rate.
Liz went first, guiding Joni behind her.
Maggie stuck close to Helena as they picked their way into the cave, the sand running silver with water.
There was a different quality to the darkness inside, almost suffocating in its thickness. The air smelled stale and dank, tinged by the faint scent of ammonia. Water trickled through cracks in the rock, everywhere gleaming and damp.
She paused, glancing back toward the entrance, watching the curtain of rain.
“Maggie!” Helena called, the beam of her headlamp swinging toward her. “You need to come deeper!”
She stayed rooted where she was.
Helena came back for her. “You’ve got to get out of the entrance! Lightning travels down vertical surfaces to reach the ground. It’s not safe.”
Maggie felt the reluctance deep in her body—something primal and instinctive warning her not to move deeper into the darkness.
“Here, wear my headlamp!” Helena snapped it off and handed it to her.
Suddenly, there was a deep rumbling far beyond the cave. The earth began to tremble beneath her feet. She waited for the flash of lightning—but it didn’t come.
“Did you feel that?” Maggie whispered, breath shallow.
Helena, eyes wide, peered toward the beach. “Yes.”
“What was that?”
Helena shook her head. “Maybe lightning struck something?”
“There was no flash.”
They were both silent for a few moments. “Let’s keep going,” Helena said eventually.
They followed Liz and Joni deeper into the cave. Maggie walked with her arms stretched out, feeling for obstacles in the darkness, the rock rough like pumice beneath her fingertips. Eventually the narrow cave opened out into a wider space, the size of a modest room.
“Look! Lobster pots!” Liz called from up ahead, casting her torchlight over a dozen or more pots stacked in the corner of the cave.
The sight of them—something human and man-made—was faintly comforting. She could smell their briny scent, salted and strong.
“Let’s wait it out here,” Liz said, guiding Joni toward the pots.
Joni sat on one, spine rounded, knees hugged to her chest.
Maggie, too unsettled to sit, paced back and forth, shining the torch into the dark, cavernous cracks. She pointed the beam upward, wondering whether there were bats roosting above. The image of sticky wings beating against her hair made her pull her hood tighter around her face.
Several minutes passed, the storm outside echoing into their hollow shelter.
Maggie kept moving, examining the inside of the cave, noticing that some of the rock seemed to glitter in her torch beam.
As she was running her fingers over the nooks and ledges, her eye was caught by something delicate and silver.
She angled the beam of her headlamp, illuminating a small natural hook on which something slender was snagged.
She tilted her head, looking more closely.
“What is it?” Helena called.
“I’ve found something,” she said, running her fingers over the nook and slipping free a silver chain.
As she freed it from the rock, it glittered beneath the torchlight, a cobweb entangled around the clasp.
She could see it more clearly now. “A bracelet.”
The torchlight glinted across it and she saw that threaded into the silver links were several letters. “There’s a name on it.”
She narrowed her gaze, turning it through her fingers. Her skin grew cool as she read the five letters.
K-A-R-I-N.
“It’s hers . . . ,” she whispered. “Karin—the girl who disappeared.”
“We don’t know it’s the same Karin,” Helena said.
“Vilhelm said that she was out here—on the Svelle trail—when she disappeared,” Maggie said. “And look, the bracelet is covered in cobwebs—so it must have been here for some time.”
She passed it to Liz, who examined it, turning it methodically through the beam of her torch.
“What do you think?” Maggie asked.
“It seems likely,” Liz said. “The bracelet is made for an adult wrist. It’s her name.”
Maggie asked, “But what’s it doing in the cave?”
“Maybe she was sheltering in here, like us?” Helena suggested.
She lifted her headlamp, raising it to the domed roof of the cave, looking into the cold hollows, wondering whether Karin had once been sitting in this very spot, just as she was.