The Cave
Ollie was a good kid. He was hardly ever in trouble. The teachers liked him and so did the other students. There wasn’t anything remarkable about Ollie. He played with the kids at recess and lunch, and sometimes after school. He loved to play football, the round ball game. He liked playing in midfield because he could defend, and then maybe score goals too.
Ollie grew up in a satellite town about 45 mins from the capital. It was a nice town, not too big, but just big enough to have everything one needed. Nice beaches to swim at, even in winter! At the end of Ollie’s street was the beach. Every night he would be lulled to sleep by the lullaby that is the ocean. His mum had told him once that everyone is a like a drop of water and we are all apart of the same ocean. He liked thinking about this as he went to bed.
Ollie was good at swimming and yearned to start surfing. His older sister Caitlin promised that when she returned from travelling overseas in a few months that she would start teaching him. The only condition was that he had to start swimming a couple of times a week in order to build up strength and fitness. The deal was that he had to be able to swim 500m non stop in 10 mins. Ollie didn’t really like swimming, but if he had to do so as to learn how to surf, well he would do anything to be able to have his big sister teach him that. Out the back of Ollie’s house was a forest. So his backyard really was 100s of acres of trees, with birds, possums, wallabies, koalas and even snakes and spiders.
Everyday after school, Ollie would run off into the forest, sometimes by himself. It was a safe town, his parents didn’t mind. Ollie would run and just keep on running. He dreamed of being an athlete when he grew up. His dad was a great distance runner, who still competed in running events.
On this one particular day, the sun was just breaking through the clouds; it had been overcast all day. There was a sea breeze blowing in off the water. Up in the trees Ollie could hear the sounds of sea eagles resting. He couldn’t see them; the trees were too tall and big to see way up the top. But he could hear them, and often wondered what it would be like to fly away with them across the oceans to New Zealand or Antarctica.
Ollie had a ‘fertile mind’. It was written on his report card. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He liked to think that his brain would be good for planting vegetables in.
Ollie could just keep running, and running, and running. The forest was so big that he’d never even got to the other side, even after running what seemed like hours. He planned to take a bag with water and food, so he could spend the next Saturday and make it to the end of forest, and back of course.
Ollie liked being alone. He didn’t need the company of others to reinforce his self-worth. He loved to sit in silence and absorb the sounds and smells of ‘his’ forest. He never saw anyone else in there, and sometimes wondered if the rest of the world existed. Of course he had his special spot, kind of like a bower bird’s nest. It was a tiny little cave about halfway up the second hill. There was a little clearing in front of it and you could see out across the ocean. From here Ollie could see the sea eagles and join in with them as they departed across the ocean. Sometimes, at the right time of year, you could even see whales in the bay. They never seemed to do much except float around. But Ollie would always pull out his binoculars and scan the horizon from his cave. He’d just been given a new pair of binoculars for his 11th birthday; they were stronger than his older ones. The last time he was up at his post scanning the world, Ollie saw a little girl. She was about the same age as his himself. He saw her get knocked off her bike by a car. The driver stopped, and it seemed the girl was okay. She just had a few scratches and was a little shaken up. The whole thing happened so quickly that Ollie wished his binoculars had a replay function. That gave him an idea to one day get a video camera so he could start recording things. He started to fantasise about making movies and acting in his own films: Action, romance, sci-fi, and comedy. Ollie didn’t always cast himself as the hero. Instead he liked to play the quirkier characters that may not even be liked by the audience. They just seemed more interesting.
Sometimes Ollie would light a little campfire and sit there and just look at the flames dancing off the coals. Sometimes, when he just started to drift off to sleep, if he looked closely he could see people come out of the fire. They didn’t look anything like Ollie. All Ollie knew was that they were friendly and ancient looking. They would start to dance around him, singing and chanting. They didn’t seem bothered by him. In fact they would urge him to join in with their dancing.
Ollie never told anyone about this. He liked secrets. He liked the power that they gave him. He couldn’t understand why people always wanted to tell him their secrets, especially if it were someone else’s that they had promised to keep.
It didn’t happen every time Ollie lit a fire and sat there. He wasn’t sure why it happened. But he didn’t mind. It was still nice to sit there and think about nothing. Just to let the mind wander, as if he was sitting on the banks of river and all his thoughts were just the debris floating past. Sometimes he would wade into the river and pick one of the thoughts or emotions out. He would play with it turning it upside down and inside out. Sometimes he would pick a memory from when he was younger. He liked thinking that all of these thoughts and emotions weren’t really him. That they were just like clothes he could change, or get rid of.
Sometimes he would choose a caladron. Do you know what a caladron is? Well it’s a kind of like a memory but from the future. So it can’t be the same as a memory, it has to be called something else. Ollie decided to call such a thing a caladron. It was his creation, so he could call it whatever he wanted. He would reach into the future and see things he didn’t understand. Not always good things either, sometimes he saw things that really upset him. But, he often wondered, who was he to control the future? He just liked to peer inside sometimes. It was better than watching television or suring the Internet.
Ollie’s parents knew where he was. He was always at his cave. They had devised a way for him to know when it was time to come home. He always had to be back well before it got dark. For this reason he loved summer when it got darker much later. Ollie’s parents had installed a light on the back of the house and would flick it on and off several times. It was easy to see from up on the hill even without using binoculars. Even when it was raining, which it often did, and Ollie would retreat into his little cave, he could still see the light on the house. The cave was big enough for him to have a little mattress and be far enough inside that even when the weather got really foul, he was able to have a little fire and not get wet or cold.
The cave had a similar shape to someone’s head. There was even some engravings on the walls, from different times, it seemed. Ollie often thought about how someone could be sitting inside his head. Lighting a fire and sitting there with someone sitting inside their head. And so on. Some of the engravings looked really primitive, almost as if they were from another world, others were written last summer, you could tell because they had included the date. Ollie wasn’t the only person who knew about the cave, but for some reason no one else really came up here. Maybe because the hill was so steep and the blackberry bushes all around made it a nightmare to get to. But Ollie was small, and clever, and had found a little track that went right under the blackberries. A wombat or something must have made it. He was grateful that in summer he got to eat the yummiest blackberries. He would come home for dinner and be so full from eating blackberries all day he wouldn’t touch his food. Not to mention that his face and hands would be stained black, and take an extra few minutes of scrubbing to remove.
What Ollie liked about running through the forest and then resting at his cave was that sometimes he would start to drift off to sleep and find himself standing in front of a labyrinth. There would be tunnels going everywhere, with big doors preventing anyone from wandering down them. Every now and then, he would find a door open. He took this as a sign to enter. It was very well lit and not really that scary. Ollie often thought that others might be scared, but he would sometimes bump into the people from the fire and they would lead him to places he was meant to go.
When Ollie would run for a long time and would start to get tired. He would stop thinking about anything and would just be running. His mind would empty and he could begin to see the cave in his own mind expand into the labyrinth he would see in his dreams. With every step, and the closer he got to exhaustion, the labyrinth seemed to get more life-like. He was still running, he could hear the snapping of twigs under his feet and smell the air of the forest, clean and crisp as his lungs burnt, yearning for a rest. But this was new, it was like he was running with a foot each in a different world and the further he ran, the more real like the this world of the labyrinth became, until he tripped and fell…
***
Ollie woke up and it was dark, he was cold and could feel the dried blood hardening over his knee, and on his face. His lips were swollen and reminded him of when his cousin had been stung on the lip by a bee. It was a dark moon, and the forest was pitch black.
He hadn’t been out this dark before, especially without his torch, or his dad.
Something felt different about the forest. The trees seemed thicker, almost as if they were moving in on him. There was no breeze and the smell was musty, earthen and moist.
Disoriented, cold and sore, Ollie wasn’t sure which direction he should go. He couldn’t recognise where he was and felt sure that something was wrong, or at least different.
Once his breathing normalised and the initial panic subsided, Ollie could hear the sound of water. Not like a river or creek, but like a tap dripping, ever so faintly, off behind him somewhere in the dark.
Beep-Beep….Beep-Beep….Beep-Beep
The alarm on Ollie’s watch had sounded, sending echoes off all around him. It sounded as if he was in a room and not in a forest. He certainly wasn’t in his bedroom, because that was warm and comfy, and you can hear the sound of the ocean. He closed his eyes and tried to be quiet enough so as to hear the sound of the waves or the wind rustling through the trees.
Nothing, except the drip of water.
Ollie’s watch was one of those types that had pretty good light built in to it. It was a bruised and battered watch and the torch function didn’t always work when called to. Ollie extended his arm and with his other hand pressed the button…the light didn’t work. He tried a few more times and couldn’t get it to work.
But just as he’d given up it came on by itself. Scanning his whereabouts, he wondered if he’d fallen down a hole into the underground caves. He’d never found any other caves apart from his one up on the hill. However, the older kids in the neighbourhood would sometimes mention them. Thinking about how he managed to get here, he looked up hoping to see the night sky. But there was only earth. Starting to panic, Ollie scrambled along on all fours, searching in front of him with his hands. The ground was getting wetter the further he went and was going downwards. He kept going and ended on the edge of what seemed to be a pool. The source of the dripping was directly ahead.
Turning around, Ollie headed back up the bank. His torch was only working every few seconds, turning on and off as it pleased.
Ollie kept climbing up the bank and noticed that the damp feeling was retreating. There was a little more light and even the sounds of activity. Eager for someone else to talk to, but hesitant about if they were friendly, Ollie slowly crept along on his stomach till he came all the way to the top of top of the bank. Now, as he sat behind a rock, which was just a little bigger than himself, he saw for the first time the people from his fire. They were walking around the fire in circles, moving in and out towards the fire. Their mouths weren’t moving but there were the sounds of people singing. All of them were so pleasant to look at. Dressed in pretty clothing with bright colours and headpieces. They seemed content to just walk around the fire as if an invisible current was moving them. There were twelve women and twelve men, just like what Ollie had seem sometimes in the fire in his cave when he was on the verge of sleep.
Ollie sneezed, and all movement stopped. One of the dancers came towards Ollie and, without talking, he extended his hand smiling. There was no reason for fear. Ollie came out from the shadows and met with his friends by the fire. They cleaned the dried blood from his face and knee, as they did, the pain and swelling disappeared. They gave him some water and he sat down. They continued to move back and forwards towards the flames as they went round in circles. The women went in the opposite direction to the men. They all looked so content, serene and peaceful. As if they could go on with this dance for eternity.
Ollie felt like joining them in their dance. Getting to his feet they took his hands in theirs joining them like what he imagined happening in the fire. But this time instead of it being like an illusion or fantasy, just like the bruises he was really there in the heart of this cave, his cave, moving with the feeling of love in his chest.
Ollie seemed to drift off as if being supported by the sounds of lullaby. Being rocked into a sleep so gentle and refreshing that no one would ever want to wake from. He closed his eyes and moved with the others and as he did he saw worlds that he thought could only exist in his mind. But he knew now that they were real. That he was real, and that dancing with these people was real. As real as the love of his parents, as real as the taste of salt from the ocean, as real as the warmth of fire and smell of the dust being kicked up by the dancing.
As Ollie moved he started to have visions of the forest out the back of his house. The forest where he spent almost all of his spare time, running, playing, and dreaming. Where he sat with his binoculars keeping a look out for whales and people surfing from his cave on the hill. As he spent more time thinking about his family he started to see a corridor in front of him. He was still moving around the fire holding the hands of the other dancers, but in his minds eye, without any effort, he was again in the labyrinth. The walls of the labyrinth looked a lot like the squiggly bits of a brain that Ollie had seen in a jar once. There were three doors at the end of the corridor. The middle one was a little smaller than the two flanking it. It radiated the most tender neon blue as the door swung open. One of the dancers from the fire, not the oldest one, but certainly the one with the biggest smile was standing there ushering him through this door.
While Ollie moved along this tunnel, the sounds of the chanting were starting to get fainter. He noticed that it was getting easier to see, and the tunnel was getting steeper to walk along. But all this time he was still moving around the fire with the dancers. It was as if he was walking in two worlds. Could they both be real? Or was one his imagination?
Ollie reached the end of the tunnel and by now the chanting and the light of the fire was less noticeable. The door to the tunnel opened by itself and, as it did, Ollie’s eyes opened into a world of trees. He could hear the sounds of birds chirping, singing their songs of praise. He could see the same trees that were behind his house, the same smells and the same sounds. It was all so very familiar, but at the same time all his senses were charged with an awareness he hadn’t realised before. He hadn’t realised how sweet the smell of the forest is, or that the birds seemed to move in a way that communicated something to him. Ollie rolled over and stretched out. He looked down and saw a little scar on the same spot where his knee had been wiped clean of blood. He took his hand and rubbed it over his mouth. It was fine apart from a little bump. In his other hand he found a little crystal, it was shaped like a love heart and was a brilliant red colour like blood. He remembered that the dancer who had ushered him through the middle door gave it to him as they parted.
Getting to his feet, Ollie felt a little dizzy, but apart from that he felt fine. His head was still ringing with the sounds of the chanting. He closed his eyes and could feel around his heart the same movement he felt whilst he himself danced around the fire. He could hear the chanting and vowed never to forget it. He didn’t know what it meant. However he knew that it was the dance of life. Beating within his chest. He wondered if others felt the same thing and was intent on finding them. He knew that everyone had this within them just as he did, but could he be certain that they felt it like he did, or were aware of it?

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