Geology Lessons

“I don’t like the looks of that.”

“You wouldn’t like the look of your own reflection if you saw it, it’s just a puddle, come on.”

Two sprites had journeyed for many days to reach their destination. Now that they had arrived, they looked on in confusion at the opening to the cave system they’d heard so much about. They’d expected it to be a gaping opening, yawning like the mouth of some great beast with stone teeth hanging from the ceiling and jutting up from the ground like massive teeth ready to swallow them up. What they found, however, was what looked to be a crack in a rock. Granted it was a massive crack that stretched three times their height into black stone, but it still had managed to subvert their expectations.

“I find it hard to believe that everyone who visits this place comes all the way here to get into this place,” Peregrin Took said dubiously. He took tentative steps forward, his small hooves more confident on the shifting stones beneath them than his nerves.

“I’m sure there are other entrances to the caves than just this one,” Meriadoc answered. “Use your head, Pippin, you have it for a reason. If everyone came to the same entrance it wouldn’t be much of a chore to find it, don’t you think? That wouldn’t make for much of an adventure.”

Pippin still looked unsure, but he gave his yellow and green mane a shake, his long ears flapping against the sides of his neck. He wasn’t as certain as his cousin, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. They had come here together because he was sure Meri would get herself killed if she went alone. She shared her mother’s adventurous spirit and her father’s recklessness, and it was Meri’s job to keep her from leaping headfirst into a bottomless pit or something similarly frightening.

“Come on, slowbones!” Meri charged ahead, slipping easily through the sheer sides of the cave entrance.

“Wait for me!” Pippin called after her, cursing under his breath as he grabbed the scroll from his pack that he’d paid far too much money for. He unrolled it, read the instructions out loud and gasped as he felt his eyes tingle. It was such a strange sensation that he lashed his long tail and kicked his hind legs in alarm. The light from the sun hurt his eyes and he squinted his eyes shut as far as he could while still being able to see in front of him. Then he trotted forward and stepped into the darkness.

Without the ambient light from the sun filtering through the gathering clouds overhead to blind him, the spell did its work well. He saw through the dark as if it weren’t there at all, and he realized with a start that this must be how Meri saw everything. It was no wonder she’d been so good at hide and seek when they were children.

The difference in temperature was immediately noticeable, and Pippin shivered as he hurried forward. He’d entered a tunnel with sheer sides that narrowed significantly the farther he walked. His heart quickened when he realized how close the walls were, as with each step his broad shoulders scraped against coarse stone. He scowled at how slimy the walls felt, realizing with a start that this tunnel must have been carved by water over hundreds of thousands of years. What if it flooded while they were down here?

With a new fear quite suddenly unlocked, Pippin squeezed through the rest of the tunnel, his heart thudding faster and faster in his chest until he finally emerged into the cave. He blinked in surprise as he looked around. The cave was massive! Far bigger than he’d thought it could ever be. The ceiling soared overhead to a blinding peak where he assumed daylight must have shone through. It pained him to look at, so Pippin looked instead to the massive stone pillars that grew around him. There were dozens of them, stretching from the ground all the way to the ceiling, and they were oddly smooth.

“How d’you suppose these got here?” he whispered, peering at one of the pillars suspiciously.

“They were stalactites and stalagmites that met and grew over time,” Meri said, appearing behind Pippin on a rock shelf. She flicked her tail happily as she looked at the pillar with him, her voice echoing eerily as she continued, “Then when they’d gotten big and wide, the cave started flooding over the years. That’s why they’re smooth instead of bumpy.”

Had they been younger, Pippin may have jokingly called his cousin a know-it-all, but he was actually impressed by the level of knowledge she had about this place, especially since they hadn’t been here before.

“How do you know all that?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

“You know you’d learn a lot more if you read instead of spending all your time with your snout in cookie jars,” Meri teased. “There are books about caves like this, not this one specifically, but I can see the signs.”

“Well what are we looking for in here anyway?” Pippin asked, shrugging off Meri’s teasing. “You never said.”

“We’re not looking for anything in particular,” Meri said, hopping down from the rock shelf to land lightly beside him. “We’re just looking! Adventures don’t always have to have a point, sometimes just exploring is fun.”

She trotted ahead, deeper into the cave, her head and tail held high. At least she was excited. Pippin couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong about this cave and he would have liked to leave, but he wasn’t about to leave his cousin here to get herself into trouble without him.

“Wait up!” Pippin hissed, trotting after Meri as fast as he dared. Each step he took threatened to send his hooves slipping out from under him due to the silt that slicked the stone. Meri didn’t seem to notice it at all, as if she walked on air.

“Oh look crystals!” Meri exclaimed. She darted away, leaving Pippin to scramble after her. She had seen them glittering darkly in a far corner of the cave, and when she leaned down to examine them, she realized they were buried deeply in the stone. They must have been exposed by the stone being worn away over time. Were there more? She hoped so, she so loved crystals!

Pippin started behind her and she looked over her shoulder, curious what had startled him. She followed his gaze and her whiskers flicked up in excitement. Another tunnel entrance!

“Great find!” she said as she charged ahead of her cousin again, sniffing eagerly at the narrow entrance to the tunnel. The air smelled like cold stone and water, and she wanted desperately to investigate further. But she was also painfully aware of how uncertain Pippin was.

“You don’t have to come with me, you know,” she said, looking over her shoulder at her cousin. “As happy as I am to have you with me, you did invite yourself on this trip. You can wait for me outside if you prefer.”

Pippin bristled and frowned at her, his nostrils flaring as he stalked up to stand beside her. “And leave you to break your leg and lay here in the dark with no one to help you? Absolutely not. We go together.”

With a good-natured shrug, Meri pressed on into the tunnel, excited to discover what there was to find. She’d heard all kinds of stories about this place, the crystal caverns that existed deep beneath the earth, the lake that shone with the light from a thousand faceted minerals. She was even excited to see the glow worms, despite her dislike of crawly things.

The tunnel was narrow, but not as bad as the first. She could press her side against Pippin’s—noting how he trembled with trepidation—to avoid scraping their sides against the walls. And when the tunnel opened up again, they stayed close.

Meri’s heart fell when they reached the next cavern. There were no glow worms, no impressive stalactites and stalagmites, not a single crystal to be found. The cave was smaller than the first, and as she looked around, she felt her excitement wither away. The walls were smooth, and the only thing she found was a pile of old animal bones half-covered in silt swept against the back wall of the cave. She couldn’t even tell what kind of animal it had been, the bones were so battered by the flood waters.

“We’re in the wrong cave. This was a waste of time,” Meri sighed, turning back toward the tunnel. “Let’s go home, Pippin.”

The tropical-colored sprite lifted his head in surprise and stepped in front of his cousin, forcing her to lift her head and look at him.

“Hey, it’s the wrong cave, but you still had fun didn’t you?” he asked. Meri didn’t miss the relief in his voice. He really had been worried about her.

“I did,” she said with a wry smile. “But I’ll have even more fun when we find the right cave.”

Pippin swallowed thickly, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “You…you mean you’ll try again?”

“Of course!” Meri said, her head and tail high again. “I didn’t find anything interesting here, but there are loads of caves around! We can explore them all! How long is that spell supposed to last, by the way?”

“The whole day,” Pippin said miserably.

“Oh good! Come on then, you can close your eyes and hold onto my tail, I’ll lead you to the next cave!”