The sun is already disappearing behind the hills by the time we make it to the car. We drive for about twenty minutes, leaving the town in the rearview mirror. The road narrows, weaving through dense forest and past rocky outcroppings.
“Where are we going?” I ask again.
“You’ll see.”
“You’re being mysterious.”
“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
As Saturday proved, I’m not the biggest fan of surprises.
“You’ll like this one,” Liam says as if reading my mind.
He parks near a rocky bluff at the end of a gravel turnoff that barely qualifies as a road. The air outside is chilly. The sun has dipped behind the ridgeline, turning the sky a deep, bruised orange.
Liam opens the trunk and hauls out a backpack so heavy it makes his shoulders bunch. He hands me a headlamp—theelastic band adjustable, the LED light bright when I click it on and off to test it—and fits one onto his forehead.
“Follow me.”
We hike for half an hour through a forest that grows darker and quieter with each step. The trail isn’t marked, winding through underbrush and over exposed roots. But Liam moves with the confidence of someone who’s walked this route hundreds of times. His strides are long and sure despite the uneven ground.
When we reach a wall of limestone draped in creeping vines, he pushes the greenery aside to reveal a gap. An arched cave mouth, exhaling air that’s milder than the November evening.
“Are we going in there?” I peek between the vines into total darkness. “Are you sure a bear in hibernation won’t eat us, or a hag?”
“Trust me.”
I duck through the opening. The temperature turns warmer inside, the air thick with a mineral tang. The beam of my headlamp bounces off wet stone and finds the far wall.
And I stop breathing.
There are crystals everywhere.
They jut from the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Cloudy-white icicles shaped like jagged dragon teeth, some as small as my thumbnail, others thick as my thigh. They catch the light from my headlamp and sparkle.
The silence is absolute. A deep stillness that presses against my eardrums, filling my skull, my chest, my bones. The wind is muted out. No animals are scampering around in the undergrowth. And not even the distant hum of civilization reaches us. The only sound is the faint drip of water.
“What is this place?” I whisper, afraid to shatter the hush.
Liam sets the backpack down. “I found it when I was fifteen,” he says. “One day I was running away from a fight with my dad.”
He pulls a waterproof-backed blanket from the pack and spreads it across a flat section of the cave floor. Then, he sets three portable lanterns in a triangle around the blanket and switches them on.
Warm yellow light floods the chamber.
The crystals ignite. Every facet catches the glow and throws it back, multiplied, scattered across the stone ceiling like a subterranean sky full of stars. The walls pulse and shimmer. The cave breathes with light.
My hands go to my mouth. “Liam.”
He unpacks metal tins filled with foods—cheese, crackers, olives, dried fruit, cured meat, a small jar of honey—and arranges them on the blanket. I have no idea when he found the time to plan everything. This morning?
“Are you a secret romantic?” I ask, still staring at the glittering walls.
He opens a tin and sets it between us. “Do you like it?”
“You could’ve brought me to an abandoned shack and I wouldn’t have cared.”
He glances up, one eyebrow raised. “But this is better, right?”
