shoulder. It casts a pattern of pocked shadows across the sheer stone faces and reveals that rather than rising, the rock walls tilt outward. I don’t have the strength to climb a regular cliff; you’d have to be Spider-Man to scale a jagged cliff that leans out like that.
There seems no way out until I notice a crevice where the cliff walls join. With no other choice, I haul myself up, and, hoping the opening leads to an escape route, or at least to higher ground, I scramble into the slit. There’s just enough moonlight for me to make out that the opening leads back into a tunnel. I follow it. The instant the rock walls close in around me, I am overwhelmed by a monstrous stench. With the tide rising behind me, though, I have no choice but to forge ahead. As the last few flickers of moonlight fade, darkness worse than a nightmare of being buried alive closes in around me.
As I go farther back into the cave, the sand turns to hard rock ground beneath my feet. I am on an incline that rises slightly as I follow it even farther back, praying that it leads to an escape route or at least to ground high enough for me to wait out the incoming tide. I feel my way along with a hand on the clammy stone wall. The ocean roars at my back, echoing off the rock walls and filling the narrow tunnel with a salty mist denser than the densest fog. I glance back. The moonlit mouth of the cave is lost in a whiteout of surging surf as the tide roars in. Soon the opening will be completely blocked, and even if there were a way out on the beach, I won’t be able to get there. I briefly regret not taking the swan-dive option from the top of the cliff when I had the opportunity. Even worse for my mom than Codie’s closed-casket funeral would be if my body gets trapped in this stone labyrinth and she has nothing to bury.
A second later, the rock walls echo with a thin chirping cry. All I understand from it is that the crier is female, Asian, young, and scared.
The water rises up around my ankles and I pray that whoever’s back there calling for me knows how to get out. I run up the gentle slope toward the far end of the cave. The voice grows louder and a glow appears. At first I think the phosphorescent orbs have returned, but the closer I get, the brighter the glow grows. Its source is hidden behind a bend in the cave walls. I hurry toward the feeble glimmer. When I round the bend, I catch a whiff of kerosene.
The cries are so strong now that, even above the roar of the waves, they grow louder. I rush toward the voice and scraps of memories of my grandmother speaking to me come back.
“Konbanwa!”
I call out.
As I get closer, the light from the kerosene lamp quivers, reflecting wetly off the oozing cave walls. It draws me closer with its homeyincandescence. I turn the corner and there she is, an Okinawan teenager, collapsed beside a kerosene lantern that is sending up a black snowfall of soot. Her wavy black hair hugs her round face in a bowl cut. A few dingy scraps of what was once a school uniform cling to her skeletal limbs. She is so emaciated by hunger and disease that she lies sprawled on the damp rock floor of the cave, her torso barely propped up against the slick walls. A bandage black with dried blood hangs from one stick arm.
As ravaged as she is, however, the girl’s eyes light up when she sees me. She stretches hunger-hollowed cheeks in a grin and joins her hands in a prayer that seems to be thanking and begging me at the same time. I realize she thinks that
I
have come to rescue
her.
“Who are you? How long have you been trapped here?”
Of course, she doesn’t understand English. In fact, from her expression, it almost seems as if she’s never heard it before. As if the sound of my voice terrifies her. I grab the lantern resting beside her on a flat rock, hoist it up, and shine it around the cave. No crevice, no chink in the rock, no way out is revealed. Worse, I see now that the rising tide is pushing the line of foam
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