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The tunnel was dark and damp, every footstep echoed in the tight space, every breath reverberated against hard-packed clay. Reyna was completely and utterly lost.
Her pack was heavy, stuffed with equipment she swiped from the lab on her way to impulsively deep dive into an unsecured cave system, without a partner, without safety gear, without even a note telling her team where she was going. It was irresponsible of her, and she should’ve turned right back around when she lost the sunlight filtering in from the mouth of the cave. But she didn’t.
This was a once in a lifetime discovery, after all. Cave drawings were hardly new, nowadays, most researchers sent a team to photograph and file them into the massive, ever-growing database of
prehistoric logs, whether it be paintings, ceramic, or the rare thousand year old tomb cheese. Either way, something like this shouldn’t have warranted Reyna’s haste. Except–
It wasn’t the fact that there were drawings. It was what the drawings were of.
Reyna hadn’t taken an interest at first, instead preferring to review the photographs from her own computer, a boxy, inelegant thing that was due for an upgrade. Look, transcribe, file, repeat. This time, her research partner, a short, plump woman named Emily, had not-so-insistently told her that this was worth really looking into. And Reyna was glad she did.
Most cave paintings depicted the everyday journey a prehistoric homosapien may make: venturing out to hunt game or gather edible plants, succeeding or failing, coming back home. Life was simple, and their paintings reflected that. This, however, defied every standard. The “ink” was a bio-luminescent blue, that in and of itself was abnormal. Then there was the actual painting, which depicted three humanoid figures, one holding what looked to be a sack, all standing before what appeared to be a cave entrance, with dashes outwards almost in a halo around it. Next to that illustration, a sun and a moon next to each other.
It was confounding, utterly incomprehensible. It was exciting. There was a mystery waiting to be solved, and Reyna wasn’t about to let someone else find out before she did. This was information that could change how science– no, the world, saw prehistoric society.
That landed her there, several miles deep into a cave system that should have gleaned more answers than questions, except for the fact that everything about it was wrong. The tunnel was a straight walk, no twists or turns, no uphill or downhill crawls, no change in height or width. Normal caves just weren’t... like this.
Reyna wished she’d turned back when she had the chance. When the sun was no longer visible and Reyna’s flashlight started to dim, she decided she’d rather tackle the cave when she had replacement batteries. Only, when she turned around, she was met with a dead end. She thought, maybe, she took a wrong turn without realizing it, maybe there was a cave-in that she hadn’t heard, maybe... maybe...
All of the logical explanations that came to mind couldn’t possibly explain why the cave seemed to change around her. As her heart began to pick up, her hands shaking and breaths coming out in gasps, she gripped her flashlight tighter, trying to remember the first steps to dealing with an emergency.
If only she hadn’t skimmed through the protocols during training.
Instead, she decided to test the growing hypothesis that the cave did, indeed change around her. She set her flashlight down, in front of the wall where the other half of the tunnel used to be, then walked away. She stopped, turned around. The distance between the flashlight and herself didn’t move.
“Fuck.” She breathed.
Reyna took the flashlight again, instead holding out an arm behind her as she walked forward. It seemed as though maybe the cave would go back to normal, that the path back to the mouth would
return, except that when she took a glance back, the cave was still right behind her, as though she hadn’t moved at all.
This continued for a while, and Reyna, unsure of how much time she had spent underground, walked until her feet and legs were sore. Defeated, she slumped down onto the smooth ground, the lack of
even pebbles setting off alarm bells in her head. But she was exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry. And she had half a water bottle in her bag, a stick of jerky, and a granola bar.
She sat against the cave wall, half expecting it to simply disappear from under her, leaning her head back, and closed her eyes.
Reyna jolted awake, not even realizing she’d fallen asleep, at movement that wasn’t her own. Rustling against her calf was something small, wiggly, and she’d jumped to her feet screaming. Whatever was there scurried off in frightened squeaks, and Reyna sighed shakily. A rat.
A rat?
Confused, she kept walking, the same direction the rat ran off to. After all, she couldn’t turn back. The tunnel went on and on, but there was something else, something that disrupted the stagnant air that lingered like a miasma... a breeze.
Fresh air. That meant an exit. Excitedly, Reyna rushed forward in a fervor that had been lost since she first went on this venture. She walked– then jogged– then ran, then sprinted forwards where she felt the air flowing from, but even as she ran, knowing the cave would close in behind her with every step, there was nothing in front of her. Nothing. Just the dank void of the cave.
Then, Reyna slowed, disappointed, but not surprised. She leaned heavily against the wall, catching her breath. She looked down. Stone. Not rock, not clay. Stone. Perhaps she was wrong about there being nothing.
She kept walking, despite sweat pooling at her neck and fatigue weighing down her limbs, following the path that gave way to more stone, evenly cut and placed in a distinct pattern, though in the
darkness she couldn’t tell what it was. As she walked, the rough cave walls gave way to more of that smooth stone, a welcome change after what must have been hours in the cave. The breeze grew stronger, and despite having no more charge in her flashlight, she began seeing things clearer, the light returning to the cave as she pressed onwards. She could’ve cried, she was so relieved. Reyna didn’t even care if she emerged in a completely different continent, she just wanted to be out.
Reyna walked. And walked. And walked.
And despite there being no change beyond the quarried stone under her feet and the dim light that filled the cave with each gradual degree, she didn’t stop.
The path, after another hour or so– Reyna frankly couldn’t tell– gave way to a staircase, with true, albeit gloomy, sunlight. She shouted in excitement, but didn’t run forward again, her venture more taxing than she could’ve ever prepared for, and began climbing the steps once she reached them, using the wall beside her as a brace.
Behind her, the cave stopped at the base of the stairs, blocked off by a heavy metal gate that certainly wasn’t there before.
As she climbed the staircase, probably longer than it had any right to be, Reyna began theorizing. The entrance she came through didn’t resemble her miraculous exit, not by any means. By that reasoning, this must be a different place she’s emerging to. She climbed the last step, legs wobbling under her, and her heart leapt into her throat.
Around her, people in Polonaise style attire tittered about, horse drawn carriages plowing through the crowded square, all framed by tall brick buildings and a heavy fog above it all. Young boys in flat caps waved papers at passersby, and people behind wooden stalls yelled out unintelligibly in the noise.
In her daze, Reyna hadn’t paid attention to those directly around her, and pumped into someone at her left.
“Excuse me!” An accented voice exclaimed.
“Huh? Oh–” The person, a woman with powdered white face and blonde hair in an outrageous updo sneered at Reyna, and she could only blink in her shock. “Sorry.”
The woman harrumphed, looking her up and down. “Have you lost your mind, child? Walking around in your smallclothes?”
Reyna looked down at herself, where she was wearing cargo pants over boots, a tank top under a bomber jacket. Smallclothes?
“Hey, uh...” She reached out to the woman, who stepped out of the way of her hand. “Um. Could you tell me where I am? And what day it is?”
“The great city of London.” The woman sniffed haughtily. “Tuesday, June fourth. In the great year eighteen eighty-nine.”
She felt the color drain from her cheeks, barely even registering the woman’s passing “go put clothes on, you urchin” as she tried to regain her senses, everything drowned out under a distinct buzzing in her ears. Yet despite how she tried to contextualize this, there was no explanation, unless her team was
pulling a very elaborate prank on her, maybe as revenge for going off without them.
And yet, that didn’t explain how.
How she ended up half a continent away, from the forgotten, half-buried cave entrance in southern Ireland, to the busy streets of London. How she found herself in 1889, a hundred years in the past.
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