KIARA AND THE CAVE OF EMPTINESS

Victoria Mack

I want to tell you about a girl named Kiara. She lived a long time ago, in a small cabin just outside a mountain village. She had black eyes and a long black braid that brushed the top of her leather belt. Every morning, Kiara woke in her cot in the warm kitchen, the dead embers from last night’s supper in the hearth beside her bed, and stretched her arms and legs as she yawned. Then she sat up and gazed out the window, where, across the valley and half-way up the next mountain, an immense waterfall fell from a great green cliff. The water roared, and Kiara thought it said, “Don’t come near me, little girl! I’m too big for you.” The water was blue at the top but turned white as it picked up speed, bubbling and frothing like a rabid dog. Behind the waterfall was the entrance to a cave that the villagers called the Cave of Emptiness. It was vast, and deep, and as dark as a grave, and no one had ever gotten to the end of it. The villagers told stories of brave men who had sworn to make it to the end of the cave and back, and had disappeared forever. Boys in their early manhood had attempted many expeditions, only to emerge within the half-hour, their faces tight with fear and their eyes closed tightly in the sunlight. They told everyone that their torches had been extinguished within minutes, as if blown out by unseen mouths. Some of the old women in the village said that there was no end to the cave at all, that it went on forever, until there was nothing left inside—not rock, not air, not even darkness. 

Kiara lived in the little cabin with her father, a blacksmith. He worked in a small forge behind their cabin, making candlesticks, axes, and horseshoes for the village. He had even made Kiara her very own sword. The sword gleamed so brightly in the sun that it could blind the birds passing in the sky. 

Kiara had a mother once, too. Her mother had given Kiara her black eyes and black hair and her life, and not a thing else, because she’d died the moment Kiara was born. Kiara knew nothing about her. When she pestered her father for details, he set his jaw and turned away, his forehead wrinkling. 

Kiara longed to know about her mother. One day she prepared a plate of her father’s favorite snack, pineapple. She cut it into perfect triangles and carried it out to her father’s workroom. She found him bent over the forge, holding an oblong piece of iron between tongs. His hair, gone gray early, clung to the sweat on the back of his neck. 

“I’ve brought you some pineapple,” Kiara said. 

He looked up from his work, glancing at her and then the plate. “Thank you, Ki-ki. That was very thoughtful of you. Set it down on the table, please. I’ll have some when I’m finished with this candlestick.”

Kiara set the plate down, then looked back at him. She shuffled her feet, then cleared her throat.

Her father looked up at her, his brow furrowing. “Was there something else, Ki-ki?”

Kiara took a breath. “I have a question, Father,” she began.

“Ask it!” said her father.

“What was my mother’s favorite color?” 

The tendons in her father’s neck went rigid. He bent over his forge. Finally he said, “She didn’t have one.”

“Father!” said Kiara. “Everyone has a favorite color! Tell me.”

Her father didn’t look up. “Black,” he said.

“Black! That’s not a color.”

“It’s all of the colors,” he growled.

“Well then,” said Kiara, “What kind of black? Like a raven? Like ebony? Like coal?”
“Kiara! Leave me be!” her father roared, his eyes dark and threatening. Kiara turned and ran back to the cabin, muttering, “Black is not a color.” In the kitchen she grabbed the pineapple rind off of the table and hurled it out the door to the chickens. She was desperate to learn more of her mother, but it wasn’t just that that bothered her. Why was her father so unhappy? She knew he loved her, but his grief was like a shadow through which she could not cross. She longed to make him happy, to see him full of joy and admiration for her.

That afternoon, as Kiara scattered corn for the chickens, she looked up at the waterfall and the Cave of Emptiness. “I bet I could explore the cave,” she thought. “I bet I could get all the way to the end of it. I’d find whatever’s there, and come back and tell everyone, and bring souvenirs—pebbles, and pieces of the cave wall, and things like that. And they’d all think I was so brave. And Father would be so impressed, and that might make him truly happy. Tomorrow is my ninth birthday. I’m old enough now to go out on my own.”

The next morning Kiara woke before dawn. She filled her father’s flask with water, and squeezed a wedge of pineapple through the opening. She didn’t bother with a torch, knowing they never lasted in the cave. Just in case she ran into trouble, however, she slipped her beloved sword into her belt. Then she set out for the great waterfall and the Cave of Emptiness. 

And this is where our story truly begins, so join me, please, on the path to the cave. Imagine Kiara, small even for her age, with her braid swinging left and right with each step, marching towards the waterfall with determination. Her sword shines down her left leg to the knee. She grips the handle as she marches. Her flask bounces against her hip on the right side with a small sound that goes pit, pit, pit. She’s already thirsty, but she’s too intent on reaching her destination to pause. She reaches the cliff. She climbs up the side, where it’s dry, until she reaches a dirt path that’s been worn down by the feet of villagers who came to explore the cave, only to turn back. Kiara brushes the dirt off of her leggings, and looks up at the waterfall. The roar is stupendous, like sticking your head right in the mouth of a mad lion: ROOOARRR. The sunlight on the rushing water looks like a hundred dragons opening and closing their mouths, their green tongues snapping and their yellow eyes flashing. Kiara is just steps from the water now, and for a moment she considers running back home. She imagines throwing herself into her father’s arms, and curling up by the kitchen fire as he makes her a bowl of soup. But instead she takes a deep breath and steps behind the water, into the cave. When she looks back, there are no dragons in the water, no flashing yellow eyes. Just the rush of water as it dives from the cliff to the boulders in the lake below.

Kiara turns away from the waterfall. She is in the mouth of the cave. “Mouth of the cave,” she thinks, and now she understands that phrase: the cave’s opening is dank, and musty-smelling, like the unwashed mouth of a monster. She looks around. Where she stands everything is still lit from the sun weaving through the water. But when she looks into the depth of the cave, it is like looking into eternity. She can see nothing. 

Kiara begins to walk towards the darkness. It isn’t long before she feels the blackness cover her like a heavy quilt. Instantly she feels the fear of all those who came before her. Their bodies are gone but their fear remains, bouncing against the cave walls like an echo. She whirls around and finds the opening of the cave: a distant circle of light, but it grounds her. She uncaps her flask and takes a long drink. The water is cold and crisp, with a hint of the pineapple’s brightness. She feels it run down her throat and into her stomach, and the sensation helps her feel the reality of her body, although she can barely see it. She hears a drip of water fall into a puddle, and the echo it makes: plop plop plop. She keeps her eyes on the circle of sunlight at the cave’s entrance.  

Kiara’s heart is beating hard, and it says, “Kiara, you are brave and strong! Keep going! Do not lose faith!”

Kiara takes one more pull from her flask. She places her left hand on her hip and finds her sword, sturdy and real. She takes one last look at the dot of light behind her and then turns. She walks.

Kiara walks for a long time. She wants to look back, to see if she can see the cave’s opening, but she senses that if she does, she’ll run back as fast as she can. She keeps her face fixed ahead of her. The darkness goes from soft brown, to the color of the coffee beans her father grinds each morning in his pestle, and finally to a black purer than anything Kiara has ever known. It is not the black of ravens, which are flecked with purple, or of ebony, which is striped with brown, or of coal, which is spotted with silver. It is the black of the time before creation, of absence, of nothingness.

Kiara’s pupils are as large as the wheel rims her father makes in his forge. They search for light, for shape, for anything, but there is nothing. Now the sounds of her body are as loud as drums. She begins to breathe quickly, and her hands shake. She stops walking. 

“Keep going!” says her heart. 

But her head says, “Why do you care about the Cave of Emptiness, Kiara? Why do you always need to be the one to solve every riddle? Turn around, go back to your father, who is by now no doubt worried sick for you. For once, be what you are—a kid!” 

Kiara breathes heavily, and her breath says, “Kiara, I’m afraid! Darkness is unnatural. Please, take us back to the light or we will die!” 

Kiara turns around, towards the entrance. She begins to walk, slowly at first, and then faster. “Kiara!” shouts her brain. “Are you sure this is the right way? Are you sure you turned exactly 180 degrees? What if you turned down a side path, and will never find your way out?” 

Kiara falls to her knees. She puts her hands on the ground, to feel where she is in space. She turns to her right and begins to crawl. “Kiara!” cries her breath. “Oh god, what are you doing? What if you were on the right path and this is a side path? You’ll be trapped here forever!” Kiara stops again. The cave is a huge black house with endless corridors. She pants, her head races, and her heart beats wildly. 

“Heart,” she says, “you have never steered me wrong. Tell me, now, which way do I go?”

Kiara listens. Her heart beats, dumbly. Finally it says, “I do not know.”

Kiara has never felt so alone. She falls to her side and curls up into a ball, clutching her knees. “I am sorry Father,” she whispers. “I did not know how dark it would be.”

Kiara lays there for a long time, with her eyes closed. Finally, she hears a small voice. “Kiara?” asks her heart.

“Yes? What is it?”

“I have a small thought I would like to share. If you still want to hear from me, that is.”

“Of course I want to hear from you, heart. What is your thought?”

“Well, it occurs to me that if you lie here, you will surely die.”

“That’s true,” says Kiara.

“And if you get up and walk and never find your way out and are stuck here forever, you’ll die, too.”

“That’s true,” says Kiara.

“But if you get up and walk and find your way back to the village, you won’t die. You’ll go home, and eat supper, and live a long time. I hope, anyway.”

“That’s true as well,” says Kiara.

“What’s more,” says her heart, “if you get up and walk and find your way through the cave, and there is something astonishing on the other side, well then that would be excellent too. So if you stay here, you will die without a doubt. But if you get up and walk… we don’t know what will happen. It could be anything.”

“Hmm,” says Kiara. “I see your point.” Kiara gropes for her flask, unscrews the cap, and swallows her last long pull of pineapple water. She stands. She has no feel for where the entrance is. She looks around, but the darkness is absolute. 

So she closes her eyes. And walks. 

She walks a long time. She smells the metal of rocks, and the musk of wet dirt. She hears the drip of water, plop plop plop, and the scurry of small creatures, tu-kuh-tu-kuh-tu-kuh. And she walks. 

Finally she hears something new. She hears the wind, and it seems to say, “Kiara…Kiara…” She walks faster. The sound grows louder. She opens her eyes and stops. Ahead of her is a small point of light. It is like a single star in the night sky. She begins to run. Her heart says, “Run, Kiara!” and her breath says, “Run, run!” and her head says, “Quickly, Kiara! As fast as you can!”

The point of light grows bigger and bigger until Kiara can see everything around her: glistening rocks, and tiny lizards, and puddles that reflect the dancing light. And then she is face to face with the opening of the cave, and the waterfall is crashing down from the cliff above, and the light is moving with the water like a mother and child who hold hands as they run. Kiara runs to the side of the opening and onto the path. She feels a few cool drops from the waterfall as she steps out, and then she is on the dirt path, and out of the cave that she is sure she will never, ever enter again.

Kiara stops. Where her village should be she sees a grassy meadow. She sees only tall grass, with small yellow flowers swaying in the wind, and beyond the grass, woods. Kiara feels for her sword and grips the handle tight. Now she spies, at the edge of the meadow, close to the forest, a small cabin, just like her own. In front of the cabin, in a bright blue dress, stands a woman with a long black braid over her shoulder. Kiara stares at her. The woman raises one arm. She waves. 

Kiara’s heart says, “Go, Kiara.” And so Kiara walks, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, until she has crossed the meadow and reached the woman in front of the cabin. And then her mother’s arms are around her, and Kiara is weeping, and her mother is whispering, “Don’t cry, it’s alright, don’t cry,” and Kiara knows that somehow this is an invitation to cry as much as she wants, as much as she has ever wanted since the day she was born, motherless, into the world. Her mother runs her fingers over Kiara’s face, feeling the large eyes, the round cheeks, the high forehead, the small mouth. Kiara looks up to see the same small mouth, the same forehead, the same eyes as dark as a cave. She nestles her head into her mother’s neck and listens to the heart that beats there, and it sings, “Love, love, love, love, love.”

Kiara will go back. She will turn away from her mother, and cross the meadow to where the waterfall has reappeared. She will look back once to see the small yellow flowers waving goodbye, goodbye. She will enter the cave, and find her way in the darkness without fear. She will go back to her father, who is worried sick, and grow up, and have adventures, and even daughters of her own. But for now, we will let her stay in her mother’s arms, her eyes closed as the tears fall, as her mother whispers, “You found me, dear one, you found me.” Let us go, now, and give them their moment.

Image: Caverne Milodon de Chili by Remi Jouan (2006), from Wikimedia Commons