Restless Soul Read Online Free Page B

deeper into the cave, and bats, hidden by the shadows, started squeaking.
    Zakkarat picked up a gas lantern from the floor and lit it. The squeaking grew louder as the light grew brighter. A mud-colored snake slid across the path and toward the wall.
    “This is all so beautiful,” Annja said.
    “Yes,” Luartaro whispered. “Though not so beautiful as you.” He took a few pictures of her looking at one of the limestone formations, bouncing the flash so it would not be so disturbing.
    They both stared at the immense chamber striped with earth colors and shining in the meager light.
    No matter how many caves Annja had traipsed through, she never really tired of them and was always amazed by what magnificent formations nature had sculpted.
    Annja felt relaxed in the cave, though she knew from their mannerisms that some of her companions, the Australian husband in particular, were made uneasy by the surroundings. The sense of foreboding she’d had the night before seemed far away.
    They walked on, following the bobbing light of Zakkarat’s lantern.
    Annja could hear moving water a few minutes before they reached another river, or perhaps a branch of the same one.
    Zakkarat indicated another bamboo raft.
    “More baht, right?” the Australians said practically in unison. “For the Shan.”
    Zakkarat poled them across to the far side of the cave.
    “Follow me, please.” He led them up a fairly steep rise to a ledge that overlooked a cavern.
    “No rails,” the ecowife noted. “We’ve been to quite a few caves. Not near the safety standards as in Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave. Or even that Mark Twain one in Missouri. They all had railings.”
    Zakkarat’s course took them around a deep sinkhole and to another chamber from which tunnels branched away. Scattered road cones and faded danger signs blocked off a few of the passages, and Annja suspected there was a risk of cave-ins. Another sign, more recent from its bright paint, dangled from a rusty chain. It read Do Not Pass—Low Oxygen.
    “See here? Cave painting. Authentic.” Zakkarat pointed to a spot midway up the wall. “One of seven in this cave. But the only one I can show you today. Most paintings are where it is under excavation. Archaeologists from Bangkok found a skeleton under a rock shelf, supposed to be twenty thousand years old. The oldest skeleton found in Northern Thailand. The dig is off-limits, and the skeleton predates the coffins you will see. But this cave painting you can look at. Do not touch, though.”
    Annja squinted to make out a faded design. At first glance it looked like a shadow or a smudge. Beneath it, affixed to the stone, was a large black-and-white photograph of what the painting had looked like before tourists had rubbed it away by touching it. The photograph clearly showed a deer, an arrow and the sun overhead.
    “There’s writing on the photograph,” Luartaro said. He leaned close and almost touched the picture. “A date. This photograph was taken thirty years ago.”
    “Pity that people have to ruin things,” Annja said. “Inadvertent or no, people don’t understand how precious the past is. I wonder what the artist was like. He or she probably painted it with burned bamboo. A lot of bamboo still grows around here.”
    “The cave paintings off-limits today are in better condition,” Zakkarat said. “Perhaps it is why they stay off-limits.”
    Zakkarat led them up a damp slope, then down, stepping over and through pools of water and past columns that dripped with moisture and glimmered like jewels in the gaslight. They walked down a set of rickety wooden steps, and they reached the river again.
    “A beach, I say,” the Australian man grumbled. “That’s where we’re going next. With a book in one hand and a drink in the other. I’ll sit on my bum and soak up the sun. Aruba, I think. Or maybe Jamaica. Rum and cola from a bottomless glass with one of those paper parasols in it.”
    Zakkarat pushed the raft into