“Okay, that’s a solid clue.” Nayna bit down on her lower lip, the action catching his eye and threatening to tighten his sweatpants over a certain part of his anatomy, but Raj managed to keep his attention on the road. They were out of Auckland now, sheep and deer farms passing on either side of them. Despite it being summer, they’d had enough rain that the fields were green, the sheep puffy white clouds against the velvet grass.
“I don’t mind heights,” Nayna said after a while. “Are we jumping off something? Because you know that thing about bungee jumping and retinal detachment, don’t you?”
“Damn, the tickets are nonrefundable.”
A suspicious silence before she pushed him playfully on the shoulder. “Not funny, Raj Sen,” she said, but he heard the smile in her voice.
That smile never faded as the miles passed, the road trip made an adventure by Nayna’s interest in everything. He had to stop by an ostrich farm so she could watch the long-necked creatures bob about. Then came the deer by a fence line that she had to photograph.
“Hey, what was that sign?” She twisted around to look behind her as they drove on. “It said we’re going in the direction of Waitomo!”
“You’re getting warm.”
Nayna wiggled excitedly in her seat. “I love the glowworms,” she said. “You were supposed to tell the truth when we played twenty questions. There are no heights involved in the caves.”
“Mea culpa,” Raj said, and kept on driving.
* * *
Nayna wasn’t surprised when Raj drove not to the main entrance to the cave system but into a parking lot that had a sign touting adventure tourism. She figured he must’ve booked them in for a walk/climb through one of the less well-known caves.
While Raj checked them in, she looked at the brochures for all the adventures on offer and felt her eyes go wide. He’d said no when she’d asked if they’d be getting wet, so they couldn’t be going on the black water rafting trip. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that anyway. From the pictures, a number of the passages appeared extremely narrow. Also, the water looked freezing.
“We’re checked in.” Raj took her hand in his, led her out to a small private parking lot behind the main building. “This is where we catch our next ride,” he told her just as a professional guide came out. Two twentysomething women who’d been loitering outside came closer, and Nayna realized the four of them were going together.
It turned out they’d be driving about fifteen to twenty minutes to reach an isolated cave. The ride was a fun one with all five of them ending up chatting. As they got to know one another, Nayna sat with Raj next to her, his arm casually around her shoulders, and drank in the sensation of being with him among people who saw nothing unusual with an unmarried couple on a date.
Because this was definitely a date.
The sense of freedom was exhilarating.
At last their van reached a solid-looking structure in what felt like the middle of nowhere. Behind them was a private farm through which the adventure company had authorized access, but in front of them lay only local forest. Large tree ferns, lots of lush green foliage. Once they were all out of the van, the guide looked each one of them up and down, then began passing out blue coveralls.
They were instructed to put the coveralls on over their clothes and, if they had anything loose in their pockets, to leave it behind in the lockers provided. “I’ll take the photos,” the guide told them. “Trust me, you do not want to lose your phone down there.”
That done, the guide sent them into another part of the structure to find a pair of heavy white calf-high boots to pull on over the thick socks they’d been instructed to wear. Nayna returned after finding a pair that fit and saw the guide handing out what looked like climbing harnesses.
“Raj.” She elbowed him. “Why is he giving those out?”
37
A Kiss under Starlight
Her gorgeous, often serious boyfriend gave her a slow, wicked smile. “Trust me, you’ll love it.”
After the harnesses came helmets that had to be clipped securely under the jaw. All of them ready and safety-checked, they strode off into the untamed landscape. Every so often, a native bird would call out, but otherwise it felt as if they were on the edge of civilization.
Because of rain the day past, the area was a little muddy, and Nayna almost slipped a couple of times, but Raj was always there to stabilize her. They arrived at the start of a small hill and began to go down… and that was when Nayna saw it.
A platform.
Hanging out over the edge of nowhere.
The ground was just suddenly not there.
Raj closed his fingers over hers when she sucked in a breath. “Okay?” His eyes held a true question, and she knew he wasn’t teasing this time. If she said no, they’d turn around and walk away.
But she squeezed his hand back and grinned. “I’m terrified, but I want to do it.”
He laughed, and the two of them went down to the platform built of crisscrossing lines of metal that allowed a dizzying view down into the depths below, the platform literally suspended over thin air. It was as if a giant hand had scooped out a massive hole in the earth, the distance from the platform to the ground so far that their landing spot was shrouded in shadows. A river’s roar echoed in the air, but she had to squint to make out any hint of its rushing force.
The guide stood at the far edge of the platform, and behind him was nothing but open space. To their left was a rocky wall lush with moss, to their right a frame from which hung a number of ropes that dropped down into an abyss surrounded by primeval green foliage. Each rope ran through a system of metal brackets and pulleys that made zero sense to Nayna.
All she cared about was that the ropes seemed very secure.
“First thing,” the guide said, “we hook you up, so even if you trip and fall off this platform, you’ll live to trip another day.”
Nervous laughter from one of the other women.
Butterflies danced in Nayna’s stomach.
The guide was clipping her by the harness to one of the ropes before she could have second thoughts. Once all four of them were clipped in, he gave them a safety briefing, then it was go time. All of them had to lean back against the very edge of the platform, their backs hanging out into nothing.
“Now, take one foot off the edge.”
Squeezing her eyes shut for a second, Nayna did as instructed, then hooked her foot into the rope as they’d been taught. She had her eyes open again by the time the guide told them to take the remaining foot off the edge. Which would leave her hanging over thin air, the next stop a loooooooong way down.
She glanced at Raj, her heart thundering and fear squeezing her chest. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she said to him.
A smile lighting up his eyes, he took his other foot off the edge of the platform but didn’t drop, controlling his descent with the ease of a man who’d obviously rappelled before. “Do it, Nayna with the pretty nayna,” he said. “I’ll be with you all the way down.”
Taking a deep breath, Nayna surrendered her last footfall on reality. And realized the hardest part had been letting go and leaving the platform. “This is so fun!” she said to Raj. “I’ll go rock climbing with you!”
Raj grinned at her reference to their first meeting and kept pace with her, both of them taking in everything around them as they rappelled down while calling out encouragement to one of the others—the most skittish of their group. The woman, a tourist from Norway, kept going, and then they were all on the floor of a huge subterranean cave twenty minutes after stepping off the platform.
Looking up, Nayna saw the sunlit circle of sky rimmed with hazy green from where they’d come. It felt like a haunting alien world down here, even the foliage unique and a little eerie in a beautiful way. And the adventure had just begun.
They climbed over rocks, scrambled down them, and crossed parts where it felt like they could fall into the darkness and never be found. Then they were in the most stygian part of the cave, an area so devoid of illumination that they had to flick on the lights on their helmets.
“It’s cold,” Nayna said, her breath fogging the air.