“It was very much like the visions I had at the Drawings cave,” Nixie said, enjoying the warmth of the fire. “But these were richer, and I could hear the cats talking.”
“What?!” Chantel exclaimed. “Actual voices… you could hear what they were saying?”
“Not only that, but I got a sense of what they were feeling.”
“That’s all very interesting,” Isis said, glancing from where she was sitting next to Cisco. “A few details would be nice.”
“What? You don’t want to wait for my drawings?” Nixie grinned.
“Alright, someone get a stick,” Piper said, starting to rise. “We’ll beat it out of her.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you everything, just drop the stick.”
“First off, the cavern was completely lit up with torches, and there was no ice.”
“The pool was there, of course, but from the way the cats were dressed and how they were acting, it must have been warm in there.”
“And Chantel and Gabby… your Great, Great, many greats Grandmother was there, directing everything. There was also the same fine-looking male cat who was with her in some of my other visions.”
“The door was open, and other cats were continuously carrying jars into the chamber.”
“It’s nice to hear about my ancestor again,” Chantel said. “But what were they saying?”
“I’m not sure I can remember what they said word for word,” Nixie said with a distant look. “But I’ll try.”
“Here goes…”
“This is a good thing, Ayisha,” the male cat was saying as they stood next to the pool. “It should give the next group of cats a better chance of winning when the plague rises up again.”
“Ah, Francisco, you know we did the best that we could,” Ayisha told him, holding his arm. “We saved a lot of cats who wouldn’t have made it without our help.”
“Yes, we did, and maybe the next time they can save everyone,” Francisco said. “And we’ll have helped them with that.”
Setting back, Nixie said, “The rest was just the sounds of the other cats moving things into the storage chamber.”
“I don’t suppose you saw them sealing the door shut?” Cisco asked hopefully.
“Sorry, but no,” Nixie said with a shrug. “I guess you’re going to have to figure out how they did that on your own.”
“Hold on a minute,” Piper said, from across the fire. “Didn’t you hear what they called each other, Ayisha and Francisco? Doesn’t that sound a little bit like… Isis and Cisco?”
“I suppose it does,” Cisco said with a growing look of amazement.
“What do you think about that, sweetheart?” he said, giving Isis a hug.
“I think we’ve got a lot to live up to,” she replied with a smile.
“That makes me think, that they didn’t intend for the Ice cave to be so hard to find.” Jax said, “I mean, they didn’t want it to be common knowledge, but I suspect that they would have kept it as a kind of family secret to be passed down generation to generation. Somehow that secret must have gotten lost over time.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Isis agreed. “Maybe the same thing happened to the knowledge of the History Tree site.”
“Good thing they left clues in the Drawings cave,” Star remarked. “It makes you wonder what else is out there that we don’t know about.”
“Yeah, like the instructions for how to make the cure using the violet flowers,” Isis said in frustration.
The next few days were spent taking the rest of the boxes down to the village and moving the jars through the cavern chambers to bring them up to temperature.
Finally, everything had been removed from the site, and the entire location had been studied as well as possible. When they were ready to leave, Piper had one last thing to do.
She walked with Nixie across the ice cavern, where the two of them managed to swing the chamber’s door closed.
“Well,” Piper said with satisfaction, “now I can sleep at night, knowing that, in fact, we didn’t forget to close the door.”
“Whatever works for you,” Nixie laughed. “But you know, I’ll miss this place.”
“I think we should come back sometime,” Piper said as they walked out. “Just to see if there are any more visions waiting for you.”
“That’s for another time,” Nixie said, walking with her friend. “For now, we’ve got more important things to do.”