He shielded his eyes with both hands. It took a few minutes for them to fully adjust to the homogeneous brightness of the world outside the cave.
His imagination was still wrestling to accommodate everything his aunt had told him. They didn't come to India to visit dusty museums, they came on a mission. A mission that included funny-looking astronauts painted on cave walls by hairy people straight out of the pages of the History textbooks from school.
The thought sent a wave of excitement down his spine. It sounded more like a story from one of the comic magazines he liked to read in his time off than school stuff.
While walking by the riverbank, fighting the half-dried bushes and shrubs that blocked his passage with an imaginary sword, he imagined the men Laura had described to him, painting the strange saucers in the sky. He supposed they had to take turns doing it, otherwise, they would soon hurt their fingers.
He walked and walked, playing with these ideas until Laura's cave was but a speck on the horizon. He didn't find any monotons like she had instructed, only the same dull vegetation everywhere he went.
He wondered if he should go back and report his findings, or lack of findings. There was a part of him that wanted very much to go look at the astronauts again, but there was another part that suggested staying was a better idea. In the end, he just kept exploring the landscape, letting his path strand away from the river.
If he were lucky, he would see some flying saucers too and make his own drawings, the thought popped in his head.
He had fished the term "flying saucers" from somewhere deep inside his brain and felt impressed by how scientific it sounded out loud. Maybe he could work with Laura when he grew up.
He looked up, shading his eyes with his chubby hands once more, but saw nothing out of the ordinary, just a cloudless blue. When his gaze descended back to Earth, however, he did see something.
On a hillside, there sat a cairn almost as tall as he was. Nothing unusual signaled the ensemble, except that it couldn't be a natural formation.
Once he reached the spot, he crouched to investigate like he imagined his aunt would do. The stones were flat and squared. He also found that they were different in color and texture from those he had seen by the river.
He felt the urge of pulling one out and taking it to Laura. Luckily, it would be something of interest, something that would compensate for the absence of painted monotons.
He picked one stone from the top and pulled it away. As it came out, the whole pile tumbled down and a rabbit hole appeared in its place. A mixture of excitement and unrest assaulted his stomach.
It wasn't a natural rabbit hole either. The borders were paved with the same stones that formed the pile that once hid it. Different from the latter, however, these stones were cut with precision to fit each other. It would not be possible to remove a single piece.
The opening was too small for him to walk into, so his only option was to crawl.
At first, all he saw was darkness, a darkness so thick that even the bright light of the afternoon had a hard time penetrating.
He waited uncomfortably for his eyes to adjust, but even when they did, there wasn't much to see. There seemed to be a chamber under the hill, paved with stones, mirroring the entrance. He was looking at it from above, in such a way that the ceiling lied only a few feet from his head.
Aunt Laura ought to see it, he thought as he tried to crawl backward, succeeding only in moving further down the hole. Before Elias noticed, he was falling.
#
They started calling out his name, first in unison, then at random and in opposite directions.
Laura looked around the cave several times. Followed the riverbank. Searched all around the site.
Minutes went by. The local police were called. Hours went by.