Okay, this is a pretty grim storyline, but it’s necessary to make my point. Part One is “The Monster In the Cave.” I want to capture the horror that the ancients must have felt when they discovered what the ‘gods’ required of them – the twisted, sick requirements around human sacrifice and sexuality. This would not be a kids’ book. Rescue of this settlement from the clutches of the Nargun would come in Part Three.

Part Two

We begin Part 2 with the Nargun’s interests with Turner fading. Through symbolism, the Nargun in the cave has communicated that he wants a fertile female. Owen, Turner’s sidekick, suggests Mirin, a young woman about their same age who seems much older and is awkward in social situations.

Concurrently, a raiding city-state threatens to invade.

Mirin is easily drawn in, and is ravenously interested in the Nargun herself. Turner finds himself jealous of the way that Owen and Mirin are pairing off, like the third wheel, and that it was “his thing” in the beginning, but now it seems they are taking over. Through the jealousy, and the intense pressure, he can’t help but develop feelings for her, and feelings of hate against Owen.

Things come to a head when Turner and Owen finalise their plan, forcing Mirin to the edge of the pool, naked, when she is in the fertile time of her cycle. She is terrified and furious, realising that they have betrayed her, but she has no choice. Turner has tied a long rope around her ankle, and when she is pushed down by the waterfall, he is hoping to pull her out, but the rope becomes tangled.

When Mirin appears, unconscious, floating in a side pool, Turner is sick with relief. Owen is the first to get there. He gives Mirin mouth to mouth, which makes Turner even more jealous. When Mirin revives, she screams, “Don’t touch me!” but Owen doesn’t listen, grabbing at her with relief. Things turn dark when Owen clutches at his throat and drops dead. “Don’t touch me!” Mirin warns Turner again, and tells him that she has met the Nargun, and he is beautiful, and she has become his wife. It will be her, alone, who communicates with the Nargun, and Turner will be her intermediary, her servant.

Turner gets rid of Owen’s body. Everyone in their settlement is too preoccupied by threatening, murderous raids, so Owen’s disappearance is easily explained. People are wonderng where Mirin is, though. Turner keeps her secret. Mirin lives in the cave, drawing symbols all over the inside walls in chalk and charcoal. Turner must bring her food and wait on her. She tells him to make a diving helmet for her, and that his job will be to bring the gifts, and also to turn the pump and maintain the hose airline while she is underwater. She explains to Turner that the Nargun will help, and wants to establish proper communication: If they drop sticks marked with symbols into the waterfall, along with a gift, the Nargun will stir the waters and send the symbols associated with its answer to the side pool where Mirin floated to the surface. Mirin, as the Nargun’s wife, must visit him regularly by jumping into the waterfall.

Turner begins to suspect that it is he who has been used by Mirin, and not the other way around. If he wants to have power, he must do exactly as she says.

As the raiders from the invading city-state become even more threatening. Mirin explains the situation to the Nargun and before Turner knows it, he has made a pact with the Nargun: The Nargun will fight on Turner’s behalf in return for gifts. It is expecting fifteen gifts, fifteen people by Mirin’s next fertile cycle. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Mirin asks, wide-eyed, and Turner knows he is stuck. He has already made promises to the Nargun and he must deliver.

Now, Turner must play politics, he’s just a weird guy in his early twenties, on the edges of social life in his settlement. There is no reason for the elders of his settlement to listen to him. He convinces the head elders to come to his cave. The elders are reluctant, but Mirin puts on a good show. It turns out her social awkwardness was because she didn’t know how to do small-talk. She is extremely persuasive and sensual. She tells then that while the Nargun is her husband, Turner is also her husband, and they must do what he says. When they laugh at her and one of the elders touches the water, he chokes and dies. “I am the wife of the Nargun,” she says. “Fear me!”

The clock is ticking, and there are fourteen gifts needed. Actually, there are seventeen needed now, because of the demonstration of the Nargun’s power requires payment.

The elders have agreed to let Turner use the Nargun in battle.

Turner sees Mirin in a whole new light. She is powerful and sensual and strange, somehow ugly and beautiful all at once. She explains that the Nargun wants him to “seed the water”, and that he is to play the part of her husband, but they are never to touch. She reminds him of the time when Turner saw her and Owen together in the pool, and how she locked eyes with Turner in Owen’s moment of ecstacy, and it was Turner that she was with. “We will be together,” Mirin says. Turner doesn’t remember this at all. He thinks she is making it up, but the way she tells it is so convincing! Furthermore, didn’t the Nargun always want virgins? But Mirin says she will be his. Kind of. Turner doesn’t know if this is good or bad, or whether he is filled with horror or desire.

The city state attacks. While the battle is raging and the town is under attack, Turner knows that the Nargun can only injure people who touch its water, and its water must be contiguous. How will he do that? The trick comes when Turner realises that if he diverts the town water supply to the Nargun’s cave, the Nargun can transmit upstream from its den, to wherever they want it to go. Furthermore, if they time the fight for a thunderstorm, the puddles in a flat plain will join, and the Nargun can get to a large lake.

Turner does his part as the joiner of hoses. First, the hoses to join the water supply to the cave. Next, he must operate the airpump as Mirin enters the water for the duration of the battle. Everyone else is fighting, and he is alone, in the cave, turning the pump and manning the hoses. Mirin is under the water, with the Nargun.

An intruder comes to the cave, and Turner must simultaneously fight the intruder and keep the pump going for Mirrin’s air.

Mirin emerges in the pool, without her helmet, and Turner must pull her out and revive her without touching her.

Turns out that the Nargun wants its “gifts” brought to the cave. They must be female and male. Young. Virginal. Turner explains the problem to the elders, that if they don’t do what the Nargun says, the Nargun, who has access to the town water supply, will keep killing until they comply. The elders choose a young man and a woman, to go to the cave. “Hello Owen,” Mirin says to the young man when she sees him, and Turner’s heart sinks.

End of Part 2