The Glow from Below

The air inside the Wai-Light Caverns was choice—cool, damp, and smelling like wet rocks and old secrets. But for twelve-year-old Ari, it felt a bit heavy. He sat in the middle of the heavy plastic boat, his puffer jacket rustling every time he moved.

“Far out, it’s pitch black, eh?” his cousin, Jun, whispered from the seat behind him. Jun was fourteen and usually acted too cool for school, but his voice was sounding a bit thin. “If the torch goes out, we’re properly stuffed.”

“Zip it, Jun,” Ari muttered, though his own heart was doing a bit of a haka against his ribs.

They weren’t supposed to be this deep in the cave system. The official tour ended back at the “Cathedral” cavern, where the choir used to sing. But Ari and Jun had slipped away, stealing a small maintenance dinghy to drift down the “Whispering Vein,” a branch of the river that the guides said was too narrow for tourists.

The Mission

The mission was simple, but gutsy. Their A-Ma (Grandmother) had come on a trip to the caves last week. She’d been leaning over the railing of the walkway when her Jade Dragon—a tiny, deep-green pendant passed down through four generations—had snapped its silk cord and vanished into the dark water.

The park rangers said it was “gone for good, mate.” They told her the silt at the bottom of the river was like quicksand and the current would’ve swept it into some crevice deep in the earth. A-Ma hadn’t complained. She just got quiet. And a quiet A-Ma was a sad A-Ma.

“I reckon it’s around this bend,” Ari said, his voice echoing.

“You reckon? It’s all just rocks and shadows, bro,” Jun grumbled. He was holding a small LED torch, but the beam barely bit into the darkness.

The Underground Stars

Ari looked up. The ceiling of the cave was covered in them. Thousands—maybe millions—of tiny, pulsing blue lights. The titiwai. To the scientists, they were just fly larvae with glowing bums. But as Ari stared at them, he felt a weird tingle in the back of his neck.

He closed his eyes for a second, picturing A-Ma’s face when she realized the jade was gone. He pictured the Dragon pendant—the way the light caught the translucent green stone.

I need to find it, Ari thought fiercely. Please, just show me where it is.

When he opened his eyes, the cave had changed.

The blue lights weren’t just sitting there anymore. They were moving. Not crawling, but flashing in a pattern. Blink-blink… pause… long glow. “Whoa,” Jun gasped, dropping his torch into the bottom of the boat. “Did you see that? The ceiling just went mental!”

The glowworms directly above the boat began to pulse in a rhythmic wave, like a neon sign pointing downstream.

“They’re helping us,” Ari said. He felt a strange calm wash over him. It wasn’t scary anymore. It felt like the cave was giving him a big, glowing hug.

“Don’t be a egg, Ari. Bugs don’t help people,” Jun said, though he didn’t pick up the torch. He just stared at the ceiling.

The Rhythmic Code

Ari stood up, balancing carefully as the boat drifted. He didn’t need the torch. The light from the ceiling was growing brighter, a brilliant, electric indigo that turned the limestone walls into shimmering silver.

Left, Ari thought.

The lights on the left side of the cave flared bright white.

Faster.

The pulsing speeded up, a frantic, heartbeat rhythm.

Stop.

The boat drifted into a tiny alcove where the water was so clear and still it looked like glass. Directly above a small silt bank, a massive cluster of glowworms began to drop their sticky, glowing threads lower, like shimmering fishing lines. They were illuminating a single spot in the mud.

“There,” Ari whispered.

He leaned over the side, his arm disappearing into the freezing water. It was “freezing as,” the kind of cold that makes your bones ache. He felt through the soft, slimy mud. His fingers hit something hard. Something smooth.

He pulled his hand back, and there, resting in his palm, was the Jade Dragon. It looked even greener in the blue light of the cave.

“No way,” Jun breathed, leaning over. “You actually found it. You’re a total legend, bro!”

As Ari gripped the jade, the entire cave ceiling gave one final, massive flash—a brilliant explosion of light that made the stalactites look like diamonds. Then, as quickly as it happened, the lights settled back into their usual, sleepy shimmer.

The Journey Back

The row back was quiet. They managed to sneak the boat back and slip out the side exit before the night shift ranger saw them.

“Hey,” Jun said as they walked toward their bikes in the car park, the stars in the New Zealand sky looking surprisingly dim compared to the ones they’d just seen underground. “How did you know? About the lights?”

Ari looked at the Jade Dragon in his hand. He could still feel that rhythmic pulse in his mind, like a song he’d forgotten he knew.

“I don’t know, Jun. I just… I listened with my head, I guess.”

Jun nudged him. “Choice, bro. Truly choice. A-Ma is gonna be stoked. She might even make those pork buns you like.”

Ari smiled, looking back at the dark entrance of the cave. He knew he’d never look at a glowworm the same way again. They weren’t just bugs. They were keepers of the deep, and for one night, they’d spoken to him.