The Mirror After the Cavern

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Somehow, in that strange, inexplicable setting, the wagon had landed intact. The mule had landed alive. And Silas had landed alive as well. But where was Moochie?

  With a start of fear, Silas considered that the murderous trader had fallen with the rest of the wagon, and might have lived through the fall as well. Silas quickly swiveled his head in all directions, looking for any sign that Moochie might be prowling about, preparing to sneak up on him and flail his deadly knife at Silas.

  Fortunately, there was no sign of the man anywhere. All directions, despite the disconcerting colors that glowed in various shades of the two unblended fogs, were free of the appearance of Moochie.

  Silas realized he was standing on the bench of the wagon as he searched for signs of Moochie, and he realized he was going to have to climb down off the wagon to search further.

  He bit his lip and then climbed down to the rocky floor of the cavern, and immediately spotted Moochie’s worn boots sticking out from under the wagon. The vehicle had landed directly on top of the man. He had fallen down beneath the wagon when it had last become stuck in the narrow portion of the shaft, Silas recollected, and then the wagon had come loose and fallen down and reached the bottom of the cave by landing on Moochie, who had probably died from the fall anyway, Silas told himself.

  He looked up at the dome overhead, with the opening upward, in the center of which glowed the small spot of light that was the open road level Silas had just descended from.

  “Help!” he cupped both his hands around his mouth and shouted out mightily. “Help, we’re down here!” he repeated the call as he lifted his face upward.

  He then stood in silence, listening intently, hoping that his voice had been heard, and was about to produce a response.

  There was nothing from above, nothing but the beams of filtered light, where motes of dust lazily floated out of reach.

  Silas shouted again, and then again, and again, growing suddenly panicked as he began to understand that he might be trapped in the cave, doomed to be undiscovered, and doomed to eventually die while stranded down amidst the strange swirling fog.

  He stopped shouting, and panted to catch his breath, then stopped panting and held his breath when he heard a sound, a noise that was a small pebble dislodged and falling somewhere nearby.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted, whirling around, looking for any movement, person, or beast that might had kicked or knocked a stone loose.

  There was another sound, a small cascade of stones falling. Silas’s panic increased and the mule brayed nervously as well. He had no weapon, he realized. He could only defend himself with his fists, and that had proven to have been of no use against Moochie’s interrupted murderous attack just minutes earlier.

  Moochie had a weapon, he realized. The dead man had no further need for the deadly blade he had carried and used to threaten Silas. The boy quickly circled around the wagon, and knelt down, then reared up in momentary fear at his first sight of the dead man’s face. The eyes were open wide, staring up at the bottom of the wagon without a blink or movement, sending further shivers along Silas’s spine. Nevertheless, Silas crept to the side of the dead man, then spotted the long, sinister knife lying on the rocky floor of the cavern next to Moochie’s open hand, a film of Silas’s own blood evident on the tip and along the upper edge of the blade.

  He grabbed the knife, quickly backed out from the space beneath the wagon, then whirled around to protect himself from any threat that he imagined might be creeping up on him.

  The cavern appeared just as empty as before, except that the level of the colored fogs was rising, reducing the amount of area of the small island hill the wagon sat on.

  “Why couldn’t you be the green gas of Heathrin, so that I could be a speaker and tell someone where I am?” Silas called out bitterly to the gasses.

  “Who’s out there?” he called a moment later, still searching for the source of the mysterious sounds.

  The cavern was silent once again.

  A stone suddenly fell from directly overhead, landing just two feet away from Silas. He jumped to the side as he looked upward. As he searched the dome overhead, he felt a strong vibration, then saw a large slab of stone detach itself from the ceiling and come crashing down onto the cave floor. It sent out a wave of yellow gas that crested over the wagon, the mule, and Silas, making him cough and sputter from the acrid feeling in his throat, while the earth continued to shake.

  More stones began to fall, and large pebbles painfully rained down on his head and his shoulders. The mule began to voice its pain and fear as well, reminding Silas of its existence.

  “We have to get out of here; let’s go!” Silas raised his knife-holding hand over his head as an ineffective shield while he sprinted around the wagon and up to the front of the vehicle, next to the mule. He grabbed the reins from the drivers’ bench, and pulled them as he went past the mule.

  The animal began to immediately follow him through the increasingly heavy rain of rocky debris. Silas heard the wagon wheels turn, and then heard the wagon give a thump as the wheels rolled over an obstruction. The obstruction was Moochie’s body, he understood, with a jolt of disgust.

  Then he realized he had not even thought to unfasten the mule from the wagon. He should have; he would have expected the wagon to be broken and immovable after suffering the fall from the surface far overhead. But it was moving – its wheels were turning, the axles seemed to be sound. There was a tinkling sound from pieces of broken glass rattling together in the wagon bed, but not a great deal, not as much as Silas would have expected.

  And in the moments that he realized and processed all that information, the mule kept straining to walk to safety, and the wagon kept rolling along.

  Where could safety be found, Silas asked himself.

  He realized that the wagon was descending onto the slightly lower floor of the cavern, deeper into the colored fogs that continued to flow like waters along the shore. And the wagon was directed towards the passage he had seen earlier, the cave that opened in the seam in the distant wall where the two differently colored glowing segments of stone met. The cave passage that stretched away even had one wall that glowed purple and the other that glowed yellow. It was where they were heading, if they survived the stonefalls and the gasses.

  Silas coughed as he inhaled the gasses fully at that moment, while the mule likewise gave a noise that seemed part cough and part sneeze. But the animal continued to follow Silas’s lead, and he continued to move forward despite the conditions.

  There was a tremendous clap of noise, and Silas turned to see that a large portion of the ceiling had fallen down in the center spot he had just departed.

  “Let’s go mule! Run for your life!” Silas urged. He slapped the flat of his knife against the animal’s haunches, and it broke into a run, whether from fear of the noise or in reaction to the smack, he wasn’t sure.

  They coughed and sputtered as they pulled the wagon forward. It would take longer to stop and unharness the animal than it would to just continue pulling the wagon with them to reach the safety of the passage ahead, Silas was sure, and so they carried their cargo with them. A shower of sharp-edged pebbles began to fall on them, making the mule squeal in pain as a stone struck its haunch and open a slice in the fur-covered flesh, making the animal’s blood begin to trickle out in a small stream. Silas reached over to pat the animal comfortingly, but as he did, another sharp stone struck his hand, opening a slice in his own flesh, and pressing his hand down on the mule. Their two wellings of blood mixed together, and Silas felt a strange shock to his system, while he continued hurrying towards safety.

  They reached the pointed arch of the cavern entrance, and darted inside, safe from the continued rain of stones that were falling in the domed chamber they had fled from. Moochie’s body was buried under unmovable tons of stone, and the opening to the surface and the road they had left was out of reach, cut off by the changed and shifted layers of rock overhead. There would be no m
iraculous rescue, no return to the surface that way.

  He and the mule were doomed to die in the dark underground space, Silas realized. He sobbed, then choked off an impending wave of noisy self-pity.

  Get hold of yourself and follow the passage. You will be safe, he heard the voice of Krusima state matter-of-factly. This is my domain, and you are safe down here.

  The god was speaking to him! The god who had spoken to him in the temple was addressing him once again.

  It was the same god that told him he was on the road to greatness and adventure; his elation grew suddenly clouded as he recollected the false promises of his last encounter with Krusima.

  “Why should I believe you?” he asked, turning his face upward to stare at the ceiling, as he rotated his body from right to left, searching for a sign of the god to address.

  What choice do you have? Krusima asked wryly.

  “Curse you,” Silas said defiantly, fearfully. A moment later he realized that the god was correct; he had no choice but to follow the passageway. He coughed again from the gasses that he inhaled, that penetrated into his lungs, while seeming to cling to his clothes and his hair and his very skin as well.

  “Let’s go, mule,” he said grumpily. He took hold of the lead once again and gave a tug as he walked to the front of the mule and passed it, while looking down at the floor of the passageway, and then ahead at the width of the long, eerily-dim road ahead. The way appeared large and level enough to take the wagon along, so he decided he would. There would come a point when he’d have to abandon the wagon – there might even come a point where he’d have to abandon the mule – yet maintaining the semblance of normalcy by clinging to the remnants of life in the caravan was important. It provided a bulwark that protected him from overwhelming horror at the notion of being trapped and left to die in a deep, unstable underground chamber.

  The mule was wheezing in the gaseous tunnel as the pair of travelers began to advance through the beckoning cave. As they moved, Silas felt the earth begin to tremble once more, and he crossed his arms above his head protectively, while a few pebbles were jarred loose and fell. Behind him though, there was a loud rumble from the wide chamber he had fallen into, and then a cloud of stone dust was blown past him from the chamber, striking the wagon and Silas’s back with sand and grit as it was propelled by the collapse of the cave.

  Silas stopped the mule and wrapped his arms around his head. “Make it stop!” he bellowed in agony, fearful and tired, shocked by the extreme drama that his life had become wrapped up in.

  The last of the shock wave passed by, and the tunnel grew quieter and calmer. Silas straightened his posture and removed his arms from his head, looking around at the state of his entourage following the tremor and its aftermath. There was a layer of sand atop the mule’s back, which he brushed away, but no other evidence of any greater harm or damage than the animal and the contrivance had suffered since the plunge to the underground world, which was an unbelievably small amount.

  The wagon still rolled, and the mule walked without any evidence of injury. Silas had heard at least one mirror break in the fall, but seemingly not the entire load of the fragile cargo.

  The gasses suddenly swirled further, seemingly with intensity, and Silas felt them more deeply penetrate his hair, his clothes, and then they seemed to discover and crawl into the long, bloody scratch that Moochie’s knife had left on Silas’s torso. The wound began to itch, and then it began to burn, with a heat that radiated across and into his chest. Just as Silas began to rub at the pain vigorously, he felt extremely light-headed, and he passed out, slumping to the ground.

  Minutes later he awoke, and sat up. The pain was gone. Silas unthinkingly ran his hand across his chest, then stopped the casual motion, and his fingers carefully examined his wound. It was gone. There was no scratch, no sign of the slight damage the knife had done to him. He shook his head, puzzled, then stood up. It was just one more riddle that he couldn’t explain.

  Silas prompted the mule to begin to walk once more, and he tried to calm his frayed nerves. Perhaps with a nice steady walk, and no further earthquakes, he could settle himself into a semblance of composure. He knew that there was no actual hope of finding an escape, but he appreciated the fact that there was at least an activity to fill the time that was going to be spent waiting for the bitter end.

  The small group walked on, step by step, in the cloudy purple and yellow corridor, and time began to pass uneventfully. Silas felt his heartrate slow and his mind settle into relative calmness the further they walked. He began to feel hungry, then realized his mule was hungry too.

  “Hron is ready for an all-day graze in a pasture,” he told himself as he walked alongside his mule.

  Why had he called the mule Hron? he wondered. He’d never called the mule by any name, but the name seemed appropriate and comfortable as it floated into his consciousness, and so he decided to use it henceforth.

  “Hron, it was an unlucky day for both of us when Minnie gave you that feed mix. If you hadn’t had that bad feed, we’d have never met, and we wouldn’t be stuck down here,” he told the mule philosophically. “I’d be studying codes right now and trying to remember what geography to use the shift sentences for,” he mused.

  The mule turned its head to look back over its shoulder at him for a moment, while it continued to pull the wagon.

  “You like that name, do you?” Silas asked. “Or do you like the idea of eating?”

  They continued to walk, and an hour later, they reached a bend in the tunnel. The purple glowing stone disappeared as the passageway delved into the yellow side on the left, and the eerily floating fogs and gasses of both colors ceased to cover the way.

  “Well, at least it’s different,” Silas murmured aloud. “At this point, different is good.” They walked through the corridor, which remained wide and smooth enough for the wagon to continue to pass. At some point, the passage began to slant downward, easing the mule’s work, until the cavern leveled off again much later.

  When it did, the light from the softly shining walls began to fade. The streaks of stone that had provided visibility grew thinner and the cave grew darker. Silas slowed his progress as he began to walk in front of the mule and wagon, trying to discern if the passage was safe for the wagon to roll through.

  But then the last streak of yellow stone faded away, and the tunnel became pitch black, except for a tiny light far ahead.

  “Let’s rest for a while,” Silas finally suggested, feeling a heavy weariness. He took pity on poor Hron, who had been confined within the traces that harnessed the animal to the wagon. As he released the mule and let it step forward, he could sense its satisfaction at the end of the confinement it had endured for so many hours.

  “Don’t go far,” Silas warned his companion. He stood still and listened as the animal took a few hoof steps forward, then stopped and shook itself vigorously.

  “That’s good,” he said. He was ready to rest his own weary legs, and climbed up onto the driving bench of the wagon, then groaned with satisfaction as he sat and relieved the weight his joints had carried for so long. And before he knew it, he had fallen asleep. And he dreamed. At first he relived the brief battle with Moochie, ending with the man’s plummeting beneath the wagon in the cavern. Then he dreamed of his short visit to the temple of Krusima in Heathrin, and he recollected the god’s promise that something important was going to happen in his life. The dreams went on, some based on reality, others as strange imaginings and wishes – visions of being a speaker and using a sword proficiently, or running through a thick green jungle with a pair of beautiful girls.

  When he awoke he was stupefied to find that he was in the tunnel. All the dreams had seemed real, and leaving the shady green jungle canopy behind for the black underground chamber left him confused and depressed. The tiny light he had seen before slowly came into focus, though it seemed it had turned red, no longer the white it had been before.

  Hron, where are you?” he c
alled out loudly. He sensed that the invisible mule had moved forward in the darkness, looking for forage to browse on, undoubtedly.

  “Hron?” he called again.

  The mule gave a reply, a bray that sounded to be many yards away. Silas dismounted from his seat on the wagon, then began to walk cautiously forward, his hands at arms’ length in front of him as he tried to locate the mule.

  He called the mule again, and the responding bray, in addition to an intuitive sense inside his head, told him that the animal was just ahead. When he had the animal collared, they shuffled back to the wagon and Silas awkwardly reconnected the mule to the wagon by fumbling in the dark, before he led the animal to resume their journey in the underground passage.

  Silas was hungry and thirsty. He was sure the mule was as well. He wondered how long they could live without eating or drinking, while they continued to approach the small red light.

  The light was changing, Silas realized. It was growing larger, and also changing its shade, growing yellow instead of red. It was a mystery, but it also was a target, a thing to move towards.

  As he progressed, Silas found that the light began to grow in size rapidly, and then he realized that it was a light, a shaft of sunshine entering the cave. It was a possible exit, an escape from the untold hours spent in the chilly darkness of the underground world!

  He stumbled over a stone then, and belatedly understood that he had virtually reached the cavern exit; it was blocked by a large pile of debris, so that only the top of the opening was unfettered, allowing light to stream in. Silas was going to have to move a great deal of the boulders and stones in order to squeeze out. He would have to remove even more to make room for Hron to exit, and the whole pile of stone would have to be shifted to produce a gap large enough for the wagon.

  Hron gave a bray of excitement, as he seemed to pick up on the emotion and hope that was coursing through Silas’s spirit.