by Jim Ware
The answer was not long in coming. Somehow, she thought, the music had something to do with it. In some unexplained way, the two must be connected. Even now she could hear the ascending melody of “The May Morning Dew” rising up from the deepest recesses of her mind. Or was it echoing off the rocky face of the cliff behind her?
Yes!
She was sure of it now. The tune was actually ringing in her ears, not merely in her imagination. Only on this occasion it was not the plaintive strains of the violin she heard, but rather the gently dropping notes of the wire-strung harp. She turned and looked up the beach in the direction of the Cave of the Hands.
Eny followed the music, shoes squishing and clothes dripping, through the shallows, under the arch, up the slope, and straight on toward the cavern’s black mouth. At every step the tune altered slightly until at last it had become a melody she had never heard before, haunting, sensuous, and otherworldly. Slowly, imperceptibly, it wove its strange spell around her, drawing her onward and upward, until she stood panting and blinking into the dim spaces in the opening in the cliff.
There she paused and sniffed. From the entrance to the cavern, mingled somehow with the music and the cool, damp air that flowed out of the darkness, wafted a fragrance like a mixture of orange blossoms, jasmine, and honeysuckle. Eny checked herself, tilted her head slightly, and took another breath, drinking deeply of the earth’s sweet exhalations. Then she took a tentative step forward into the cave.
Though gray and fading, the light from the sea was still sufficient to illuminate the copper-colored hands ascending the wall of the cavern. Eny stopped just long enough to touch them with her fingertips. She would have lingered in that familiar spot, but the notes of the harp and the strangely attractive aroma would not permit her to stay. Without growing the least bit louder—indeed, if anything, it seemed to be diminishing in volume—the melody somehow became more aggressive and insistent, penetrating her brain, calling her deeper into the cave. Persistently it wormed its way into the center of her consciousness, thrumming as if it were the pounding of her own heart within her chest or the pulse of her bloodstream behind her ear. Or was it rather the beat of a drum that she was hearing? Eny followed the relentless sound forward, noticing for the first time that a faint light was illuminating the rear of the cave, quite near to the spot where she had seen the crow. Again she halted and cast her eyes around the cavern’s damp and dimly lit walls.
“Oh!” cried Eny in spite of herself, the sound of her voice setting off a series of unexpected reverberations. She clapped a hand over her mouth and took a step back.
At her feet, just at the place where sand and bare rock yielded to wet, impressionable earth, she could see footprints coming and going across the floor of the cave. There were two distinct sets, and they had obviously been made by two very different kinds of people. The first were quite small: possibly the tracks of a child. By contrast, the prints in the second set were extremely large—even unnaturally large. Eny felt as if she were looking at the footprints of a giant.
All this while the beating of the drum had become more pronounced, almost drowning out the strains of the harp altogether. At the same time, the flowery fragrance was growing stronger and more enticing. The air felt warmer and lighter now than when she had first come into the Cave of the Hands. Her heart was pounding as loudly and persistently as the drum itself.
Eny bent forward, squinting and straining her eyes in an attempt to discover the source of the illumination at the back of the cavern. To her great surprise, she found that it flowed from a passage that opened between two squat boulders that stood in a corner where the dripping ceiling sloped down to meet the floor. She closed her eyes and drew in a chest-deep draft of the sweet fragrance that came drifting from that quarter of the chamber.
At that moment the music took an upward turn, then suddenly faded and ceased. Eny let out all her breath in a long, shaky sigh. Then she squared her shoulders, walked to the rear of the cave, ducked between the boulders, and stepped into the light of the narrow passage.
Chapter Eleven
The Tunnel of Light
Light. But not as she’d been accustomed to think of it. Swirling, churning, eddying in little whorls and back-currents and dust-devils of luminosity and brightness. Bubbling and boiling, flowing and skimming over the stumps and bumps and outcroppings of rock in the floor and walls and ceiling. Light that reminded her sometimes of water, sometimes of glowing clouds of mist. Light like some kind of tangible, workable, malleable stuff. Fine threads or fibers of light that spun themselves out interminably in all directions like sparkling cotton candy or glittering spider webs. Clinging strands of light that wrapped themselves around you and got tangled in your hair. Light bodied forth in the form of reaching hands and grasping fingers. Winding and binding strings of light, an inescapable shining net of light, leading you on, drawing you down, overpowering you, forever eluding your grasp. Light that passed straight through you like shafts of pure energy, and then went whirling and spiraling away into the surrounding emptiness. Light like none she had ever seen before.…
Beyond the two boulders at the rear of the cave Eny found herself in a brightly illuminated tunnel. On either side its walls flickered and shimmered, like the walls of a pool or an aquarium, under the liquid waves of the mysterious phosphorescence. She put up a hand and touched the damp, shining surface of the cold, rough rock. Then, feeling her way along with her fingertips, she began to move forward, down into the heart of the sea-cliff.
How had this tunnel come to be here? How, in all of her many visits to La Cueva de los Manos, had she failed to notice it? That was a mystery she’d have to plumb some other day. For the moment, every particle of her mental and physical being, every taut nerve and sharpened sense, was intent upon one thing: the downwardly sloping course of the narrow corridor that stretched away in front of her. A quest had been laid upon her. Her purpose was clear. She had to discover the source of this strange luminescence. She had to find the incandescent subterranean well from which these waves of light came sweeping irresistibly up the descending passageway.
It was neither a natural nor an earthly light. Of this Eny was certain. Her first thought was that it was like the light she had seen surrounding her vision of the Green Island in the West. The similarity between them wasn’t limited to color: a soft silvery whiteness tinged with green and gold, hinting of sunlight on grass. In both cases the most striking thing about the light was its otherworldly quality, and something else that she could only conceive as a kind of bodily intensity. This light seemed to be a thing possessing substance and form. It flowed across the floor and up the sides of the tunnel in ever-shifting, shimmering, vacillating strands. When she stretched out a finger to touch them, these strands clung to her hands and arms like hairs or statically charged fibers. They wrapped themselves around her in bright rippling circles. They pulled at her and drew her gently along. Yet she could never be absolutely certain that she actually felt them.
The passage plunged forward, proceeding through a series of winding curves and sharply angled turns: first left, then right, then left again. Never did it keep to a straight course for more than four or five paces together. On and on it went, delving deeper and deeper into the earth, until at last Eny lost all sense of location, direction, and time. She felt as if she had been walking forever, down, down, down into the center of all things seen and unseen. And always, spilling and curling around each successive bend in the path, growing progressively brighter at every turn, the strings of light reached out to her from the invisible place of their origin, grasping her, enfolding her, leading her further into the rock.
At last she reached a spot where the passage widened out into a broad colonnade of gleaming stalagmites and stalactites. Eny put up a hand, shading her eyes against the light, leaning into the strangely elastic stuff of which it was made. Slowly and tentatively she made her way forward
, the ceiling of the cave rising to loftier heights above her head at every step. At length the pillared grotto became a vast, dripping, echoing hall of flashing crystals and smoothly fluted columns. Every facet of every jewel danced with light. Every formation, every inch of wall and floor, glittered with bright festoons and frills of illumination.
By this time the light was so strong that Eny felt she could no longer make any headway against it. So thoroughly had its threads and strings and cords wrapped themselves about her and tangled themselves in her clothing and hair that she was finding it difficult to move or breathe. Her steps grew slow and heavy. Her thoughts became sluggish and confused.
She stopped and gazed around, squinting into the intense brightness, and found that she was standing in a broad open space where the stony floor once again gave way to moist, soft sand. Impressed upon this sand were the same footprints she had seen in the Cave of the Hands. Clearly, the creatures or people who had left those tracks had also made these. They too must know about the strange light and the tunnel below the cliff.
Through the thinning forests of stalactites and stalagmites to her right and left, at a distance of about fifty feet on either hand, she could see rising walls, as straight and smooth as if they had been the work of skilled masons. At intervals these walls were marked by even smoother spaces—blank, polished, and rectangular—that looked oddly like doors except that there were no seams or breaks of any kind to set them apart from the surrounding rock.
Directly ahead the columns of stone ceased altogether. The ceiling of the cavern lifted higher and ever higher until it was completely lost to sight. In that vast and empty space the threads and strands of light swirled and pooled and spiraled together, like the swift currents of a stream trapped in a churning backwater. At a great distance above her head they stalled and spun and congealed, forming knots and balls and pinwheels of stunning splendor like stars in an underground firmament. Far below them, at the bottom of a gentle sandy slope, heaved the sparkling swells of what appeared to be a limitless underground sea.
Down to that sea went Eny, weary, weak, and irresistibly drawn by the cords of light that bound her hands and head and feet. Helpless she plunged forward into the foaming breakers, head over heels and heels over head, rolling, floundering, spinning, and sinking until she no longer had any sense of up or down. I’ll drown, she thought vaguely; but it wasn’t so. For the water in which she was tossed and flung from side to side had no wetness about it at all. It was warm and airy and downy. It, too, seemed to be fabricated of the bright and sinuous fibers of never-resting light. With something like a satisfied sigh, she rolled herself into a ball and gave herself up to be tumbled along by the silky undulations of the fragrant glowing billows.
And now began a long and dreamlike journey in which the beating of her heart merged with the rhythm of the unceasing drum and the gently floating music of the harp. Consciousness slipped away like a little boat loosed from its moorings. She was unaware of breathing, moving, waking or sleeping. She did not know whether she was blind or seeing, whether her eyes were open or shut. And yet she felt, perceived, and envisioned many things.
Flocks of seabirds with broad iridescent wings. Geese and swans in arching skyward flight. Fleets of pigeons and squadrons of doves, bursting up from behind the sun, scattering storms of pearly feathers, dipping and rising and disappearing beyond the watery blue zenith.
White-sailed ships upon the water. Winged vessels soaring through cream-colored clouds. Sun, moon, and stars in a dimpled pool, green cataracts thundering over the edge of the world, fountains of silver foam and coppery sparks. Glittering green coils and writhing, red-mouthed serpents.
White wings and white feathers. Black wings like long-fingered hands. Bubbles and brine and dark headlands in the sea. Hulking shapes stalking across barren fields. The moon behind a veil of rain, the moon through parting clouds. A face—a pale but luminous face: oval-shaped, green-eyed, smiling, always smiling.
Eny opened her eyes. Sunlight was filtering down through a lacy canopy of delicate branches and young green leaves. Groggy with sleep, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut, rubbed them with her knuckles, then opened them again and blinked. Raising herself on one elbow, she yawned, stretched luxuriously, and looked around.
She was lying under a slender beech tree atop a small round hill of glittering white sand. At the foot of the hill a green ocean flashed in the sun beneath a clear and cloudless blue sky. Beyond the breakers, halfway between the shore and the horizon, a humpbacked island raised its bulk above the tossing white wave-caps.
She got to her knees and shaded her eyes. Was it possible? Could this be the island she had seen through the mist off La Punta Lira? Heart pounding, she staggered to her feet and took a few uncertain steps down the hill, craning her neck for a better view, lifting a hand against the glare. But in the next instant her hopes were snuffed like a candle. For this island was not lush and green like the one she remembered. It was dark and rough and bare in the open sunshine. Its cliffs were of stark red rock, and from its highest point a spike of smooth black stone shot skyward like a forbidding finger. Gray and pebble-strewn its steep flanks rose dripping from the sea, and from its rocky shores—
Eny stopped dead still, her heart in her mouth. Out past the churning surf, between the dark island and the white sands at her feet, something was coming toward her over the restless sea: not one, not two, but three gigantic man-shapes. Three lumbering giants like the one she had seen below the arch outside the Cave of the Hands: black silhouettes against the sky, huge-limbed, round-skulled, heavy-faced, moving mountains amid the waves. Slowly, steadily, laboriously they came wading through the billows, making directly for the spot where she stood.
Cold from head to toe with sudden dread, she let out an involuntary gasp and took a step backward. Something struck her on the head—something soft and feathery, like a puff of air or a brush of wings. Startled by the wild fluttering sounds that accompanied the blow, she cried out and dropped to one knee, flailing her arms frantically above her head as a great black crow swept past her ear and went winging out over the deep.
“Don’t stand there gawping like a lummox!” shouted an oddly familiar voice in her other ear. “Can’t you see it’s after you they’re coming? Up with you and away!”
A pair of hands, small but strong as a vise, grasped her by the arm and jerked her to her feet. Blindly she turned and stumbled forward, her brain spinning, her arm throbbing under the unrelenting grip of hard, bony fingers. Her companion—or assailant—dragged her up the sandy heap and past the drooping beech to a place where the ground become more solid and the sand yielded to smooth and clumps of fragile white flowers. Then the two of them began to run in earnest, chests heaving and feet pounding, straight for a grove of tall trees at the top of a gentle rise.
Glancing to one side, Eny discovered that she was running alongside a wiry little man with a wizened, walnutlike face, wild, woolly eyebrows, and a bulbous nose that showed signs of having been broken in several places. Even in the act of lunging desperately up the hill, gasping for breath at every step, she found herself gaping in disbelief at this odd little man. He was strikingly similar in appearance to Eochy, the strange, diminutive person she and Morgan had met in Madame Medea’s shop. As a matter of fact, he might have been Eochy’s brother. But he was leaner and hungrier-looking, and his clothes were much shabbier and dirtier. Instead of shoes he had filthy rags bound upon his feet. In place of a cap he wore a faded red cloth wrapped about his head. As he ran, a lumpy leather bag or satchel swung madly from his frayed rope belt, bouncing like a cow’s udder just below his belly.
“Go on with you!” he shouted to several others of his kind who stood cowering under the eaves of the forest. “Follow Sengann to the village! Get weapons and supplies! I’m taking the girl to the wood above the dun!”
Soundlessly the little band disappeared into the shadows within
the grove. An instant later Eny and her escort reached the top of the ridge and plunged in after them.
“Wait!” screamed Eny, collapsing in terror and exhaustion the moment they were under the shelter of the trees. “Can’t you wait a minute?” With one last desperate burst of energy she jumped up, freed herself from the little man’s grasp, and flung herself against the trunk of a towering oak. “What is this place? Who are you? And where are you taking me?”
With a grim look, he seized her by the wrist and drew her face down to his.
“It’s in the Sidhe you are, where Overlanders like yourself come rarely. Rury of the Road am I. And it’s over Mag Adair and past Beinn Meallain we be bound—as far from her and Tory Island as we can go!”
Chapter Twelve
Pursued
The slope grew steeper as Eny, sweating and panting, stumbled up the thickly wooded hillside behind her solemn and silent guide. It was amazing how quickly the bent and stooping little man could go. Deftly he threaded his way between the thick-boled trees, around lichen-covered boulders, and over broad patches of pale red-speckled mushrooms, his nose thrust forward like the snout of a dog, his skinny arms akimbo, his bandy legs churning up the leaf-strewn forest floor like a whirlwind. Eny was barely able to keep up with him. It was not a time for questions, and so with every step her distress grew more profound. What am I doing here? she wondered. How did this happen to me? And how will I ever find my way home? But there were no answers for the present. Never once did Rury stop or speak or turn around as the trees and shadows flew past on either side.
After half an hour or so of this desperate, breathless flight they came out from under the spreading oaks and broad-leafed elms into a lighter and airier stand of tall, straight pines at the top of a rocky ridge. Between the stems Eny could see the flash of the sea and a ribbon of bright sand along the shore. Not far from the silvery beach stood a huddle of wretched-looking thatched huts from which a gravel track wound its way up the green slopes below the wooded ridge. Along this narrow path seven small and heavily burdened figures were making their way laboriously up the hill and toward the grove of pines.
