Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  She continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “No. I’m sure it will pass. I’m just going to try and get some sleep.”

  “Well.” I said doubtfully. “I guess we can visit Topaz Dragon tomorrow, if you are feeling better.”

  She shook her head. “I think you and Miranda better go on without me. I’m sorry to leave you all alone, but I don’t know how long I’ll be sick and I’d hate to delay us any more than necessary.”

  I’m not an idiot. I knew exactly what she was doing. “I’m not an idiot.” I said. “I know exactly what you’re doing.”

  She gave me a sickly smile. “I’m not an idiot either. Or did you imagine that I was completely taken in by your superior acting? So, unless you want to explain where you went that day back at the Oak and Oar, you’ll get out of bed and go visit Topaz Dragon.”

  Well, I didn’t want to explain. So I nodded. “I don’t even know why we want to talk to Topaz Dragon. And I don’t think Mirabel does either. If you don’t come, the whole trip will be for nothing!”

  She smiled. “Mirabel, I like that. No. You and Mirabel, as you say, can find out what I want to know. It’s just a simple question. Just ask Topaz Dragon how he liked the wine.”

  I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Why is everyone so cryptic all the time? I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about! You need to come!”

  She shook her head. “Just ask the question and if it’s not clear after that, come back here and tell me what he said.”

  “Ug!” I sighed. “Why won’t you just tell me what you think is going on?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t want Mirabel to know what I suspect. I think she’s trying to derail the quest, although I don’t know why. If you don’t know, you can’t tell her.”

  I have to admit, I found the idea that Amy was suspicious of Mirabel somewhat appealing. “Ok. Ok. I’ll just go wandering into the dragon’s lair like some bumbling idiot.”

  She smiled and gave me a quick kiss. “Not just like some bumbling idiot. Like my bumbling idiot.”

  And I have to admit, I’d rather be her bumbling idiot than anybody else’s genius.

  So it was that I soon found myself astride a shaggy mountain pony with Mirabel beside me and a third pony, where Amy should have sat, holding nothing but supplies.

  “If nothing else, you’ve learned to ride.” Mirabel said after we had gone a little ways.

  I just grunted as we turned off the road onto a mountain path.

  “The girl at the inn drew me this map.” Mirabel said, unfolding a sheet of paper. “Of course, she’s never been and seems like nobody else has ever been either, so I don’t know how much use it will be. Still, I guess we’d better follow it and see where it goes.”

  I said nothing. Not because I wasn’t talking to Mirabel, but because her inane comments didn’t require a response. Was I supposed to opine on the validity of a hand-drawn map by a person who had never visited our destination, when I, myself, had also never visited the destination? What could I possibly add?

  “Ok!” She nearly shouted. “Up we go!”

  And up we went. It was beautiful on the mountain. The little path was clear and wide and we rode in the speckled shade of the trees. The gentle swaying of the pony lulled me into a sense of serenity and if fucking Mirabel could have kept her stupid fucking mouth shut for ten fucking seconds, it would have been a pleasant morning.

  “Did I ever tell you,” She prattled. “About how I became the Champion of the Mad Dreamer?” Then when I didn’t respond. “No. I can see that I haven’t. Well, you might think that it’s a post with a long and storied history, but actually, I’m the first. It all began when Neb decided to make the pilgrimage to Xanadu to see the Mad Dreamer. I must have been ten or eleven, at the time…”

  “And that.” She concluded several hours later. “Is how I finally defeated the Green Knight. He gave me this scar.” She said, indicating a thin line that went all the way around her neck. “But you should see the one I gave him!” And she doubled over laughing. Then she slapped a hand on her saddle. “Whelp! What do you say to making camp for the night? This clearing looks about as good as we’re going to get.”

  And it was a good looking clearing. Flat ground, covered with soft needles of white pine, a small stream ran along one side. I wanted to argue. But I didn’t want to start a conversation, so I just grunted and dismounted.

  We spent that night under the trees. It was odd to have a real wood fire, with the attendant sounds and scents. I expected not to sleep, what with Mirabel having spent the entire trip annoying me with a never-ending comparison of her fabulous adventure-filled life to mine, but the roar of the flames and the sweet smell of the pine needles put me out in moments.

  I awoke the next morning to find Mirabel examining a piece of paper like it held the secret to the meaning of life. I didn’t want to start a conversation so I dug around in our supplies for something to eat, hoping that by the time I was finished, Mirabel would be ready to leave and we could just get on our way with the minimum amount of talking. But, as I chewed, I wandered over to where she sat and looked over her shoulder. It was the map that the girl from the inn had drawn.

  Mirabel sighed and tossed the map at her feet. “I can’t make heads or tails of this map! I think we should just keep heading up on the theory that there’s less mountain up top and maybe it will be clearer where to go.”

  I was tempted to say nothing. Seeing Mirabel fail at something and frustrated at her own failure was an extremely sensual pleasure and I wanted it to last. But, knowing that Amy was waiting for us back at the inn and counting on us to advance the quest, forced my hand.

  I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed off to our right. “Do you see that? I asked.

  “You mean the 5-foot tall glowing letters that say ‘This way to the Dragon’? Yeah, I see it. I mean, I see it now.”

  So, we packed up and exited stage left. After that, the signs became smaller but more frequent. There was no way to miss the Dragon.

  After we passed what must have been the tenth or eleventh sign, Mirabel muttered “See Rock City” just low enough that I could pretend not to hear it. She was referring to a trip we’d made the summer before she disappeared, to Georgia or Tennessee or somewhere like that, and the signs that we passed on the way. I did pretend not to hear it, but I could feel my traitorous lips threatening to break into a smile.

  The signs stopped at the entrance to The Labyrinth. We knew it was the entrance to The Labyrinth because another sign said so.

  “It seems odd.” Said Mirable. “That the Dragon would have all these signs, as if he wanted visitors, and then put a labyrinth in front of his lair, as if he wants to discourage visitors.”

  I didn’t want to start a conversation, but I also didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to make Mirabel look bad. “It’s not like a maze is all that much of an obstacle.” I said. “You just always turn right and eventually you have to reach the exit.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “You’ve been in a lot of labyrinths, have you?”

  “No.” I said. “But it’s just a thing everybody knows.”

  She shrugged. “Everybody doesn’t know shit. But this labyrinth isn’t going to solve itself, so stick out your right hand and lead on Macduff”

  I could see her waiting, caught the little twinkle in her eye, like she thought she was going to get me a second time. But I already knew that it was a misquote and I kept my piehole shut.

  The labyrinth was made of some kind of smooth white rock. It had no straight lines or sharp corners and reminded me of nothing so much as being in a giant intestine. It had no roof, which made it bearable, but the smoothness and rounded tops of the walls made it so that you couldn’t cheat by climbing up to see the design.

  We’d each brought a pack of food and water, not knowing how long the labyrinth would take to solve, but I had no doubt that we would solve it. I kept my right hand planted firmly o
n the wall and we took every right turn.

  “You know that we’re lost, right?” Fucking Mirabel said, after some hours in the maze.

  “What? No! We just have to keep following the walls!” I rejected her assertion.

  She shook her head. “No. We’ve been going around in circles for at least an hour now.”

  “What?” I asked. “How can you tell? Everything looks the same!”

  She nudged a blade of grass that sat in an otherwise completely undifferentiated passage. “I thought we might be going in circles a while back, so I dropped this blade of grass, and now here it is again.”

  “Well, thank you, Gretel. Why didn’t you say something?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I did. I told you that the right-hand thing doesn’t work for all labyrinths. It works fine for simple labyrinths, where all the walls are connected, but it fails on complex labyrinths where some of the walls aren’t connected to other walls. This is that kind of labyrinth.”

  “Well, why the hell didn’t you say something before?” I shouted.

  She shrugged. She was always fucking shrugging, like everything was a big joke, like nothing was important. “I didn’t want to fight.” And she looked ashamed, and she looked like she wanted to say something more.

  “So, what do we do now?” I asked her, desperate to keep us on topic, off topic.

  She smiled. She actually smiled, then she reached into her pack and pulled out a large skein of thread. “Luckily, this ain’t my first rodeo.” She said, as she tied the thread to a spike that she just happened to have in her pack and hammered it into the wall with a hammer that she also just happened to have.

  “Never been on a quest, eh?” I muttered and she either didn’t hear or she let it pass.

  We picked a direction and, Theseus-like, unrolled the thread behind us and then it was a simple matter of not crossing the thread.

  It wasn’t completely straightforward, we had to backtrack a few time when we reached dead ends and it was almost night before we reached the exit, but since my way was going to see us die of thirst before finding the exit, I have to admit that her system was the better one.

  We exited the labyrinth. “What is it with this place and caves?” I asked, staring at the mouth of the Dragon’s cave. “The Caverns Measureless to Man, the Caves of Ice, which while not actual caves, still have the name, and now this cave! I’m sick of caves!” I complained.

  Mirabel gave a shrug. “Well, it’s all vaginas, isn’t it?” And she started towards the cave mouth.

  I grabbed a hold of her arm. “You’re going to go in now? It’s almost night.”

  She pulled her arm free. “It’s going to be dark in the cave, no matter what time it is.” And she walked on.

  CHAPTER 27 - Let’s not spoil our last moments alive with conversation.

  I didn’t feel good about entering the cave. I’d had enough with caves. I didn’t see why we couldn’t wait outside. The dragon would eventually come out and find us waiting there, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, eager to have a chat.

  But, Mirabel went on and, as had become my habit, I followed. The moment my foot cleared the threshold of the cave, a clang rang out as a grate of heavy iron bars slammed shut behind us.

  “The fuck!” I shouted and spun around. I’ve always been noted for my eloquence in difficult situations. I put my hands to the bars and shook and tried to lift the grate, but it was hopeless. The bars were 3-inch thick and the entire grate must have weighed thousands of pounds. I gently banged my head against the bars in frustration.

  “Don’t turn around.” Mirabel said from over my shoulder.

  Here is a lesson I wished I had learned by now: It’s generally a pretty good idea to do what Mirabel says.

  Here is what I did: “What? Why?” I asked spinning around to see. I wished I hadn’t. The falling grate appeared to have triggered some kind of illumination system and the illumination system illuminated the thing that Mirabel was trying to warn me about. To wit: a wall hung with three decaying human corpses. The corpses were suspended from the wall by iron manacles and their skin appeared to have been flayed off, exposing the fat and muscle and bones beneath.

  I vomited then. And you would have done the same. Of course, the vomit didn’t make things better, just the opposite. It’s a weird reflex when you think on it.

  Here was my first thought: Thank god Amy didn’t come with us.

  Here was my second thought: Oh fuck! I’m going to die!

  Or it might have been the other way round.

  Mirabel and I threw ourselves against the grate. We tried to lift it, or failing that to bend it, or failing that to squeeze through it. But it was too strong for us and it was too heavy for us and it was too much for us in every respect. That was obvious from the first moment, but not so obvious that we didn’t still try. Not so obvious that we didn’t batter and strain ourselves senseless against the grate.

  Twenty minutes later, bruised and bleeding we slumped down with our backs against the iron rods to wait for the dragon and our deaths.

  I must have nodded off, because I awoke to Mirabel shaking me. “Nicky. Nicky. Are you alright?”

  I rubbed sleep from my eyes with a satisfying sense of grit tumbling away beneath my fingers. I rubbed my pounding sense of dread with a less satisfying result. “I’m OK.” I mumbled. “But thanks for making sure I was wide awake for the dragon. I’d hate to miss what happens next.”

  Mirabel sat back down and hugged her knees. “Look, Nicky, I just wanted to… I just didn’t want… I mean, I… Look. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “You know what? It’s all going to be over soon. Let’s not spoil our last moments alive with conversation.”

  “Fuck you, Nick.” She spat. “You want to die in peace? Well, get used to disappointment. You want to avoid conversation?” She gestured with her hand towards the tunnel that led deeper into the cave. “You can leave at any time.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Look. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I lied to you. I just wanted to, I don’t know. I wanted to ease into it. I thought it would be too hard all at once. Not for you. I get that now. It was always going to be hard for you, but for me. I was scared. It had been so long and so much was different.” She stopped to look at me, to give me my chance to say something. I had nothing.

  She stayed quiet for what seemed like a long time.

  I shook my head. “That’s bullshit. It’s all been a game to you. You and your fucking Dreamer have been scripting this thing from the get-go. But you think you’re so clever and that I’m so dumb that you didn’t even bother to be careful. I could almost buy this ‘I was scared’ crap, except you forgot that I saw you. I saw you at the Fair. ‘Can I have a quarter, mister?’ You, you and a group of friends. Everything plotted and planned. You want to come off like you’re somehow ignorant and innocent, but how did you know where to find me at the Fair? You must have been watching me. That’s the only explanation.”

  She held up her hand. “There’s another explanation, the Mad Dreamer – he put me right where you were. I didn’t even know those kids. I’d met them just a few minutes before. I just needed a group, I didn’t want to, couldn’t face you alone. You would have known. You might have guessed. And I needed. I needed that the first time I saw you, I needed it to be not at the house. You act like you’re the only one with feelings, but this has been hard for me too.”

  “It doesn’t seem like it.” I said. “It seems like you’ve been having a great time. Traipsing around, visiting old friends, and dragging us behind you. Just something to keep you entertained. Some kind of big joke.”

  She shrugged. “Well, I have been having a great time! I was with my brother again, after, well, after a long time, after forever. And Amy, the girlfriend. And she paused and looked at me with a grin. “The girlfriend?” She made the question clear with a comical movement of her eyebrows.

  And I didn’t want to respond, but
I couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk about Amy. “Yeah. The girlfriend.” I admitted, with my own smile. Not for Mirabel, but just because I was thinking about Amy.

  And her grin widened into a big smile. “Can I call it or what? Anyway, Amy, I got to admit, she’s pretty fucking awesome! She don’t take no shit.”

  I slumped down closer to the dirt floor. “I’ll never see her again. And she’ll never know what happened to us. Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” The horror dawned on me. “You’re right. You’re fucking right! She is awesome and she doesn’t take any shit. She won’t stay at the inn. She’ll fucking follow us! What the fuck are we going to do?” I jumped up and stripped off my shirt and scrubbed my bloody fingers across it, trying to get it as bloody as possible and then I wadded it up and threw it out through the bars.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Mirabel looked at me quizzically.

  “I’m leaving a message for Amy. Hopefully, she’ll see the shirt and realize that it’s dangerous and turn back.”

  Mirabel laughed. “How likely do you think that is?”

  “Well, she might not see the shirt, or seeing it, might not recognize it as mine, or recognizing it as mine, she might not understand the warning, but it’s better than nothing.” I said.

  Mirabel laughed again. “Oh, Nicky! Let’s for the moment assume that she sees the shirt and she recognizes it as yours and she understands the message that something here has caused you to bleed and that for some inexplicable reason you took off your shirt and that you left it as a warning for her. Let’s assume all that. What would she do?”

  “Oh fuck! She’d rush right in.” I realized.

  Mirabel nodded. “She’d rush right in, she would.”

  I threw up my hands in frustration. “So what do we do?”

  Mirabel, reached into her pack and pulled out a shirt and threw it to me. How many shirts did she have in that pack?

  Then, she grabbed a couple of fist-sized rocks that were near her and tossed them to me. “Knock those together and see if you can’t make something sharp out of them. At least let’s go down fighting.” She said, as I put on the shirt. And she picked up another couple of rocks and started to bang them together.