The chambers and tunnels looked just the
same; but this time Celia was awake and walking. It was hard going as the tunnels had been
built for much shorter creatures – she had to stoop almost all of the way.
The Captain was
accompanying her along with two traditionally-sized dwarves from the pool of
miners in the area, who were acting as guides. They were half her height but
significantly wider than she; the Captain called them ‘yokers’. They were
covered in hair: beards, heads, hands, just about everywhere. It was hard to
make out their faces. They spoke in a language that she couldn’t understand; a
musical boom like a bass voice at its lowest singing register. She imagined
that this was how they discovered ores – by triggering earthquakes.
The smaller dwarves
went ahead and found the right way through the maze of passageways. She walked
in the middle with the Captain just behind her. He was an extraordinary
companion: he seemed to be able to read her moods exactly. He would talk when
she felt lonely, keep quiet when she needed space, and he knew exactly when she
needed to rest and sleep. He would make someone a wonderful husband, she
thought with a chuckle, but she was sure that that wasn’t what he had been
developed for. This was clearly what selective breeding could do if applied to management
skills.
McEuan carried two
rolled mattresses; one his size and one a normal human’s size. They stopped every
now and then to doze, to drink a little stale water and to eat some dry
rations. Occasionally they would halt for a long rest. There seemed to be no
normal logic to it, but it seemed to make sense here in the permanent darkness.
They talked a lot, but
it didn’t take long for Celia to realise that he had a knack of speaking but
not saying much that was revealing. His listening and coaxing skills were
extraordinary, however, and she had soon revealed a lot more about herself and
her coven than she had ever intended to.
There was nothing specific, just a lot of context. She had avoided
mentioning Owen at all, however, as she knew that would just make her upset.
She definitely had no intention of letting him see her in tears.
There was only one time that she caught
him out. She had noticed that he carried a small flask of something inside his
coat pocket. He would sip on it at every waking with his fast breaking meal and
before every sleeping. At one rest point she leant over and gestured at the
flask.
‘Can I try
some?’
He laughed warmly and
handed the flask over.
‘If you want – it’s
strong stuff, mind you’
She took the
container and sniffed it suspiciously.
‘What is it?’
‘We call it barley-bree;
the liquor of the Far North’
She let a drop touch
her lips; it was some form of whiskey – like a stronger version of the
distilled drinks made from the barley that grew in the vast fields above
Seerport in northern Eth. She sipped. It was very rough but it warmed her like
unexpected spring sunshine.
‘That’s... good’ she
said in all sincerity
He looked puzzled.
‘Isn’t it a bit...
unrefined for an Ethian lady?’ he asked
‘Possibly’ she
replied, ‘but I wouldn’t know – I’m a witch...’
She handed the flask
back to him. This triggered some reflex in him. He took a large swig and handed
the flask back to her.
‘I’m glad you like it’
he said, ‘I rarely have a soul to sup with’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Yokers don’t drink
barley-bree – it reduces their
efficiency. It makes ‘em ill...’
‘Oh no!’ she laughed,
‘what a terrible life!’. She put the flask to her mouth and tilted it steeply.
Her lips, however, remained closed. She passed the flask back.
‘Easy with that’ he
said, grinning, ‘I only have two flasks left!’
‘Drink up, captain’
she said, ‘in Eth it’s rude to lag behind a guest when drinking’
She had no idea if
that were true. She liked pubs and enjoyed a few social pints of ale with her
female friends, but her background was not one that encouraged drinking games.
He seemed to buy it though. She sensed that he needed no encouragement. She
probed through the small chink that had opened in his armour.
‘So, aren’t there any other warriors to drink
with, Captain McEuan?’
The Captain shook his
head in momentary sadness. He took another swig before answering. His large
brown eyes began to look more and more like a puppy’s.
‘Warriors can’t drink
either – slows their sword arms, they say. There’s Tav; but I haven’t seen him
for a hundred sleeps or more’
Celia saw, with
satisfaction, that the Captain now had the flask firmly grasped in his left
hand.
‘Tav?’
‘Bruce Tavish - he’s
the Captain of the sector above here; poor deposits, aye, but canny miners. He bleeds
those seams wizen, he really does’
‘So, why do you so
rarely see him?’
‘We don’t stray into
each other’s sectors. We only meet during the together times’
She pointed at the
flask, but he was no longer interested in sharing. This was strong stuff.
‘What are they?’
His eyes reverted
back to their shiny martial state.
‘When we go to
Hyperborea for our orders; we see the sun again and we share stories with our
comrades’
And drink far too much concluded Celia. She was gripped by an image of
loneliness, where friends were distant points of light constellated among endless
dark tunnels.
‘Do you have a wife?
A family?’ she asked, as it seemed like the appropriate next conventional
question.
The Captain roared
with laughter.
‘Of course I don’t!’
he bellowed. He stood up and pointed to his crotch. For a second Celia thought
that he was going to drop his breeches.
‘It only performs one
of its functions, witch; the other thing is only for breeders...’
‘I see’ said Celia,
in consternation, that was the last thing that she’d been expecting, ‘you’re
sterile?’
He nodded. It didn’t
seem to worry him, but that wasn’t surprising, if you never had it you’d never
miss it. She had a vivid memory of Owen lying next to her on the soft pub room
bed, naked and with all his functions working just fine. She swallowed – better
not to think of that at all. She forced
herself back on track.
‘And is that true of
the miners as well?’
‘Aye – we all have
our work, especially thae yokers. None of us need any additional distractions’
He sat down and took
another swig. His hands began to shake a little. He was lapsing rapidly back
into dialect.
‘Umm’ she searched in
her mind for the right simile, ‘so your society is a bit like an ant colony, is
it?’
‘I suppose so’ he
said, but his head hard started to nod on his chest, ‘But I know nocht about
thae wee eemocks...’ He burped gently and closed his eyes.
Too much hooch! Oh well. She thought. She waited until he had fallen fully asleep
and then she took the flask from him. She drank one large gulp, to help me sleep, and then screwed the
top back on the flask and placed it back in his bpack. Then she lay down on her
mattress, pulled her furs around her and fell asleep.
***
Every rest she slept in the utter
darkness of the tunnels and at every rest she dreamt. These were not the mad
unfocused dreams of her earlier Nux journey. These were insistent dreams; dreams
where she was tracing a map that she had no memory of towards a place that she
did not know. But there was something hidden somewhere and she had to find it.
Each consecutive dream followed on from the one before, but when she awoke she
had no memory of the stitched-together dream sequence at all.
She began by walking
across a high windswept moor along a vaguely marked track. The rain was
tumbling down and there was no-one else around. She needed to find the
sea. Up and down the craggy hillsides
she walked, trying to look down through the squalls. Every time she descended
into a valley the rain would stop and a watery sun would peek out from behind
the clouds. Every time that she climbed up the sun would disappear and the rain
would sweep back down again. She just accepted this as her lot, as one does in
dreams. The dream hours wore on.
At the bottom of one
of the phantasmal valleys was a bubbling stream. She made her way down to it
eagerly – it was about the first bit of new scenery she’d seen for a long dream-time.
By the stream there was a large rock and balancing on the rock was a hazel rod,
with a line snaking out from the top of it into the brook.
She picked up the rod
and reeled in the line by rotating the drum of a little cylindrical reel. There
was a hook tied to the end of the line. She pulled a green berry from a tree
that had suddenly appeared to shade her. She slipped the berry on to the hook.
She looked down at
the stream, trying to see if there was anything to catch within its turbulent water.
Then without another thought she flicked the rod and line so that the berry
flew out over the water and fell into the middle of the stream. She watched it
drop below the surface. She waited a moment and then a fish struck at the berry
and was hooked. Celia scrambled to wind
it in, her hands tugging at the line. However, the fish did not resist at all
and soon she was pulling a small silver trout out of the stream.
The trout flopped on
the floor a few times and then turned into a girl, a slender child with apple
blossom in her glossy black hair.
‘Celia!’ the girl
announced, ‘it’s me!’
‘Who are you?’ Celia
asked, shocked by the suddenness of the transformation.
The girl stood up
tall and brave. She seemed no more than maybe twelve years old.
‘I’m the Dreamgirl’
she said grinning, ‘and now you must – follow me. I know where to go’
She skipped away over
the brook – her long peasant dress trailing across the water; except that the
water was gone; now there was just a long sandy beach, leading to a boundless
grey ocean. As she ran her bare feet
left little landslips in the dunes. Celia followed – her legs felt as heavy as
lead but she dare not stop. Who knew when she might wake?
***
At some unknown time nine sleeps into
their journey there was a point where a much wider tunnel sloped down to the
right. The worker dwarves hurried back and spoke to the Captain. He nodded
vigorously.
‘We must not tarry
here, Councillor Franklyn’ he said, ‘the miners say that this is a dangerous
place. We shouldn’t be here – we have erred in our navigation’
‘Why is that?’ she
asked, suddenly gripped by the strangeness of the place.
‘It often happens in
these tunnels – there is an effect that pulls everything and everyone to this
point – the point of greatest malevolence. Perhaps it is the same force that
pulls a fly into an orben web’
Celia had not felt
fearful for many days, but now the mixture of some ambience in the air and the
Captain’s words was making her stomach churn.
‘Where is this
place?’ she whispered
‘It’s said that far down
there in a hole...’ he pointed through the wide corridor ‘...the Muckle Laeer
weeps evil tears in her slumbers’
Celia knew that she
should keep moving but she also wanted to stay still; something was holding her
there. She looked down the corridor – it was lined across wall, floor and
ceiling with light green brambles, their thorns the bloodiest scarlet. That way
was forbidden, and yet, she so wanted to see what was down there. The brambles
looked like deadly vines; she could imagine the berries on them hanging like
grapes. She had a vision of an elf in vines of the same colour – vines that
looked like serpents. She shivered.
‘Who did you say was
down there?’ she asked, her eyes still fixed on the long bramble tunnel.
The Captain shook his
head – he had no intention of answering. He led her gently by the arm away from
the tunnel, while the worker dwarves scolded her in their deep, sonorous
language.
They hurried away,
fear dogging their steps – she dared not ask again. After that there were just immeasurable
hours of walking and sleeping, and she grew to crave the sleeping more than the
waking. And when she was asleep she pursued the Dreamgirl across the wide
ghostly sea but she still did not yet know where the shade was leading her.
