A World Underground

March 5, 2018May 20, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

discreet charm (2)

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Alli nodded, one foot on the rope ladder, hands resting on the edge of the well.

Ran looked her in the eyes, and gave her a peck on the lips, “Alright, have fun on your adventure.”

“Well, Kaan did say this was the only dry well she’s ever found,” Alli remarked, “There’s no way I could come all the way back up here, and not check it out.”

“Be careful,” Ran said, switching on the flashlight mounted on Alli’s helmet.

“I will,” Alli smiled, “Stay on the walkie-talkie.”

She climbed down into the abyss. The pool of light above her head swam around the cold, stones, slick with the morning dew. The further down one went, the less likely that liquid was to evaporate.

As each rung sunk under the weight of her foot, she wondered what she was doing. Kaan had cited Aro’s advice to look for the blockage of the flow in a dry well. This was back when Kaan and Aspen had been still together. Then in Maine, Kaan had found the dry well in question. After exploring it, she offered it to Alli to use.

Ran’s head, swaddled in the red-orange corona of her hair, floated above Alli, on the surface. She was an auburn glow, looking down, crowned by the aura of the blue sky, sunlight filtering through the still empty branches.

It grew colder quickly, but Alli was in a puffy jacket. She seemed to descend forever. When her foot touched the wet dirt at the bottom, she looked up. Ran was still there and waved. Alli waved back. Like Kaan had explained, there was some sort of water main at the bottom of the well, a sewer leading farther into the bowels of the earth.

Alli waved to Ran once more, and disappeared into the ragged entrance, torn open by some water diversion crew years ago. The absence of natural light was felt immediately; the artificial light on her head bounced up and down with her movements, with each step into the gloom. She followed the slim stone catwalk, running along the channel of water, at the bottom of the well.

She tried to keep her heart’s rushing to a minimum. Other than the cloak-like darkness, the tunnel was peaceful. The underground brook gurgled. Tree roots hung from the ceiling. Occasionally, the muted rustling and shuffling of rodents, mice in the soil and crumbling or eroded parts of the walls, was heard, as they ran through their burrows.

Alli walked on in the darkness, for half an hour. The orb of light, a fluid conic section, danced along with her footfalls. The path sloped upward, and Alli struggled to keep her balance on the slippery rocks. As noted by Kaan, the passageway opened to another platform, the bottom of a second well, about two miles away.

The sky was the color of a robin’s eggshell. Cumulus clouds drifted over the opening, out to the distant sea. Alli sat down on the well bottom, looking up. Water glistened and rolled down the stones, past thin creeping vines, and fine, feathery plant growth, minute patches of lichen.

She held her knees and turned off the helmet flashlight. The morning cold gave way to the sunlight of early spring. She breathed in the musky smell of the damp undergrowth, tiny leaves, stunted in the half-light. She looked at the mute, unassuming stone wall in front of her, still covered in life, even several feet below the ground. Alli closed her eyes.

At this terminus, the path continued, but it was an immaterial path. In her mind’s eye, she was walking onward, stepping beyond the wall, seamlessly into the summer home of Nealy, located in the south of France.

The hallway was dark; only lit from the day, creating a chiaroscuro of white beams in a flurry of mites and dust. The red carpet was well-tread, but still soft, pliant. Alli crossed the hallway, dressed in a white jacket and pants, wearing a navy-blue pocket square.

Nealy was at her side, also in white, but sporting a red pocket square. They walked out to the main staircase and passed through the atrium, to the exterior of the house and the grounds.

Outside was a haze of orange light and strips of clouds hovered in the last minutes of twilight. They strolled the rolling promenade, not worried about getting grass on their white shoes. The evening was relaxing and cool after the heat of a summer day. The lawn was empty except for those two white-clad figures. It was just those two walking in the mists of time.

They reached a white swing hung from a stately oak. Alli sat down and Nealy stood up, holding the ropes of the swing. They looked on at the sinking sun, the pink sky, heard the chirping of the sparrows in the bush.

Will we never be this way again?

“The ghosts of time are always racing toward the sunset,” Nealy said, “There is an eye of the needle that they must squeeze through, to get back to their world, before night falls.”

The last embers of dying rays were being extinguished, consumed by the graying hills, the dark countryside.

Will I ever see you again?

Alli jolted awake, shivering in the night. Above her the circle of the sky was a midnight blue, dotted by stars. She shuddered and said into the walkie-talkie, “Ran, are you there?”

A pause, but then the connection crackled, “Yes, I am at Kaan’s cabin. I can see the other opening from the porch,” Ran said.

“I’m coming back,” Alli said.

She stood up, joints aching from being in one place, one position, for so long. She looked up at the post-twilight sky. The portal was closed. A memory was gone forever.

Criesandwhispers

Songs:

Dustin O’Halloran – “Opus 23”

Albinoni [attributed] – “Adagio in G Minor”

See Also: “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami

Subtle Awakening

March 4, 2018April 7, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

djsdfjd

It was winter. Thin city snow sprinkled black trash bags and the green-yellow dead grass of dormant lawns. It was mostly a clear night; the moon was high in the sky and surrounded by a blue-white halo of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Alli was out on an evening walk after work with her dog. Her dog was a German shepherd named Rufus. She liked to think the brown parts of his coat were the color of ginger ale.

Back at home, she sat down in the downstairs living room to watch the evening news, Jeopardy and some of the gossip shows. The moonlight coming though the drapes of the bay window had dimmed. She got up to get some water and looked out. The moon was lost in voluminous dark gray clouds, its lighthouse beam reduced to a faded and fuzzy signal that strained as if shining from underwater or from behind heavy cloth. Even with the clouds, the moon and the sky were still beautiful. Alli got herself a glass of water and sat back down on the couch.

Alli noticed Rufus was in an interesting mood. He normally lay near her feet when she watched television. He was lying near the window looking up at it as if with his supersonic hearing he could hear something rustling that she couldn’t. Maybe someone was outside putting out trash and traipsing across their lawn down the street. Or maybe there were cats outside who were going to trigger the motion-sensor light around the back of the house near the garage. Her dad used to chase them away, along with the squirrels that ate up the birdseed in the backyard’s birdhouses. Whatever it was, Rufus soon lost interest and came to lie across her feet.

Or perhaps whatever it was had come inside the house, because movement flickered in Alli’s peripheral vision. She naturally turned her gaze toward it and froze, a familiar and unwelcome pins-and-needles feeling spreading over her arms, neck and shoulders. Sitting near the doorway to the foyer, was another dog, a black dog with white eyes and fur that seemed to move and wiggle, like fire or smoke. Otherwise it looked like a normal dog and was just sitting there panting. Other than its ghostly appearance it did not look frightening but Alli still felt terrified.

It did not disappear or lunge or do anything. Alli became more puzzled than terrified. She didn’t want to look away from it lest it move or attack or disappear, but she had to glance at Rufus. He had not done anything. He hadn’t leapt up or barked or even shifted from his position of lying across her feet. Alli naturally took this as a sign that Rufus was not frightened or angered. But he could see it. He was looking at it – placidly, even perhaps in boredom or out of a strange sort of familiarity – but he was looking at it, which made Alli feel tense. Unless Rufus was hallucinating too, she wasn’t the only one seeing the ghost dog.

Alli reluctantly dragged her eyes back in the direction of the foyer, hoping it was gone, had disappeared in the fleeting seconds she had taken to observe Rufus’ reaction. It was still there. Alli felt a sinking feeling of dread like the bottom had dropped out of her stomach. Still she could not move. And before her eyes the dog transformed. As if it were made of mist it changed into a human form – a human outline drawn by pencil thin lines filled with what looked like white-gray campfire smoke. The human form was not a monster – it was pleasant to look at, normal even, a young woman around her age in a sweater and jeans, bespectacled with long, light-colored gray-scale hair. In Alli’s peripheral vision, Rufus had not reacted at all. In fact, the figure had taken up enough of his time and he gone back to watching television.

kuvira lin su