by T C Shelley
The imps smirked.
Betty whispered, ‘He’s even odder than he looks.’
‘Come on then, just down here,’ Cutpurse said.
The group walked on. Nutty-Arm was shivering.
The tunnel mouth opened on to an old, empty cavern – a ghost town with hollows leering down on them. A few lights here and there shone with a meaty tint.
‘What used to live here?’ Sam asked. The dirt echoed with his question.
‘Succubi and incubi,’ Bogweed said.
‘Were they horrible?’ Sam found himself whispering. Cold soaked into his back and bones.
‘They sucked souls from humans.’
Sam shuddered. ‘It’s an awful place then?’
‘If I had a soul it might be,’ Bogweed replied.
Angler and Betty tittered.
The place looked a little like the Pixie Cavern, though most of the lamps were broken, and those giving light had a tinge of red to them, like blood mixed into the yellow miasma. The walls climbed rough and earthy, and the dome above rose so high the light could not pick out where the roof finished. This place felt dead.
Sam stared up into the darkness and imagined the incubi and succubi’s dead eyes boring into him.
‘Why did you bring Beatrice here?’
Cutpurse pointed ahead. A dead well sat in the middle of the cavern, a dark-bricked thing. The canopy had rotted away although its skeleton remained. The wood may have been ebony; it was dark to the core.
‘Nothin’ comes here any more, not even ogres. Right, Nutty-Arm?’ Cutpurse said.
‘That’s right.’
Sam stared at the pixie. A wide smirk stretched across Nutty-Arm’s face.
‘How could you put her down that awful dark place?’ Sam said. Even Bladder shuffled away. Sam’s voice sounded as cold and dead as the cavern.
‘Is his little lordship, Sir Ogres’ Nip, unhappy? I am truly sorry.’ Nutty-Arm bowed. ‘What can we do to make amends?’
Sam took a few steps towards the well and peered into the blackness. He heard Bladder behind him.
‘Imp! There’s something goin’ on here. I knew I shoulda trusted my instincts. They’ve been all too helpful. Come on. It’s not worth it,’ the gargoyle begged.
Sam turned and glared at Bladder. ‘Beatrice is not worth it? Well, maybe you’re not worth it either. Why are you even here? You don’t consider me part of your pack.’
The mixed monsters cackled between the gargoyle and the boy.
‘Watch them, Imp,’ Bladder said. The gargoyle growled as Cutpurse, Angler and Bogweed stepped closer. The trio encircled the gargoyle, they picked up stones and began chipping at his mane with them. ‘Imp! Pay attention!’
‘Just … leave me alone, Bladder.’ Sam strained to make out any movement at the bottom of the hole. ‘How far down does the monster live?’ Sam asked Nutty-Arm.
‘I’m sure it’s not far, just lean in and have a look.’ The tiny pixie shook its sweet curls.
‘Beatrice?’ Sam called down the hole.
Bladder screamed as Angler and Betty pushed Sam over the wall and into the well.
CHAPTER 17
The black swallowed him, blinding his gargoyle eyes. He could have been floating; no wind blew up to create friction. It was only when he reached out and smacked into the wall and the force threw him back against the opposite side that he developed a sense of dropping. He put out one hand. It grazed the wall at high velocity, and he howled. It slowed him a little and even as he screamed he put out his other hand. His palms burned, and his face hit bricking as he dragged down the walls. He stopped, dangling in rough darkness, yelling at the pain. His voice drained down into the space below.
He had no idea how far he had fallen.
If Beatrice had hit the bottom she would have died.
‘I’ll take you home, Beatrice.’ He felt the words vibrate in his throat, but they slurped away before he heard them.
His back ached under the weight of his bag. The stones bit and pricked at his raw hands. It gave him something to feel, so he focused on climbing and his steady heartbeat, at the rhythm inside his head.
‘Beatrice?’ The dark gobbled his words.
Sam had no idea how long he climbed down. His legs shook by the time he touched the bottom, and his hands had gone beyond pain into numbness. He couldn’t move his fingers and his thumbs were stiff and sore. He dropped to the ground, wanting to sleep but, as tired as his arms and legs were, he scrambled around, sniffing for Beatrice.
No sign of her, no sign of anything. He touched the rounded wall to where the base of the well opened into another tunnel, feeling its low-slung roof against the backs of his hands.
Sam stooped and crawled inside, his backpack scraping the dirt above. He pressed from wall to wall.
He sat down alone in the darkness, leaning against blackness, his chest rising and falling, the sound of his breath darting away down the unexplored part of the tunnel. He closed his eyes. Beatrice was not here. What was he supposed to do?
Sam imagined Michelle’s eyes the colour of plums with crying. Sam thought of Richard when he last saw him, his waving arms and feverish nods as he talked to the police officer.
He wondered what they said after he left. ‘Yes, officer, it’ll be that boy’s fault. We don’t even know his real name. He helped someone take our baby. Then he tricked Michelle into taking him to town, the one person who would have protected her.’
Sam’s chest ached. What else could they think of him? He arrived, Beatrice disappeared and he followed soon after. They must hate him.
Bladder must hate him too. Sam remembered hours ago, days ago maybe, the last thing he’d said to Bladder had been cold and unfriendly. Sam’s only friend, who’d tried to warn him. And he’d left the gargoyle with those vile pixies. Sam hoped he’d got away. Maybe Bladder would think Sam had behaved too human and be glad he was gone; he wouldn’t have to bother with the annoying little imp any more.
He wailed, and his wail sucked away as dirt and dust from the tunnel roof pattered on to him. Silence smothered everything. When he didn’t have the energy to cry, he held himself and his raw hands. And wondered about the absolute emptiness.
Maybe there was a reason for it. Maybe I am dead, he thought. The pixies pushed me into the well, and I died. I wouldn’t know, of course. I don’t know what happens when you die. My hands hurt, and my shoulders are sore, but other than that it feels the same as before. Maybe this is how death feels.
He wasn’t cold. Sam didn’t know if the dead could hear their own thoughts. Maybe you sat where you were until someone came along to tell you that you were dead. If he slept, he might be asleep when they came. He could wait a hundred years and miss the one person who passed.
Sam found comfort in the idea of being dead. He didn’t have to do a thing. Nothing could hurt him, he was no use to the ogres, and he would never have to find out if the Kavanaghs hated him. Maybe if someone told them he’d died they would be a bit sorry about it and not angry any more. They would hold a wake for him.
Sam’s sigh danced off. It was an awful place to be dead though. It would be nicer to be dead somewhere with sunshine.
Whatever I do, I can’t just sit here, he thought.
‘All I want is Beatrice,’ Sam said. The words escaped before he heard them.
He crept on. It became a tight squeeze pulling himself and his backpack through the tunnel, the ceiling above pressing down on him until he slid along on his belly. If it got any closer he would be stuck, or maybe he’d be forced to retreat and climb back to the succubi’s cavern.
He pulled himself forward and realised something had changed, his arms felt space, his pack sprang free soundlessly, and he could slide his legs out of the tight area he had thought would be his silent, lightless grave.
Sam stretched his arms, feeling his shoulders and elbows crack. He stood and extended his back, reaching his hands up to loosen every squashed and distorted muscle. Did dead imps ache? He
contemplated the idea. The relief was the first pleasure he’d felt since the fall.
The windless, soundless, dark space gave him no sense of his surroundings. He put his arms forward, lengthened his spasming muscles and stepped out.
His joints jolted as he fell forward into nothing but air.
His scream slithered away into black space. He dashed downwards, his body hit three times and smashed against a ledge as he plummeted. His heart thrummed like a squirrel’s.
Sam’s bag padded his fall, but the contents shifted and pulled him sideways, and he rolled into the walls of a new cavern.
In the absolute darkness, explosions of light and pain fired behind his eyes.
When the sparks subsided, Sam looked around.
The darkness was complete. The silence too. Only the smell of old bones and dead things gave him any sense of this cavern.
A bony hand clamped over his mouth.
‘Found him,’ hissed a haggish voice. Despite its grating quality, his ears were hungry for sound. Light stung his eyes and he cried out.
Fingers clutched at his legs and arms. A hand muffled his screams.
‘Hush, fool boy,’ a voice said. ‘And stop wriggling. It no use; we no muscle to harm; we just hair, eye, tooth. You can’t fight.’
The speaker lobbed Sam into the air above its head. A second pair of hands caught him and forced his hands behind his back. Sam felt groggy and dizzy, but his head didn’t hurt as much as his shoulder. He stopped struggling as strong finger bones manacled his arms and legs.
Snarking giggles cradled him. The smell of ash seasoned the air, somewhere a fire died.
His kidnappers bore him along at a lolloping speed.
They entered a burrow which stank of sweat and old food. A strange fire was dying in the centre of the cave. After such absolute darkness, everything shone in the morsel of light. Red, gold and molten blue.
One of the creatures clutched him from behind, while the other darted about in a tangle of limbs in front of him. She was a bony hag with sunken eyes and skin like gnarled wood. She had hair as white as ash and Sam was sure he saw a mouth on the crown of her head spitting out hair, puffing and pfaffing as the strands tumbled back and caught in its yellow teeth. She threw a cord at Sam’s unseen captor, then piled kindling on the fire, which cracked like thin bones as the flames caressed it.
The light flickered in the lanky hag’s face and she knelt and blew on it. A flare licked the other twigs. Sam thought it roared like a crowd, laughing as a thin voice called out from the fire, dark and lonely. White sticks snapped as the flames twisted.
‘Fuel,’ said the fire maker, and ran to find more bones to keep it going. The bones she dragged back were huge – heavy and white and thick. Even bigger than an ogre’s would be, Sam thought.
Sam’s captor wrenched off his backpack and he could hear rummaging, then a claw reached around and tied the rough cord around his ankle.
Sam wriggled harder and yelled out.
‘No one hear you, lad,’ his captor said. ‘The dragon-fire draws every sound and light and traps it down here. We hear you hours back.’
Sam’s voice shook as he asked, ‘What’s dragon-fire?’
‘Fire from dragon bone, of course.’ The voice behind him tutted as the lanky hag shoved a bone into the heart of the fire. ‘Long, long ago some crawl here to die in cave; leave skeletons full of dragon dreams. A dragon is greedy thing, brownie boy. Even its bones long for song and sky and gold. Dragon magic draws all precious to it. All sound and all light it draw. Even down here in dark.’
She pulled at Sam, wrenching his shoulder, whacking his head as the lanky hag took the rest of the cord from his captor and tied his wrists and ankles together.
Disturbed voices came from the fire. Ogre yells, pixie screams, the lost call of someone wandering in the dark. The flicker of flames formed a face for a moment, then faded as the bone beneath it cackled.
His captor shuffled forward and grabbed at a thin stick sitting in front of Sam’s foot and now at last he could see her. She looked more dry and shrunken than the other witch, shorter than him. And she had chicken legs.
‘My name Baba Yaga. You hear of me?’
Sam shook his head.
‘Bah! Thunderguts, he not breathe my story!’ She glared at the other. ‘What we do with boy, Yama-Uba?’
A lipless, too-wide grin spread across the lanky hag’s face. ‘Stew?’
Yama-Uba ran off to the back of the cave and lugged a huge black pot towards the fire. Sam looked at his cord. It was a combination of different hairs plaited together to form one long rope. Silky blonde hair, frizzy brown hair that irritated his wrists, and a lot of red hair. Pixie, he guessed.
‘She say “no”, remember?’ Baba Yaga said.
Yama-Uba dropped the pot; a flood of black water washed over its lip and darkened the earth beneath it. ‘Bah!’
‘Who said “no”?’ Sam asked.
Baba Yaga smirked and sucked on a small, white bone.
‘She get pixies to pretend send us baby so you come. Trap you here. Baby never here.’ Yama-Uba licked her lips. ‘Would be sweet.’
Baba Yaga peered at Sam. ‘You know who.’
Sam’s headache returned, his shoulder throbbed. He groaned and pulled his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible. He shivered, the fire incapable of warming the cold in him. ‘The crone?’
Baba Yaga laughed. ‘O, Moya Solnishka! Dah! Yes!’
Yama-Uba sniffed at Sam then turned to Yaga. ‘We not eat? You sure she say? It is the more nice taste. I am hungry.’
Baba Yaga swung her heavy head. ‘You see what she do with one who disobey? You think she any less slice you? She queen of everywhere. She know everything.’
‘Bah!’
The fire spat and dimmed. Yama-Uba rummaged through the sticks and bric-a-brac at the back of the cave. She came to the fire, and the flames reached towards her. She laughed and the sound broke into sparkles over the flames. Her cackling sent rainbow-coloured smoke curling from the cave entrance out into the wider cavern.
‘Hate colouredy smoke,’ Baba Yaga said.
Sam sat up, pushing his wrists and ankles together. The cord didn’t loosen. He looked at the small bone between Yaga’s lips. ‘You haven’t eaten a baby recently?’ He watched Baba Yaga’s face, expecting a cruel laugh.
‘Baby? Not stupid me. No. Ash too much for baby. Sometimes I think we too far down in dark for notice, so am tempted, but, hmmmm … risky.’
Yaga and Yama screeched and giggled.
Sam sat up, pushing his wrists and ankles together. The cord didn’t loosen.
Sam rocked himself. His eyes filled with tears, but there was a chance. He was trapped but alive. Beatrice might be alive too. He sniffed to check if they were lying and could find no trace of human or fresh air anywhere. She’d never been in this horrible place.
‘Oh, more cry? We hear blub-blub as you come through tunnel and blub-blub as you fall. Enough already!’
Sam snorted back his tears.
Yama licked her lips and smiled at him again.
‘Why does she want me?’
Baba Yaga crunched her bone. ‘She come before and say Great Cavern want boy. When he fall here, we not to eat.’
‘Maybe this one’s not the one she want,’ Yama-Uba said, then sat up. ‘He little monster-u, but look like he taste like boy.’ She waved her arms around the cave roof, gesturing at nothing. ‘We have plenty salt.’
‘How many boy-monster you think in Hole, Yama? Huh?’
‘Maybe we eat you, maybe no.’ Yama touched Sam’s leg. The tip of her tongue stuck out of the side of her mouth.
Yaga flicked Yama’s hand away with a pointed nail.
Yama-Uba plumped on the floor, her stick legs in front of her. She thrust out her bottom lip. The long tongue from her crown surprised Sam as it poked from Yama’s head and licked the air. Yama crossed her arms and stared at Sam. He wondered if she knew she was drooling.
>
Then both hags seemed to tire of him. Yama-Uba threw another large bone on to the fire. It ignited and flared blue.
She turned and joined Baba Yaga at the doorway.
Sam knew he had to get away before the crone arrived. He shuffled closer and let the fire warm him. His cords hurt as he studied the hearth. There were stones, some round and curving but a few sharp and nasty. Just what he needed.
Baba Yaga watched him, her eyes flickering as she nestled in the doorway wall.
‘No escape for you, lamb chop,’ she said.
Sam curled around and rubbed the cord against a toothy rock. The strands of hair broke easily, but there were thousands of them to get through. He pushed towards the fire, hoping to break more, but the flames gave out a gentle warmth, making him sleepy. He was so tired.
He thought of Beatrice. He wished he knew she was all right.
The fire breathed. A soft, gentle breath, like a sleeping baby. An image flickered there.
‘How long will she sleep?’ Thunderguts’s voice asked from the flames.
‘As long as the siren’s song holds,’ Snide’s voice replied.
‘Good. Every time she wailed, I drooled. It’s dangerous having one so close.’
Sam stared at the fire, a golden-red baby flashed there, her face mucky with dirt and her eyelashes moved by pleasant dreams.
Sam yelped and fell back. He had been thinking of Beatrice and she had appeared in the flames.
What had Yaga said? Dragon-fire pulls all precious things towards itself.
The most precious things to him were the Kavanaghs.
The heat scorched him and licked towards him, leaching secret treasures from his heart and showing them in flames. Michelle’s sudden face bloomed in the yellow tongues, just as he’d imagined her, her eyes swollen and fire red.
‘Our baby’s gone,’ she told Richard.
Then the red tongues exploded into a single huge face: Great-Aunt Colleen. Her orange eyes turned blindly towards Sam. ‘Who’s looking at us? Who’s out there? Is that you, boy?’
The dragon-fire ate the image, and the old lady was gone. Sam sobbed on to the cord biting into his wrists. Beatrice was fine, but he’d not just heard and seen, he’d hurt too.