Watt O'Hugh Underground: Being the Second Part of the Strange and Astounding Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh the Third (The Memoirs of Watt O'Hugh III Book 2)

by Steven S. Drachman

  Their journey was long. Dry grasslands rose into forested hills of Douglas fir and ponderosa pine, then descended into the plains, then to the edge of a river. At dusk on their fourth Wednesday together, they found a bend in the river shallow enough for their horses to cross, slept on the western edge, woke early before the dawn on their fourth Thursday together, and by their fifth Monday, rose up into the mountains, where they made camp on a dry lake bed. Over the ridge, yellowing grasslands spread out to the horizon. John Dead-Man left camp for an hour, then returned with a couple of javelinas, which he roasted over an open fire.

  “We are close?” Master Yu said, the moonlight in his eyes.

  John Dead-Man nodded.

  “Very close,” he said.

  He poured himself a cup of water, took a drink.

  “What’s in this for you, Chinaman? The praise of the Empress?”

  “No,” Master Yu said. “That’s what I thought when I began the journey. But I know that she would leave me to die, and I have realized that I care not if I pay taxes to the Empress, President Rutherford B. Hayes or the Sidonian King. I didn’t know what was in this for me before I arrived here in America. I didn’t know what was in this for me until the morning I left San Francisco.” He shrugged. “And now I know.” He almost admitted that he was doing this for a woman, but then he kept quiet. It didn’t sound worth it, when one came right out and said it, without any poetry attached. There’s always another woman walking up the next lane, after all, isn’t there? Why would one seek the love of a penniless woman with a vengeful deadling husband when one might easily meet a rich woman who did not have a vengeful deadling husband?

  From the lake bed, they climbed down a narrow crevice that had once been a beautiful little waterfall, but which had dried up centuries ago. At the next cliff level, they headed a bit east, where John Dead-Man stopped before a thicket of springy, man-size trees, dry but tough. The Peking Indian took a hacking knife from his pack, and he whacked away at the trees until they were splintered and ragged, revealing a cave opening. John Dead-Man lit a lantern, checked his compass, and in they crawled.

  The cavern passages were indeed twisty and dark; there was a distant and mysterious (and ultimately infuriating) drip of water; and the air was dank and forbidding. While crawling through a winding rock tunnel would elicit feelings of claustrophobia in the most fearless of men, I have to admit that their trip into the cavern’s bowels was relatively uneventful, and thanks to the Indian’s orienteering skills, not particularly frightening. I wish I could tell you that they encountered human skeletons and other gruesome discoveries, because this would be exciting and chilling, and it would “up the ante,” so to speak. But no human had been in this cavern for many years, if ever, due to the remoteness of its location and the near-unbroachable nature of the cave’s mouth.

  The tunnel narrowed to a crawlspace, and the two men crept for some yards on their hands and knees.

  Then Yu Dai-Yung stopped crawling.

  “Soon,” he whispered, “we will pass through a portal into the Dark Thief’s world, a portal just north of Xiorian. Xiorian is in Sadlo’reen, but unlike North Sadlareeyah, it is loyal to the Falsturm. Throughout the land, from coast to coast, Time moves at a different pace, and the Dark Thief, their mad sea captain, has been sailing the Sadlareeyahian Sea for more than a thousand years, so long that even the Yellow Emperor knew of his quest.”

  The Indian grunted.

  “It is important that you believe this, that you trust me. If you do not trust me, we are doomed. In the portal, as it is written, you will pass demons, a multitude of them. Look them in the eyes, and be unafraid. If you look them in the eyes without fear, they will be trapped in their frozen air. But you must be unafraid. You must not doubt.”

  Now comes the frightening part, after pages that were, I admit, not very frightening. But I am not here to frighten you. I am here to tell you the truth.

  The next twist of the cave tunnel was just as the Yellow Emperor had described it in White Pond, opening up to a wider and higher corridor filled with demons, large hairy demons with teeth and horns, small buzzing demons that poked at our heroes’ eyes, and green slithering demons that wound themselves around Master Yu’s legs.

  “They cannot hurt you,” he whispered. “Look in their eyes and do not doubt me. Do not be afraid, even for a moment.”

  And then it happened. A creature that looked like nothing that could be real – my readers of the 21st century would have dismissed the beast as “computer animation,” all bouncing green flab and shining silver claws – took a great swipe at Master Yu’s friend and cut his head right off his neck, till it hung sideways, narrowly attached by a thin ligament.

  Then Master Yu noticed something. No blood spurted from John Dead-Man’s arteries, as one might have expected. And while his head dangled precariously from his body, his eyes remained bright and alert. He had trusted Master Yu just enough, and he had doubted the demon just enough, to keep him just barely alive. His lopsided head smiled and popped back onto his neck, and after that everything was, as one might say, a “snap.” They marched through the corridor of screaming, slashing demons without a care, until the tunnel opened up into a large grotto. Sunbeams flickered through a jagged crack in the grotto’s ceiling, and chunks of gold were embedded in a scattered pattern across the rocky walls.

  The gold embedded in the walls was clear and flawless and turned white in the flecks of sunlight that danced across the cave floor, which was where, incidentally, a dragon reclined, half-asleep, one eye open. The dragon was threatening in its passivity, in its focused calm. A Chinese unicorn lay beside the dragon, and the unicorn was quite unconscious.

  The Indian pulled back. He put his hand on his pistol.

  Master Yu put out a hand in warning, and he shook his head.

  “Is this not, after all, why we came?” he asked.

  The dragon was about eleven feet long, significantly smaller than the great lizard that Master Yu had seen atop the Bank of California building. The unicorn was a frail creature, which in its youth must have looked fearsome. Its once vibrant, colorful skin was gray and black. It had the body of a deer, the hooves of a horse, the tail of an ox, and a single corroding horn atop its tired head. Its breathing was labored and painful.

  The unicorn opened one eye, which was red and wet. Then its eyelid trembled shut again.

  The dragon’s tail stroked the unicorn’s back, tenderly but mechanically.

  “Is this a dream?” John Dead-Man asked. “Are we mad?”

  “Perhaps,” Master Yu replied. “I am quite certain that not everyone who enters this golden cavern would be able to see this dragon. Does that make us mad? Or, instead, does it mean that we are very very perceptive? Most would say mad. And perhaps they would be correct.”

  The Chinese poet approached the dragon, whose demon eyes opened wide in his great camel head, expectantly, a bit impatiently.

  Master Yu held out his right hand. The dragon rose and put a great tiger paw into the Chinese poet’s palm. Master Yu closed his hand around the dragon’s paw. They stood for a moment, the Chinese poet and the Chinese dragon, just greeting each other silently.

  The dragon purred.

  “Dragons purr,” Master Yu marveled. Who could have guessed that a happy dragon would purr?

  One might expect that the dragon’s lair would have been a place filled with jewels and emeralds; that they might fight a fierce battle with the dragon, a fire-soaked battle from which only one combatant would emerge alive. But the only two treasures in that particular lair were an old sword and a large but dusty diamond, and real dragons cannot breathe fire – a physical impossibility, as an expert in the field of Dragonology had once taught me – and this particular dragon did not wish to fight; the dragon pushed the old sword forward towards the two men with one gentle tiger paw before turning back to the ailing unicorn.

  The Indian approached the sword gingerly, bent down and lifted it slowly. He stood, and he
bounced the sword back and forth in his hands.

  “Doesn’t seem like a very good sword,” he muttered. “A little light and flimsy.”

  He tossed it to Master Yu, who caught the handle in his left hand. The handle was made of tortoise shell, tied together tightly with a band of leather, which was a strange design, Master Yu thought.

  “Maybe they didn’t make very good weapons back then,” the Indian said. “Thousands of years ago. Maybe they just weren’t that good, back then.”

  Master Yu turned the sword over in his hands. He reluctantly realized that John Dead-Man was correct. Not a very good sword, as swords go.

  “Maybe it’s magic,” he said. “Maybe it is a magic sword.”

  The Indian laughed.

  “Let us hope so,” he said. Then: “I’ll take the diamond, if the dragon doesn’t mind.”

  The dragon, who was deeply focused on nursing his unicorn back to health (or comforting him as he succumbed to death’s lure), did not seem to bother or even notice. His reptile eyes were gentle, sad and worried, and the diamond was the last thought in his mind.

  Chapter 15

  And now we come to the Talmudic part of our tale and any disinterested reader is encouraged to skip and to flip ahead without further delay and continue with Chapter 16. I will ensure that you will be able to follow my story without confusion. Readers who stay with me and complete this chapter can be assured that they will be subjected to no proselytizing and that I will take no side on the whole “God” question, although I have developed my views on the issue, as have most men who have reached their tenth decade.

  It came about like this: When the wise man of the fictitious mountains dismounted from his very strong horse, I recognized him immediately as a rabbi, not from his garb – his great black coat and hat – but from an aura of wisdom that seemed to glow and engulf him almost visibly (although I had to my knowledge never before in my life even met a genuine Jew close-up). While I am unsure whether the rabbi was indeed wise, he certainly knew a bit of hocus pocus, which I have found can come in handy.

  The rabbi’s horse snorted, then relaxed.

  “Watt O’Hugh,” I said, and I held out my hand.

  “The late Watt O’Hugh the Third,” he laughed. “The several-times-late Watt O’Hugh the Third. You look well for a man so recently and frequently deceased.”

  He shook my hand.

  “Rabbi Samuel Palache,” he said.

  I was about to introduce Hester, but the rabbi interrupted me.

  “Hester Smith,” he said with a smile, squinting in the sun. “A pleasure to meet you at last,” and Hester smiled back. The rabbi raised a finger, and the two of them strolled a few yards into the clearing, where they spoke animatedly for a few moments. Hester seemed slightly agitated, and the rabbi seemed mildly alarmed. They noticed me noticing them, and they walked a bit farther away and turned their backs.

  I nodded to the rabbi’s companion, a natty young man of no more than 19- or 20-years of age, with a great waxed mustache and a starchy white seafaring outfit. He introduced himself as Arthur, and he told me that he was a doctor serving an apprenticeship on a Greenland whaling ship, “which is how,” he added, “I came to be cast ashore on this island.”

  “Is this an island?” I asked, peering into the distance, trying to get a clear view of Hester and the rabbi, who were hovering on the far side of a great and precarious pile of boulders.

  “Oh, yes,” said Arthur distractedly, as though nothing were more sensible than the idea that we were all on an island, or that I would be here on an island and not know it. And for a young man who just yesterday thought he’d be spending this day treating scurvy, this was perhaps not the least sensible thing he had encountered recently.[17]

  The rabbi returned with Hester and said he had some stew in the oven and wondered if we weren’t hungry. We all remounted our horses and the rabbi led us through an extravagantly circuitous stone pathway that widened and narrowed between two sheer mountain cliffs. Once we were all thoroughly disoriented, the trail deposited us into a mountain forest, at the center of which was a small, humble wooden home, smoke puffing cheerfully from the chimney.

  “He is not the original Samuel Palache,” Chu Ying said, his enthusiasm unabated, once we had dismounted and were approaching the cabin on foot. “You know, he is of course not the famous 16th century pirate rabbi.”

  I nodded, as though I had been up till now well-versed in the history of 16th century Jewish sea piracy, and as though this very question had been therefore on my mind.

  According to Chu Ying, in 1624, the “original” Rabbi Palache helmed a pirate flotilla that captured a Spanish warship in the Mediterranean Sea. In the process, the rabbi pirate rescued the passengers of a Dutch vessel that had been captured off the coast of Morocco some months earlier. Almost immediately, the rabbi’s ship was met by both a storm of ferocious intensity and the cove of an unmapped and unnamed isle, where the pirates and the rescued passengers attempted to wait out the storm.

  One of the passengers was Rivka, a Jewish woman of murky background and provenance, who had by then convinced herself (or at least claimed to have done) that her own sins were to blame for the sudden storm, as though she were a medieval Jonah. The same thing had happened to the Vliegende Draeck, a three-level Dutch fleut that she had boarded in Copenhagen, and so she bid the pirates leave without her.

  Rabbi Palache’s son, Solomon, volunteered to chaperone the young woman until a suitable rescue could be arranged. This proposal was offered too eagerly, and with no possibility of negotiation, it seemed to the Rabbi (and with no realistic hope of the “suitable rescue” of which the young Palache referred), and thus he concluded that love or enchantment had irrevocably intervened and that nothing could be done, and so the young couple – for couple, by now, they were – received a quick shipboard wedding from the pirate rabbi, rowed to shore and vanished from view into the lush island woods and out of recorded history.

  The island itself was indeed not free of Magic, and not entirely uninhabited, and so the devoted Solomon and Rivka lived happily and comfortably behind a mist that, on most days, rendered the island invisible to mortal eyes, and protected by winds that steered most ships in a different direction. That is, until the threat of the Red Eyebrows exploded from the Earth again after two Millennia like some terrible thousand-year cicada, and, at Lady Amalie’s request, Rabbi Samuel Palache the younger, the 19th century island descendent of the original fearless pirate, saw fit to leave his paradise and teach a counter-Revolutionary army what Magic he had learnt.

  Hearing this story, which Chu Ying whispered excitedly to me on the little path leading to the cabin, I nodded patiently and without comment, as one might when accosted by a muttering lunatic on a city street. While this was not by any margin the very strangest thing I had heard since awakening in the Laramie prison, Chu Ying was an especially gullible messenger, and I was not entirely sure that I believed the story about the Jewish pirate rabbi and the magic isle.

  The inside of the cabin was lined with shelves that held well-thumbed, ancient looking treatises titled with an unfamiliar script. The home was otherwise filled with unidentifiable baubles, but which seemed to inhabit a place of honor in the house. The rabbi’s wife minded the oven stew.

  Two other things of particular note: First, I felt that the light in the cabin was rather extraordinary, and when I looked out the window I realized that the view, from this mountain cabin, was a quiet blue sea, gentle waves stroking a yellow, sun-drenched shore. Second, my old friend Billy Golden was sitting in an armchair in the corner, reading a copy of the recently published Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft (in the original German), and looking younger than I had ever seen him.

  At my first opportunity, I shook Billy’s hand, and I asked after the staggeringly beautiful Christine Nilsson.

  He shrugged. The opera singer? he mouthed in confusion.

  I smiled.

  “Later
on in your life,” I said, “during the years when you are rather older – although temporally earlier in the history of the universe – you both fall madly in love with each other.”

  “In the jungle?” he asked. “In April? 1879?”

  I nodded.

  He sighed.

  “Thank God,” he whispered.

  At the dinner table, a half hour or so later, the conversation returned to the subject of Christine Nilsson. Billy was very young now, younger than when we’d begun the meal, not much more than a teenage boy and very excited about the possibility of pursuing a love affair with Miss Nilsson, and he peppered us with questions, gunning for advice on how to capture the lovely young woman’s affections. Hester sought to warn our friend, to tamp down his rising enthusiasm.

  “I fear,” she said, “that it may not be entirely happy for you. I think you would be well-advised to look elsewhere for satisfaction.”

  “A great love is worth experiencing,” Billy said, “even if it does not bring great joy.”

  And with that, I noticed that he had grown very old indeed, and rather sad.

  “I would do nothing different with respect to my affair with Miss Nilsson,” he told us, his eyes weary, “if I had the opportunity to re-live my life a million times over.”

  At once, he was young again, happy and eager and hopelessly ensnared in the first throes of love.

  We sat around the table, Hester, Chu Ying, Arthur, the young Billy Golden and I. The rabbi sat at the head of the table, and the rabbi’s wife joined us, from time to time, at the other end of the table. She was a plump woman with a beautiful smile.

  “It has been taught,” said the rabbi, holding his spoon aloft. He was answering a rather guileless question that Arthur had just asked. “Abba Binyamin says, If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the demons. Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge around a field. Rav Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right hand. Rava says: The crushing of the crowd in the yearly public lectures comes from them. Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them."