Benediction Denied: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

by Engstrom, Elizabeth

  This was the first normal thing he had seen since this whole weird adventure started.

  It would be nice if he found a pair of teenie shoes amidst the debris.

  Where the tunnels had been hot and steamy, this cavern was huge, open and cold. He sat down, shivering, and caught his breath, sending prayers of thanks to God above.

  Prayers seemed hollow and useless in this place, though. The god of his understanding, the god of his belief, his Christian god, did not extend to magic and underworld craziness such as brass elevators in rat tunnels and heatless, waterproof blue flames that healed.

  He had left his god back in the village, back in Africa, back in America, back in the sunshine. No gods existed down here, except maybe Jolmy’s god of the underworld. And Adam had no idea how to pray to that type of deity.

  So for now, he rested, fresh water sloshing in his belly, looked around and sifted through the junk that was all around him. If he moved around, got his muscles working, he would warm up.

  He held the flame up and looked deeper on both sides of the shore.

  From what he could tell, he’d been washed ashore like the acres of trash he could see, and there was much more that he couldn’t see. Trash, as far as the light extended his vision, and in piles much taller than he.

  Slowly, carefully, he picked his way through, looking for a tiny, undamaged bottle that he could use to carry fresh water with him.

  But not only were the ones he found damaged, they were as big as he was.

  Something that looked a lot like a coconut—and he had seen plenty of them since being in the jungle—lay half buried in rocks and sticks.

  Of course a coconut could wash down that river and float its way to the shore, especially during the rainy season.

  Adam crawled over to it, climbing over the mounds of debris, careful about his skinned knee, careful about being only in stocking feet.

  Indeed it was a coconut, but they were hard to open. At his size, that would be nearly impossible. The thing was the size of a car.

  The local people at the village knew how to open a coconut. In the center of the village they had a metal stake buried deeply into the ground, and they shucked the outer shell of a coconut in no time by hitting it on that stake. The fibers were so tough that the women wove floor mats with them, twisting them into ropes.

  Fibers into ropes.

  No, he had no time for that. Opening the coconut was out of the question, and he had no time to pull fibers and twist them into ropes long enough to be of any use.

  But if a coconut had washed down, perhaps other food had as well.

  Adam set the blue flame on top of the coconut and began digging through the sticks and vegetation that had piled up on the shore. Dead fish. Rotten fruit. Waterlogged cardboard boxes.

  His fingers touched something firm and round, and he dug through rocks and trash with renewed interest.

  A gourd. Or a squash. Or something, as big as his head. Bigger. Soft, as if overripe, but it didn’t seem to be rotten. It didn’t smell rotten.

  Suddenly, hunger overwhelmed him. The ache in his belly ignited a desperation for something to eat, something nutritious, not something dead or rotten.

  This could be it.

  With the shard of glass he had saved, he cut open the rind, stuck his hand inside and pulled out a fistful of fibrous meat with what looked like seeds still attached.

  A pumpkin! Well, not a real pumpkin, but some kind of a squash nevertheless.

  Soft and squishy, tart and more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, he ate the flesh. He cut open and ate the soft interior of the gigantic seeds, gorging himself, swallowing without even chewing, eating like a madman, until he could eat no more.

  The very act of such a feeding frenzy left him exhausted.

  He lay back next to the big coconut and tried to review what had happened to him. Tried to make sense of something so tremendously nonsensical.

  He wanted to rest. He wanted to reflect. He wanted to have a moment’s peace, but he had limited light, and limited time, and limited cards, and he was still stuck underground in the dark. He jangled, as if he should be doing something, up and rummaging around, looking for something useful to carry with him, or a way out that didn’t include being washed through any more claustrophobic lava tubes, or whatever the hell that was.

  He wanted to get back on the move, but his belly was full and his hands hurt. His muscles hurt. His head hurt. He desperately needed to rest.

  Slowly, and with great deliberation, he touched his breast pocket, made sure it was buttoned securely over the cards, then he packed one giant squash seed in each of the cargo pockets in his pants, just in case they might come in handy later. He went to the edge of the water and washed the stickiness from his face and hands.

  Clean, nourished, hydrated, still alive, and with the cool flame as his traveling companion, he wrestled a piece of cardboard from the debris, pulled it over him, curled up next to the giant coconut, and slept.

  5

  HE DREAMED of Jolmy.

  Jolmy, his great Congolese friend who was the foreman on the village water project. A big, black man with a shy, sweet wife and four beautiful children, Jolmy was always happy, always grinning, always appreciative of the help from the Justice Corps volunteers who came to make his village an easier and better place to live.

  Adam lived with Jolmy and his family until his own family came to visit for the summer. Adam slept on a mat on the floor of the open-walled living/dining/kitchen room. That’s where the children usually slept, but as long as Adam was their guest, the kids slept with Jolmy and Belvina in their room. Adam was always surprised and touched by their attention to his privacy in a place where privacy barely existed.

  When his family came, they were given their own little one-room house, built of scavenged scraps, but as soon as he put Chrissie and the girls on the plane, he would be back to his coconut-fiber mat on Jolmy’s floor.

  In Adam’s dream, Jolmy’s face loomed large. Above ground, his booming laugh could be heard all across the village, but now, down here in the labyrinth, his face was stern, his dark bloodshot eyes riveted directly on Adam’s face. “You do not tease the gods of the underworld,” he said. “They are not kind. You do your business and you get out. And you must always leave a sacrifice for them.”

  Sacrifice?

  “The underground gods are angry and they are jealous. They covet you everything. They covet you youth, you whiteness, you clothes, you education. They will steal it all if they can, but if you leave them something, they might let you go. So leave them something you value so they don’t take insult.”

  Something of value.

  “If you don’t leave them something, they will take something, something you prize.”

  Adam startled awake.

  “Jolmy?” he called, but even as he opened his mouth, he remembered where he was and knew that Jolmy had come to him in a dream.

  The comforting blue light began to sputter.

  Jolmy had said that he had to dream himself out from the underground. Were his dreams something that he could use? How could one wield a dream?

  And what on earth could he leave behind that would entertain, or at least placate these underground gods, of which he knew nothing? Were his shoes not enough? His glasses? His blood and sweat and fear—this wasn’t enough?

  Adam sat up, rubbing his face.

  The blue light had diminished to a barely visible little pinprick, sitting atop the coconut where he had left it.

  “Please don’t go,” he beseeched it, and as he did, it winked out.

  Darkness again closed around him.

  The vague sound of water lapping at the shore mixed with sharper sounds of some kind of night creatures sifting through the debris on shore. Crabs?

  At his size, they might be big enough to ride.

  Oh God, at his size, he would be just the right size for them to eat.

  He remembered hearing that Amelia Earhart was l
ikely eaten by crabs on the island where her plane crashed.

  The thought had made him shudder at the time, but now it horrified him. The thought of being eaten by giant Army ants was nothing compared with the thought of being picked apart by crabs.

  He leapt to his feet, and kept his feet moving, in case a crab got snagged on one of his socks, or tried to crawl up his pant leg.

  He cursed himself for not making better use of the light while he had it. He could have looked for a way out of the cavern. He could have looked for his shoes. He could have investigated his surroundings.

  Instead, he ate, and slept. But that was important, too. Imperative, even.

  He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the cards he had left.

  They were waterlogged and swollen. Would they still work?

  Magic doesn’t care about a little waterlogging, does it?

  He wanted shoes. He wanted light. He wanted to get the fuck OUT OF HERE!

  He wanted to go home.

  The tears he feared the underground gods required now overcame him. The sobs of exhaustion came freely, and proved to be a great emotional release. He felt stupid dancing in place to keep the crabs away, while crying, but there was no one to hear him or see him, there was no one for whom he had to put on a brave face. He could be small—more than literally—he could be vulnerable, he could be afraid, and it was all right.

  The emotional storm didn’t last long. He wiped his face, blew his nose, then washed his face and hands again at the edge of the lake.

  “There,” he said to anybody who was listening. “I’ve sacrificed blood, sweat and tears. Can I go home now?”

  Unfortunately, he feared the only ones who heard him were the crabs and rats rooting through the stuff on the shore.

  He sat cross legged and leaned against the coconut, hyper alert for the sound of any crustacean who dared to approach.

  Perhaps the gods of the underground could be persuaded. Perhaps they had compassion, or pity. Perhaps they could influence the magic of the cards.

  Adam counted the cards. He had sixteen left. Was that a lot? Would he need more?

  It didn’t matter. He had sixteen cards, and when they were gone, they were gone.

  He took one, and put the rest of the deck back into his shirt pocket and buttoned it for security. He wouldn’t be able to get to them in an emergency, but he wasn’t likely to lose any by falling or being sucked down a river, either.

  He sat quietly and calmed his mind, which was difficult, once he thought about the possibility of being eaten by the crabs that scuttled about. How big were they, compared to him? The size of dogs?

  Again, he saw the little flickers of movement at the periphery of his vision. Little sparks.

  He ignored them. Took a deep breath.

  Calm.

  Calm the mind.

  The beautiful face of his fifteen-year-old daughter came clearly into his mind. She smiled at him with her light blue eyes and sandy hair. Lisa was the scholar of the family. She knew everything, and if there was anything she didn’t know, she was on the internet finding out about it. A treasure trove of trivia, they all called her.

  She would be starting her sophomore year in high school. She’d be getting her learner’s permit and driving the old Volvo.

  They say that it’s not good to have a favorite child, but Adam, though he claimed not to, clearly did. Lisa had been their first. When he held that teenie, sweet-smelling newborn in his arms, he saw the faces of his mother, his grandmothers, his great-grandmothers, and surely all the women who had gone before. All their genes, all their DNA was represented in this tiny bundle of sweetness, wrapped up with the DNA of Chrissie, exhausted and sweaty, and never more beautiful.

  From her earliest moments of talking, Lisa wanted to know everything. She sat in on all the adult conversations. She dreamed of going to college and getting multiple degrees, all before she was out of elementary school. At the moment, she had her heart set on Harvard Medical School. Adam and Chrissie would do everything they could to make that dream come true.

  But if he died down here, Chrissie would never be able to manage that alone.

  The familiar pang of guilt clenched his gut. Especially since … since he had “mismanaged” the girls’ college funds.

  He had to get out, if for nothing else than to make that right. He had to.

  He lifted his face and his hands to the darkness of the cavern and the gods that were above it, beneath it, all around it.

  “Thank you for the squash that nourished my body, and the water that sustains me,” he whispered. “Thank you for the wild, mysterious magic that has saved my life from the rebel thugs. I am happy to pay you whatever you ask, but I ask you please to help me back to my village, back to my Congolese family, my Justice Corps family, and then to my American family in Minneapolis.”

  He ran his fingers around the edges of the card from his pocket. “I will pay whatever sacrifice you ask of me, if you will do this one thing for me.”

  He stood, took a deep breath and flicked the card at the wall of the cavern.

  The concussion banged him in his chest with the blast of horizontal circles of light, and where he imagined the card hit the wall, a blue circle began to sizzle and grow, as if the light was melting a hole into the side of the cavern.

  For a long moment, the cavern came to life, bathed in the thrilling light.

  Adam looked around in amazement at the enormity of the cave, at the placid nature of the vast lake, at the piles of debris on all shores. Those piles could be mined for many things he could use, not the least of which was more food, and something of an appropriate size to carry water in. Maybe something for his feet. Sandals. Shoes, if he could find something that would fit his tiny size.

  He looked around for an opening in the cavern, but saw none.

  The only exit seemed to be the tunnel that the blue magic was burning into the rock.

  That hole in the side of the cavern beckoned.

  He could stay here, eat more squash, drink his fill of water. Rest. Try to get his flame back and search for his shoes.

  He didn’t want to rest. He didn’t want to sleep where the crabs were likely to begin feasting on him.

  He wanted to go home. He wanted to take Lisa to her driving test.

  He stood up, looked around for anything he was leaving behind, but of course there was nothing, and he walked tenderly on stocking feet toward the entrance of the brand new tunnel.

  The blue light continued chewing a hole in the rock, creating a long tunnel, leaving the faint smell of burned dirt behind. Adam stood in the darkening cavern as the light disappeared down the tunnel.

  Yet another long, dark tunnel.

  Was this the answer to his prayers? Or were the cruel gods of Jolmy’s understanding toying with him? Would he find a way out, or was this just another in a long line of dead ends and other tortures?

  He could always come back here to the water, the lake, the squash, the coconut. And since the lake had such a swift inlet, surely it had a swift outlet to match. He couldn’t hear it, though, so likely it was underwater. He’d have to dive in total darkness, looking for it, feeling for the current.

  Not an attractive option.

  He looked back down the tunnel. The blue light was still working, only now it was way, far away, and as he watched, it turned a corner, leaving only the palest glow of blue reflected on the wall, very far away.

  The rest of the cavern fell back into darkness.

  Creatures again began scuttling around in the debris piles.

  The tunnel invited him. If he ran, he could catch up to the blue light. He would be able to see, as long as he kept up with the crazy magical melting or digging of this tunnel through what appeared to be solid rock.

  He had asked for this. He had engaged the magic, and now the magic was inviting him to engage with it.

  Time to go.

  He sat down, and with the help of his little piece of sharp glass, cut and ripp
ed the sleeves off his shirt and wrapped each sleeve around the wet sock on each foot. It wouldn’t be much protection for very long, but at least it would be some protection for a little while.

  He stood up, picked his way across the rocky shoreline and stepped into the portal.

  It smelled like fresh air.

  Hope brought his spirits up. He thought he smelled the fresh African breezes that brought those dark blue clouds across the village and blessed them with rain squalls. When the rain came, all the children flew out of their houses to play in the water, to smear mud all over each other, to mud their hair and twist it into unnatural shapes.

  The adults stood on the roofed porches and watched the children, smiling and recalling their youth. Jolmy would call a work stoppage and he would lean back in the chair on his own front porch and light up one of those stinky herbal cigarettes that he liked to roll and smoke.

  Homesick for those sights and sounds, Adam started walking, and then he walked faster.

  This tunnel, created by magic out of pure rock, was glassy and smooth to the touch. There were no rocks and roots to trip him up, nothing to stumble over. His feet were grateful, but walking with the sleeves tied around them became awkward and cumbersome. After a while, he untied the sleeves and saved them, tucked into his belt, in case the smoothness of the floor did not last.

  He continued on in stocking feet. His wet, chafing clothes began to dry out in the heat of the tunnel.

  At the end, the tunnel turned right. Way, far down, he could see the blue glow as the ring continued to dig well ahead of him. He began to jog.

  The next turn was left.

  He had to remember, in case the magic petered out and he needed to get back to the cavern, back to water and likely food. If he didn’t fall prey to the creatures that skittered across the detritus, perhaps he would be big enough to kill and eat one.

  Adam shivered at the thought of trying to kill a giant crab or rat as big as he was with his bare hands.