by Ellis Knox
“That is all commendable, miss, but …”
“I’m not finished.” I had long ago learned how to hold my own in conversations with men. “I will write your story, naturally. My publisher pays me to do this—not enough, mind you, but I’ll do a proper job. You will be famous, assuming we find our man.
“But I shall not stop there. I shall write not merely of the adventure, I’ll write up the science.”
“My uncle,” Thesiger interjected, “may want to add a word or two.”
The sardonic interruption was intended to mock my enthusiasm, but he wasn’t trying very hard. I let it go and continued.
“Professor Queller will publish in his scientific journals, as is proper. The learned speaking to the learned. But who speaks to the common people?
“The Zeitung is a newspaper, and so will only print stories—they want heroes and, when they can get one, a villain. They want escapes and escapades and romance.”
I tripped over the word romance, keenly aware I was a single woman in a room of men. I felt my cheeks warm. Herr Thesiger showed himself a gentleman, though, and said only, “But you will write something more?”
“Yes,” I said, recovering quickly, for my spirit was up. “I believe strongly that the average person, man and woman alike, want to know about the progress of science, to know not only that a discovery has been made, but what it means; to learn not only of an invention, but how it works. More than this, I believe it is vital for them to know. The future cannot be built upon the backs of dull brutes. The common folk must be educated, Herr Thesiger; our very future demands it of us.”
It was a fine speech. It still sounded fine when I reviewed it hours later, in my private room—they were accommodating of my female “sensibilities.” The speech had done the trick, though. Both men had assured me my place in the expedition was secure.
As I lay back on the fine feather-filled bed, staring at the ornate ceiling by the soft glow of a Steam lamp, I allowed my misgivings to gather. I have long experience with showing a brave face by day, then letting my fears gather at night, like wolves at the edge of a campfire.
The professor was surely half mad, like that mage he had studied. Atlantis was a myth—there was no scientific evidence for a sunken continent anywhere in the Great Western Ocean. As for the Long Dig, that old dwarf tale had a hundred variants. Every cavern system deeper than a hundred feet was held to be the spot where dwarves had emerged into the world. Where and what was their home? “Far away,” was the only reply—a land with mushrooms the size of trees, or where nothing at all grew, or a place of volcanoes and fire, or an oceanic place with sea monsters the size of castles. There was a different legend for every clan and canton, and nowhere a shred of evidence for any of it.
As real as Troy? Another myth.
I shook my head. I had used every connivance and contrivance to get this job, persuading my editor to send me rather than any of a half dozen male reporters. Now I wondered if it would turn out to be scarcely worth the train ride. The likely prospect was that we would wander aimlessly for a time, while the professor imagined seeing evidence for his fantasies. We would run low on supplies and return to Salzburg in defeat, the same as the other expeditions, and somehow I would have to turn that dreary tale into a newspaper story. Tragedy, I decided. A comical beginning to win sympathy, but ending in pathos and pity.
That was assuming we returned at all.
The real tragedy was that there would be precious little science and nothing new. The science was to have been my personal prize in all this. I resolved to make the best I could of it all, keeping ears and eyes keen, and pencils sharp.
I sighed and stood up. I took off all my clothes, hanging them to air out, to sleep au naturel. I knew this would be my only chance. From here on, I’d be sleeping in one or the other of my two sets of clothes. I wondered who among us would be the first to have their decency shocked.
It wasn’t going to be me.
The Queller Expedition
We spent the money from the newspaper in a single day; Queller and Thesiger appeared to have any number of merchants lined up and ready to sell. We left Salzburg shortly after noon the day following, going by foot.
“We shan’t have ponies once inside the caverns,” Professor Queller explained, then added with typical arrogance, “so you may as well try out your shoes while you can still repent.”
He baited me like that more than once on our march. I recognized the tactic, though I doubt he did. For him, it was simply normal male behavior when saddled with a woman on a man’s undertaking. There’s the door, young miss; you may leave any time, without criticism. No one would blame you if you give up on an enterprise for which you are so obviously ill suited. I ignored that sort of thing without half trying.
And I was already sure of my shoes.
We had barely left sight of Salzburg before we began climbing. The city stands at the edge of the Austrian Alps. To the north, the land tilts in long vales down to the River Ister. To the south, mountains rise abruptly to great, snowy heights.
Within an hour we were hiking up a narrow valley. Hills rose steeply on either side (we would call them mountains, back home), thick with dark green pine and a scattering of poplar and alder. A little road picked its way through the valley, its flanks chewed on one side by a river and by deep forest on the other.
I felt good. The day was warm but cloudy, neither hot nor cold. Perfect walking weather. I was able to keep up with the others.
I’d been worried about that but found in the professor an unwitting ally. I saw at once that Niklot and Cosmas were moderating their pace for the professor, a pace that turned out very nearly to match my own, burdened as I was. Henrik Queller’s constitution was strong, though. He never slackened his slow but steady stride and was usually the first to rise from a rest, eager to go on. He was full of good cheer, plainly excited to be off on an adventure.
My pack did slow me a bit. This proved a minor point of contention before we left, for Cosmas carried the gear of everyone else. When we gathered at the Mirabell to set out, I saw only walking sticks, plus Cosmas and a misshapen bag.
Nik and the Doktor Professor both suggested I give my pack to the ogre.
“He carries all of it,” Nik said. “He’s a träger. A bearer.”
I glanced over. Now I understood the ogre’s role in the party. I had heard of trägern, but had never seen one. They were highly valued as bearers, incredibly strong, and like all ogres, utterly reliable when under contract. Still …
“But where are all our supplies,” I asked. “Food, equipment?”
Cosmas held up the bag. “Ein trägersack,” he rumbled.
“Truly?”
Nik nodded.
“Very few ogres have a bearer’s sack anymore,” he explained, “and even fewer know how to make one.”
I looked at the bag. Plain gray wool, as far as I could tell. Or was that canvas? The more I inspected, the less sure I was of the material.
“There are no seams,” I said.
“So it does not come apart at the seams,” Cosmas said.
“Everything is in there?”
“Yes.”
“Is it heavy?”
“No.” He held it out with one hand. It sagged almost to the ground. When he slung it back over his shoulder, it seemed to grow smaller.
Despite the offer, I insisted on carrying my own pack. By the end of the day I was heartily regretting my decision, but I clung to it nevertheless. I had stated to all of them that I could manage, so manage I must.
“Herr Thesiger?”
The man looked back at me and slowed to walk beside me.
“Before we go much farther, let’s get this name business out of the way.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m Nik. You’re Gabrielle. My uncle’s name is Henrik, the dwarf’s Bessarion but you can call him Beso, and Cosmas is too tall to have a nickname.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
�
��Nik,” I said, hesitantly.
“Yes.”
“Very well, call me Gabi.”
He nodded. “Pleased to me you, Gabi. You had a question?”
“Not really. It’s just that … well, it struck me as ironic, is all.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s all uphill,” I said. We were walking in deep shadow; I had no idea of the time, though the sky—which I could see only by looking nearly straight up—was still a deep blue where it showed between clouds.
“We are in mountains,” Nik replied.
“A fact hard to miss,” I said. “I just find it ironic that in order to go deep into the earth we must first go up.”
He had the decency to chuckle at that.
“It would have been more convenient,” he said, “if Lamprecht had placed his cave down nearer Salzburg. Or near Rostock, if we are wishing.”
“Camp.”
This declaration came from Bessarion. He was standing in a small clearing, hardly more than a wide spot in the little road. Professor Queller pulled out a large chronometer from his vest pocket, consulted it, and nodded.
“Seven by the clock,” he said.
I thought it rather early to be stopping but for once had the sense to say nothing.
Nik got a fire going while Bessarion saw to the meal, which consisted of dried meat and dense bread of the sort favored by dwarves, along with some sharp, odorous cheese. I was hungrier than I thought, and it all tasted divine to me. Cosmas somehow managed to pull out whatever was requested from his magic bag, almost without hesitation.
“How do you find anything in there,” I asked him as we were finishing.
“By looking,” he replied. His face was so misshapen, with hardly anything in proper alignment, it was impossible to tell when he was joking or serious.
“Do you have shelves in there, or drawers?” I said.
“Not as you would understand them,” he answered.
“Uncle says the most patient man in the world is he who studies ogres,” Nik said from the other side of Cosmas. “One never gets from them a whit more than one asks.”
“Could I reach into the bag?”
“You don’t want to do that,” Nik said. The ogre nodded agreement.
“And why not?”
“You’d likely not get your hand back. A trägersack is for ogres, and each is unique to the individual. Cosmas spent years crafting this particular bag. Anyone else reaching in there would lose their way.” He raised an eyebrow at me and added, “I wasn’t joking about losing a hand.”
I folded my hands in my lap and said nothing. The only magic I’d encountered was scientific magic—devices powered by Steam or some other derivative of phlogiston, or else the puzzle box I had back home in Stralsund, given me by my grandmother and crafted by a vill gnome. Even after centuries of study, no one could agree on whether gnome work was magic or not. These days many people, and I count myself among them, are not entirely comfortable with the word magic at all. There is Steam. There are some unexplained mysteries. The word magic feels altogether too much like we are still living in the Dark Ages.
The day gradually came to an end. I managed to make notes by the light of the campfire as Bessarion let it burn down, and to do a little writing, as I listened to the men talk among themselves.
How fortunate boys are, I wrote. They are given markers of progress and achievement throughout their lives. They move through their forms at school, receive degrees as they advance in rank. In business, money marks their progress. They gain titles, property, companies. Little wonder their talk at the end of a strenuous day is so relaxed and confident. They live in a different world from me.
We women are measured by what we lose: beauty, youth, virtue. None of these can be measured objectively; they can only be disfigured, lost, or disgraced. We cannot become younger. Nor, to be candid, can we ever be more virtuous than the virgin. This must be why we spend so much effort on beauty, the one thing we can affect. The only title we gain also comes from the male: wife.
It has ever been thus, but today there is another way, that of the modern woman. We few dare to meet men on their own ground. Even more! We stand on ground of our own choosing and refuse to cede that ground to men, but call it a land open to all. In that land, in every endeavor, but most especially in science and the exploration of our world, we meet with everyone on equal terms—men and women, elves and dwarves, even ogres. We are courteous to all who respect science, and every reputation must be earned.
Such, or very nearly, were my words that evening—words both bitter and bold. It was a kind of pep talk to myself, nor was it the last such. The days to come were hard, testing me in ways expected and unexpected. On this first night out, the talk was based on principles as yet untested. I went no further that night. Besides, as the light failed and conversation faltered, I discovered I was remarkably sleepy.
We rose the next day in near darkness. The grass of the clearing was wet with dew; water dripped from the alder trees. A deep chill had settled into my body, and I rose by stages, like an elderly lady. I followed the example of the men and stamped about to get the blood flowing. We were to have no fire, but set out after only some bread and cheese, and plenty of water.
And after a ritual performed by the dwarf.
Cosmas produced a hollow stone block, reddish in color, and handed it to Bessarion. The dwarf set it carefully on the ground. I moved to a better vantage point and saw a small statue stood inside the block.
Bessarion stood facing it. He knelt, then made a series of rapid gestures with his hands, speaking in low, swift tones; his back was toward me and I could not see the motions. He then stood and faced about. His back faced the shrine, for such I supposed it to be, and he spoke again. I could not catch the words.
He picked up the shrine, gave it back to Cosmas, who placed it in his bag, and then we were off, up the narrow valley.
“What was that ritual?” I asked Professor Queller in little more than a whisper. I didn’t want Bessarion to hear; it felt rather like gossiping.
“A traveling ritual,” he replied in an ordinary voice. “He places the shrine with appropriate words. He faces it and says where he has come from; then he turns and says where he is going.”
“Interesting,” I said, though honestly it seemed a little silly to give travel information to a statue.
“It is a common practice, though Beso is of the Old Reverence, so he speaks the words in Old Dwarvish, which is not at all common.”
“What if one doesn’t know where one is going next?”
“If you don’t know where you are going,” Beso’s voice came from up ahead, “then why do you leave?”
Nik chuckled behind me. “Dwarf ears,” he said. “The practice is not only common, it’s also very old. Dwarves speak to the ancestors, so all know where they’ve come from and where they’re going. It is a reverence.”
“It is my own belief,” Queller added, “that it reflects an ancient practice that helped them not lose their way when deep under the mountains.”
“Interesting,” I said, except this time I meant it.
We walked in silence for another hour. The day got no warmer, but the steady pace at least warmed me on the inside. I looked around me often, thinking I might be the first to spot the opening that was Lamprechtsofen—Lamprecht’s Cave. As I write this now, I smile at my naiveté.
One of the little brooks that fed the river threaded its way from a declivity in the mountain side. The opening was scarcely twenty feet wide, with granite cliffs rising a hundred feet or more. Enormous boulders lay in a pile at the mouth, so that one had to look sharp even to notice the stream. Bessarion turned aside without a word, clambering over the rocks without looking back once. It was plain we were simply to keep up.
Professor Queller followed close behind, surprisingly agile for an elderly man carrying a walking stick in either hand. His Tyrolean cap sat at a rakish angle on his long head. He had chosen a ridiculous oran
ge feather to set into the band, giving him the appearance of an exotic bird hopping from stone to ledge to stone.
Niklot came next. His gray felt hat was pinned up on one side. He wore the same tall black boots, woolen pants felted, and a least two layers of shirt beneath a leather vest much decorated with embossed figures. He moved with the dexterous grace I had imagined he would possess. He was, after all, the only explorer among us.
“Après vous, mademoiselle.”
The French, delivered by a hulking ogre in a fine Parisian accent, made me chuckle. I had meant to go last, to keep the whole story in front of me, as it were, but Cosmas disarmed me. Soon, I was scampering over boulders that were as big as oxen, and edging my way along narrow ledges mere inches above the burbling stream. The sun had risen, I supposed, but in these deep valleys my familiar Baltic notion of sunrise became nearly irrelevant. I doubted these chill depths ever saw that yellow orb for more than an hour a day. Soon enough, I knew, I would be where no sunlight had ever reached in all the years of the world.
As we moved upstream, the cleft narrowed even as the cliffs rose to ever greater heights, and the watercourse deepened. The boulders and ledges were fewer, forcing us to leap like goats from one to the next. There was no possibility of wading; the water was much too cold, and in any case it was now six or seven feet deep, perfectly clear. I wondered if we were going to be asked to swim.
Sounds here were muffled by the closeness, but at the same time each was rendered sharp by the stone walls. We made our way along a natural concourse carved by forces indifferent to the tread of living creatures. Every aspect of this canyon reminded me of what lay before me, and every aspect became inexpressibly sweet: the filtered light, the sound of wind, the smell of pine.
All of this would soon be lost to us. It came to me that I had never properly valued the natural world before now, that to study it is one thing, but to live in it is quite another. Much of what we do as men and women is meant to remove us from nature. We make fire to ward against the cold. We build shelters against sun and storm. We erect walls to shut out animals. Our modern homes are so far removed from nature that we buy paintings depicting landscapes, animals, and plants to remind us of what we’ve abandoned. We bring nature back inside, but tamed and framed, only dimly aware of what we have not so much lost as have intentionally shut away.