The Rings of Poseidon

by Mike Crowson

  Chapter 12

  Everything was black. So black that the blackness was almost solid. Not just a total absence of light, but a darkness as if there had never been light in the world. I couldn't see my hand when I held it up, but it felt as if I still had one.

  I didn't think the fall had knocked me out, even for a short time, just winded me. I moved my left arm and flexed my left wrist and fingers. Apart from a stinging where I had apparently scraped my hand against something, they seemed to be all right. I did the same with the right and they seemed unharmed as well. I made no move from where I was, but I tested each leg in turn and satisfied myself that nothing was broken, then thought about my predicament.

  We had been playing ball against a sort of natural cliff face, near my grandmother's home. The sun had begun to sink towards setting, so we had not been up from rest long and it was still very hot. Too hot to be playing ball, I suppose. Anyway, my sister and I had been using a ball made of real sap, which came by boat from the far continent years ago before the island was destroyed. I had taken it from my father's possessions when he wasn't looking, so when it disappeared amongst the rocks, I had to find it and while I was looking I heard their voices in the hot air. There were three men.

  "That's her house over there," one of them said.

  "Right," said the one who seemed to be giving the orders. "If she's not there we look for it and take it away with us. We only kill her if she's there and resists."

  "Are we going in now?" asked the third.

  "Get your breath back and have a drink of water," said the one in charge, "You might have to run if anyone sees you."

  They sat down by some rocks in the shade of a carob tree.

  I wriggled out of the rocks, taking care to stay out of sight of the intruders and went to warn my grandmother, for there was no house but hers and no one else around the men might mean.

  When I slipped into the two-roomed hut, she was getting a meal ready. She listened as I told her of the men.

  "I don't know what they want but they're here for something," I said.

  "The ring. They've come for the ring. Well they will not have it."

  I had heard her speak of rings, though I think there are now few left in the world and hers is the only one I have never even seen. From a shelf she took a wooden box about two hands square and one hand deep, better made than any other I had seen.

  "Give this to your mother," she said. "Tell her to guard it well."

  I took the box from her.

  "You're a good boy, but don't get caught," she said.

  The sun would still be sharp and bright on the mountains. Trees grow on flatter land but the heights themselves are rocky and bare, with no trees and just a few scrubby bushes, thorns and the odd cactus plant. They are rugged and sharp with deep, dark chasms and ravines cutting through the ranges, where the sun only penetrates briefly at the height of the day. It's not that the mountains are so high - the highest ones are only just high enough to have snow on them in the less hot time of year - but they are lonely, rough, arid and rocky, watered only by the occasional river. Mind you, where there is water and the land is flatter, things grow. Our group of houses is built into a very steep hillside by a small lake where chirrimoyas thrive and I love the fruit of the chirrimoya tree.

  The mountains slope down to the sea in places, ending in rocks and cliffs that jut and tumble out into the water, which is usually a patch of vivid blue, about as far as you can walk from our house before it gets too hot to walk.

  My sister was still near the house and I wondered whether the men were within sight of it as well. Standing well back in the shadows I called her. I had the beginnings of an idea. I opened the box. In it was my grandmother's ring and some kind of necklace. It looked as if there had once been other rings in the box, which supported my grandmother's story which I'll come to later. Itza came up in answer to my call.

  "I thought you went into the rocks to look for the ball. You left me alone out there and it's not fair."

  I answered in a lowish voice. "There are three bad men out there want to steal from grandma. I want you to take some things straight to mummy for safekeeping. Straight there, you understand?"

  She nodded.

  "Now I'm going to try and make them follow me away from the house."

  I took the ring and the necklace from the wooden box and gave them to Itza. She put them in her pocket.

  I looked out into the sunlight but, although I couldn't see the men, I knew more or less where they were because I could see the tree beneath which they rested.

  "Are you ready?" I asked.

  Itza nodded again and I strode off in the general direction of the men. I was level with them but more than an arrow's shot away before they noticed the box.

  "Hey! That looks like the ring box," cried the one in charge and he yelled, "What are you carrying in that box?"

  "None of your business," I shouted back, and began to run.

  With shouts and general noise the other two leapt to their feet and they all chased after me.

  At first I followed a track and the ground, though stony and rising steeply uphill, was even. I panted and sweated but they were gaining on me, so I turned off amongst the tumbled rocks, weaving and dodging. I did lose one of the men, but the other two were still with me and one was closer than before. I saw the dark opening of a narrow cave ahead and dived in.

  "Where is the little brat? We can't have lost him," I heard one of them say.

  "Probably hiding in a cave or behind a rock. He can't have gone far."

  I edged further back into the shadows. The cave was narrow and dark but showed no signs of ending yet, so I inched still deeper, feeling my way into the obscurity offered by the narrow cleft. Then with a sharp crack I fell amid a shower of dirt and pebbles into the blackness.

  The cave was utterly black. I felt carefully all round to make sure there was something to lean back on, then moved into a sitting position. I won't say I was all that comfortable, but I felt better than I did before. The air was warm and dry and, though it was still, it seemed wholesome enough to breathe, which was just as well seeing as I had no choice. There wasn't a sound: not the running of water, nor the dripping of water; not the stirring of air or the wings of a bat. It was as if all my senses except that of touch had been suspended by my fall.

  Perhaps they had. Perhaps I was already dead and this was the afterlife. This didn't seem to be much of a fun way to spend time after death. I could see why a person might want another body! On the whole I concluded that I probably wasn't dead yet. On the other hand, my position looked pretty serious.

  From underneath and around me I amassed a small pile of gravel and pebbles. The first pebble I threw landed a couple of feet in front of me, I heard it chink. The next small stone I threw a bit further - and nothing. There was silence and I was about to throw another when there came a faint rattle beyond and far below me. It shook me to discover there was a big drop just alongside the spot where I had been lying and I used the remainder of my pebbles establishing that I seemed to be high up on the side of a very substantial cavern.

  Outside Itza should have reached my mother and she might be searching for me, or at least wondering where I was. Against that, the three men would still be looking for me and I didn't fancy my chances if they found me first.

  The family would sit outside to eat just before sunset and afterwards grandmother would probably tell her story of how I come with a warning. Like as not she would go on yet again about remembering when her grandmother had told her she had come across the shorter crossing from the island itself before it was destroyed, to settle somewhere west of here. Well, if she was still alive she would.

  My grandmother's story didn't take much telling and it's probably true - well, more or less true - because it was lacking in obvious embellishments.

  Apparently my great great grandmother was a priestess and in those far off days, before the rock from the sky, priestesses didn't usual
ly marry. The idea of priests and priestesses living in the villages came after the flood when, I suppose, people had to do more than one job.

  Anyway, they - and don't ask me who 'they' are because my grandmother doesn't seem to know - had built a temple on the coast near a port and town on an estuary. A temple is a place where there are lots of priests and priestesses and an estuary is just where a proper river flows into the sea. I can't really imagine what a port is and I don't think my grandmother can either. I know it has something to do with unloading bigger boats. I've only ever seen the ones they catch fish in and they pull those up onto the beach to unload them. I suppose those in my grandmother's story must have been bigger.

  There was a big day coming up when several cycles all came to an end together, and all of the priests and priestesses prepared for it. Then this day a huge rock crashed out of the sky and into the ocean somewhere beyond the island. It set off mountains of fire and great columns of smoke. Three of the younger priestesses including my great great grandmother ran away to get a better view from a cliff where some mountains jutted out into the sea and you could see the top of the sacred mountain on a clear day. They were high up looking at the fire and smoke when a huge wave struck the temple and the town and the boats.

  The wave must have been pretty big, because it completely washed away the temple and the town and most of the people. My great great grandmother was upset. The three of them were on their way down to see if there were any survivors when they met three men on their way to higher ground. They were the only survivors from a boat which had been coming to the port at the time of the big wave. The boat itself had been wrecked, most of the people aboard killed and most of the goods lost, but one of the men was carrying a wooden box he had saved.

  According to my grandmother they camped for three days among some rocks with makeshift shelters and not much food, while they searched unsuccessfully for survivors. They decided they would have to search further afield and for that they would have to split up. The women were priestesses, one of the men was a priest, one was an engineer and the third was a young man who had just started training as a priest. They talked over the whole situation and finally it was decided that they would have to make two groups of three. One group would cross the narrow stretch of water to the big land while the other group would move along the coast of this land. They would look for survivors, individuals living alone, explorers and traders who had gone inland and so on. They decided they would have to try and preserve knowledge and re-establish the old ways. They also agreed that they would have to mate themselves and encourage large families if they had to, since nobody knew then how complete or extensive the disaster was.

  Then the priest opened his little wooden box. In it were six rings and a talisman to contain their strength. He had been bringing them by boat with five other priests who were to rule the six temples of Poseidon. Things had changed now and he gave the rings, one each, to the six survivors. The priest also had his ritual dagger with a polished bronze blade and a hilt worked into the shape of a wyvern's foot.

  My great great grandmother had been given one of the rings and, for some reason, she also had the little box with the talisman in it to look after. The priest took his dagger, one of the priestesses and the young trainee with him and set off to the big land. My grandmother came eastwards along the coast. She had taught her daughter astronomy and her granddaughter - that's my grandmother - had learnt the trade too and she taught my father who was teaching my older sister.

  The blackness of the cave was no blacker and no less black than the moment after my fall. It was unchanging. The silence was complete as before. If the men were still searching for me or even my family had begun looking for me, I couldn't hear them. Of course, unless they saw the men they wouldn't even know where to look. I thought I had probably fallen through into this cave just about where the rock was, which would explain why I had fallen about twice my own height without hurting myself much.

  Since it was clear nobody would come I climbed up onto the rock, which was pretty tricky in the darkness, because I could only do it by feel. I could just reach the roof and, feeling around, I thought I could feel the hole I had fallen through and imagined that the darkness was perhaps a little less intense here. However, I still couldn't see and, what was worse, I couldn't reach anything to get hold of so, frustrated, I had to get down.

  I wasn't sure which way I was facing or how big the rock, and I was, not surprisingly, unsteady. I grabbed at part of the roof for support. As I grabbed, pieces came away in my hands. I rolled sideways in a shower of a small rocks, pebbles and dirt. I fell a bit awkwardly with my feet first. I felt a sudden shock in my ankle, which gave way, and I fell sideways again, this time into nothingness. Black nothingness.