Through Caverns Measureless to Man

by D G Rose

  Amy took it in stride. “Nope. You?”

  “I experimented once, but she turned out to be a demonic killer, destruction’s whore. So… it didn’t work out.” She looked back at me and gave me a wink.

  I sped up and inserted myself between them. “So, where are we headed?”

  “Xanadu, of course.”

  “I mean, is it very far?” I clarified.

  “Further for some, less far for others. It’s your first time, so I thought we’d take the scenic route.” She didn’t clarify, at all.

  “Can we just take the faster route? I’m not really much of a tourist.” I’m not.

  Christabel shook her head. “Scenic route, faster route, all pretty much the same in the end. Except, of course, the scenic route is more scenic. Much more scenic.”

  I tried again. “But the faster route is faster.”

  “Not really.” She shook her head. “Trust me.”

  And there it was really. What choice did we have? “What’s on the scenic route?”

  “Well, scenery, of course. Scenic stuff. Stuff you’ll want to see.” And I think she could see my frustration. “In a little while, we’ll run into Alph, the Sacred River, and we’ll follow the river down to the Sunless Sea, seeing scenic sights all along the way, mind you, then we’ll take a ship across the sea and we’ll almost be in Xanadu!”

  “I’ve got to work tomorrow.” I told her.

  She laughed and put her hand on my chest. “Darling, you will not be making it to work.”

  “Who’s the river sacred to?” Amy asked.

  Christabel thought for a second. “Well, to God of course.”

  “God, like the Judeo-Christian god? That god?” Amy pressed. “Because I never heard of him having any sacred rivers in Sunday school.”

  Christabel scoffed. “No, of course not that god. A real god, a living god, the Mad Dreamer. Even now, in the Caverns, far from Xanadu, we swim in his dreams.” It’s funny. Christabel hadn’t struck me as a religious fanatic, but I guess you never know.

  Amy seemed satisfied with Christabel’s explanation. I wanted more details, but Christabel insisted that Miranda would explain everything in Xanadu and that was that.

  We walked for what must have been hours, although it was hard to hold on to any sense of time in the featureless landscape without any sun or moon or stars.

  “Let’s call it a night.” Christabel announced, suddenly stopping.

  “How do you know it is night?” Amy asked.

  “Well, I don’t know it is night, but I know I’m tired and hungry. Anyhow, this is where the tavern is, so it’s a good place to stop.”

  “I don’t see any tavern.” I looked around and saw the tavern, right there beside us.

  Light spilled out from the half-opened doors and a broken sign swung slowly in the absent breeze. ‘Half-Frog Tavern’ it, more or less, proudly proclaimed.

  Christabel waved her hand. “Best tavern around!”

  I gave the landscape another sweep. It was literally the only building in sight.

  “Used to be the Frog Tavern until the sign broke.” She continued. “Now it’s just the Half-Frog Tavern.” Which, of course, didn’t make any sense, because the sign had ‘Half-Frog Tavern’ painted on it, with no indication that it had ever been repainted. And why would anyone bother to repaint the sign rather than just replace it? Christabel pulled the doors all the way open and we followed her inside.

  It looked like no tavern I’d ever seen. Maybe I’d never seen a tavern. I’d been in a couple of bars but I wasn’t then, and still am not, sure what the difference is between a bar and a tavern. Anyway, this looked like no tavern I’d ever seen, but like every tavern I’d ever imagined. If you imagine a tavern now, that’s probably what it looked like. It was crowded and full of long tables with benches instead of chairs and there was a big fireplace with a fire and overly buxom barmaids carried foaming mugs of beer to groups of women and men who looked like they might be dangerous.

  Christabel led us to a spot along one wall and a barmaid came over. “Welcome to the Half-Frog. What’ll yas have?”

  “What’s the difference… uhf!” I started to ask, but Christabel silenced me with an elbow to the stomach.

  “Three beers.” She told the barmaid.

  The barmaid nodded. “Anything to eat?”

  “What’s on the menu?” Christabel asked.

  “Rabbit stew or…” She thought for a moment, “Or rabbit stew. We ain’t got nothing else.”

  “I’m a vegetarian.” Amy interrupted.

  “Well then, yas’ll get along fine with the rabbit stew. Thems rabbits was vegetarians too.” The barmaid told her, without a trace of sarcasm.

  “Three beers and three stews.” Christabel confirmed and the barmaid took off.

  She returned a few moments later with three foam-topped mugs. “Three beers. Stew’ll be up in just a bit.” She said cheerfully.

  I took a swallow of my beer, just then realizing how thirsty I was. The beer was good. It tasted homemade, but by someone who knew how to make beer, not by your coworker who makes undrinkable crud beer but still, somehow, wants you to drink it.

  Just then the guy next to me took delivery of a fresh beer, maybe even from the same barmaid. He turned to me with his mug in hand, “The Mad Dreamer!” He looked at me intently, waiting to see my reaction. It was clearly some sort of toast, so I tapped my mug against his and drank. I liked the feeling of easy companionability. But some men at another table gave us an odd look and I had to look down at my beer to break away.

  Amy took out her cell phone and was about to take a photo. I’m not much of a photo guy, but I can understand it. This tavern wasn’t like anything we’d ever seen before.

  Christabel slapped the phone from her hands and it clattered on the table, causing everyone in the room to look our way.

  “Hey!” Amy yelped.

  Christabel picked up the phone and shoved it into her pack then gestured at the assembled tavern goers. “Do these people look like they want to be in your selfie?” She asked. “No photos.” Then she held out her hand to me and I, reluctantly, gave her my phone, which joined Amy’s in the pack.

  The stew came out and it was good, full of big chunks of vegetables and hunks of meat. I’d never eaten rabbit before, I’m not sure I could tell it from any other kind of meat. Amy took a long time to start eating, but eventually hunger won out over principles and she just ate around the rabbit.

  “You’ve got a spot of stew on your face.” I said to Amy, wiping the stew with my finger. It was an oddly intimate thing to do and I immediately felt weird.

  “I think you just wanted to touch my face.” Amy said, with a shy smile.

  “I just wanted the stew.” I replied, licking the drop of stew off my finger.

  And she laughed and I laughed and I took another swig of my beer and I started to feel like things were alright.

  I finished my beer and another appeared and then another. Normally, I wouldn’t have three beers in the evening. But, normally stepped out the moment Christabel stepped in. So, with a few beers and a bowlful of stew in my belly, I was feeling more sure of myself. “OK.” I turned to Christabel. “What the heck is going on?”

  Her face was flushed with the beer and the heat of the fire and, maybe, a little annoyance. “I don’t know how many times I can explain it. Miranda sent me to get the box and you and take you both to her in Xanadu. Your girlfriend here just got caught up in the mix. Can’t be helped now.”

  Neither Amy nor I bothered saying ‘not my girlfriend’. “That explains exactly nothing. You can’t just say Xanadu and spout some line from a poem about Kublai Kahn and ‘oh your dead sister is alive’ and what about the monster? Oh! And the hole in my roof! And what’s in the box? And what the hell is Miranda doing in Xana-fucking-du anyway!?” I was kind of shouting by now.

  Christabel clamped a hand on my wrist. Hard. “First. Shut the fuck h
ell up.” She hissed. “Not everybody here is, necessarily, on our side. Now, let me take your concerns in order.” She then proceeded to not take them in order. “One, I don’t know why Miranda is in Xanadu, happened before my time. Two, the monster, who’s really a spirit, is not a good guy. Three yeah there’s a hole in your roof. If you ever make it back you should probably look into getting that fixed. Four, what’s in the box is no business of yours or mine either. It’s above our pay grade. I’m just the courier, and you’re just a deliverable. Five it’s Kubla, not Kublai. And six, Xanadu is a place, like any other place, only…” she gave a shrug, “more so.”

  Well, none of that was satisfactory. And we had a side?

  Amy shook her head. “I’m pretty sure it’s Kublai.”

  Christabel shook her head right back. “No. Not here it’s not.”

  I turned to Amy. “Really? She gives us that whole glop of non-information, and the thing that stands out to you is how to pronounce the name of a dead Mongol?”

  Amy shrugged. “Yeah, well, I watched the Netflix series, so I know a bit.” Then stopping for a moment. “Oh, and we have a side?”

  “No. That giant monster ripped a hole in the roof and tried to kill us because we’re all one big happy family.” Christabel did not display the barmaid’s talent for keeping the sarcasm out of her voice.

  “We have a side in what?” I asked.

  “See number four above.” She replied, then seeing that neither Amy nor I remembered her obtuse numbering system added, “Above my pay grade. Miranda can explain it all to you in Xanadu.”

  “How long until we get there?” I’m not sure if the beer was making me lose patience or keeping me calm.

  She made an indistinct motion with her hands. “You know, more or less… soonish.” She lowered her voice and leaned in. Amy and I leaned in too, our three heads almost touching. “I know you want answers, but it’s not safe here.” Then she loudly called for the barmaid and asked for a room for the night, slipping her a gold coin as big as a half dollar.

  The barmaid returned with a large iron key. “Third room on the right at the top of the stairs. There’s just two beds, so yas’ll have to work it out between yas.” She said with a smirk.

  The room was clean and the beds small. Christabel stretched out on one bed in a way that made it clear she had no intention of sharing. Using the gallantry I’d learned from movies, I offered the remaining bed to Amy and said I would sleep on the floor.

  “Nonsense. You can share with me. We’re both adults.” I had thought that the fact that we were both adults was the issue, but I was too tired to argue and we lay down, Amy spooning me from behind, her arm over my side and her hand on my chest. Her breath was hot and steady on the back of my neck and it made the blood roar in my ears and my heart beat higher in my chest. It was the first time I’d slept with another person in the same bed in a long time. I was surprised how much I liked it.

  I awoke early. I might have mentioned that I’m not a good sleeper. Amy and Christabel sleep like statues. I slipped out from under Amy’s arm and put on my boots. I sat for a while in the dark, then I figured it would be better down in the big room, where I didn’t have to worry about waking anybody up.

  It was dark downstairs too, but there was a light coming out from the door behind the bar. I remembered my toasting companion from the night before and figured everyone seemed friendly enough that I would risk a peek.

  As I passed behind the bar I could hear a rhythmic thunking and I almost lost my nerve. But I pushed the door open. “Hello?”

  Thunk! Thunk! I saw a man, fat and splattered with blood. He raised a heavy iron cleaver and brought it down hard and fast. Thunk!

  “Hi there!” Thunk! He tossed a footless rabbit carcass onto a pile of similarly footless rabbit carcasses, tossed a rabbit's foot into a bucket and pulled another carcass from a pile behind him. Thunk! “You want a rabbit’s foot?” He tossed me the bloody foot and I cringed away from it so it hit me on the sleeve of an arm that I’d pulled in front of me for its small protection and it fell with a little splat to the floor.

  He laughed and continued chopping. “Supposed to be lucky.” He said. “And you’ll need all the luck you can get traveling with that one.”

  “Not so lucky for the rabbits.” I pointed out the flaw in his logic.

  “Well, that’s the way it works, innit? All your good luck is always somebody else’s bad luck. We can’t all be lucky. You’ve got to steal it when you can.”

  I bent down to pick up the bloody foot, holding it between my fingers to minimize our contact, the rabbit’s foot and me. I noticed a ruddy stain on my sleeve where the foot hit me on its way to the floor.

  “That’s a lot of dead rabbits you’ve got there.” I say, just to fill the space between now and the question I really wanted to ask.

  “Gonna be rabbit sausage for breakfast.”

  “It was rabbit stew for dinner.” I point out, as if he probably didn’t both make it and eat it.

  “That it was. And it’ll be rabbit something or other for lunch and dinner today.”

  “Where do you get the rabbits?”

  He shrugs. “Rabbit hunters.”

  “But, I mean, the area seems pretty bare. It’s not like there are any plants for the rabbits to eat.”

  He shrugs again. “You know where all your food comes from? Rabbit guy comes by and sells me rabbits. If a chicken guy came by I’d serve chicken.”

  “So…” I open. “You know Christabel? What do you mean I’m gonna need luck if I’m traveling with her?”

  “Christabel?” He asks like he’s never heard the name before. “Yeah, I know her. More or less.” He’s run out of legs to chop off and has moved on to skinning the legless bodies, it’s a gruesome bloody affair. “I don’t know for sure where she stands, but the way I hear it, she plays a dangerous game. Fly too close to the sun and you’ll like to get burned, Icarus.” And it seems like such a weird comment for him to make. Not just the landlord of a tavern in the middle of nowhere referencing Greek mythology, but a man living in eternal twilight talking about the sun.

  I pester him for more details, but he becomes engrossed in his task and turns taciturn, although, enjoying his own joke, he takes to calling me Icarus.

  The sausage gets made and I get nothing more worth hearing from the landlord, although I take his silence for assent and pull myself a beer from the bar tap. I have no money that I think he would accept, but Christabel seems well supplied and I figure he’ll add it to her tab.

  I’m on my second beer when the house wakes up and people begin to filter into the dining room. The place is crowded when Amy and Christabel come down to eat. Even without the benefit of the sun rising and setting there seems to be some agreed upon cycle of living. I’d like to take a shower. I hadn’t had a chance, way back before I went to help Amy. I’m grimy, there’s oil in my hair, and I can still feel the spot on my arm where the rabbit’s blood seeped through, but I haven’t seen anything that looks like running water and I don’t want to look foolish, so I don’t say anything.

  The sausage, even though I’ve gone against a lifetime of warnings and watched it made, is very good. Amy isn’t happy at the lack of a vegetable option and chews and swallows with almost theatrical reluctance.

  The man right next to Christabel begins to sing some kind of song and his friends join in. I can’t make out many of the words, but it’s punctuated with rounds of pounding on the table and drinking and cheers of ‘The Mad Dreamer!’ Another group begins a different song, also punctuated with pounding and drinking, but they are shouting ‘The Waking God!’ The two groups seem to be involved in an unfriendly competition to see who can sing and shout and pound the loudest and the longest.

  Perhaps predictably, a fight breaks out and the room is suddenly filled with flying mugs of beer and plates of rabbit sausage mixed with the occasional tooth or spray of blood. Christabel pulls Amy and me down to the floor
and leads us crawling out. She flings a coin at the bar and a hand (probably belonging to the landlord, who is safely hidden) shoots up, like magic, to snatch it out of the air.

  Upstairs in our room, hurriedly grabbing our few things, it sounds like the fight has died down, but as we head downstairs, Christabel, clomping like a Clydesdale, rather than trying to quietly slip away, the fighting seems to resurge. But we make it outside without any interference.

  CHAPTER 8 - Have you ever thought that maybe God is unhappy?

  “What the heck was that about?” I ask Christabel. Amy nods in agreement.

  “What? That? Nothing.” She makes the universal ‘not important’ waving hand motion to emphasize just how unimportant it was. “Just a friendly tavern brawl. Happens all the time.”

  Amy seems unconvinced and I know I was unconvinced. “But what was all that singing and shouting about? The Mad Dreamer and the Waking God! You mentioned the Mad Dreamer yesterday, or… well before.” This lack of Sun makes it hard to keep the days straight. “Is there some kind of religious intolerance problem here?”

  Christabel looked uncomfortable. “Look. It’s nothing. No religious intolerance, it’s just a little theological dispute. No. Big. Deal. Ok?”

  “Those people hardly struck me as theologians.” I pointed out. “Just tell us what the deal is with the Mad Dreamer and the Waking God. Just so we won’t feel so out of the loop here.”

  “It’s really nothing. I’d rather not bore us all with the stupid details.” Christabel replied.

  Just then the cavern shook violently and I was almost knocked off my feet. “Earthquake!” I shouted and I began to run about looking for a safe place. Then I remembered that we were in a cavern, which meant that somewhere above us was the roof and maybe rocks would come tumbling down on us, so I clasped my hands over my head and I was still running. I was pulled up by the sound of laughter and when I looked up I saw Amy and Christabel doubled over. Laughing at me!

  I started to explain but Christabel waved away my concerns. “That’s wasn’t an earthquake. It was a Dreamquake. The Mad Dreamer stirs and we have haste to make.” Sometimes she would talk like that, old-fashioned and weird. Maybe it was all that late 18th Century – early 19th Century English Romantic poetry she was reading.