"I can't see! I lost my glasses! I don't know where they are!"
Theron, where are you? I'm in the water! Sinking! I can't
"Duane! I'm coming!"
can't swim heavy help me
Birka let the girl go let her go!
Swimming furiously, Ted plowed into Duane and for a few moments both treaded water, face to face in the light of swirling moths. Singularly frail and mild in luminescence, by the hundreds they formed a storm-green tornado just above the surface and a dozen feet away from the heads of the swimmers. The draft from the flutter of all those wings was enough In nearly freeze their faces.
"That must be . . . where they went under!"
Ted didn't reply; he took a couple of hasty breaths and dived. I n>>: kicked twice and found himself directionless in ink. He bumped something hard with his left shoulder, veered and scraped by it painfully: a big stalag mite, perhaps, but in total, horrid darkness panic almost did him in and his left side was on fire, as if he'd scoured most of the skin off his ribs. On the other side of the stalagmite he had butted into, the water was translucently pale below the seething surface, a pillor of light cast into the depths and brilliant as moonbeams. Light fading into deathly quiet, melancholy depths, painted surrealistically with the shadows of other stalagmites, an underwater forest of knurled, fluted stonework. He had the sensation of being in a vast aquarium. He saw, in the dreamy, phantom light, a wavering hand. It appeared—eight, perhaps ten feet down at the beginning of jet darkness—like an oddly shaped fish, then vanished as he kicked toward it. Ted couldn't be sure how deep he was. He felt pressure on his eardrums. He was more than a little out of shape, and, throat filling with liquid fire, already needing to breathe.
Sorry little Marjory I can't keep you sorry you must die and never know us
Ted felt something on his ankle, a failed attempt to grasp, and with a jolt of fear he turned convulsively, quickly using up more of his precious store of oxygen.
It was Duane. He gestured emphatically where he meant to go away and stroked away, powerful and fluid at these depths, a better swimmer than Ted. Duane was heading for one of the stalagmites, mountainous to Ted's eyes, faintly aglow at its tip where there was a murky disturbance in the water. Ted couldn't make out anything more, his lungs were bursting. He went straight up, to the surface.
Theron sinking why
No air in our lungs too heavy to float hold on to something
Can't see there's no light so dark worse than the Black Sleep. Save me Theron
Ted's head broke the surface of the pool near the icy whirligig of moths; one of them stuck to his forehead and fluttered there; colder than the water itself, it made him feel as if he were being branded to the bone.
His limbs were heavy, his mind lethargic, he couldn't seem to breathe deeply enough to get all the air he wanted. But Duane was still down there, somewhere, and so was Marjory. And so would they all be, if they stayed much longer in the water. The cold, he knew, killed with great subtlety. First the lack of focus, then the loss of momentum: unable to lift an arm for one last stroke . . . frightened and angered by his frailty and fear, Ted closed his throat and summoned the will to dive again.
Theron please ANSWER ME
Seven feet, ten feet down, to the limits of the light: and Ted could see nothing, no sign of either Marjory or Duane. How long had she been down? Confused and sick, he kicked out in the direction of a looming stalagmite, a twisted pillar of rock he hadn't noticed before. He should be diving deeper, but what good would it do? Nothing was coming up from the black depths, not so much as a trace of bubbles. If Duane was far below, drowning, wouldn't there be bubbles? Ted came up too fast on the stalagmite and almost ran into it, slanted off to his right where the light still glimmered, a faint afterglow like that of a match in a dark arena, and collided gently with a dangling bare foot.
Ted looked up and saw two figures on the rugged side of the stalagmite. Inching upward slowly. Topmost was Duane, holding Marjory by the hair. Exhausted, about to drown, not able to lift her another foot toward the vaguely glowing surface. About to lose his grip on the stalagmite and on Marjory as well. Ted thrust himself powerfully upward, hooked Marjory under a limp arm and kicked, wrenching her from Duane gesturing with his free hand:
I've got her, go on.
He had a glimpse of Marjory's closed and silent face. Dead? He battled her weight, clawing at the water, and was amazed when she showed a little buoyancy. Unconscious when she went down, her mouth was closed. If she hadn't taken on too much water, and if another cold plunge wasn't enough to shut down the brain, then there was a chance.
Above him, alongside the stalagmite that topped out a few inches below the surface, Duane emerged, choking but not drowning. When he could breathe and dive again he returned to help Ted. Finally they pushed her head up out of the water. Marjory's short blond hair was plastered around her face; by mothlight she was green as a mermaid.
"On her back," Ted gasped. "The ledge. Go."
He took one of Marjory's arms, Duane the other. They synchronized strokes and towed her doggedly, freezing and numb; it seemed to be a very long swim until they reached the edge of the cavern where the flare burned at the heart of pink halos, a spot of welcome heat in the frigid cavern air. They were both trembling violently as they bumped and shoved and dragged Marjory up to the ledge; there they laid her out, furnereally, on her back. Nothing flickered in her dismally pale face. The pupil of a blue eye was rigidly fixed. They gave her CPR, Ted massaging the heart, Duane breathing for her. Ted counted, soon losing track of how long they'd been at it. At least ten precious minutes. In the intervals when Duane was back on his heels, not breathing for Marjory, he stared dully at Ted, his teeth chattering.
Marjory? I'm sorry. Sorry we aren't together. It's very dark down here. Different, though. Darkness, but not the vile, disgusting darkness of the strangler fig. I don't know how deep I am . . . but it's very deep, and I am far from you. I can't move. Can't lift a finger. Oh my soul, how long? Will it be this way, for Eternity? I'm afraid of Eternity, without Theron. But I can't find him. What did they do to Theron? I know you are still there. Faintly, but there. I feel your spirit, Marjory. As long as the spirit is alive, then it isn't too late, you can live, too. So try, Marjory. And remember me. Always remember your loving Birka.
Duane was about to fasten his mouth to Marjory's again when something leaped in her, she twitched the length of her body. Ted backed off, gasping, astonished. A hand flew up and then she raised her head hard enough to split Duane's lip. Her face convulsed and he heard a sound, almost like a toilet backing up; then she heaved and vomited a gout of brackish water all over Ted. He had to hold her tight to keep her from falling off the ledge, propelled by the force of the spasms that followed.
"Huh. Uh. Uhh!"
"God . . . Marjory . .
"She's breathing!"
"God . . . don't believe . . . I didn't think . . ."
Ted wrapped his arms around her. She tried to talk, but was incoherent. He was ecstatic, and frightened, thinking of brain damage. But her lungs were working, her heart was going as she retched. Not over yet, Ted thought. Get her to a hospital. How long was it going to take Vedders to get back to them? If he'd made it out of the caves at all . . .
Marjory slumped, eyes half closed. She grimaced, turning her head, looking across the pool where the moths had scattered, wheeled big as gulls over the gently undulating surface.
"Birr-ka."
"It's okay, Marj. Honey. You don't have to talk. Help's coming soon, we'll get you out of here."
"Ted," Duane said, in a higher tone of voice than normal, and Ted twisted, arms still around Marjory, looked back and then down at Theron, climbing slowly out of the water toward them.
Marjory, eyes like fogged steel from shock, turned her head and saw him too, over Ted's shoulder. Her mouth opened wide but she shrieked no louder than a mouse.
Theron paused, one white hand on their ledge, all of his wide bony hairless head showing, his nearly lidless eyes deep in marble sockets. Three spread fingers on the ledge, and a gleaming black thorn.
Ted, shuddering, Marjory stiff in his arms, making her mouse-sound.
Theron! Where are you? Help me! Help me!
No. This is your fault, Birka. Stay there until I'm ready to forgive you.
Ted let an arm slip from around Marjory; he groped with his free hand for the holstered revolver he was half sitting on.
Theron reached up with his other hand, gripping rock, and lifted himself slowly, eyes on Ted, then on the nickeled revolver that Ted drew and cocked. He raised the hand with the thorn, palm out, a slow gesture of power and contempt.
"Humans," he said. "But I'm afraid I'm going to need you, for a little while."
"Need us . . . for what?" Already exhausted, Ted found it hard to speak, let alone deal with a monster.
"Ted," Duane said, his own voice low and tired, "there's . . . a lot of them. Like mummies in a cave. I saw them. Some kind of vine around . . . their necks. They need us to—untie them."
'Who—I mean,
what
are you?"
"We've had many names, in many places.
Huldufólk,
for one.
Huldufólk
will do. A bullet or two might disfigure me, for a while, but it's not harmful, not even painful."
"Where're you from, all of you . . .
huldufólk?"
"From Paradise, actually."
"Long way . . . from Paradise. You know I'm not believing any of this. Or what . . . a bullet will or won't do when I pull the trigger."
"That's a yokel for you. Can't you think any better than that? Your young friend—Duane, is that correct?—is so much more intelligent. Let me try again, yokel. My name is Theron, eldest of the unwashed Children of Eve. Leader of all the . . .
huldufólk.
I'm not at my best right now, as you can see, but still I'm immortal, and on my worst day I have the strength to crush every bone in your body with three or four blows from my hand. Not my closed fist. Only my
hand.
Should I want to go to the trouble.
(Birka, be still!)
If I don't, then I have the power to make you crawl up the face of this rock and hang by one finger until you drop and kill yourself. You're very tired, yokel. At the very limits of your endurance already. I doubt that you have the strength to pull the trigger of your . . . what do you call it? Oh, it's a "revolver." So. Try it. Try what is left of your strength against mine . . .
(Birka, I warn you! You don't know me as well as you think. I can be very harsh. There are worse punishments than to spend a century or two in those depths
—
Birka, no! You
BITCH!)
Marjory's head jerked, she gazed bleary-eyed at the pool again, lips apart, listening intently.
"Ted," she said, clearly but in a voice that didn't sound like Marjory at all, "Aim for the thorn on his hand."
Theron rose up in front of them, a fiend of wrath, right hand swiping at her face.
Ted's gun bucked. His first shot hit Theron dead center in the palm of the right hand, diverting the blow that would have broken half of the bones in Marjory's face.
He fired again, the light tricky, the fiend growing still taller, looming over them. The force of the bullet took out Theron's right eye and rocked his head back, rocked him on the narrow ledge. His hands flailed the air as he tried to balance himself.
Ted stood up suddenly, leaned over Marjory, stuck the short muzzle of his Smith against Theron's right hand and shot him again, mowing all three fingers midway between the second and third knuckles and disintegrating the wicked thorn.
For a couple of moments Theron was frozen on the ledge, apelike toes gripping the rock as he stared with his remaining eye at the devastation. Something welled up out of the cavity where the thorn had been attached to his hand; something that wasn't blood, liquid or partially frozen. It was darker, as slick and dark as oil pouring from a rent in the earth, from a sunless, primeval depth, and it smelled worse than decay. It welled and then sprouted furiously from the cavity as Ted ducked, instinctively covering Marjory with his arms, choking on the stenchy spray, the corrupt essence of the eternally damned pouring from Theron's stark and collapsing body. Theron, rooted to the rock, turned and twisted in an agony of depletion, his bones snapping and cracking like echoes of the gun. They all cowered in the face of this furious, writhing transformation. His form, his link to humanness, was vanishing.
The pink light of the flare was diminished by another, kindlier light, from a canopy of moths congregating above their heads. All green, as growing things, with the eyespots of many animals in thick greenery watching, attending yet another banishment. The odor of corruption thinned as Theron writhed down on glowing rock, his once massive and hairless head shrunken, flattening, assuming a spadelike shape, darting in the air, bewildered and bereaved.
In the end there was nothing but the albino serpent, limp and motionless on the rock beside them until Ted rose shakily and kicked it sidelong into the pool. The water fluoresced hotly and bubbled for a time as the spent serpent drifted slowly downward, drifted out of sight.
The three of them were huddled together on the ledge when a shaft of light brilliant as the sun shone down from the jagged hole in the quartz above their heads, skimmed and sizzled on the quiet surface of the pool. Ted noticed that the moths were gone. He heard voices: rescuers, he presumed. He gave Marjory a reassuring hug; she stirred on his shoulder, sighed but didn't speak.
As for Duane, his eyes were on the pool; he continued to stare at the place where the serpent's remains had disappeared. He stared as if mesmerized by a magician's well-staged trick, trying to understand the slick deception, believing in his heart that it could not end so simply.