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In Silent Depths
The way was steep, descending in tight shafts through sedimentary layers into the pulse-haunted quietude of dark spaces below. I hammered my anchors and tested the protection before rappelling deeper. As the rope spiraled away like a thin snake into the aphotic throat of silence, I lowered myself down. My lantern glowed amber, creating a thin blister of light around me that swayed with each movement. Precariously, I dropped further into the depths. I was squeezed through a maze of tunnels, down broad fissures, and out of claustrophobic cracks into wet chambers. Limestone, gypsum, and dolomite took strange liquous forms, carved as they were by the slow flow of water over time. Occasionally, when I raised my lantern, strange fossils and ancient relics would cast worrisome shadows amid the looming stalactites and stalagmites. As my footfalls echoed into the shadowed stillness the warm glow of my little lantern was my dearest companion. In a place that dark and isolated, time passes differently. Without the Sun and Moon to pull one through their days, time vanishes into a permanent Night in which the only stars are phosphene flashes in the optic nerve, the false lights of the so-called “Prisoner’s Cinema”. But I was no captive here. I had come in search of something. Something lost. Something precious. After several cycles of resting and moving (what day was it?) I reached at last a vast chamber hollowed out long ago by heat and pressure into a natural cathedral. My lantern sent waves of light shimmering through a sea of dancing refraction. I shivered in the vaulted womb and listened to the sound of my breath. Eventually, I found it: a low mound of dirt on a bald island in the center of the prismatic chamber.
Though tired and sore, my heart fluttered in anticipation. I set down my pack, adjusted my lantern, and set to work with my shovel. How long I labored there in that crystalline abyss I cannot say. My face dripped sweat and strained muscles weakened as exhaustion set in. On I went, giving myself fully to the task, until at last I uncovered a feminine form beneath the moist soil of that secret place. I was struck with a sudden fear, and for a moment, I was frozen. I could hear the subtle sound of slow moving-water as I set to using my hands to clear away the dirt. It was then that I saw her face. How long had she lain there? Gingerly, I wiped the mud from her eyes, my hands gently clearing the muck from her cheeks and brow. When she opened her eyes I saw myself in them, and taking her into my arms, we wept. When at last she would emerge into sunlight, it would be without me. My body slid neatly into the impression. As I lay motionless in the mucky indentation, I closed my eyes. “I love you,” I said. “I know,” she spoke softly. I smiled as I felt each shovelful of earth add its weight upon my body. It was strangely comforting. Finally, I could rest. I closed my eyes and dreamt of her. © JM Tiffany 2024
Red Hands
It was Fall.
Smoke rose from a squat birch hut that was dug half into the slope of a leaf-littered hill.
The cottage’s roof was piled with heavy mats of green moss, and the lambent orange glow of tallow lights shined through its deep-set windows.
Inside was a hushed voice muttering of the cold and of sad little no-one’s.
A child’s bones were there, wrapped in a swan’s wings and tucked into a nest of sticks.
I heard a woman weeping, her deep sobs answered by a pained voice, dark and coarse, whose wet rasp sounded like dull steel scraped over bone.
In the faint amber radiance of the dying sun, I pressed my ear lightly to the chinking and listened in the chill.
The thing croaked and hissed of things hidden, and, mesmerized, the woman swooned.
It spoke in kennings of the ancient ways, and of the faint life that lives in death.
The wretched wight revealed to her the dim paths that lead into Shadow, prescribing offerings and signs as it instructed her in the opening of the ways.
As the setting sun kissed the horizon, the cottage fell silent, and the mourning woman ground something slowly with a mortar and pestle.
Then, she hummed a sad tune to her strange god, her dead offspring, and I, her lurking watcher.
It was then that I left her to suffer alone in that place the grim tasks of the wight.
I padded away like a wolf. And though I parted as night from the dawn, I left her all the coin in my purse and the haunch of a deer whose blood inexplicably yet stains my hands.
I have never returned to those woods where I came upon the woman and the infant’s remains.
Many years have passed since then, and I am too old and frail to hunt. As you can see, time has gnarled my joints and drawn the color from my beard. But, I have never forgotten what I learned there, in the red dusk of yesterday, and a harsh voice continues to utter black secrets in the darkness of my dreams.
© JM Tiffany
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