Into the Heart of Darkness

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

~ George Eliot

Margaret was the first through the door, holding the torch above her head, yet it still did not pierce the darkness more than a yard or so ahead. She was afraid, so afraid, and in her mind was a sense of something half done. She had planned for this day for years; she had plotted and thought and worried and now, as she strode in front of her three warriors, she feared she would fail. She could not fail…they could not fail.

Dark, damp walls loomed above them and cavernous openings seemed about to close jaws about them and swallow them forever in darkness. Their footsteps echoed and reechoed, then echoed again, rushing away through a million endless passages that lay before them. In Edmund's hand, the ball of thread shimmered, ever unwinding and leading away behind them, marking their trail and the path to safety.

It was then that they heard another sound, a soft hiss of breath, more than just the wind.

Goosebumps ran shivering up their arms as they turned to hear where it came from, but it was everywhere…and nowhere.

Margaret lead them on, turning confidently down the passages, the torch leaping in her hand and always behind them lay the thin, shimmering thread in the darkness, wandering away to vanish where they had come. The thread had a beginning and an end, but they were somewhere in the middle and it seemed to them, there in the darkness, that they would always be there, caught in a sort of purgatory, searching for their own shadows and afraid of their own breath.

Afraid? But they were not afraid, Margaret thought, making an excuse to look behind her at them as they marched along. Their faces were lit by the torch and Peter grinned down at her as if he were on a morning picnic.

There was all around them that breathing, slow and deep, as if the very mountain was asleep, not just the beast at the heart of it.

"Where is it?" Peter asked, leaning down to whisper into her ear.

"At the heart," she replied.

The heart…the heart…the heart…

The words rebounded around the walls as steadily as a pulse, reverberating in their ears.

Then they knew the thing had woken.

The slow steady breathing ceased and there was only silence, a black silence, not dead, but waiting. Then a deep growl trembled in the stone beneath their feet and they knew that they had been found.

"We'll wait here," Peter said, catching Margaret's shoulder. "Let him come to us."

Come…come…come…the walls seemed to whisper, breathing around them.

The time that followed did not seem to be time at all, only darkness like the water at the bottom of a lake, slowly drifting back and forth between the walls as the torch sputtered and went out. Margaret gasped, reaching for a spare she had carried with her; she had forgotten to light another.

Peter took it from her, trying to breathe the embers back into life and light the next one. They waited, holding their breath; then it flared into life.

But Margaret had seen what they had not.

Two sparks of reflected, smoldering light were coming towards them.

Susan's week had gone fairly well.

She was still mildly disturbed by the state in which she had found Peter and Edmund's rooms, and though they were quite tidied now, she was still slightly bothered by the memory.

"And the worst thing is that they'll go right back the way they were the moment Peter and Edmund get back. That's the thing about rooms; no matter what you do to them, they always sink back when you look the other way. Fickle, fickle…and the dust!"

The castle had been aired out and all the flower arrangements had been replaced by later growing things; wheat heads and wild poppies and the roses…the roses were growing thick and tumbling in the garden and she could smell them even from her balcony.

"I think everything looks very well," Susan said, as she pushed long stem roses into an arrangement in a marble alcove. "It's about time, anyway; a delegation from Ruska is due to arrive any day."

"I'm a little nervous about that," Lucy said, stooping to pick up a leaf that had fallen to the mosaic floor.

"There's no reason to be," Susan stepped back to admire her handiwork, then bent down to pick up her basket of cut stem-ends and leaves that had been stripped off. "After all, I'll be here."

She left Lucy standing in the evening sunlight that fell from the open door, pooling across the fish worked into the floor. It was the last golden hour before sunset and butterflies were swarming over the roses beyond the open windows that Susan passed. It was these times that Susan longed to bring the outside in and paint with sunlight on the shadowed walls.

"If you leave the doors open long enough, we'll have a little bit of sunlight left in here for winter," she loved to say.

"But will it be enough?" Lucy would ask with worry.

"Smile for us, Lucy, and you'll be our sunlight."

In the evening after they had dined, Susan had returned to her work. Rooms had to be prepared for their coming guests, the great hall had yet to be decorated, the feast had yet to be planned. She watched dusk fall, then night, and the lamps were lit in the anteroom to the throne room. The sage green walls glowed in the lights and the centaurs were eating apples, watching as the squirrels hung garlands of wild wheat and poppies. Susan tripped over a pumpkin and apologized when she stepped on someone's Tail.

"We can't find the Calormene side tables," someone else said. "We were going to set them up in here."

"They must be somewhere downstairs," Susan said. "In storage. I'll go down and see if I can find them."

"There's no need, your majesty," Chiron said, turning to her. "I've already sent several centaurs down to look."

"I don't mind."

She left the basket out of the way. There were more flower cuttings all over the floor anyway. Buckets of black-eyed Susans, Heleniums and Chrysanthemums were waiting until the fine Cathay vases were dusted and ready. There was water on the floor; a centaur had tripped with a bucket.

No one had ever really been all through the castle. There was too much of it that went on too long. There were rooms that had been boarded up and never aired out, concealed doors that had never been found, dwarfin locks that had never been opened. It seemed one could wander forever and never come to the end of it.

Susan went down past the rows of dusty bottles and great barrels in the wine cellar until her shadow was rushing over cool flagstones in the dusty vaults where things were stored until they were needed. In the light of her lamp, a spider was dangling from an invisible thread, hovering in the air above her. Two centaurs were already there, hunting through dusty boxes for the pieces of the inlaid tables.

"Not those boxes; look in these first," Susan said quickly. "I packed all these myself last summer. Who opened that door?"

A cold draft was rushing along the corridor, shadowlike, through a door she never remembered opening before. It was one of those ever-locked doors no one could figure out how to open and as she turned to step through it, she saw something shimmering just out of her vision.

It was something golden, round, beckoning. She stooped nearer, her hand outstretched, but just before her fingers brushed it, it rolled a little further away, slowly unwinding a thin, shimmering thread. She stepped forward again, but still it rolled away, just out of her grasp, slipping into the shadows that welled up from the flagstones before her.

A consuming desire to touch it flashed through her. It was there, just out of her reach; surely if she stepped forward again, she would be able to pick it up. But again, it slipped out of her grasp, leading her ever on into the darkness.

She looked back once, seeing the bit of thread that had unwound from it leading, meandering, away back towards the door. "I can always find my way back," she said quietly to herself, turning again to the ball, rolling steadily away before her.

The new torch flared and sputtered as Peter held it above his head and they saw that they were at the entrance of a monstrous cavern. Bones littered the floor, seeming to stretch everywhere in a sea of glittering, polished white.

And they saw the shadow, a huge, horrible, ugly shadow, swinging towards them ponderously at first, then more quickly, the way an avalanche pours down a hill. His eyes were glowing in the light; and slowly, the glow of blood rippled tooth by tooth over his curving jaws.

Then he roared.

All over the city above them, people woke, staring, as the ground seemed to shake below them, rippling the way the air ripples when lightning slashes the sky. They knew that the Dark Spirit had been aroused.

"Margaret!" Peter yelled, pushing the torch to her. "Keep clear!"

He drew his sword, the blade hissing from the sheath, a far more sinister sound than the growling of the beast, and behind him he heard the sound of blades rippling free as Edmund and Alasdair stood ready.

"Margaret! What are you doing, girl? Get back!"

But already, she was rushing forward, the torch flaring in her hand. The great beast swung around, slow and mighty, muscles rippling under his thick, dark hair. The torch was burning twice in his great eyes and with a terrible roar, he reared up on his hind legs, seeming to fill the entire chamber with his presence.

"Margaret!"

She stood among the bones, halfway between them, staring up at the monster that towered so high above her. She held up the torch, her eyes wide with fear, yet she did not flinch.

"Balder!" she cried, her voice tearing from her and racing away down the passages. "There is still time! Aslan told you that you had until your death! You are locked in a prison of your own devising. You have been running away from him all your life, turn now, and let him set you free!"

The monster stared at her, his blood-shot eyes searing her in place, yet even as they watched, they saw his form shift, and for one brief moment, he seemed almost like a man; a dark, shaggy, lonely, angry man, lost in a terrible place.

Then the monster returned sinking down like a shadow and the eyes glowed anew.

No…no…no…

They were not sure whether he spoke, or if it was just the wind, racing around them to vanish in the distance.

"There is still time," Margaret whispered and her tears fell, twinkling, to land on the bones that covered the floor.

"Please."

With an angry roar, the monster swung his great, terrible arm towards her, the long, curving claws flashing in the torchlight, and with a shout, Alasdair leapt, sweeping Margaret out of the way. In that moment, Peter and Edmund rushed forward, their swords swinging in glittering arcs as the creature whirled around, snarling.

The battle was met.

Have you ever heard the wild squealing of the boar and the baying of the hounds? Or felt the smooth motion of your horse as you flew in the chase? Soon, the boar is brought to bay, his tusks flashing in the sunlight, and the death begins. The dogs dance around, lunging and feinting, and with a wild squeal, the boar lunges, catching one to flip him into the air.

The hunters are circling, their spears ready, the cold iron tips flashing in the sun. The stiff mane of the boar stands on end; his eyes are red with fury and his tusks are stained with blood. Soon it will be over, and the boar may not be the loser…

Author's Note: More Greek mythology, of course. On the Island of Crete, our hero Theseus went into the Labyrinth in order to kill the fabled Minotaur. It's not original, but I'm not sure what is. William Shakespeare, the most lauded English writer was a dedicated borrower. Pyramus and Thisbe, from Ovid's Metamorphoses evolved into Luigi da Porto's 16th century tale, Giulietta e Romeo, which has all the same names, places and events as Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare adapted stories in the same way a screenwriter adapts for cinema; I assume that his 16th century audience knew that none of his stories were original, just as a modern screenwriter would never be accused of inventing the storyline of a movie which was based on a book... unfortunately, the 21st century audience doesn't have the same historical context.

~Psyche

Anonymousme: I apologize for the way I came across in my response to your last review. I didn't realize until I reread it how blunt my answer was. Sometimes I sound amazingly like an entry in an encyclopedia. :P I think I've read the story you mentioned, but it was so long ago I don't really remember it. :D It sounds compelling, anyway.

Thank you so much for your reviews and I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

Production Note: In the event that some of you would like to tour the maze, the Monster has kindly volunteered to sell tickets. However, if you would like to be eaten, you will have to pay extra for the privilege.