All the worst stories went uphill. Fairy tales told of children stranded on cliffs or heroes climbing towers or of flying. Legendary heroes always rose up to battle invaders on the hills. The most fearful tale for many centuries was an epic poem known very simply as The Sky.
Bewrhig loved all of them, asking to hear them again and again till he fair wearied his storytellers and drove his sisters to pleading for happier stories; he had nothing against happy stories, but they didn't satisfy like his preferred sort did. Like his favourite did, the one for which he wasn't allowed to ask when Mother and the girls were present. Perhaps it was because he knew it was true, or because he knew the storyteller. Perhaps it was because it combined elements from so many stories, or because it was new, or because it felt so real.
So the next time Uncle Thrute took him to roast opals by the fire-river, just the two of them, Bewrhig asked to hear it again.
"I young and foolish then, not quite grown," Uncle Thrute began. "My friends and I were enjoying the first of the diamond harvest – this was over in Silverfields. The town is nestled in a cleft at the foot of a great cliff, but we were out in the orchard, so we could see the top of the cliff better than we could have in town. Well of course that was the night that we saw a peculiar sort of glow up there, and, ridiculous fools we were, decided to climb up to investigate. If we had thought to remember all the stories we'd been taught, we might never have gone; but you remember, don't you? What do the stories say about this kind of thing?"
"Witches always wait at the top," Bewrhig said.
"You wouldn't know it to look at her: she was beautiful and fair, and she spoke right sweetly. I don't know how or when it happened, but she enchanted us. None of us knew it then, of course, but we lost all will except hers. It's a sad thing, that, and I hope you'll never have to know what that's like. Anyway, she led us up a tunnel – up and up and up – till we got to her city. Very large, it was, much bigger than Onyx City, but with none of the noise or the liveliness of such a place. There were docks and palaces and cottages and roads, but hardly a sound was made. And there should have been, for she had many, many gnomes, from all over Bism it seemed. But worse –" Uncle Thrute dropped his voice – "we had gone so far up the tunnels, we were in the Shallow Lands."
Bewrhig cringed a little. He of course did not know about the Shallow Lands for himself, but it was certainly too near the surface to bode well.
"I was assigned to the diggings. The witch gave us all work, and that which she chose for us, we were to do. We didn't know what we were digging for, only that we had to dig. No song or talk was permitted. Whether that was a rule, I don't know. It might have been, or we might have been too witless to even try.
"We came to know some way or another that the witch intended to tunnel up to the surface world. The diggings aimed upward from then on, but even as our hearts fainted at the task and its terrible end, our minds were too dull to do otherwise. Then came even worse news: the witch would make an army of us. No to defend ourselves, no; to attack. And who do you suppose we were to attack?"
"The enemy always comes from above," Bewrhig answered.
"Always from above," Uncle Thrute repeated. "And she wanted us to attack them first, up on the surface." He shivered at the memory. "Cruel and heartless, she was, but what else could we do but keep at it, day in and day out. I forgot what it was to laugh, what music sounded like, what freedom was. All I knew was endless, plodding work and a dreadful fear of her and of the surface world. My shovel brought me closer and closer to it, but I couldn't do any more than dread it: whether I wanted it or not, I would see the sky." His voice had grown lower and deeper before it paused for dramatic effect.
A thrill of fear mingled with disgust filled Bewrhig. The sky was a empty expanse, he knew, but unlike their home, deep in the earth, the sky had no roof, nothing beyond it, nothing to keep it from going on and on forever. It was terrifying enough on its own. Bewrhig couldn't imagine how it would feel to be forced into it.
Uncle Thrute nearly whispered, "I was fortunate: Only a few digs more, and I would have seen it, but we were all saved: there came and crash and a bang, and there opened a great crack in the floor of the Shallow Lands. The enchantment in our minds broke and the fire-river light of Bism shone through and awakened us all. None of us, I should think, knew what it meant, but all at once we set to joking and laughing and dancing and letting off fireworks! Such a celebration there's never been, for there's nothing like waking up free from a spell!"
Bewrhig wished he could have seen it, this scene of jubilation. It would have been a sight to behold!
"Then we learned the witch was well and truly dead – which was why the spell broke, we figured – and we had nothing left to fear of her. All that was left was to make our way back home, safely deep in the earth and free like we once were. I was lucky to make it there early enough to climb down the cliffs; some had to fling themselves into the crack as it closed, and trust their landing to providence! So I closed my adventure much as it had begun, and couldn't be more thankful to have made it home."
"Did you drink some diamond juice then too?"
Uncle Thrute's eyebrows went up. "Why, yes! A better cup of diamond juice there never was!"
"Never ever?"
"After years without, nothing could be more refreshing," Uncle Thrute reiterated.
That sounded familiar somehow, that sense of a good thing being all the better because of what awful things had come before. Diamond juice was best after years without, jubilation was greatest after too long a period of misery, home was worth flinging oneself down into it for after captivity in a foreign land.
All the worst stories went uphill… until they came back downhill to become all the best stories.
Prompt: Write a story from the land of Bism, the land below the earth, where jewels are alive.
Author's note: Apologies for any lack of good build-up or narrative. I confess that I didn't hit my second wind until after I reached the end, and it's late, so...
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