Chương 3: Chapter 3
'Here's some of the glowing mushrooms!' Flora exclaimed and rushed to the cave wall, when they were back on the path. 'They're tiny, but there's so many of them, all glittering, in patches. And the mosses and lichens too! Purples, pinks; greens and whites! Regular little flower beds! If you look close enough they look like tiny meadows, even.'
Flora ran her fingers along the banks of coloured subterranean life, and her eyes brightened with wonder at how the colours changed beneath her fingertips. With a touch, she drew shapes along the soft blanket of moss.
'Careful what you're touching there,' Henry called. From his tone it sounded like he knew full well that Flora wasn't listening.
'Oh, look! This one has a flower lit up like… the moon! An orchid!' Flora remarked in a voice full of childlike wonder.
Flora reached for it, and then screamed aloud.
'Something bit me!' cried Flora.
'I told you to stay on the path and keep in the light! You shouldn't go touching things down here however you like!' Henry scolded.
'There's teeth marks on my finger! They look like little human teeth!' Flora wailed, holding her hand to her lantern.
'I heard something laugh as it ran off,' whispered Zachary.
'Nonsense, they can't be like human teeth, and no-one heard any laughing. Your mind is playing tricks. There's too much nonsense going on down in these mines and I want things to start making sense,' Dale retorted, as his anger bubbled up.
'Oh no, and the flower withered. The light's gone out!' Flora moaned.
'It looks like you folks are intent on learning things the hard way, every step of the way. You're not the first…' Henry grumbled.
'Now look, I can tell you're hardly overflowing with sympathy but people are scared and they've got a right to know some facts about what's going on round here! They don't want superstitions and make-believe!' Dale shouted as he rounded on Henry.
'I have told you nothing but the truth ever since you got here! If you're the kind of person who won't believe anything they see, even when it's right in front of you, then that's on you!' Henry's voice glowered like the coals in the chapel hearth.
'Don't accuse me of not understanding things! I see things perfectly well – and I want things to start making sense. I don't want to hear any more foolishness about magic and little hob-goblins or whatever they are. It's ungodly and I won't hear it!' Dale blurted in fury.
'Alright! I'll show you! I'll show you what I mean in person so you can see it for yourself! We'll see what's foolishness, or not!' Henry yelled. 'And I haven't yet mentioned the hobgoblins.'
'Fellas! Fellas!' Irene consoled. Both she and Aisling tried to get between Dale and Henry who squared up to each other.
Henry turned and limped along the path ahead. The others followed. They picked their way around boulders and crunched their way along mounds of loose shingles, and huddled close to the lantern light.
'You'll see that we've long since run out of path, but I know the way,' Henry called back to the others. 'It'd be one thing for the Company to find the vegetable patch, but I couldn't have it if they found my next little hideaway.'
'Do you hear those sounds around us?' Flora whispered to the others, her voice trembling.
'I keep hearing footsteps, and whispers,' Zachary whispered back.
'I can see a pair of eyes, reflecting in the dark!' exclaimed Percy.
'It's a cat!' said Dale.
'It looks like a cat,' Henry replied. He rapped the end of his stave on the ground. 'Go on now, Shoo! Get!'
The cat melted back into the dark, and made an all-too-human chuckling noise.
From next to the group's feet, a flock of crows burst into flight with an explosion of beating wings.
'Bah! Bloody foolish little tricksters,' Henry cursed and swung his stave at them. He turned to the others. 'And why'd you have to go and scream like that? You trying to deafen me?'
The others took a minute to steady their nerves.
The miners came to a small grotto in the cave wall. Inside was a heap of coal and iron ore, and a roughly-shaped clay structure that looked like a stubby chimney.
'This is my forge,' said Henry, with a degree of pride. 'I can't claim credit to have made it myself. This was the work of a bright lad who used to be apprentice to a blacksmith. It took forever to sift enough clay for it.'
'What happened to him?' asked Percy.
'He paid off his dues and made it back to the surface. Thomas, wherever you are now, I hope it's somewhere good,' Henry intoned a quick prayer.
Henry drew an iron rod from a stash of rough pieces of metal. He wrapped it in a pocket concealed somewhere in his layer of sacking cloth, then ushered everyone back out.
Together, they scaled another stone ridge in the cavern. They were directly underneath the beam of light.
'It's dazzling,' Zachary breathed in awe now he could see it up close and so bright.
'Can you feel that? The prickling on your skin. There's a buzzing in the air,' Irene said in wonder.
'My clothes are standing up, and so is my hair,' Percy said in astonishment.
'Wow,' Aisling said in a quiet voice.
'It's electricity… that's all it is…' Dale stated with defiance. Nevertheless he looked up with awe at the rippling, flowing river of light.
'This is the purest energy in all the world. This is the energy that underpins all the other energies. It holds it all together; like glue on paper. It can become anything; that's what I believe,' said Henry.
The others watched as Henry climbed a stalagmite that rose like the trunk of a mighty tree. He got so close to the glowing beam that he was but an arm's length from it.
'Now, don't try this yourself, folks!' Henry called to the others, with a jaunty air that made them know he was about to do something incredibly dangerous.
Henry withdrew the iron rod and plunged it straight into the light.
There was a crackle of brilliant sparks in every colour that the eye could see. The light itself flowed like water around the metal and sent the flecks of light gushing away. Henry's rod glowed an intense, white colour. It made a sizzling, bubbling sound like hot iron being dunked in water and trembled and jolted in his gauntlet.
Henry half climbed, half slid back down to the ridge where the others waited.
He held the iron rod at arm's length. It sparked and fizzed with energy, and the top of it emitted a corona of white and rainbow-coloured light.
'The raw energy can be turned to any other energy of the world. Right now, I'll introduce this one to fire,' Henry said. He unscrewed the lid from his lantern and held the flame underneath the rod. As soon as the flame touched it, the rod glowed an infernal orange and the light emitted from it blazed like a sunset.
For a moment, Henry showed the others the glowing metal, while seeming not to be burnt by it, then he turned and hurled it into the depths of the cavern.
The rod exploded.
A brilliant plume of fire burst out, and fireballs spiralled out in all directions. The thunder of the detonation echoed for several moments, then all was deathly quiet; as if the cave waited with baited breath.
'Run for it,' Henry said.
He picked up his stave and lantern and sprinted off along the ridge, as fast as his uneven lumbering gait would allow.
The others looked about in astonishment, then ran after him.
From within the caverns a cacophony erupted. The disembodied voices that made their background murmur of whispers and chuckles rose to an angry screech. Flocks of crows screamed, cats wailed and there was the baying and howling of packs of hounds.
The last of the new employees of The Righteous Anglian Mining Company of Our Lady's Hallowed Earth reached the chapel.
Henry slammed the door behind them and slid a wooden bar into place to lock any supernatural and unnameable horrors outside.
'Lights out, lights out!' Henry urged, and all fell to darkness.
They ducked out of sight of the windows, which were too grimy and cobwebbed to see much through anyway, and waited and listened in silence.
Outside, they heard dogs sniffing around the chapel entrance and scratching at the crack under the door. The silhouette of a cat appeared against the glowing beam as it sat and looked in through a window. Crows harked; their wings beat; and animals screeched through the holes in the roof.
Henry waved his stave at the crows. There was a splash as he stepped in something unpleasant, and wet.
'What was that?' Henry groaned.
'Ow!' Flora exclaimed. 'I put my hand in something prickly. There's leaves and thorns all around here!'
'Lights on, lights on!' Henry called as he stepped in more water and audibly overbalanced in the dark.
'Oh no!' Flora moaned, as the chapel's interior came back into view as lanterns were relit.
Half of the worn, subsided floor of the chapel was covered in water, up to Henry's ankles. It reached the bottom of the coal pile; the extinguished hearth, and the supply crates. More curiously, plant life had pushed its way through the cracks in the chapel walls and twisted its way through in bushy, thorny growths.
The crows in the rooftop gave a scornful cackle and flew off. The activity outside went quiet.
'I don't believe it, how has this happened?' Dale said aloud as he held his head in his hands.
'We were only gone a short while!' remarked Percy as he plucked a stem of thorns that clung to his legs.
'This isn't natural,' mourned Irene, with despair in her voice. 'Look at all the supplies! Help me get them out of the water; they'll be ruined!'
'Oh look, it moves! It moves!' Flora cried. She held the stem of one of the thorns and it twisted and coiled around her hand like the tentacle of a squid.
'You're making it do that!' Dale accused.
'I'm not, I swear!' Flora protested and flung the stem away as it tightened around her wrist.
Aisling set about hauling crates from the water and dumping them on the dry floor. She grunted in wordless anger as she tossed even the heaviest crate aside while the others bickered.
'Folks… look outside…' said Zachary in a hoarse croak as he peered out of a window.
Dale wrenched the window open and looked; aghast. From the rear of the chapel, unseen by them in their rush, there were sprawling masses of barbed, tangling greenery that rolled towards the chapel, like waves.
'My God. Lord preserve us,' said Irene.
'Impossible,' said Dale in a numb voice, and shut the window.
'Is water still coming in? I can't even see where it's coming from,' Percy asked. He attempted to lift a crate, but only succeeded in ripping the lid off and splashing down on his backside.
'There's a pool of water nearby, up on a ledge. It might be seeping through, but this has never happened before. But the thorns? I've got no explanation for that,' said Henry. 'Oh, look at all the coal. That won't dry for weeks, maybe months!'
'Can we get the supplies up somewhere dry? How about upstairs?' asked Percy.
'Ha! You'd be welcome to try! Carrying all this up there; you'd fall through the floor,' said Henry, and wrenched the coal shovel from under the murky tide with a mournful splash.
It was a good while later before everyone conceded that they had done all that they could.
The supplies were stacked on wooden pallets and the water had been dammed up. The miners made their way up the tight, spiral staircase to the chapel's upper floor and settled down to fall asleep. Exhausted, they laid in the bed rolls provided to them in their provisions.
Henry sat and looked out of one of the windows. Irene came and sat down next to him.
From here they could see how the writhing thorns had washed over the rock like a sea until it ran aground on the chapel. At least now it seemed to have come to rest, at a high tide of barbed malice.
'Aren't you tired? It must be deep in the night,' Irene asked, with weariness in his own voice.
'It's been a long day,' Flora murmured, half asleep, in her bed roll next to them.
'It sure has. Is it even safe to sleep?' questioned Zachary. He sighed.
'I'm making sure. I'll sleep soon,' Henry said. He gestured towards a bundle of foul sacking in the corner of the room. 'I was waiting for everyone else to fall asleep anyway. I built an outhouse where I can wash away any residue after handling magic like that. I don't want anyone peeping.'
Irene took the opportunity to look Henry over, now he was sat closer. She examined the rough pieces of iron plate that covered his shoulders, chest, arms and the back of his hands. Indents from the hammer work could be seen all over them. Here and there it looked like molten iron had been poured over cracks to repair them. None of the plates were even or symmetrical.
The sacking that protruded between each plate and covered the gaps between was dirty and roughly torn into shape. It seemed to act as padding between the plates and Henry, and it covered any last bit of him from view.
'Isn't that uncomfortable?' Irene asked.
Henry murmured a small noise, neither yes, nor no.
'Why don't you even take off your helmet and breathe? Let us see you,' asked Irene in a soft voice.
Henry recoiled as she reached towards the helmet. He brought his hand up to ward her off and growled. Irene backed away.
'There's little symbols etched all over your suit of armour, mister knight. What do they mean?' asked Irene in a sharper voice.
'They mean what you make them mean. You give the symbols meaning,' Henry replied.
'I don't get what you're saying. These look like mystic symbols; things witches would have in their spell books, or when people want to put curses on others. You are a believer in our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, aren't you?' Irene retorted.
'Yes, yes. Of course.' Henry's response was dull and not convincing.
'Look out at what you can see.' Henry gestured out of the window. 'Today we saw a vast beam of pure energy, the likes of which has never seen before, on the surface of the world. It's been drawn down here. I think it's the energy that underpins everything in Creation. That energy could have been anything. I stuck a metal rod in it and turned that energy into fire. I saw it, you saw it. This is what I believe in; what I can see.
'There are lights that glow like fireflies over by those waters. They will beckon to you, but if you follow them, they will dance out of reach until they lead you out to depths where you'll drown. Over there is a flock of sleeping crows where I know no crows on earth should be. Yesterday I saw a large dog, with eyes as large as saucers, which glowed with fire. Over there you can just see a person by the water's edge; a person who I know is dead and buried.'
Irene gave a start and looked to where Henry pointed in the distance. Just visible beneath the ethereal, lunar glow of the beam of light she could see a figure stooping and feeling about in the shallows of a rock pool.
'There are forces in the world for which we have no explanation, but that's our shortcoming. That's our fault. We should acknowledge these things, even if we don't understand them. But, the world is full of Dales who don't want to understand, and that's a problem. That's what I believe.'
Henry got up. In a quiet voice so as not to wake the others he said; 'It's late. I need to have that wash. It's beginning to itch, and I can tell by your expression it's been a while since my last one.' Henry yawned. 'I tend to sleep through the day, so I would appreciate if no-one woke me,' he said, and went down the stairs.
'What do we do about him?' Dale snapped as he rummaged around in a crate for something for breakfast.
'What do you mean?' asked Percy.
'Him. Henry. I don't trust him one bit. I think being too long down here has turned him barmy. The way he scuttles about and is dressed up like that – he's part feral. That stunt he pulled with setting that rod on fire and blowing it up was stupid and dangerous.' Dale shook with anger. The dark rims around his swollen eyes suggested that he hadn't slept.
'He's a strange one, but he knows his way around. He said he would help us,' replied Irene.
'I don't know how he did that trick with the exploding rod,' said Zachary.
'He showed us what he meant about the power of magic – about the beam of light. Although it was reckless,' said Percy.
'Magic indeed! Some kind of parlour tricks he's playing on us, more like. He must have stuffed that rod full of gunpowder, or something. He can't fool me. And this cave is crawling with wild dogs and birds; real ones I mean, not goblins and ghouls, like he says.' Dale peered through one grimy window to the dark of the cavern outside.
'How can you say that, Dale, after all we've seen? We've seen so many strange things over the last day that we can't explain. I want to hear what he has to say. He seems to know what's going on,' said Flora.
Dale yelped as he went to sit down on a crate. 'Oh these blasted brambles, where are they coming from?' he lamented.
'I want to get the hearth fire back on. There's still so much broth left to reheat. And I don't know about you but I'm dying for a pot of tea.' Percy had his head buried in the fireplace as he went back to scraping out lumps of wet coal.
'Where's he now?' Aisling spoke up in her sullen, muttering tone to break her morning-long silence.
'He's asleep upstairs. He asked that we leave him be,' Irene replied.
'We've got one more day before the Company comes back for their inspection and we haven't done a lick of work. I for one am going out there to the pit and make myself useful rather than sleep all day. I expect to see the rest of you there within the hour,' Dale announced. He grabbed a pickaxe, a sack and a lantern and stamped out of the chapel, slamming the door behind him.
Aisling shrugged, grumbled something, and followed after Dale with tools of her own.
'What's the matter with Dale? When I first met him I thought he was the most reasonable person I ever met and would help get us through this!' Zachary exclaimed.
'I don't know,' Irene replied. 'It's as though he doesn't accept the way things are.'
'It might be the shock of all the changes. Maybe he thought he would be in charge,' said Flora.
'We should go after them. I'll wrap up some food for us to take.' Irene gave a weary sigh.
'Go out there? By ourselves?' asked Zachary, aghast.
'Yes. Together by ourselves. Come on, be brave. We'll stick to the paths and use the lanterns. It'll be fine,' said Irene.
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