The Catswold Portal

Mag said the upperworld was awash with falling water, burnt by the spinning fire of the sun, and scoured by tearing wind. Mag said love was deeper there, babies healthier, and that there was in the upperworld a power that had been lost in the Netherworld. She said they did not have magic, but that other power was as strong as magic. The old woman grew morose sometimes, longing for that world. Melissa had no idea why she had left it, or why she never returned.

The dropping chasm disappeared, the stream ran again beside the path, sending spray across it. She knelt and drank, wishing she had a waterskin to fill. She was painfully hungry, and she was cold again. She imagined the queen making this journey wearing a fur cape and warm boots and gloves, her servants carrying food and wine; a safe, cosseting entourage within which the queen would travel warm and cared for. As I would, she thought, if I were queen.

Well, to Hell with that. She would rather be herself, and free, than be like Siddonie.

She waited impatiently while Vrech stopped to eat. She could smell onions, and could hear him chewing. Her stomach growled. They seemed to have been in the tunnel forever.

After many more hours walking, as the tunnel rose it narrowed so tightly and the ceiling dropped so low she panicked. Walking crouched, her head bent, then creeping, she held her fear in check, sweating, trembling. If she let her fear master her, there was no one to help. To beg help of Vrech would be to die in this tunnel.

But at last the constricted space eased, and the way rose more steeply. Twice more Vrech stopped to rest, and once to urinate. When she passed that place in the path she could smell his sour scent.

On and on up dark, winding ways. She sensed vast and dropping chasms, sensed jagged, tumbled boulders teetering across black space. Once she put her ear to the stone wall and heard beyond the stone the hushing roar of an under-earth sea. The tunnel grew so steep in places that steps were cut in the path. Hungry and afraid, she grew achingly tired. She went on heavily, wishing she were safe back in Mag’s cottage. And then suddenly ahead Vrech stopped and spoke. The thunder of his voice, after the long silence, turned her cold.

But he wasn’t speaking to her. He was reciting an opening spell. She heard stone scrape against stone and saw a stone wall swing in, then his light moved away beyond the wall, and the wall scraped closed, and she was alone in total darkness.

Tracing her hand along the rough wall, she felt adze marks where the earth and rock had been cut. She found the solid end of the tunnel and, to her right, a wall made of small stones set into mortar.

She repeated Vrech’s spell.

The wall moved toward her, pressing in against her. She slipped around it ready to run back down the tunnel if Vrech was there. She stood looking into a storeroom, an earthen cave cluttered with a ladder, wheelbarrow, potting table, and garden tools. She was alone.

There was a door in the opposite wall. The streak of yellow-white light beneath it told her how bright this world must be. She moved to the door and pressed her ear to it. She could hear wind blowing; she could feel wind shake the door. And when she lifted the latch the door was pulled from her hands by the wind. Wind hit her, pummeling her. Sunlight exploded in her eyes. She stepped back, covering her eyes, pushing the door closed. Red spots swam across her vision.

When she opened the door again, she was ready for the light and the wind. Wind whipped her hair and dress against her. Light burned her. Squinting, she searched the brightness for Vrech.

She could make out nothing clearly. Masses of bright color swayed before her; tangled branches swung away to reveal blinding light, then swung back again. She was in a hillside garden. Down the hill stood three houses, their windows filled with the garden’s bright, blowing reflections. When she turned she saw three more houses above, and above those rose the empty sky. She looked straight up at total emptiness and went dizzy, reeling. Clinging to the door she felt as if she would fall upward straight into that tilting and endless space.

And in the sky rode the sun. Ra. Osiris. Elven tales of the sun god filled her. She felt drawn by that powerful being. The sun made her feel weightless and giddy; she wanted to run through the garden leaping, wanted to bat crazily at blowing leaves. The wild abandon that filled her was beyond any human experience, made her long for claws to rake the trees, made her feel she must have a tail to lash.

And when, controlling her wildness, she turned to pull the door closed, she was facing cats, dozens of cats. She thought they were alive, then saw that they were carved from the wood of the door. They were familiar; she thought she had seen them before and she reached to touch their little oak faces.