Things that can’t live in the light
I watch Rogger get smaller and smaller.
“Rogger!” Pem cries.
There’s a splash, and I can’t see Rogger anymore.
“Oh, no! William! What are we gonna do?” Pem asks.
I’m panicky and don’t know. The earth’s still shifting and the column of rock we’re on is swaying.
Pem’s low and moving with the shifts on her four legs. I have only two and no tail, so …
“I’m slipping, Pem!”
“Jump, William!”
I do, and somehow know to tuck my head and curve my arms to make a wheel shape, and I roll off the next rock formation and onto another.
Pem leaps, hippity-hopping from one to another.
“Look down there!” Pem says. “It’s another cave!”
It looks stable down there. But dark.
“I dunno, Pem!” I shout over the cracking earth and raging river. “It looks dark.”
But the earth’s rolling like a carpet snapped, so we jump again.
I curl my head and lead with my left hand. The edge of it contacts the ground, and I roll along my shoulders and down my right arm to my feet.
“How am I doing this, Pem?” I ask.
Pem’s whiskers are wide and forward, but her ears back. “We gotta boogie, William!”
“Right!”
We dash into the mouth of the cave.
“It is stable in here,” I say. “And dark.”
“Yeah,” Pem says. “It’s kind of dim.”
“Can you see?”
“Oh sure. No problem.”
“You lead the way then.”
Pem looks at me, then mews.
I kneel, pet her head. “What is it, Pem?”
“Rogger. She’s gone.”
I know she’s not. “Rogger’s tough and well-prepared, Pem. She’ll be okay. We’ll find her again.”
“We should go back and look for her,” Pem says.
I think about it.
My finger on my left hand raises and points deeper in the cave.
I look at Pem.
She paws at her face, shakes her body, licks her chops. “Okay. Forward it is.”
As we walk I realize I can’t remember how long we’ve been here.
“How long have we been in here, Pem?”
“I dunno.”
There’s a flicker of light ahead.
“Is that a torch?”
“Looks like a lantern,” Pem says.
We reach it, and it’s a candle, burning down in a lantern.
“Looks like this is the back of the cave,” I say.
“What is all this stuff?”
There’s lots of things sticking out of the sandy, ashy floor: boxes and dressers and boats and figurines and keys and shocks of hair.
I pick up a small brass box, dust it off, open it.
Inside are silver and gold coins, rubber bands of different colors, tokens with faces on them, two keys on one ring, and some thumbtacks, also of different colors.
Pem peers in, sniffs. “What is that stuff?”
“I’m not sure, Pem.”
My ring finger twitches.
The light dims, and the flame on the candle is whipping around.
Pem flips one-eighty. “Oh no!”
I look over my shoulder and see a figure there, long and tall, wide and dark, with metal thorns on her shoulders and knees. A gauntlet-clad hand pulls a blade from its scabbard. As the blade is emerging, the light is leaving.
She speaks: “The dark has come for you. Tremble before the weight of your own transgressions.”
Pem crouches behind me. “I’m scared, William.”
Me too. So scared, I can’t speak it.
