You can read the original here:
All Credit goes to the original author
A few months ago I was walking along the sidewalk with my friend Kia and my sister Sakura. I had invited Kia on a walk, and my sister had tagged along. I was good to be back in the states, even if it was for only a week.
“When are you going back the Japan again?” asked Kia, watching a pip-sqeak alligator swim lazily across the surface of the lake that we passed.
I turned to watch the gator as well, wishing that the quaint little creatures lived in Tokyo, too. I missed finding them so casually everywhere I went. All I ever saw in Tokyo were wild koi fish (which are an appallingly boring shade of gray) and pigeons pecking at the gray dirt. Everything seemed gray in Tokyo compared to the wonderful swamplands of Florida. The streets, the parks, the buildings, the people, everything was gray in Tokyo. At least, the metropolis seemd that way to me.
“Soon,” I said, shrugging as the alligator disappeared back under the water, “I want to stay, but I have college over there, obviously. And a job at a bakery and everything.”
Sakura, who was obviously bored, skipped ahead so that she would get there, wherever we were going, faster, “I haven’t met everyone yet! So let’s hurry and go meet everyone, Lisa.”
“Yeah, yeah," she began pulling on my sleeve. I tripped as she did and caught myself before touching the sidewalk with my face. She was so much older and stronger than the little baby sis that I remember, "Be nice. I’m old now remember?”
Old at eighteen? Maybe. I felt like I was already forty. Life is half over by the time you enter college, that's what people say. And for woman it’s usually go to college, get a job, then quit the job in four years because you have to have kids. I suddenly had the horribly painful feeling of wanting to start over at about age four. Or maybe twelve, since I didn't want to waited a few years to ride the fun rides at Disney World if I was going to go back and do everything over.
Kia turned to me again as if about to say something when we felt the ground shake. Although we all probably knew what an earthquake felt like, it scared us. Earthquakes in Florida were rare and rare meant dangerous. The thought of a giant sinkhole crossed opening under us to swallow us down into an underground lake crossed my mind. I felt tears of fear burn my eyes as I reached for my little sister’s hand. The earth shook and cracked under our feet. The cement of the sidewalk ground and screeched as it tried to settle on the shifting soil beneath. A few feet away, the sidewalk crumbled and fell into a black something. The falling spread, and unluckily towards us. I looked at Kia, knowing that running wouldn’t help if the water far under us was huge, which it probably was. We stood staring at each other’s fearful eyes before the ground yawned its mouth and took us in.
I don’t exactly remember falling, but I remember something surreal. I was holding my sister in a desperate hug. Maybe if I hit the ground first, she could survive. Maybe we’ll hit the underground lake, and maybe it’ll be deep enough for all of us to survive. Maybe, this, maybe that. I was thinking, just thinking, when I saw a small girl with brown-green eyes. She seemed to be standing next to us, dressed in a medieval tunic with an elegant sword at her hip, looking at me, a smile on her face. If I was falling, she seemed to be rising, but somehow, we were right next to each other. She opened her mouth. No sound came out but the words resounded in my head.
Don’t be scared, everything will be alright. Just be yourself, and everything will work out.
I tried to answer, but she suddenly shot upwards and disappeared from my sight. Nothing remained and everything went dark.
When I woke up, it was dark. Dark and extremely wet. I tried the age old custom of trying to see my hand in front of my face. I could only see it in a blurred sort of way, if I squinted and thought really hard about what my hand looked like. I seemed to be on a bunch of rocks, and also happened to be half submerged. I really did fall into a sinkhole. I instinctively looked up to see where I had fallen from. Then cocked my head to the side.
Where’s the hole in the cavern ceiling?
Did I not fall? Was it a dream? Is this just another one?
I shook my head, shaking water droplets and thoughts from my head. I dragged myself out of the water so that I could avoid the horrors of slow hypothermia. It was dark, there was a lake, apparently, and I didn’t know where the others were. Maybe they were close by, still unconcious. It that case, I thought, I better start putting that lifeguard training to work, or they would probably drown.
I sat on the cold, but relatively dry rocks. I dried dreadfully slowly, my jeans staying wet and therefore heavy. I seemed to have lost my socks and shoes. I pulled my black hoody around myself, looking around and seeing nothing but an tiny bit of light coming in from the sides and the light bouncing off of the lake. It was a pretty big lake, and made me wonder if something lived in it. The biologist in me began begging me to let us take a long refreshing swim to look for some undiscovered species of subterranean fish. I ignored that notion for the moment and sat waiting for the others…Or a rescue team with ropes and ladders. Six o’ clock news, here we come.
Instead, a pair of softly-glowing globes in the lake turned to me instead. That’s when I suddenly felt like whatever was in the lake was not something I wanted to meet.
There was a long, loud hiss like a bursting exhaust pipe. Then there was a big splash in the middle of the lake. This was followed by a bunch of smaller splashes that became slower louder and obviously closer. I scrambled to my feet and step back away from whatever it was. Thousands of possible outcomes passed through my head, none of them all that pleasant.
On the fourth or fifth step, I stepped on something that obviously wasn’t a rock. It made a off-key clang when I stepped on it, and a indignant squeak as well. Wait, a squeak? I bent down for an instant and picked whatever it was up, and accidently cut one of my fingers. I realized that it must have been a sword. I held it where I was pretty sure was a hilt. When I did, a large jewel near the guard glowed slightly pink.
“Lisa, look out for the thing!”
The jewel glittered slightly when the voice passed through my head. A talking sword. I would have been spazzing out and interested if I wasn’t in danger. The eyes were closing in.
“Lisa! You remember the chant for Rock Break?”
“A little?” I said, wondering why this sword’s voice sounded so familiar to me.
“Good enough,” the sword said with a hint of disappointment. “Kyo Ran Se Shi…”
“Chirei no utage yo!” I finished, remembering the spell in the video game. I pointed the sword at the approaching eyes, “Rock Break!”
In disbelief I watched, or listened to be honest, as the rocks around me suddenly lifted themselves up and converged on the incoming creature. It gave another one of its loud hisses and feel to the ground. I stepped away from it again.
“Why does it know to use the rockses? Can it talk to them, precious?”
There is only one thing anyone can say in this situation.
“Gollum!?” I heard the sword say the same thing.
“Why does it know our name, precious? Does it knows it from the Bagginses?”
Gollum seemed interested, which was good. It gave me a few seconds to think, not to mention live before he decided to skip the formalities and eat me instead.
Gollum knows who Bilbo Baggins is, but he’s in this cave, which is probably Gollum’s lake cave thing. That would mean I’m somewhere in between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. That’s good, I think. And the Fellowship hasn’t gone through the mines yet. Gollum would probably want to know where Bilbo is. Why the heck am I in Middle-Earth?
That was my last thought, because I was too busy trying to figure out a good excuse that would let me live. I was more interested in giving Gollum information that he wanted so he didn’t attack than knowing where I was.
“I’m an enchantress,” I lied, or lied as far as I knew, “And a powerful one. I can feel it in the air that a hobbit will come through the mines. He carries danger and peril with him. But with these items, he also carries your birthday present,” I paused to take a long breathe. Lying wasn’t usually this nerve-racking. Then again, I had never lied to actually save my life before. I told myself that I wasn’t really lying. I knew Frodo would come through the mines, anyways, “I can help you meet him, and help you catch fish without having to lift a finger besides.”
Gollum seemed to consider this as his eyes went left and right. I waited with baited breathe until he finally looked at me. It was at this point I noticed that he was nearly at eye level with me. It must have been creepy to always be with this guy. I thanked whatever luck I had that I at least didn't meet the creature outside.
“Does it promises?” mumbled the strange little person, “Does it swears?”
I looked back at him the best I could, “A sorceress cannot give her word. She only does what she feels like. I will spare you and even help you, but only if you play nice.”
My sincerest hope was that I sounded cryptic enough to sound believable.
A week past in Gollum’s cave. I caught fish with spells just as I had promised.
“Muzu ni nomare ro…” I muttered holding the talking sword in both hands. I could feel the waves of energy caress my skin before shooting off to gather water from the lake. When I felt the water fall in sync with the energy I shouted the rest, “Aqua Edge!”
The water rose up in the air and I directed it straight at the nearest cave wall. The water hurtled at surprising speed towards the wall, cut into the stone half an inch, then splashed into regular old water again. Unlucky fish that happened to be in the water fell to the ground, flapping helplessly. This would be the only time Gollum ever came to bother us. He would paddle to shore in his tiny raft, take a fish or two, then paddle back to his islet, looking annoyed at us the entire time. The sword laughed at this. I panicked at first, but soon realized that Gollum couldn’t hear the sword’s voice. That made sense the second day.
That second day was the day I realized that the sword was my sister turned into a magical sword. It made sense, but I was still surprised, anyways.
“It’s about time you noticed,” said the sword with obvious disdain, the jewel in the middle of the guard glowing and even brighter pink, “Apparently, whatever transported us here decided it would be funny to turn me into a Swordian.”
The only Swordians I knew were the enchanted weapons created by Harold Belisarius in Tales of Destiny. They were swords with a special ore called “Lens” put into the hilt or guard that were then injected with a person’s personality. I decided there that I would follow the tradition in the games and name the Swordian Sakura, after the person that it had the personality of. The “Lens” was supposed to have the spells I could use programmed into it or something, which explained why Sakura knew them, and I could use them. It also explained why Gollum couldn’t hear Sakura, since in the video games only the wielders of the Swordians, known as Swordian Masters, could actually hear their swords and use the spells. We talked for a while, but both of us had no idea where Kia was.
When I became bored, I would explore the other tunnels and ends of caves. I never went too far because I have a horrible sense of direction that would probably lead me off of a cliff. Yes, even if there aren’t really that many cliffs in a cave, I would still somehow find one and fall off. However, despite my labors of not trying to get lost, I still did. I stumbled around in the dark for a little, until I noticed a glow of a fire. I hadn’t seen anything like that for days by that time, and I went cautiously towards it. As I approached I could hear hoarse voices laughing a singing. (And singing terribly off-key at that.) I looked carefully around the corner to see a huge group of goblins. I could understand why everyone fought wars with them. They were not only unpleasant to look at, but also to hear and smell. And probably to taste, but I wouldn’t know that. Gollum would, obviously, but I wouldn’t.
I saw only one thing there that wasn’t in the movie or books. It was a dragon, just about the size of a great dane. It was chained and muzzled in their midst, but the goblins kept their distance, probably because dragons have claws that could do them harm. The dragon was something beautiful to see. It had a reddish glow around it. Its whole was adored with jet-black scales, and stared out into space with eyes that seemed to be gray. I came back a few more times just to look at it, before I decided to do something about it.
I waited until most of the goblins were drunk off whatever they seemed to be drinking every day. I didn’t have to wait long at all. Many were asleep by the time I got there.
“Kotodoku fuse yo,” Sakura laughed with delight, since we both knew that this spell was our personal favorite, “Fusatsu no tetsui…”
I gave Sakura a florish, and pointed her at the goblins, “Pico Han!!”
Red plastic hammers appeared in the air above each goblin, glowing with slight, white magic. They all fell on their heads, magically knocking them out cold. I gave Sakura a pat, our variation of a high five, before approaching the dragon.
“Moechai na! Fireball!” I said, sending exactly that at the chains that held the dragon in place. The chains immediately turned red, heated by the magical flames. I closed my eyes, concentrating since I was less talented at the next element according to our practicing in the tunnels, “Kouchi mai na! Ice Needle!”
Said needles of ice crashed into the red-hot chains, blasting the metal with the sudden change in temperature. I gave a sigh of relief at the fact that an ancient plan like that actually worked. We left together, leaving the goblins to wake up puzzled.
When we got back to Gollum’s cavern, the dragon shook itself off, then flapped her wings in a testing sort of way. It looked towards me, its eyes suddenly turning from gray to gold.
“Thanks, Lisa. I was wondering when you were actually going to do something,” it said in a familiar voice, “I get turned into a dragon, then I can’t do anything about it. I was cursing the world at being cruel until I noticed you sneaking around.”
A dragon was a fitting form for Kia. She had always loved dragons, at least, for as long as I knew her. I always thought she was a lot like those flying wonders of the fantasy world; free, strong, and a chronic pack-rat.
“It great to find you again, Kia,” I said, smiling at her. I felt kind of small next to her, but she was probably pretty big. I put my arms around her serpentine neck, the closest I could do to a hug, “And be happy that you aren’t a sword. This is Sakura, you know.”
“I thought so,” mused Kia, tapping her claws on the rocks, “I could feel a Sakura-y-ness from the pink jewel-y thing in the hilt. And the voice, but I was pretty sure that it was my imagination.”
“You can hear it?” I asked, surprised slightly.
“Maybe the rule doesn’t apply with dragons,” reasoned Sakura, sighing, “Dragons can do anything anyways.”
Days went by without too much happening. We still caught fish with spells to feed us as well as Gollum. Kia helped by gutting the fish with her claws, then cooking them instantly while practicing breathing fire. It was the first time in days that I had eaten something that was actually cooked all the way through, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Gollum hissed in disgust at the smell of cooked fish.
A goblin came into the cavern one day, obviously looking for Kia. However, he was drown and eaten by Gollum before he had a chance to know what hit him.
“Poor, ugly devil,” I said, gnawing on the head of a fish. The meat in the fish’s cheek is some of the best on the entire body. Yes, I like fish.
“He was evil, and he deserved what was coming to him,” said Sakura. She was sulking because eating had been rendered impossible for her since she wasn’t a proper living being anymore.
“Yeah, well, I still wouldn’t want to go that way,” said Kia, staring at the spot where we had last seen the goblin standing.
Some days, I would jump into the underground lake to have a swim. I would hold Sakura in one hand, in case Gollum got any ideas. Thankfully, my backpack had been transported with me, and my swim goggles were in it. I went diving, watching the blind, white cave fish in their natural habitat. I would dive a few times, chasing the fish that simple dodged out of the way as I tried to grab them. How did Gollum catch these things when he didn’t have me, anyways?
It was on one of these swims that I found something that could potentially be used to my advantage.
I had swum quite far from the shore and had resurfaced for a breathe of air. There was a wall in front of me, signaling that I had crossed the lake completely. Curious, I dove back down to investigate the details of the wall.
No sooner had I reached near the bottom of the lake when a snake-like appendage shot out of a hole near the bottom of the wall. Half-panicked, I gave a swift kick and shot towards the surface. If I hadn’t been a strong swimmer, I probably wouldn’t have been able to catch a short breathe of precious air before the thing curled around my ankle to drag me back down.
I forced myself to get calm. As I felt my head cooling off, I got the most obvious idea cross my head. Swinging in a slow, underwater arc, I sliced whatever had my leg tangled. There was a furious, nail-on-the-chalkboard noise from beyond the hole before the injured thing disappeared back into the wall. I stared after it for a moment before remembering that I needed to breathe.
Kicking swiftly to the surface, I broke the water with a loud gasp. I floated there for a moment, gulping air before hurrying back to the shore. Kia waited there, her eyes turning a dark navy with worry.
“What was that?!” she asked, obviously knocked off her normality by the incident. She began breathing lightly over me. She had said that she had two ways that her breathe ran, the normal one, and the one where the larynx was replaced with a fire-breathing organ. She was breathing through her fire breathing one softly in order to warm me, but not burn me to a crisp.
“Thanks,” I said, pushing my goggles up to my forehead, “I think it might have been the Watcher of the Water. I never knew that his lake outside was connected to the one down here. But it makes sense I guess, some caves are like that.”
“It makes perfec sense when you think about it,” said Sakura, apparently thinking it over in her pretty, pink jewel, “Gollum over there is obviously a strong swimmer, but he uses a boat. It all fits into place if he rides a boat to avoid the Watcher. I would, anyways. It’s not going to be effective if he gets attacked, but it probably gives him a sense of security.”
Kia tapped her claws on the rocky floor, her eyes slowly changing to a thoughtful, lighter green, “So why do you have that hopeful look on your face, Lisa?”
A slow smile spread across my face. I turned slightly to address my dragon friend, “The Watcher’s lake is outside of the mines, remember?”
“I’m a generic fire dragon,” said Kia, her eyes switching to a disdained green, “I’d probably sizzle, sink, and die if I tried the idea of swimming.”
“My breathe wouldn’t last me if I tried to swim the distance, Kia,” I told her, sounding more confident as I rolled the idea over and over in my head, “I promise, this is a better plan.”
The allegory of the cave.
I’ve never liked that story. It’s not because it scares me with ideas about actual reality and all that. I can accept it if this world we live in isn’t the truth at all. The world we live in is important and beautiful enough as it is for me to ignore the real world completely. I wouldn’t do anything to try and find the actual truth. I’m too busy with my life here; my friends, my family, my home, my ideas, my research, my world. My hate for it has never been root there at all. You see, I never liked it because it made me think about the people in it.
Why were they chained to the cave? Who did that to them? Did they deserve it, or was it some horrible trick played on them by a bunch of losers? Did they really believe that all the world was the shadows on the walls? Did they feel happy? Sad? Angry? Did they experience love, even with the silhouettes that passed by above the wall over their head?
And because I thought about these things, I would look like I was daydreaming. My teachers would snap me out of it and give me extra work or detention, and that would be the end of that. That’s the problem that aspiring researchers face, all I wanted to know was why.
I hate that story.
For a long time, all Sakura could feel at all were the slow, rhythmic movements of the blind cave fish. She stood wedged into a niche in the rocks, submerged halfway in into the lake. She concentrated on the vibrations that shot through the water. Whatever her sister’s plan was, she had been pretty confident about it. All the girl inside the pink jewel had to do was feel for tiny vibrations, followed by big chaotic ones. That couldn’t be too hard, right?
I was sitting on the shore, still in the dark, holding one of the odd fish in my hands. I had become relaxed since my first encounter with the Watcher, since then an estimated three days had past. I stared at the thing, which was already half-dead in my hands. I wouldn’t let him go to waste. I would eat him of course, but my scientific urges were screaming to be satisfied.
I passed a hand across the pale head, touching the soft skin over the sockets where the eyes used to be on its far, far ancestor. My hand moved over and touched the gills. Man, I love gills…I have, like, a gill fetish or something. When I go to eat lobster or crab, I always freak my friends out because I stop to poke and prod the crustacean gills. (“Did you know that walking actually moves these gills so that they can take in more oxygen when they run away from predators? Did you know that…” and then usually someone stops me.) I sat there, trying to see as I opened up the gills. I could feel the feathery feeling of fish gills overlapping each other between the large outer flap and the almost completely hollow skull on the other side. After a moment of gill staring I inspected the scales, which were spiny to the touch. I assumed that a hundred years of being hunted by Gollum had caused all the slightly spinier fish to survive, just like how gray to black moths survived through the Industrial Revolution in London. Its fins were also so sharp, that if I wasn’t careful, they could probably stab into my skin. I sighed happy when Kia laughed a smoky laugh.
“You’re like a mad scientist,” she said, her eyes the brilliant gold-yellow of happiness. It was a good thing that dragons in Tolkien’s world just so happened to glow slightly. It’d be scary to see those eyes shining in the dark, even if she happened to be one of my best friends evar, “Not like that’s a bad thing, of course. Can I cook that now? If we’re getting out of this place, I want to stock up some fish in your backpack over there so I have something to eat.”
My backpack, by the way, was the only thing we had left from the real world. Well, that and the clothes I was wearing that day: a black zip-up hoodie, a pair of jeans, and a one piece bathing suit. (Yes, bathing suit. We were planning on going swimming that day when the earthquake happened.) Kia and Sakura, who both obviously didn’t need that sort of thing anymore, brought along absolutely nothing at all.
In the backpack were: two pairs of goggles, two post-freshly laundered towels, a novel by Diana Wynne Jones (Dogsbody), five tiny pencils, one actually useable pencil, a pen, and a notebook.
I wished (at a time that I got somewhere I could actually see) that I had brought a book that I hadn’t read. That or the actual Tolkien books, since it had been years since I actually read them. Then I realized that I would have been happier in a Diana Wynne Jones world, especially the world of the Derkholm series. The mages in those were halfway scientists, after all. Maybe I was in the Chrestomanci world(s). After all, this could be a world of a series. Maybe if I tried hard enough, I could do something to pop myself into other worlds like the man himself. That would have been a completely different thing entirely. I would probably be world-hopping to find my way back home. Then of course, this story would be in the crossover section.
I tossed the fish at the softly-glowing dragon, who caught the thing in her mouth before slicing it cleanly with her claws.
“You’ve changed a lot from the sugar-high rich girl living in a huge house,” I told her, looking out towards the lake but seeing only tiny flecks of reflected light bouncing off the surface. It sucked to be in a dark cavern, “You’re a dragon survival expert.”
“Weeeee!!” she answered, blowing fire along with the sudden exclamation, “I can still be sugar high without the sugar, Lisa! Dragons! Pyramids! Anubis! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeegypt!”
I laughed out loud this time, half-relieved that turning dragon hadn’t snuffed out the old Kia spaztastic-ness, “Well, I wouldn’t mind sugar. Or tangerines and apples and chocolate and creampuffs and soup and vegetable sticks and fish besides this cave variety…and lots of other things that I’ll forget if I have to spend another couple of days in here.”
“Would you biological organisms stop talking about food?” came Sakura’s annoyed voice from the lake, “I’m trying to feel the water.”
Just then, Sakura felt new movements in the water. They were staccato, unmistakable with the swish of a fin. Each one of them was followed by a displacement of water that was larger than any creature she could imagine. The Watcher, it seemed, was fidgeting its tentacles irritably. With each new staccato sound, the Watcher twitched again, its rage climbing to a boiling point. Then, Sakura felt a huge rush of water. The movement was so huge, that the surface of the underground lake moved ever so slightly. The movement here in Gollum’s cave was peaceful, but since the other lake was so far away, it could only mean that the battle outside the Mines was horribly energetic.
“Lisa! He moved!” screeched the voice in the pink jewel, “They’re here!”
I snapped my fingers excitedly. Unless this was a world in the series where the Fellowship died before they made it out of the Mines of Moria, it was time for us to attempt a tag-along and leave Gollum’s Happy Soggy Place.
“Oi, Gollum!”
Gollum looked up on his little island, eyes glowing eerily in the gloom.
“I wonders what the witches wants, precious. What does it wants? gollum gollum”
The slightly creepy, but in-the-end-oddly-likeable creature made his way across the lake in his boat again. Kia packed the last fish into my backpack, before handing it to me. I took it, slinging it over my shoulders before tugging Sakura out of the rocks. I pointed her at Gollum, hoping to look dominant and official. It was hard to guess what a strange creature thought of you when it was almost completely dark and all that reflected light were those huge blue eyes. I was starting to feel bad about sending this guy on the journey that would end in his demise.
“The Hobbit Baggins has come. His name is not Bilbo, but Frodo. He has your birthday present with him, but where I will not reveal,” I said, the scene where Gollum burns in the mountain churning though my head, “Our time in the cave is done, we must face the sun outside. A journey awaits for you now and at the end again.”
I hoped that was cryptic. Despite my anxiety, however, Gollum seemed excited a practically lept over us to get out of his long-time home. I shrugged and put a hand on Kia’s neck to signal that we should get going, too. It was time to follow the ring.
UNFINISHED!
No comments:
Post a Comment