Chapter Three

My eyes flutter open

I let out a groan

I lift up my head and peer around

I feel like I’ve bruised a bone.

Gingerly, I pull myself up

Standing on my two feet

I stagger, weak, my balance gone

I resume my stone floor seat.

How did I get here? I think to myself

Instant déjà vu

I take a look down a long passageway

Darkness, and at the end a tiny patch of blue.

Once again I stand up tall

I stagger, I lean on the wall

I take a deep breath to clear my head

Thoughts crowd my mind instead.

For we shall watch as the river flows,

Down the winding path it goes…

Song lyrics? A poem?

They drift through my head like the soft, cold as it snows.

I am confused. I shake my head

I must make my way from here

I creep into the dark passageway

My body tingles with fear.

Oh horror! I see before me now

A cavern, surely meant for giant folk

My breath has stopped, too shocked for words

Such size, I struggle to cope.

What place is this, that has a cave so large

And makes me dread it so?

Is it the cold that seeps into my bones

Or it the chill wind that blows?

I have lost all track of time

I have been here for minutes, hours, months, days

Have I been here before? Or not at all?

My memory is covered with fog and with haze.

I am aware of one thing

This cold stone floor beneath me

I must force myself to move, move

Before the spiders take me.

I see them scuttle along the passages

I see them turn their blind eyes to my face

I see their skinless corpse-white bodies turn

As if to say I am of no consequence.

I am no longer needed here, no longer valued so

The master of this dreadful domain will soon turn me back

But I almost remember, from my cracked and broken memories

A time when I was happy

And then it fades to black.

I remember his eyes, like something dead walking

Not the hellfire like that of a demon, nor shiny like a gem

But happy memories

Or, at least, the lack of them.

It’s happening again, I feel him draw near

The Blind One returns to the child he hurts

Again and again it happens, or is this time the first?

He reaches out his finger. This part’s the worst.

Oh great one, I feel your strength!

And your memories come rushing in like a river through a broken dam to my head

It is too much for me to hold, too much to remember

I fall back to my freezing stone bed.