'The Magic Begins.'
Captured!
I plunged at breakneck speed, but I was eventually able to gain some control over my body. I pulled out of my dive and flattened out into horizontal flight. As my vision cleared, there appeared to be a woman in black, furiously pedalling away beside me on an ancient bicycle. Hunched over the handlebars, her face smeared with tears, she continually looked back over her shoulder as if searching for an unseen pursuer. Her eyes widened as she saw me, but she kept on going. We kept pace, side by side, until she began to falter and fell back to where I could no longer see her. There was no impression of speed, and I drifted along in this dreamlike state until my eyes closed, and I fell asleep.
I awoke on firm ground, and my body felt stiff and cold as if I had lain there for a long time. I scrambled to my feet, only to despair at the sight of this barren world—an endless desert of rock without trees or vegetation. No living thing could exist here.
I sank back on my haunches and covered my face with my hands. Ernest had warned me that a host of different worlds exist in this dimension, and I seemed to have landed on a dead one, cast away in an inhospitable wilderness with no obvious means of escape. Somehow, I had to get out of here, but first I must see to my immediate needs, and I hurriedly pulled on the coat Earnest had given me, fastening the buttons and pulling up the collar against the intense cold.
It was too large, but I was grateful to have it, and I thrust my hands into the side pockets, where I found a pair of black leather gloves that fit me perfectly.
My priority was survival, and I had no alternative other than to move on. I must first find a source of food and water and a way out. Only then could I begin my quest to find the key and lock the Green Door, but I did not doubt that there were further trials to come.
There was no real day or night here, just a continuous red twilight. I was exhausted, hungry, and lost in a wasteland that was as desolate and empty as Arctic tundra. The land was virtually featureless, with not even a blanket of white snow to brighten the mirrored surface of the blackened rock. My body was numb with cold; I could not go on much longer without rest or food, and remembering the rucksack, I vowed to open it as soon as I found a place to stop.
Everywhere looked the same, but I found an incline under the shelter of an overhanging rock and sat down. Opening the rucksack, I found a bottle of water and drank from it greedily. Further down, I found a cheese sandwich, a bar of chocolate, and two oranges. Mr Menschen must have thrown in whatever came to hand, but despite his good intentions, it did not add up to much, and I laid my limited food supplies on the rock.
Next out were a Swiss army knife, a blanket, and a padded pillow with one end covered by a flap, and inside were all the paperback books on the list that I had left on the shop counter for Mr Menschen:
Plato's Republic, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Silver Chair, She, Journey to the Centre of the Earth,The Hobbit, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
The original note was gone, but in the same hand was another note in green ink that read:
'Rest your head upon these books and dream.'
I put the books back inside the padded pillow and lay down against the hard rock with the blanket over me. I ate half of the cheese sandwich and an orange, saving the rest for tomorrow. I rested my head on the pillow of books and, huddled up in the blanket, drifted off into an uneasy and restless half-sleep.
A flash of lightning illuminated the dark sky, followed by a roll of thunder, and the ground around me began to shift and crack in every direction. Now wide awake, I stuffed my meagre supplies back into the rucksack and ran across the heaving surface in search of more solid ground, but it was hard to keep my feet, and I had only gone a few yards when a large funnel-shaped crevice opened directly in my path. I desperately tried to keep my balance on the lip of the fissure, but it suddenly gave way, and I toppled down the slope into the mouth of a steep chute that had walls as smooth as ice.
Flat on my back, I hurtled down like a bobsleigh, twisting and turning through the rock and bouncing off the corners, sliding ever deeper underground until the solid surface ended, and I flew off the edge like a bullet fired from a gun. It was a long time before my forward momentum finally faltered, and I hovered motionless for an instant before dropping down onto what felt like freshly dug topsoil.
I later learnt that my soft landing was on a dump of residual ash from the great fire.
I lay on my back in complete darkness, bruised and winded but not seriously injured. The intensity of the blackness was terrifying, and when I glimpsed a faint red glow in the distance, it seemed like my salvation. I scrabbled frantically over the rocky surface towards the light, constantly tripping, until I fell headfirst against a giant boulder and knocked myself unconscious.
When I came to, the dim red light was still there in the distance, and I picked my way more cautiously, with my arms outstretched before me like a blind man, for that is what I was in this tomb-like darkness. The going was slow, but I was getting closer, and the red light became brighter until I saw that I was in a huge cavern.
Stopping by chance to get my bearings, my vision cleared sufficiently for me to see that I was on the edge of a sheer drop to the cavern floor, but the shock of entering this underworld had numbed my senses, and I was unafraid. I was equally unawed by the height and scale of the cavern, although it was the size of a cathedral and possessed an aura of great antiquity. This palpable presence reached into my mind and delved deep into my unconscious, making an intuitive connection with an idea that had a far greater claim to reality than anything in the world of appearance.
But there were others in this world.
Rough hands gripped me from either side and dragged me toward the edge of the plateau. I thought they were about to throw me over the edge, but my assailants forced me into a sitting position on a chair-like structure made from hewn wood that overlooked the cavern below. My arms and legs were bound with rope and cruelly tightened until I groaned aloud. Satisfied, they left me alone, and I saw my captors for the first time.
They were humanoid but small in stature and extraordinarily muscular. Dwarves, I thought, but then I remembered that the Dwarves of mythology were renowned as proud men of great vigour and warlike by nature. My assailants more resembled rodents: furtive creatures with downcast eyes, with heads that moved from side to side as they constantly sniffed the air. Subterranean and half-blind, they must live a mole-like existence, far removed from the light, yet they did not lack strength or petty viciousness and snarled and bit at any creature who jostled against them. Even so, they were not animals but a form of primitive man, with well-developed calf muscles covered in wiry black hair.
They did not wear any kind of footwear and went barefoot with splayed-out toes that had tips of hard bone used for digging, and below a mass of unkempt hair, their faces were lean and rat-like, with economical features barely sketched in, a vertical slash for a nose, a wider horizontal slash for a mouth, and tiny, sunken eyes. Large canine teeth hung over thin lips, and they had stone-sharpened, dingy yellow fangs, weapons used for ripping an enemy's flesh and cutting the meat to eat. Carnivores, then, cannibals even, and solitary predators by nature, they had become a tribe banded together through fear, not love; not once did I detect any sign of kinship or caring behaviour.
They settled down around me at rest and slept in hollows dug out with their fearsome feet acting as spades. They were waiting for something, and it was most probably the orders of a more advanced being, someone with the strength to whip them into submission and force them into service, for they were not intelligent enough to plan my capture alone. I guessed that they had received orders not to unduly hurt me; otherwise, there was no doubt that I would have been mercilessly savaged.
All was quiet now. I abandoned my futile straining against the securely tied bonds, but I was unable to sleep. My mind was overactive and jumped from one subject to another, but I managed to calm myself and focus on my present predicament.
The Earthmen were nasty pieces of work, and I was curious to know the identity of their leader, and my erstwhile protector against these lowly beasts.
Earthmen.
Where did that name come from? It was a fitting description, but I was sure it was not a name of my invention. I must have heard it before, or more likely, read it before, was not my quest characterised by characters from fiction? The thought prompted me to think more deeply. I was on to something here. What was the name of the book?
I struggled against my bonds in my frustration to remember, and the chair rocked from side to side.
The Silver Chair!
The memory of the book I had read as a child popped up in my mind from nowhere. It was part of the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, whom I saw in my visit to Oxford with Albert. Underground creatures called Earthmen, featured in The Silver Chair, but they were nothing like the vicious primitives who had captured me. Yet there was undoubtedly a connection. They must be mutants who evolved from the original fictional species as they escaped the confines of the novel and became part of the living world.
Darwinian evolution in the world we know is the process by which populations of living things change and develop over time by selecting chance mutations that offer an advantage for the survival of future generations.
In this dimension, it seems that mutations can be selected for survival, not by the original species, but by somebody who wants the mutations to survive for their own advantage. It would have to be a person of great power to make this happen. Who could it be? Somebody from the pages of fiction, not a good person, and it had to be a supernatural being.
I thought for a moment, then it came to me. Of course! It had to be!
Excitedly, I struggled to free myself. The chair edged closer to the lip of the precipice, and I peered down into the body of the cavern below.
What I saw took my breath away.
All my previous thoughts vanished from my mind.
Far below me, a line of weary slaves with rope harnesses strapped to their backs dragged logs of wood to feed a huge fire. This was the only source of light, and it burned like a distress beacon. The fire was set on a giant step cut into the rock, and a gap in the roof above formed a natural chimney to let out the smoke.
An overseer in a black leather tunic idly cracked his whip as a signal to a group of slaves to roll on more fresh logs and keep the flames high. The slaves seemed programmed to complete specific tasks and did not show any emotion.
I wondered where I was.
Had I fallen into Hell?