This Side of Jordan by Monte Schulz

Author:Monte Schulz
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Published: 2009-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

An hour or so after dawn, the farm boy and the dwarf ate meat sandwiches and a pair of mushmelons for breakfast at the roadside stand, then left the auto camp and headed down the county road to Allenville. The skies had cleared and the sun felt warm and dried their clothes as they walked along, suitcases in hand. The dwarf kept to the shoulder of the road, while Alvin strolled down the middle, humming a tune his grandmother had taught him when he was a baby. He’d had sweaty dreams all night long about the kid they had buried, but now that his fever was gone, he was doing his best not to remember. They hadn’t seen any traffic since sunup when a truck carrying a load of hay drove by heading away from Allenville. The driver honked and gave a wave as he passed and the dwarf saluted in return. The farm boy just watched. None of the roads near Allenville had been paved yet, so the wheel ruts and damp earth made walking arduous. The dwarf seemed unconcerned. He meandered in and out of the weeds along the shoulder of the road and talked unceasingly about people and places Alvin had never heard of.

“Of course,” said the dwarf, “had our guide warned me of the dangers of the cave beforehand, I’d have never dared take such a risk, at least not alone. Fortunately, I was able to keep my wits about me and devise a plan to mark my progress until a solution presented itself. Can you guess what I did?”

“No.” Alvin was keeping count of black crows on the fencelines from the tourist camp to Allenville. If he reached a dozen, he would stop and make a cross in the dirt of the road ahead.

“Well, I’m sure you recall how Theseus unraveled a ball of string in the labyrinth of the Minotaur. That was my inspiration, but as I had no string, I was forced to improvise. You see, at such depths within our earth, the stygian darkness evolves creatures whose very skin glows phosphorescent, thereby creating visibility where sunlight never shines.”

“Glow-worms,” said Alvin. “I seen ’em before. They ain’t nothing special.” He watched a pair of crows take flight several hundred yards up the road. That made six since breakfast, a bad sign. “Me and Frenchy used to fix lanterns out of fruit jars and fireflies when we were kids so’s we could fish in the dark. That’s what you ought to’ve done.”

“Perhaps,” replied the dwarf, “but seeing as how I had no jars, nor were there any fireflies in the cave, a different solution was required. Nor were the creatures I spoke of glow-worms. Rather, they were a peculiar form of fungus that grew along the cave walls. What I did was to secure great handfuls of them for storage in my haversack and I used them to finger-paint arrows along all the maze of passageways leading to a subterranean river where at last

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.