Country People

Continued, Country People

…And so my path descended, through the twisting caverns.

I had but a single candle, and its flame sputtered in the damp air, as if I were entering Darkness itself.

Were I to drop it, I would be lost forever, and my faithful little dog as well.

But something drew me forward…Down, down!

Crouching at times to squeeze through narrow passages, wading over subterranean streams, scrambling across fallen stones, one foot before the next.

Creatures watched me from the darkness, shuffling forms I caught only in fragments: a wing, an eye, a slithering back.

How much time had passed since I’d last eaten, I didn’t know—the world outside seemed to belong to another life entirely.

Soon my stomach began to gnaw with hunger.

Was I to dine on snake, on bat? But the Mystery drew me forward.

For all my isolation deep within the earth, I felt that man had gone before me.

Was this a footprint in the clay, a handprint on the walls?

The eyes play tricks in darkness!

My little dog barked. Did she know where we were going? Was she urging me onwards? Or did she fear this journey was nothing but a descent into our tomb?

Deep, deep; down, down! And just when I thought that I could go no farther, and my feet had grown so heavy, and my flame flickered on a final inch of candle, and my clothes, torn to rags, fell from my body, I saw, at the end of a narrowing corridor, a light, and, hastening towards it, naked as a babe, found myself before a door, which, opening, revealed, in splendor and immensity, a dazzling, vanished world.

Wylkes, Colloquies, 1874/1899