Daphne and the Silver Ash: A Fairy Tale Read online

  Chapter 6

  Drowning in Darkness

  For a long time, Daphne sat in the dark and stared up at the tiny window of light where she had tumbled down into the tunnel. She heard heavy boots thumping across the earth overhead, and she heard men talking although she could not understand what they were saying through the thick clay. Shadows rippled past the tiny hole and she held her breath, waiting for the first man to appear, the first head or hands or musket. But none did. The voices faded away, and the footsteps faded away, and she let out the breath she was holding and closed her eyes. “We made it.”

  “Yes, we did. But where are we now?” Serafina asked.

  Daphne opened her eyes and squinted into the darkness, but there wasn’t enough light from the hole above to let her see anything. “I don’t know. It’s too dark in here.”

  “Dark?” Serafina chuckled, the sound echoing softly in the tunnel. “It’s never too dark for a phoenix. Hold out your hand.”

  Daphne didn’t understand what good that would do but she was too tired to argue, so she held out her right hand, palm up. “Now what?”

  “Now imagine a flame. Not a burning match or log. Just the flame itself. Not touching you, not burning you, but dancing in the air just above your hand.”

  Daphne frowned as she tried to imagine a little yellow candle flame flickering in the air over her palm. At first the air seemed to pulse and shudder, and then a pale gleam appeared. The dim light grew larger and brighter, then rolled over on itself and became a tiny tongue of fire, wriggling and waving slowly in the still air.

  “A little bit bigger, please,” the spirit said.

  Daphne imagined the flame a bit bigger and it grew into a merry floating lantern, a ball of warm golden light spinning in the air. Its bright amber light illuminated the walls of the tunnel and Daphne stood up, careful to keep her right hand open and away from her so she would not disturb the flame.

  “How is this possible? A fire needs something to burn,” Daphne whispered.

  “Naturally. And this fire is consuming the very air itself. So don’t make it too large, and don’t hold it too close to your face, or you may find it very hard to breathe.”

  Daphne nodded as she inspected her surroundings. She was standing on a mound of dirt that had fallen into the mouth of the tunnel, blocking the entrance hundreds of years ago. The flat floor and walls ahead of her were made of stone blocks, stones of every shape and size carefully and cunningly arranged to fit tightly together with no cement to hold them in place. “Well, here we go.”

  With her floating lantern held out before her, Daphne entered the tunnel. A cool breeze blew lightly over her face, but her fire barely wavered and she smelled only old, dry earth in the air. As she walked, she felt her heart beating just a bit slower and she tried to draw deeper breaths. With only the smooth stone walls to look at, she found it easy to forget about all her troubles and fears about the tree and the city and even her family for a moment. The world became small, and quiet, and peaceful. For the first time in many hours, she sighed and simply walked contentedly.

  There were no roots poking through the walls, no trickle of water, no scurrying rats. Just cool stones and hard-packed earth and clay. Her lantern illuminated the tunnel far into the distance, so she didn’t worry about foul creatures lurking just beyond the light. No eyes blinked in the darkness, no claws scratched at the walls. All was still.

  Daphne followed the tunnel in a straight line until it suddenly began to bend and weave, first left and then right. The stones in the walls here did not fit together as well as before, and she passed little clumps of dirt and broken rock that had fallen from the walls and ceiling here and there. Gradually, a strange odor began to tickle her nose. It was a sickly cloying scent that reminded her of rotting fruit, but it was very faint. When she heard the first echoes of dripping water, she stopped. “Where are we now?”

  “I don’t know,” Serafina whispered back. “But I think we’re getting closer to the roots of the Silver Ash. Keep going.”

  So on she went. But she hadn’t gone far before the light of her lantern on the floor ahead began to shudder and ripple and cast bright amber reflections across the walls and ceiling.

  Water.

  She came down the last little slope of the tunnel to stand at the edge of the water and saw a huge cavern stretching out before her. It was not a very tall chamber, maybe only twice as tall as she was, but the space was very wide to both sides and she could not see the far shore of this underground lake. Kneeling down, she swept her golden fingertips through the water. “It’s cold.”

  A soft slithering echoed on her left. A quiet plop echoed on her right.

  “Is someone here?” She peered into the gloom but saw only the dark water rippling at her feet and a few lumpy rocks poking up through the surface. “Spirit?”

  Another slither. Another plop.

  Daphne stepped back from the water. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

  “But the tree!” the phoenix said. “We must go on.”

  Daphne nodded. Of course we have to go on. For Bryn and the Silver Ash. For Serafina and the city itself. For Justin and Violet. And for me.

  Holding her lantern high, she scanned the lake for any sign of a bank or a path around the edge, but there was none. The walls came down straight into the water. So she lifted her skirt with her left hand and stepped gingerly into the inky pool. It was freezing cold, so cold it would have stung her feet and legs if not for her phoenix skin, but the cold was only a distant sensation and she set out to cross the lake. Her bare feet picked out round pebbles on the bottom and sometimes a slithery tendril of grass would brush her ankle, but otherwise nothing impeded her progress. The farther she walked out into the lake, the higher the water rose until it was almost up to her waist. The flame in her hand glowed merrily, its light warming the low ceiling, and in the vast quiet of the cavern she felt very alone, but unafraid. There was nothing there to be afraid of.

  The floor of the lake angled up sharply and she climbed up out of the water. At first she thought she might have reached the far side, but she quickly realized she had only stumbled upon a high mound of earth and stone in the middle of the lake.

  An island. And a desert island, from the look of it.

  No mushrooms, no moss, nothing at all grew on it. Daphne stood at the top of the mound and peered out into the gloom again, but still she could not see the far side of the lake, nor could she see the side she had come from.

  “It feels like the middle of nowhere,” she said. “I’m not sure which way to go next. Which way is east, back toward the roots of the Silver Ash?”

  “I don’t know,” Serafina said. “A pity we can’t ask for directions.”

  Daphne smiled and sighed. She wanted to stay on her little island to rest and drink in the quiet stillness, but she knew she needed to move on. But just as she put her toes back in the water, she heard a faint slither and a faint plop, and she pulled away from the lake’s edge. “Who’s there?”

  Her words echoed softly into the distance and she blushed.

  Of course no one is there.

  Shaking her head, she moved down toward the water again and discovered a tiny pale shape where there had been nothing a moment ago. It was a salamander. By the light of her lantern, the creature’s skin looked soft, wet, and sickly white, and all covered in purplish veins. Its fragile little body stood on four fragile little legs, each with three tiny toes, and on the back of its head were two strange horns that ended in bushy purple feathers, like tiny trees or spears of broccoli. There were no eyes on its face and no mouth that she could see, but it had a tiny nose and it sniffed the air as it leaned its head from side to side.

  Daphne paused to study the tiny white animal for a moment, then shrugged and moved toward the water again, and again found another salamander poking its nose out of the lake. Turning she found another, and another, and another. Within a few moments, her entire little island was surrounded by tiny whi
te salamanders, all standing at the water’s edge, all crowding in so close that they piled upon each other’s backs two and three deep.

  “What are they?” Daphne whispered. “Are they spirit creatures? Is this what Bryn told us about?”

  “No,” Serafina said. “They are only salamanders. Do you see how they are all blind and deaf? They experience the world through scent alone. In the ancient times when I was not so old, people used to say that the animals always knew when a great spirit was coming long before any man did. Dogs especially. Perhaps some mortal creatures can actually smell us, taste us in the air.” The phoenix laughed. “Or maybe they’re just salamanders and you smell like cherry leaves.”

  Daphne smiled. She found a side of the island where the tiny white bodies were not quite so thick and she stepped out over them into the water. Hundreds of glistening nostrils tracked her movement, turning toward her as she waded out into the dark lake.

  She dragged her legs slowly through the cold water, peering out beyond her lantern’s light in search of the edge of the lake, of another tunnel, of some sign of where she was supposed to go next. Something nudged her leg. Looking down, she saw a handful of the purplish white salamanders swimming along the surface beside her, following her, clustering around her. With each passing moment, the swarm of little white bodies grew thicker and pressed closer around her. She felt the soft wet noses shoved against her legs, the tiny webbed feet swiping at her skin. The animals swam faster, paddling frantically to converge on her, climbing over their brothers and sisters, even running across each others’ backs over the surface.

  Daphne tried to move faster, but the water clawed at her skirts and the salamanders weighed heavier and heavier on her as they clambered higher and higher on her clothes, leaping onto her arms and shoulders, landing wet and dripping in her ruby feathers. She shivered and shook, first delicately prying their sticky feet from her clothing, but as the swarm grew more frantic, so did she. She swiped the little bodies off her arms and shook them sharply from her head.

  “Stop! Stop it! Get away!”

  She tried to run, but still the water was too deep and her pursuers too dogged. It was getting harder and harder to focus on her lantern, on keeping her hand high and her palm open when all she wanted to do was slap the little wet creatures away. The light began to waver and flicker, and for a moment it went out entirely though it came back again.

  Somewhere deep in her heart, she could feel the phoenix’s discomfort growing as well. The bird spirit began to dance and flutter, filling her with a cold dread, with a sharp desire to leap into the air and fly far away from these terrible little creatures that were threatening to shove her down into the cold, cold waters. Daphne longed for light, for warmth, for free air, but all she saw was darkness.

  She stumbled and fell to one knee, letting the water wash up all the way to her chin. Her hand fell into the water to catch herself and the lantern vanished, plunging her world into utter blackness as the cold salamanders swarmed up over her shoulders and head and forced her down into the freezing lake. Her feet slipped over a hidden ledge and she slipped down into a bottomless well, clawing at the icy water even as the lake itself shoved her down into the darkness.

  Daphne screamed and felt the last of her air bubbling away into the wriggling mass of bodies pressing down on her.

  She closed her eyes.

  I’m drowning. Drowning! No! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!

  And Serafina was screaming in her ears, “I don’t want to die! I want to live! Live! LIVE!”

  Just as her toes touched the hard stone at the bottom of the lake, a great heat wrapped itself around her face and her arms, banishing the cold of the water. She shoved down against the lakebed and felt herself rising up through the lake, up through the swarm. The water fell away like ribbons of silk and the salamanders tumbled free in a wild mass of waving, splashing limbs.

  A new sound filled Daphne’s ears. It was a deep-throated growl, an airy rumble, a howling roar. It was familiar, and yet strange as well, and she opened her eyes to see what it was.

  Fire.

  White flame and golden flame and crimson flame, all around her, swirling and racing and blasting in a single spinning inferno, a great ball of fire and she floated in its center. And no sooner did she see the burning waves around her than they expanded out in one great blast of light and heat and she fell back down into the water. The fire vanished and again the cavern disappeared behind its veil of darkness.

  Trembling, Daphne stood up. The water was barely ankle deep now, wherever she was, and it felt warm lapping over her feet. She held out her hand and after a moment of concentration she summoned up a new lantern, a new ball of amber light to hover above her palm, and she looked around herself.

  She was standing at the edge of the lake with a sheer rock wall just beside her, and only a few paces away she could see a tunnel in that wall, leading up and away from the lake. But at her feet, floating on the rippling waters, were the salamanders. Hundreds. Thousands. They lay piled on the surface of the lake, rising and falling with the rhythm of the water. None of them moved. Not one.

  “No.” Daphne covered her mouth and backed against the wall of the cave. “No, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want that. I just wanted to get away. I was drowning. No.”

  “These things happen,” Serafina said. “It is sad, and even regrettable, but these things happen. The poor creatures didn’t know what they were doing either. They were drawn to your scent, or my scent. After all these centuries trapped in this lake, they probably had no memory of any smell as sweet as the spirit of a phoenix.”

  “Stop talking,” Daphne whispered. “Please, just be quiet.”

  “I’m only saying that—”

  “Please.”

  Slowly and carefully, she made her way along the rock wall to the tunnel entrance and stepped onto dry, solid ground for what felt like the first time in ages. Her hands were still shaking and every time she blinked she saw the tiny bodies floating all around her. With eyes burning and lips pressed tightly together, she walked into the tunnel.