Into the Second World Page 4

  A tremendous splash interrupted these thoughts, and I was back in the moment.

  “What’s happened?” I called out, alarmed by the noise. I could only think some great rock had crashed down among us.

  “Nothing,” Nik replied. “Just crossing over.”

  I was still trying to decode that statement when Bessarion the dwarf emerged from the icy water and scrambled onto a ledge on the other side. He was utterly naked.

  I admit I gasped and averted my eyes. Even as I looked away, I heard Niklot and Professor Queller joking in low tones, followed by two splashes and a tremendous amount of hooting, which echoed up and down the canyon.

  “You’re next, Miss Gabrielle Lauten,” Cosmas said behind me. “Leave your clothes and I’ll get them across dry.”

  “I shall certainly not!” I exclaimed. I turned to face the ogre, who himself was in the act of disrobing. I quickly turned aside. “You cannot expect me to … to do such a thing.” I said this to the stone cliff, this being the only direction I could face and still preserve decorum.

  “It is necessary,” Cosmas said. “We cannot go far in wet clothes.”

  He was right, of course. But the circumstances were so outlandish, I literally did not know which way to turn.

  “Ho, Cosmas, do get over here. We’re freezing!”

  “Fräulein Lauten,” the professor said, “pray do not be alarmed. Once we are clothed, we’ll turn aside and give you privacy. But do please let Cosmas pass; he has our clothes.”

  I could hear his teeth chatter in the pauses.

  “Oh, do go on,” I told the ogre. “Let’s get this over with. I feel ridiculous standing here talking to a cliff.”

  Cosmas rumbled an agreement; this was followed by indistinct rustling. I admit I stole a look and then a second. An unclothed ogre is a sight not to be missed, and social conventions be damned.

  He was covered in hair. Not shaggy like some bipedal yak, but in a smooth pelt, much like that of a fox, and similar in coloration. His physique was every bit as muscular as one might imagine. I thought him rather magnificent.

  I don’t think he noticed my glances.

  A moment later, he slipped into the water as smoothly as an eel and was standing in the stream, which rose only high enough to cover his belly. This allowed him to sling his bag onto one shoulder. I turned slightly to watch him gather the other clothes.

  “I say, Cosmas, do hurry,” Professor Queller said. “You can turn around now, Fräulein.” he added. “We have moved out of view.”

  I turned in time to see Cosmas wading upstream, where the depth was shallower. Water streamed from his shoulders and chest, and his fine, thick hair glistened like a river otter’s. After a few minutes, he had delivered the clothes and had returned. The unavoidable had arrived. I gulped, and started with my hat.

  “I propose an alternative,” Cosmas said. “If you will remove your shoes and stockings, then roll up your skirt as high as you can, I might bear you across without further loss of dignity.”

  I stared at the ogre for a moment. His deep, dark eyes of uncertain color were wide. His head ducked in small, nodding motions every several seconds, which I later learned signified entreaty. Then I suddenly realized he was still standing waist deep in frigid waters. I glanced upstream but could see no signs of the other men. Balancing precariously on a slanting boulder, I removed shoes then stockings, rolling the latter up tight and stuffing them into the former.

  The skirt was another matter. A split skirt is in many ways a blessing for the outdoors woman, but it has its drawbacks. I could have hiked a proper skirt high enough—to my smallclothes, if need be—but the best I could manage with this was to pull each leg as high as I could then fold the material above the knee. By this means I bared my legs well above the knee but not much further. At my nod, Cosmas offered his broad shoulders, and I climbed awkwardly aboard.

  As stately as a ferry, Cosmas turned about and began to cross. My feet dangled in the water to the ankle, then to the shin. The cold grabbed hold of me tight.

  “This is the deepest part,” Cosmas said, draping his arms over my thighs to keep me steady. I felt almost like a young girl, riding pick-a-back on my father’s shoulders. I entwined my fingers in the thick hair on his head. The water rose even higher, and I could not avoid having a few inches of my hem trail in the stream. We rose out again, though, and soon Cosmas was setting me carefully on the opposite side. About a foot of my skirt was soaked, and my legs ached with cold, but I was otherwise fine. I thanked the ogre.

  “I regret I could not keep you dry,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said. “It was most gallantly done. I thank you, Herr … what is your family name?”

  “Ianesc.”

  “Well, thank you very much, Herr Ianesc.”

  “You are welcome, Miss Gabrielle Lauten.”

  “Please, call me Gabi, as a friend.”

  He touched the back of his hand to his heavy lips. “I am Cosmas. The family name is for strangers, to read in your newspapers.”

  I smiled at him. I had made a friend, and he was an ogre. I didn’t even mind when he smiled back.

  Cosmas and I caught up with the others at a waterfall. There the stream plunged over the granite cliff to form a wide pool at its base, fringed with smooth stones that formed a kind of beach on one side. The whole dell was no more than fifty feet across, but it felt spacious after the narrow canyon, and bright sunlight warmed the cold stone. I would have lingered there a while, a secluded and peaceful spot perfect for writing, but Bessarion was already eager to be gone.

  The whole dell was hemmed in by tall cliffs. I looked about me, wondering where we were to go next. Up a stone ladder, evidently, for the dwarf was already on its lower steps. Someone, undoubtedly his ancestors, had cut deep steps into the gray rock. Having been designed for dwarves, each step was within easy reach, and each had metal spikes driven into them to use as handholds. Bessarion went up this contrivance as easily as a cat climbs a tree. He then let down a rope, which Nik secured to his uncle, despite the professor’s vehement cries that he was not a child. Nik insisted, and those two went up next.

  As they climbed, Cosmas spoke to me.

  “Miss Gabrielle Lauten,” he said, “please allow me to take your pack. The climb is perilous. The additional weight is nothing to me, but I would not want it to pull you off the cliff.”

  I protested that I intended to carry my own.

  “Yet,” Cosmas replied, “you see that none of the others do, not even Niklot Thesiger.”

  I had no reply for this. Moreover, I thought I might be giving offense to the ogre by not entrusting him with my belongings when directly asked. I smiled at myself, to think I worried about offending an ogre, but there it was. I could scarcely repay his courtesy with stiff-necked pride. Besides, his offer lacked any overtones of male supremacy. I handed over my pack and started up the stone ladder.

  Within minutes I was glad of my decision. My arms and legs seemed to grow heavier with each step. The sun that had been so welcomingly warm now was becoming annoyingly hot. The higher I climbed, the more terrifying was every glance down. My fingers ached from the clenching at every new step. I began to pant, not through any great exertion but from pure dread. I ascended to a height greater than any tree I’d known. Then I was higher than the tallest spire of the greatest chapterhouse or castle in Europa, and still I climbed. I had foolishly begun to climb before Professor Queller had reached the top, so was too far along to make use of any rope that might be offered to me. I had only my toes and fingers to save me from plunging to my death.

  By the time I reached the top, I was gasping for breath and trembled in all my limbs. Nik and Bessarion fairly dragged me to get me a few feet away from the edge, into the shade of a pine tree. Professor Queller gave me some water.

  “That was a sturdy climb, young lady,” he said, “though a bit daring to try it without a support rope.”

  Cosmas came up over the side as Queller sai
d that.

  “Had she slipped, I would have caught her,” Cosmas said, with such calm I did not doubt that he would have.

  We all rested for a time. I suspect this was largely on my account. The rest and water quickly restored me, however. I reflected on my accomplishments. I had climbed a ladder two hundred feet tall (it felt like two thousand), had established my position in a company of males, and had undergone a mortifying ordeal that had violated my modesty but not my dignity.

  Plus, I’d befriended an ogre.

  The stream gathered itself into a deep pool before leaping over the precipice we had just scaled, uttering a pleasant little burble at the edge, as if the fall were only a game. The sun shone down genially, and a little breeze sent shimmers of light across the clear surface. Grass covered the ground, with reeds standing in clusters along the banks, while white alders stood behind, their arms decked in green. The day seemed suddenly so benign that it was hard to think of the austere canyon behind, or of the dark depths before us. I breathed in the pure alpine air, appreciating at last why doctors sent their patients into these mountains for a cure.

  “This is so beautiful,” I said aloud. “It’s like a dream.”

  No one responded. I instantly felt the inadequacy of the words. I was the simple Plattländer, who calls a hill of a few hundred feet a mountain. I was the converse of the country yokel chirping in amazement at the towers of a city. I was the city girl astounded by mountains and waterfalls. I might just as well have cried “Golly!” I resolved to be more restrained so as to appear more sophisticated.

  I lay back on the soft grass and stared upward. The sun rode through a deep blue that was nearly unbroken by clouds, save a few that gathered like sheep around the heads of the tallest mountains. I grew warm, and started to drift into sleep. Already my body was learning to take advantage of any idle time.

  Bessarion allowed us no time for napping, though. Without a word he stood and started off again.

  “There he goes,” Niklot said. “We’d best follow.”

  We left the stream and climbed a small rise. Before us spread an alp—one of the wide, lush meadows that give their name to the mountains themselves. Seen from afar, the alp looked like a blanket of green—in the summer, at least—dotted with patches of darker green that are stands of pine and poplar trees. We came closer, though, and found the blanket was wrinkled, draped over ravines and gullies thick with gorse and rowan and berry bushes, sometimes dry and sometimes with rivulets threading through tumbles of rock. These ravines could be surprisingly deep. They also made walking damnably difficult.

  Professor Queller seemed downright jolly as he walked alongside Niklot, the two conversing quietly. I walked a few paces away. Cosmas again walked behind.

  Two more hours of hiking followed, across the wide, undulating meadow. This was carpeted with light green grass, punctuated with lichen-covered rocks and decorated with blue monkshood and yellow gentian and columbine. Its width narrowed gradually. On our right, a tall curtain of granite rose skyward. To our left, the meadow sloped gradually down to the edge of the world.

  “There it is,” Nik said. He was pointing at that gray curtain. Partway up, at least a hundred feet or more, a hole penetrated the granite, as if some giant had rammed a fist into it.

  Before we went in that direction, though, Bessarion led us to the alp’s edge. Never has a sight made me so weak and giddy.

  The alp ended with a ragged edge. The ground fell away vertically, hundreds of feet, so far down that the ground below was partially hidden by haze.

  I looked over the side once, then backed up a yard or two. The others did likewise, save for Bessarion himself, who stood with his toe tips at the edge. A wind could have sent him over, but he stood unperturbed.

  My gaze went farther. The alp faced more or less northerly. Somewhere in the near distance was Salzburg—I fancied I could spot the heights of Hohenwerfen, and even the valley of the Ister beyond. Even farther afield, out at the limit where pale green met pale blue, were the lands of my birth. Stralsund and the sandy hills of Brandenburg, the Baltic Sea beyond. For a moment I was terribly homesick, but only for a moment. Bessarion turned round and marched up the slope, we followed, and all thoughts of home vanished. Ahead stood the mountain, the cave, and the unknown.

  Lamprecht's Cave

  As we hiked up the alp, the slope got steeper. The cave opening remained just a hole in a granite sheet hung from the sky. Only as we got quite close did I see what Nik called a trail leading to it, partway up the cliff. To my eyes, calling it a ledge would be generous.

  “We’re to climb that?” I asked.

  “That we are. Don’t worry, there are handholds the whole way, or so Beso tells me.”

  I’m not going to say much about that ascent. The cave entrance was not hundreds of feet up, though it looked that way from below. The trail that angled up to the cave turned out to be closer to a couple of feet wide than a few inches. Even so, I was terrified every step of the way. It will surprise anyone who has not experienced it, but climbing even twenty feet above the ground can make one feel as though one clings to a precipice, one slip away from death. And forty feet might as well be four hundred.

  “You’re just as dead once you land,” as Niklot said to me at one point.

  But I don’t recount every gut-grinding moment because my part was easier. The handholds for a dwarf are not so very different from where a small human would place them, but they are not at all convenient for an eight-foot-tall ogre. Poor Cosmas not only had to edge his way along a path meant for dwarf feet, he had to hunch over even to grasp the handholds. And all that with a trägersack on his back. Not once did he complain, or even hesitate. Indeed, more than once he asked how I was doing.

  We all made it safely. That’s sufficient. We climbed the wretched path and entered the mouth of Lamprecht’s Cave. I was so tired and shaky, so glad to be out of the hot sun, I at once followed the others down into the interior, quite forgetting my duties as a reporter. I ought to have paused there at the entrance, turned to look back across the sunlit world I might never see again. I ought to have reflected on the vagaries of fate, the hubris of the enterprise, or at least color of the sky. Instead, I was well out of sight of the entrance when we stopped to get out the lanterns. Only then did I realize the blue sky was gone, hidden behind tons of rock.

  The cave entrance widened immediately into a vast cavern whose sloping floor was a jumble of boulders. Bessarion led us over and through this jumble without a hesitation, though to my eyes the whole place was nothing but dark openings that might lead anywhere or nowhere.

  We were only a few minutes into the cavern when Bessarion signaled a stop and said it was time to get out the lanterns. These were unlike any lantern I’d ever seen. The lamp itself consisted of a glass tube with a coil of wire within. This tube was fitted in a metal frame to protect the glass from breakage. The frame, in turn, was detachable from a leather case two or three times larger than the lamp itself. Queller did something with the lamp, then something inside the leather case, and the lamp gave forth a bright, steady yellow light. This was accompanied by a buzzing sound.

  “Professor,” I said, “is your lantern powered by bees?”

  My attempt at humor was received by a slight frown and a cocked head.

  “It is powered by phlogiston, of course,” Queller said. He fiddled with something inside the case, and the yellow light shaded toward white, becoming even brighter. “Courtesy of the Geissler tube.”

  I didn’t really care how the thing worked, but now I’d expressed an interest, and so was doomed to explanation.

  “The design is new. Heinrich Ruhmkorff, don’t you know, but his design could never be truly effective without Herr Geissler’s brilliant use of phlogisticated gas. The Ruhmkorff lantern uses a combination of inert gases with a small amount of phlogiston to excite a network of filaments within a glass case. Each node in the network, where the filaments meet, shines more brightly. The effect is like ca
rrying an illuminated spider web in a jar. Indeed, a Ruhmkorff lantern is sometimes called a spiderweb light.

  “The choice of gases affects the color of the light, ranging from a brilliant shade of blue to white or yellow. When in its last hours the light takes on a greenish hue. The buzzing sound you hear is from the induction coil. When you hear that fade, you will know the lamp itself is at the end of its life.”

  I hadn’t even considered that the lamps might wear out.

  “How long do they last?”

  “It varies,” Queller said. Apparently satisfied with his adjustments, he looped the strap of the case over his head and around his neck. The lamp itself, the Geissler tube, was secured in the metal frame attached to the case, leaving both hands free.

  “Niki,” he added, “set the current to 1.5 and the gas level to medium. We’ll need good light on this uneven ground. Later we can reduce the intensity.”

  Cosmas now produced two more lanterns. I noted they did not give one to me, but Nik didn’t take one either, so I resolved not to ask lest it sound like whining.

  The lanterns also had hooks, which allowed the bearer to keep the light at their hip. Were this an ordinary sort of lantern, it no doubt would be too hot for that. All in all, quite ingenious. They did look fragile, though.

  I asked Cosmas how it was the lanterns did not break in the trägersack. He replied that he had packed them properly, therefore they would not break. For the ogre, this amounted to an explanation.

  We set out again. Domes of light encompassed Bessarion at the front, Herr Queller in the middle, and Cosmas at the rear. This gave enough light for Nik and myself to see the ground, which was broken and treacherous. I had to learn to keep my eyes averted from the lamps themselves, though. Even a glance at them blinded me for a few seconds.