Chương 2: The Golden Swamp

The pool was a point of weakness between the worlds, Solas revealed. He chattered away happily as he led Miriam through the cave system, as if he were giving a museum tour rather than leading away a nude, captive woman. The caves ran for miles underground, like the den of giant ants, but only one led to the pool which touched two worlds. At the end of each branch you could find bones - of men who once lost themselves inside, then of the things which ate those men before itself being torn apart.

Each stalactite a tooth! he sang happily. Each tunnel a ravenous throat. No ordinary man could survive such a place. Solas was, fortunately for her, no ordinary man. He made no effort to provide any clothes for her so she simply followed behind him full stark. Her nakedness didn't bother her - she couldn't really be bothered by much at the moment, not while she was wearing Solas's bracelet. It had been the same when he'd commanded her to put it on for the first time.

Whatever he had done with his voice had compelled obedience. Now the bracelet did the same. She wished she at least had some boots. Her new skin was thick, but it was also brand new, and sensitive to every jagged rock, pebble and bone she stepped on. Solas didn't drag her forcibly. He simply tugged on the chain and she went where he demanded. It was as if her mind were not allowed to consider taking any other action. Miriam was numb to each new revelation - another side effect of the bracelet perhaps?

He could leave me down one of these tunnels to be thrice eaten, she thought to herself. At least I'm alive. At least, she thought she was. Home was not far away, he promised earnestly. Not far at all. Solas was constantly readjusting his helmet - the lack of nose left the noseguard with nowhere to rest. It was forever falling forward over his eyes, but he refused to remove it. He explained that he had received this helmet as a gift from King Cianán himself. For service well performed in the line of duty!

Miriam doubted that very much. While the helmet seemed well-smithed, it was of a cheap copper material which had turned green in most places. Solas explained that he always wore it when he came to the pool to fish for fórsa - what luck he'd been here at the right time to catch Miriam.

"What is fórsa?" she asked, though her words were slow and slurred. Solas seemed surprised she could even talk - and perhaps a bit concerned. But when she made no effort to break away he shrugged and continued rambling.

"Fórsa! Everyone knows. It's you, the life-stuff of you. Lucky, is Solas! Lucky! Usually we get only children who wander into our waters. Little fórsa, pfah! Barely worth the time. But you! Cooking life for so long! Bursting with fórsa! Enough for me to go one, maybe two rings in, I think, if I play cards correctly." He paused.

"Listen now. This is a thing that will happen. You are a human. At least - you were. This world is not for you. If you break free, the swamps here are deadly. You are weak here, no matter what you have become. You know nothing. Better a gentle juicing from Solas than a chomp chomp from the creatures of the Forest Unending!" Cackling, Solas led her out onto a small beach, only a sandy strip about six feet across, blending into the cave mouth like a yellow tongue.

For the first time Miriam Callihan got a real look at the new world in which she found herself. She immediately noticed the sky. The sun was hidden behind slick, roiling clouds, like oil in water, moving languidly and with unnatural patterns. They were unnatural colors too, swirls of green, yellow and purple, all seeming to fight against the strength of the sun they blocked. Even with its warmth so muted, she immediately arched her chest towards the sun.

She felt it in ways that the most pleasant or brutally hot day at home never could match. Miriam wanted to lie down in the sand and luxuriate in its warmth, to climb up into the sky and part the heavens to let more light through. It was surprising she even had that much of a view of the sky, because the rest of the world seemed shrouded in dense canopy. It was as if even the trees didn't want to get too close to the cave. When Solas referred to the world as a swamp he had not been lying.

Endless channels of water surrounded them, lined with creeping trees and vines, none of them moving according to any breeze she could feel, but moving nonetheless. She wasn't close enough to make out details, but even the trees seemed… odd. She'd spent much of her life in forests - daughter and granddaughter of woodsmen - but she could not name the flora that surrounded her.

"Get in the boat," Solas grunted. Pulled up onto the beach was a sturdy, if well-worn canoe. She did as he asked - she still couldn't force her mind to do anything different - but as she did, she ventured another question.

"Where are we?" This time her voice was not slurred at all. Her voice was crisp and clear - and, she realized, not quite the same timbre it used to be. She'd always had a bit of a lilting soprano. Here, she was a confident alto. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Solas growled and shoved the boat back into the water, leaping with surprising grace into position behind her.

He seemed particularly vexed that she continued to speak and she noticed him inspecting the silver chain he held as if looking for defects.

"Amberline Channels. That's the name those High Sidhe made their snooty cartographers write on the maps, but we who live here call it Golden Swamp." So, the world wasn't all like this. Miriam knew she was in danger - perhaps of an existential sort - but as she rode silently in the canoe, she felt a strange sort of joy wash over her.

Naked and chained to a cackling gremlin wasn't an ideal situation, but it was hard not to stretch her muscles and just glory in her transformation, and to marvel at the new world in which she found herself. Gone was the monumental effort it had taken just to move her body from one place to another. Gone, the aches and pains from a frame well-worn from a life well-lived. Her eyes, once cloudy and dull, now saw colors and hues she thought perhaps had never existed for her before.

The world, once muted through a high pinched whine, now roared to life around her. She could hear everything: the soothing lapping of the water against the hull of the boat, the trills of some sort of bird in the underbrush. Even the labored breathing of Solas as he struggled with the oar. This must have been what it was like, Miriam wondered to herself.

In her last years she had looked back at her life more and more often, and couldn't imagine what it had been that led her to set off as she had in her twenties, to see a world so dangerous when home had been right there the whole time. Now, she felt invincible. She could imagine dashing off this boat, charging into the forest under the strength of her powerful limbs, giddy to face the things she had never seen, to name the things that until now had remained nameless. It was youth, she realized, grinning wide.

Just the power of youth. Another odd thing - her right hand had been clasping the rim of the canoe hard as she processed all these new sensations, but now she realized she could not easily pull it away. The wood of the small boat was dry, like driftwood, but her fingers were threading through it like soft dirt. Once she noticed, she pulled her fingers free easily, and miraculously the wounds they had left in the boat closed behind them.

"Stay still," Solas barked.

"Not long now." After an hour or so the boat ran aground on another small beach. Solas tied the canoe to a nearby tree adorned in dozens of rotting coils of rope and ordered her onto the bank. He then led her along a crowded dirt trail. Vines and yearning branches seemed intent on clawing at him, but she rarely seemed to have any trouble. Eventually the trail broke open to a gentle hill atop which sat a very lovely cottage. As Solas led her up she could see it wasn't just a cottage.

A squat structure was perched atop it, a pulsing blue glow emanating from a single window. She turned to follow where the window pointed and her jaw dropped. It was a lighthouse! From the top of the hill she could now see past the forest surrounding them and there sat what she could only assume was an ocean. It was vast and blue and in this world of strange trees and murky clouds, seemed like a perfectly normal ocean.

But what stunned her most was that the oily clouds seemed to die at the swamp's edge and there before her was a broad expanse of blue sky. The sun poured down on it unimpeded. It brought tears to her eyes she could not explain. And there, she felt a tug from beyond the horizon, an urge to move in that direction that was faint, but at the same time absolute. And… familiar?

"Get in quick," Solas said, tugging on her chain.

"Sun'll be down soon and you don't want the ocean sneaking up on you." Miriam found that comment strange, but so much here didn't make sense that she didn't bother to try to question it. Also - Solas seemed to be sweating, the hand holding the chain shaking. She still had to obey his command, but… she could now consider if she wanted to. Miriam ducked through the low door into the cabin as Solas slammed the it behind him.

Faint light from two dusty windows revealed a relatively threadbare living space - a cot on one side under one of the windows, atop which sat a tangle of blankets. A copper stove lurked in the middle of the room, a thin pipe snaking out to the roof. The left side was dominated by a slender corkscrew staircase - though wooden, she noticed, not iron like she might have assumed. The stairs went both up and down. Up, she assumed, to the lighthouse mechanism. Down? Solas tugged.

"Down you go." Miriam stepped timidly down the winding staircase. The room was dark below, though there seemed to be a thin outline of sunlight near the ceiling - a small window shrouded by a curtain. Unlike the above room which was sparsely furnished, the basement was cluttered. Tables and shelves took up all of the wall space. Each table was covered in what looked like parts of machines - gears, wires, ball bearings. The shelves were dominated by books, thick, hand-bound volumes.

Often tufts of loose paper were stuffed between them. Everywhere bore the blurred marks of rushed ink in small handprints and in every breath a thick smell of oil.

"Bed's there," Solas grunted. Indeed, under the tiny window there was a cot about a foot too short for her to stretch out on. He seemed to be hurrying, shoving her into the room, and then stepping back out. He was clearly panting, his green features slick with sweat under his oversized helmet. He seemed to slap the air and suddenly the room was ringed in glowing sigils, and three glass spheres attached to the walls erupted into light.

Solas sighed in relief and let go of the chain, which bubbled away into a dozen fading points of light.

"Too tired tonight. Get sleep, start juicing first thing." Solas turned to walk up the stairs, then paused.

"There's no getting out of the binding. Besides… ain't nothing but the ocean out there at night. And what I'm going to do to you in the morning ain't nothing compared to what those things in the water will." Then he was gone, stomping wearily up to his living room.