Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

Her heart seemed to fly into her mouth as she hurriedly backed away, back into the sheltering corridor. No! No! her mind screamed; I can’t face them again!

Back in the corridor she felt her pounding heart gradually return to its usual intensity. Perhaps she imagined it all. In this world where nothing was normal, a mind reeling under endless mysteries would overreact in some way – perhaps that was inevitable.

She looked carefully around the corner, ensuring that nothing below her eyes was visible to anything on the other side.

The table was still there but there were no figures. Her overwrought senses must have imagined them; imagined a horror coming back to taunt her.

However, she decided not to examine that area today. She began to retrace her steps. She knew it was unnecessary and that she was in fact lying motionless on the bed but it was hard to shake the illusion that she was actually walking back to an entry point. As she did so she noticed a book that had a brightly coloured spine, unlike the dull tan of most of the others.

She took it off the shelf, having to stand tiptoe to do so, and read the title:

She scanned the contents, becoming more and more puzzled as she did so. The narrative contained many examples of the warrior caste capturing women of the defeated civilisation and subjecting them to various forms of humiliating experiences. In particular, one activity, which kept recurring in various variations, was for the warrior to climb on top of the woman and insert some part of his body into hers.

She read on, her mystification becoming greater.

Surely the activities described were physiologically impossible and in the end she decided that the whole thing was some kind of allegory, with the captive women somehow standing for their conquered people as a whole. She closed the book with a snap, not bothering to replace it and removed the device from her head.

Instantly the room reappeared with Jon sitting directly opposite her, with the usual look of concern on his tired face.

‘How long was I gone?’ she asked hoarsely; the trips into the visualiser always left her thirsty.

‘Not long,’ he replied, ‘perhaps a little longer than last time.’

She shook her head: time seemed to move much more quickly during her forays into that weird world.

‘What did you see this time?’ he said and Shana thought for a moment there was a note of envy in his voice as he handed her a tumbler of water.

She told him of the odd book about warriors and Degenerate women and the peculiar practices described therein.

‘At one point it says – and I quote – “he poured his boiling seed into her.” ‘

Jon furrowed his brow. ‘That’s hard to understand. Why having boiled some seed would you throw it away like that? They can’t be short of food – wherever they are or were.’

Shana raised her hands high to demonstrate incomprehension and then a thought struck her. ‘It says he poured the boiling seed into her. That would surely be painful and those people did seem to take a delight in inflicting pain.’

Jon grimaced. ‘Of course. Typical of them.’

‘And they had other peculiar activities as well.’

‘Like what?’ groaned Jon. It was hard keeping up with all the oddities than Shana kept reporting.

‘I’ll show you but you have to take your clothes off.’

‘My clothes off? Why?’

‘Trust me. I just want to see if this works.’

To Jon’s surprise she had already divested herself of the small amount of clothing she normally wore and was lying supine on the bed.

‘What are you doing?’ he said exasperatedly.

‘You’ll see, I’m just trying something out. Now lie on top of me.’

‘What?’

‘Just do it Jon and stop complaining.’

Reluctantly Jon obeyed and lay on top of Shana, his toes reaching slightly further down the bed than hers.

‘Now what?’

‘Move your hips up and down so you’re pressing into me and then releasing.’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Jon, for once in your life just do as I ask!’

Jon assumed his best put-upon expression and complied. Some moments passed.

And then a few more.

In the end he said, ‘Nothing’s happening. What’s supposed to be happening?’

She shook her head in annoyance. ‘Well, a bit more than this. This isn’t how the book described it. The way they said it, it was something very exciting – for the warrior at least.’

‘Obviously I’m no warrior,’ Jon grunted as he removed himself from his soft human mattress and got dressed.

She did the same, shaking her head. ‘There so many things that are difficult to understand. And it’s so tiring when I’m in there. This last time it felt like I was in there for a whole time of light.’

‘Then you won’t be going in there again in this period,’ Jon said.

There was no reply and turning around he discovered that Shana had got back on the bed and was now asleep.

Jon was concerned that Shana was spending too much time in the world of the visualiser for every time she returned from it she was more tired, more drained than the previous occasion. But she refused to stop.

‘There are answers in there Jon, and in those answers there must be the explanation for all these things we don’t understand; why the world is like it is, what is the Gate of Light and, most importantly of all, who is Korok.’

Jon was not convinced. ‘But you have told me that what you see is vast. How long do you think it will take to find the answers, even if they are there?’

Shana shrugged. ‘I don’t know but it will take forever if I don’t keep going in and we don’t have forever.’

‘I could just tell you not to go back in.’

Shana looked directly at him. ‘Yes you could Jon. But that would not be a good idea. The only thing we have against all this madness is our trust and respect for each other. Would you really want to jeopardise that?’

He had no answer so she placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘Jon, if I really think it’s harming me I will stop. Trust me.’

He nodded and she gave him another quick kiss.

And she immediately put the visualiser back on her head.

She was back in the corridor of books again and she took the nearest volume off its shelf. It was heavy so she had to sit down in order to support it on her lap.

This one was entitled:

As she leafed through it she discovered it consisted of a series of highly condensed descriptions of the thoughts and actions of many individuals whom the writer considered to be people who had contributed to the thought processes of an entity known as “The Protectorate”, which was apparently the society of which the writer was a member.

Some of the people mentioned such as Machiavelli, de Sade or Nietzsche had been mainly theoreticians or fantasists; but others such as Subutai or Timur the Lame had been men who preferred actions to theory. And what actions! Shana grew more and more revulsed, as with horror she read of cities whose entire populations had been massacred because a single stone had been thrown in its defence; elsewhere she read of how those who had dared to resist the conquerors had been killed in their thousands and their bleached skulls piled into pyramids. Once again she read of how the civilisation of the Degenerates had fallen short of these high ideals as the book closed with the mocking words: “They became more and more afraid of risk; more and more afraid of danger and tried to create a world in which danger did not exist. But in the end, danger came looking for them.”

She threw the book away. She wanted no more of this “Protectorate” or its illustrious predecessors. Perhaps Jon was right: that if there were answers in here it would take far too long to find them.