Уильям Голдман - The Princess Bride

Most particularly though, the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp was used to frighten children. There was not a child in either country that at one time or another was not, when misbehaving very badly, threatened with abandonment in the Fire Swamp. "Do that one more time, you're going to the Fire Swamp" is as common as "Clean your plate; people are starving in China." And so, as children grew, so did the danger of the Fire Swamp in their enlarging imaginations. No one, of course, ever actually went into the Fire Swamp, although, every year or so, a diseased R.O.U.S. might wander out to die, and its discovery would only add to the myth and the horror. The largest known fire swamp is, of course, within a day's drive of Perth. It is impenetrable and over twenty-five miles square. The one between Florin and Guilder was barely a third that size. No one had been able to discover if it was impenetrable or not.

Buttercup stared at the Fire Swamp. As a child, she had once spent an entire nightmared year convinced that she was going to die there. Now she could not move another step. The giant trees blackened the ground ahead of her. From every part came the sudden flames. "You cannot ask it of me," she said.

"I must."

"I once dreamed I would die here."

"So did I, so did we all. Were you eight that year? I was."

"Eight. Six. I can't remember."

Westley took her hand.

She could not move. "Must we?"

Westley nodded.

"Why?"

"Now is not the time." He pulled her gently.

She still could not move.

Westley took her in his arms. "Child; sweet child. I have a knife. I have my sword. I did not come across the world to lose you now."

Buttercup was searching somewhere for a sufficiency of courage. Evidently, she found it in his eyes.

At any rate, hand in hand, they moved into the shadows of the Fire Swamp.

PRINCE HUMPERDINCK JUST stared. He sat astride a white, studying the footsteps down on the floor of the ravine. There was simply no other conclusion: the kidnapper had dragged his Princess into it.

Count Rugen sat alongside. "Did they actually go in?"

The Prince nodded.

Praying the answer would be "no," the Count asked, "Do you think we should follow them?"

The Prince shook his head. "They'll either live or die in there. If they die, I have no wish to join them. If they live, I'll greet them on the other side."

"It's too far around," the Count said.

"Not for my whites."

"We'll follow as best we can," the Count said. He stared again at the Fire Swamp. "He must be very desperate, or very frightened, or very stupid, or very brave."

"Very all four I should think," the Prince replied....

WESTLEY LED THE way. Buttercup stayed just behind, and they made, from the outset, very good time. The main thing, she realized, was to forget your childhood dreams, for the Fire Swamp was bad, but it wasn't that bad. The odor of the escaping gases, which at first seemed almost totally punishing, soon diminished through familiarity. The sudden bursts of flame were easily avoided because, just before they struck, there was a deep kind of popping sound clearly coming from the vicinity where the flames would then appear.

Westley carried his sword in his right hand, his long knife in his left, waiting for the first R.O.U.S., but none appeared. He had cut a very long piece of strong vine and coiled it over one shoulder and was busy working on it as they moved. "What we'll do once I've got this properly done is," he told her, moving steadily on beneath the giant trees, "we'll attach ourselves to each other, so that way, no matter what the darkness, we'll be close. Actually, I think that's more precaution than necessary, because, to tell you the truth, I'm almost disappointed; this place is bad, all right, but it's not that bad. Don't you agree?"

Buttercup wanted to, totally, and she would have too; only by then, the Snow Sand had her.

Westley turned only in time to see her disappear.

Buttercup had simply let her attention wander for a moment, the ground seemed solid enough, and she had no idea what Snow Sand looked like anyway; but once her front foot began to sink in, she could not pull back, and even before she could scream, she was gone. It was like falling through a cloud. The sand was the finest in the world, and there was no bulk to it whatsoever, and, at first, no unpleasantness. She was just falling, gently, through this soft powdery mass, falling farther and farther from anything resembling life, but she could not allow herself to panic. Westley had instructed her on how to behave if this happened, and she followed his words now: she spread her arms and spread her fingers and forced herself into the position resembling that of a dead-man's float in swimming, all this because Westley had told her to because the more she could spread herself, the slower she would sink. And the slower she sank, the quicker he could dive down after her and catch her. Buttercup's ears were now caked with Snow Sand all the way in, and her nose was filled with Snow Sand, both nostrils, and she knew if she opened her eyes a million tiny fine bits of Snow Sand would seep behind her eyelids, and now she was beginning to panic badly. How long had she been falling? Hours, it seemed, and she was having pain in holding her breath. "You must hold it till I find you," he had said; "you must go into a dead-man's float and you must close your eyes and hold your breath and I'll come get you and we'll both have a wonderful story for our grandchildren." Buttercup continued to sink. The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders. The small of her back began to ache. It was agony keeping her arms outstretched and her fingers spread when it was all so useless. The Snow Sand was heavier and heavier on her now as she sank always down. And was it bottomless, as they thought when they were children? Did you just sink forever until the sand ate away at you and then did your poor bones continue the trip forever down? No, surely there had to somewhere be a resting place. A resting place, Buttercup thought. What a wonderful thing. I'm so tired, so tired, and I want to rest, and, " Westley, come save me! " she screamed. Or started to. Because in order to scream you had to open your mouth, so all she really got out was the first sound of the first word: "Wuh." After that the Snow Sand was down into her throat and she was done.

Westley had made a terrific start. Before she had even entirely disappeared, he had dropped his sword and long knife and had gotten the vine coil from his shoulder. It took him next to no time to knot one end around a giant tree, and, holding tight to the free end, he simply dove headlong into the Snow Sand, kicking his feet as he sank, for greater speed. There was no question in his mind of failure. He knew he would find her and he knew she would be upset and hysterical and possibly even brain tumbled. But alive. And that was, in the end, the only fact of lasting import. The Snow Sand had his ears and nose blocked, and he hoped she had not panicked, had remembered to spread-eagle her body, so that he could catch her quickly with his headlong dive. If she remembered, it wouldn't be that hard—the same, really, as rescuing a drowning swimmer in murky water. They floated slowly down, you dove straight down, you kicked, you pulled with your free arm, you gained on them, you grabbed them, you brought them to the surface, and the only real problem then would be convincing your grandchildren that such a thing had actually happened and was not just another family fable. He was still concerning his mind with the infants yet unborn when something happened he had not counted on: the vine was not long enough. He hung suspended for a moment, holding to the end of it as it stretched straight up through the Snow Sand to the security of the giant tree. To release the vine was truly madness. There was no possibility of forcing your body all the way back up to the surface. A few feet of ascension was possible if you kicked wildly, but no more. So if he let go of the vine and did not find her within a finger snap, it was all up for both of them. Westley let go of the vine without a qualm, because he had come too far to fail now; failure was not even a problem to be considered. Down he sank then and within a finger snap he had his hand around her wrist. Westley screamed then himself, in horror and surprise, and the Snow Sand gouged at his throat, for what he had grabbed was a skeleton wrist, bone only, no flesh left at all. That happened in Snow Sand. Once the skeleton was picked clean, it would begin, often, to float, like seaweed in a quiet tide, shifting this way and that, sometimes surfacing, more often just journeying through the Snow Sand for eternity. Westley threw the wrist away and reached out blindly with both hands now, scrabbling wildly to touch some part of her, because failure was not a problem; failure is not a problem, he told himself; it is not a problem to be considered, so forget failure; just keep busy and find her, and he found her. Her foot, more precisely, and pulled it to him and then his arm was around her perfect waist and he began to kick, kick with any strength left, needing now to rise the few yards to the end of the vine. The idea that it might be difficult finding a single vine strand in a small sea of Snow Sand never bothered him. Failure was not a problem; he would simply have to kick and when he had kicked hard enough he would rise and when he had risen enough he would reach out for the vine and when he reached out it would be there and when it was there he would tie her to it and with his last breath he would pull them both up to life.