Free The Wealding Word by A C Gogolski Page B

the stones of the well behind the pig-specter.
    By now the bobbing spirit was almost out of sight, and the dark threatened on all sides again. No matter how much she dreaded the candlewisp, Nell knew the pig-creature was worse. “Wait, wait,” she cried, and the pale spirit wavered. Nell splashed her way toward the little spook-light, fleeing the swirling pink gaze of the creature. The thing made no move to follow, except to lower its snout and grab at some invisible web.
    Now that she was away from the specter beneath the well, the life returned to Nell’s arms and legs. It was easier to make her way through the water with candlelight to guide her – even weird green candlelight. She found that there was never any level path to follow, just the obtuse hollows of the earth. At times she had to crawl through mud, with granite bones pressing against her on all sides. Sometimes she followed the spirit into wide, accidental vestibules of stone, with ceilings, walls and floors tilting at uncomfortable angles. Other times she clung to cracked shelves, with nothing but yawning blackness behind and below – one misplaced step away. And always she needed to scale, crawl, and squeeze quickly, for the candlewisp was swift and indifferent to all obstacles.
    Bizarre mineral deposits like sagging sculptures, crystalline castles, and stony icicles appeared unexpectedly along the way. So magnificent were they that when she looked upon them, Nell could almost forget the danger she was in. Everything glittered and glistened by the light of the candlewisp, but there was little time to gawk at the marvels of the underground realm. The spirit led her tirelessly on through labyrinths of hanging rock and flowing water. There was no sign of life in the stillness – no insects spun webs or burrowed down there. Yet something thrummed deep, deep below her. She could hear a pulse of life within the earth, slow and massive beyond imagining. It came to her in her belly, a frequency so low it could only be felt.
    As she wondered at the sound, the glowing candlewisp finally slowed its flight. Having followed it for so long, Nell forgot the thing might be taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go. Stories of people drowned by the treacherous spook-lights flooded back into her mind.
    The creature beamed a steady green, blinked once, and then darted through a fissure. “I guess I have to follow,” she said, standing once again in darkness. If the candlewisp left her, she knew all waslost. There was no telling where she was now in relation to where she started.
    Nell took a deep breath and felt her way down into the narrow cleft in the rock. She soon exited into waist-high water with a gasp. Panic set in as she waded into the midnight depths, but she soon caught sight of the green flicker, sailing quite a distance away to her left. There were two of them now, or rather, it was the candlewisp’s reflection, seen from the edge of a still lake.
    She took another cautious step toward the spirit and in a moment she was swimming through cold water. It was then a faint, tinkling sound came to her. Solemn, lonely, and filled with an unnamable yearning, the melody touched a feeling in Nell that she had never experienced before.
    As she splashed further out, she noticed other lights. Below the surface, tiny flames winked into being. Whites and pale blues, lavenders and delicate greens, the candlewisps softly illuminated buildings and lanes submerged within the clear subterranean lake. Soon there were hundreds of flickering globes beneath her. As she swam on, she began to see the forms of people take shape around the candles – little troll people, like Tomkin – pale shades reliving the scenes of a drowned civilization.
    When she was about half way across the water, a number of the spook-lights wobbled up to the surface to waver over her head, each sounding a low and melancholy chime. Their dirge echoed about the cavern while she treaded water, and the city