Toward Salvation
The familiar light enswathed me. Peace was my sole sensation. The beaming face of my brother appeared before me. A warming touch lighted upon my shoulder. The visage painted upon the face of my dear brother was one of intent concern and love. The strands of dirty blonde hair running from his crown over his emerald eyes brought his sturdy hand up to brush them out of the way. A flashing smile rippled across his face as he moved on. Soft pads of his mocasined feet tread across the earthen floor the tall arched canvas. Into the face of others he gazed with love and concern.
Tight woven seams of sinew held in their grasp the long folds of tanned hide. Legs of aspen propped the wall and ceiling. Rumorous scents of prairie drifted in from the melodic freedoms of nature and rested upon my serene countenance.
Members of my proud family sat in semicircle. Black strands of hair filtered from their anxious heads. Sentiments of young boisterousness acted upon every single member. Pastes of crimson and ebony etched across tender young faces were tested and prodded by innocent fingers. Uncontrollably restless was my brother of large stature who sat restlessly upon the dirt at my side. The beast upon his bare breast pranced as he rolled intensely forward and backward. Lounging on an opposite support beam was my brother of a more slender and smaller build. To his gaunt face the nervous anxiety of future crept. Sad blue lines drooped upon his thin visage and arms. My brothers behaved in the array of emotions from calmness, to tension, to giddiness. Calmness and surity resided solely in my sandy haired brother of older years who now sat near the head of the circle. I felt in this ring and bond that a challenge would soon be thrown.
At the head in repose sat the wise patriarch of my clan. In perfect seriousness his wrinkled face gazed upon his blooming ones. "Peace," said he in his calm low voice. All noise from the circle ceased and engaging eyes peered up to the strong ancient. I peered with genuine interest upon my father's wisened countenance. Upon my father's face beamed pride in sons well loved.
"Time and your training has reached a point wherein you must be tested," said he, "therefore a journey is embarked upon. You shall travel in a group that all may return safely." "One leader among you will carry the directions to guide you," he said while raising a paper of old brittleness. "Depend upon him for the trail to success. This leader must be the one with the greatest courage among you. Upon his shoulders the reponsibility my sons' lives will rest." The worn legs of his old body flexed with steady power as he rose. His massive figure towered like a mighty redwood among bushes. Around the circle his eyes in their worn sockets moved. Young boys gazed up at their father with gaping mouths.
Finally my brother with the sandy hair rose to the side of my father. Though was much shorter than my father he stared firmly into my father's pleased eyes and said with a conviction strong enough to challenge the foundations of a mountain saying, "I will lead."
Gazes of agreement passed between the rest of us who were upon the ground. Smiles were upon our faces and love beamed up to our brother with the sandy blond hair. The massive hands of my father set the withered parchment into my brother's waiting hand. A wide and sincere grin of love stole across my aged progenitor's visage. My father's arms of strength and power engulfed my oldest brother lifting him from the ground.
As my father turned to me my senior brother exited through the canvas opening. I pressed my soft hands into the warm earth and rose to my feet. Bursting into my father's arms, I squeezed him with all of my strength. I felt the softness of his clothes against my cheek and in the palms of my hands. I smelled the odors which were his. I felt at home and at peace in his arms.
The musty scent of dust prevaded upon my nostrils. The thick cloud of sleep slid from my mind. I felt the warmth of a leather cloth, the hardness of the shaven floor, the wrinkled folds of my woven shirt beneath me, the tangled knots of my filthy hair pressed into the hard stone, the stirring form of another body beside me, and the calloused feet of another body pressed upon the crown of my head. I lay upon my side with the leather folds draped over me. I lazily extended my neck to try repositioning the offending foot. The hairs of my head only served to irritate the foot though giving myself a sudden jar to the head. I moaned amid silent curses as I pulled a weary hand from beneath the smooth cloth to nurse my aching head. My knees bent and I slid my body towards my feet. I rolled into a tight ball and tucked my head under the blanket.
Within my tight bag of leather I crouched upon my side. The reins of sleep no longer lead my thoughts and I lay beneath the warm skin of leather. My thoughts drifted to the night. The blinding force of waking loosened memory's grasp and an imcomprehensable nothingness filled my mind.
My nose wrinkled in soft, slow folds and I first opened my drained eyes. A light band of beige with ran vertically before my newly adjusted eyes. Out from between the worn edges of my protecting blanket soft light reflected off the blanketed side of a slumbering neighbor. The roughly leveled stone floor lay covered with a level of dust and stone filings.
I pressed my soft fingers into the pits of my eyes to cleanse them of night's residue. My arm, elevated from my body revealed through the opened cover the insides of a hollowed niche of stone. I gazed from exhausted eye sockets at the pocked ceiling. A rude surface of chinks and chisel holes hovered within my wearied arm's arc. Pulling the blanket from over my bared legs I dropped it upon the cloaked form behind me. I rolled forthwards gazing directly towards the light, stone-speckled granite face. Irregularities in the fractured stone cast long shadows towards my feet.
Flickering light streamed from the entrance above my head to fill the tight cavern with warm yellow light. The rigid forms of my gaunt arms raised toward the ceiling trembling in a yawning strain. With palms out my arms stretched and I pulled deep breaths of damp, cool air into my lungs. Ragged, protruding bits of shorn rock pressed against my waking fingers as they strained into life. The stone was cold and flaky causing bits and cracks of dust to fall into the air when I touched it.
Trunk muscles tensed and my head elevated. I relaxed with my head above the body level and my torso's weight upon my elbows. From side to side my head rotated scannnning the room. A far wall of randomly chipped and shattered rock stood nearly five body lengths away and bore the silhouette of my protruding head upon it's cragged surface. Rows of sleeping, leather-blanketed men stretched to the dark-shrouded side walls. As I turned my drowsy face behind me and leaned upon one arm I saw the source of the light.
An iron faceted torch sat bolted heavily to the sheer stone wall of a passageway. A minute portal, barely encompassing the breadth of a man's shoulders, lay open releasing the strong rays of the flaming beacon into the midst of the night-shrouded cavern. Corners nearest the opening and torch were cast into complete jet blackness. Three covered slumberers prostrated themselves ungracefully between the exit and myself.
Other people had begun to awake and glance about in sleep caused dazzlement. They saw me and the torch as if solutions to some ancient riddle. I rose my body to roll about completely onto crouching knees. My head, bowed low, hovered near the ceiling as it searched for a method to exit.
Onto the small bare patch of chilled stone between the man whom I had irritated and his unconscious neighbor I pressed a smooth palm. I rose off of my knees and began to move from my bed in a crouched crawl. My ragged thin-cloth shirt stretched as I strained to reach another palm position. I placed my hand next to my head's neighor's shoulder and my foot next to his right side. His face was smeared with coal dust and he lay with his left thumb in his mouth. Strain upon my face to refrain from collapsing upon him hovered a foot above his own drooling one. The man ahead of the dirty-faced one has rolled to oneside leaving an opened crawlspace.
As I moved over the thumb-sucking one the man nearest the entrance rose from his bed. He strained and glanced about before climbing out the carved hole. Another man who had slept in a shadow-shrouded corner poked his scraggly-haired form into the torchlight. He looked over questioningly to me, who was kneeling in the crawl space, turned his head out towards the exit and stepped into the full light. Upon his left shoulder was nothing but a lump, but his right arm was a muscle bound tool of force. He rotated his fleshy shoulders and disappeared out the exit.
Through my knees I felt the jagged points of the irrregular stone floor. I brushed bits of fractured stone from my knee and moved again. The man who had rolled to the side was softly snoring. I suspected that he had been dreaming of a special aquaintence of his long ago. I crawled with hands and toes along the crouched room. I scraped my bare back upon the ceiling as I went and instinctively droped to my knees. The frame of the exit was roughly rectangular andwell worn with deep scrapes and gouges.
I pressed my hands at last onto the bottom of the door frame. As I moved before the portal, the room behind me was shrouded in darkness. Shoulders scraped and slid upon the sides of the exitway. My head was bathed in the light of the flaming torch in the new hallway. As head, shoulders, trunk and legs emerged from the chamber the floor quaked and a mighty rumbling sound came from somewhere deep in a far-off passageway. Rock shards danced upon the floor and cave dust sifted down from the ceiling. The torch in front of me flickered unremittantly on.
My worried eyes shot about the cavern. I cowered against the wall in mild terror. Within my mind visions of tumbling rock and collapsing air flashed momentarily. Through rapid breathing I sat at the base of the wall. Jagged edges upon the wall gouged through my sack cloth shirt and prodded my bare back. My frame quaked with a chill breeze which stole down the long passage.
The entance's torch, now within arms length, glowed warmly. My terrorous thoughts burned away as I gazed into the hypnotically soothing flame. The torch was bound with a wide rim of iron fastened with ponderous bolts into a circular iron plate upon the wall. Struck through the plate beneath the torch were many large, scarred bolts around the lower edges in a semicircle.
The dimensions of this hallway were more finely hewn than the last. The walls extended farther upwards than in the previous cave to roughly the height of a man. The torch, with it's base neary a foot from the ground, sat adjacent to the sleeping vault's entrance. Roughly smooth shaven floor pressed against my ragged loin cloth.
I pressed my arm against the back wall and rose to my feet. The hall continued toward the right, but was completely shrouded in darkness. Down the left hall was a long dark expanse and then a torch at the end of the hall. Curiosity tugged me toward the dark passage, but the warm flickering light beckoned me towards the lit hallway.
I stretched my legs straight and stretched (). I began a few tired steps toward the torch at the end of the lit passage. At the end of that passage was a branching. Another darkened passage lay to the left turning abruptly right into darkness. The passsage to the right was a longer hallway with several torches along the way sometimes in pairs. One gleaming torch was at the end of the hallway.
I as I walked down this hallway the walls and floors became more increasingly smoothed and worn. Dark unlighted corridors lead off to the right and left. At the end of the hall the final torch gleamed brightly and the hall turned right.
A long room stretched before my eyes. Large roughly rectangular stone pillars, double the width of a man, jutted from the floor down the middle of the room. Their surfaces, unevenly hewn, held murky dancing shadows. The end of the cavern in which I stood was painted with shadows. Torches burned farther down the cavern, but dim cast light bathed my end of the room. Ashen torches, long since put still clung with metal fingers to the walls near me. Only the torch which burned from the hallway behind me gave light cutting into the murky depths.
Through the dim light I could see thin elongated troughs, nearly the height of a man, along the walls near the floor. Mounds of damp substance were piled in them peaking over the edges. Shadows stretched along the floor moved in tandem with other souls in the room. Their contrasted silhouettes against the gleaming colors of the torches moved in groups. There were groups of men near me in the darkened part of the room.
I walked to the right of the large pillar directly before me. With his shoulder pressed into the pillar, a hunched man leaned. His ragged head was turned away from the light and faced toward the ground wearliy. As I passed him his hand came abruptly to his mouth and a ragged rasping cough escaped his mouth shaking his weary frame. Men were bent over troughs noisily shoving the slop into their mouths. men lay on the floor in corners and sprawled out over the cold stone floor. In sorry groups against walls they sat. Some men would glance over at the torches, grimace slightly, and turn to the nearest trough to gorge themselves. I carefully placed my bared feet upon the ragged stone of the floor to avoid disturbing these shadowed men.
As I passed another large pillar surrounded my filthy men I accidentally brushed up against a man who had been near the torches and was moving towards the shadowed troughs.
"Sorry," said he in a mumbled voice as he hurried with his head drooped toward the nearest trough. I saw fewer men lying upon the floor as I reached the middle of the room. Here many men shuffled nervously toward the dark. Some men leaned against the walls to either side watching from a distance the flames of the flickering torches bolted to the stone face.
As I walked I saw a small slight man push off from the wall to my right and walk just behind me. My footsteps guided me toward to lighted end of the room where many men were leaned up against the rocky walls gazing at the torches and talking. As I neared the furthest trough the man directly behind me slowed. As I turned to look at him he slowly turned his face toward the shadows and shuffled off.
I turned back to the trough and was met by a tall man with dark hair. He was a younger man with vibrant eyes and stong build. His erect frame stood before me and his head nearly touched the cieling.
"Welcome" he said in a warm voice, "won't you join us?" He gestured to the others in his group with his arm. The others in his group looked out at me as he stepped back to his spot against the wall.
I noticed how few men there were around these small torches. A face in the group caught my eye as I glanced about at them. His expression seemed to speak words to me and his eyes held me perplexed. It was his fair face draped over by his uniquely light brown hair that whispered something to my memory. I nervously looked back at the shadowed men behind me who seemed so numerous. They stared back at me with their restless gaping eyes mocking me. I turned back toward the light, but felt their hot projecting gazes upon my back. I was about to take a place on the wall when my nerve failed me and I quickly turned and shuffled into the shadows.
I passed beyond the middle pillar and sat against it facing the soiled faces of the men by the next pillar. The tender soles of my feet pressed into the dust and rock filth upon the cavern floor. I lowered my head and stared through the dim reflected light at my feet.
At length I hungered and the movement of men near the feeding troughs drew my attention. A man who had newly emerged from the entrance tunnel moved to the first trough before glancing about. He casually squatted to the side of the rudely formed bin and reached to pull out a small scrap. It was in his mouth before he glanced at it with further bits following. He then dropped to his knees and pressed his head and face down to the pile of food and gorged himself.
The man next to him pulled up some scraps and held them out to men coming from the entrance. His peering gaze turned toward me and he held some dangling strands out before him. I held my hand out to recieve them. Their surface was slimy and rancid.
The food had some good parts to it, but there were dark lumpswhich tasted sour and rotten. I think I could have seen which were the bad pieces were had I been in the light of the torch behind me. I heard talking in selected groups around me. the group around the torch in the opposite end of the room talked in a midtone voice letting everyone speak.
Much of the men around me talked about why they were there. None of the men could remember anything of yesterday including myself.
"Are we're gonna be here for the rest of our lives?" said one man.
"‹for however long we live. I've heard men being killed soon after they leave here,"another man said, "The guards, they can kill you whenever they feel like it."
"One way or another our lives are over as it is. We live and then die nothing matters here. I'm gonna do whatever can get away with. If I get caught and killed some day it's only the better for me." The third man leaned back against the wall with a cynical look on his face.
"I don't want to die. I think there's a way you can get out of here through the upper tunnels," the second man began.
"Don't be a fool. There's nothing up there. I've been out there for a long time. Men have escaped and searched the tunnels. There is no way out. This is all that life is now for us," and he pointed his finger around the room.
I just sat quietly listening to this debate. I didn't quite know what to believe. I hadn't seen anything yet. I was confused and unsure where I was. the third man was so resolute and sounded like he was experienced.
Then as I sat there our group of men rose to their feet. Those were the only men I had known, so I was content to follow them for the time being. The second man in our conversation stayed propped against the wall as we left. We moved toward the light and then turned left down a musty, worn tunnel. The walls had torches on them about every fifteen feet to light our way. The tunnel floor was worn roughly smooth from men's feet upon it.
We came to a small room with a few torches on the walls. It had many different tools in it leaned up against the walls. There were pick axes, hammers mallets. It seemed to me that there were so many to choose from that I wanted to choose the one just right for me. When I chose my tool and the other men had chosen theirs.
We left the room out the opposite side from which we came. We stepped into what looked like a long hallway with very irregular cielings. there was a set of rails upon the ground running perpendicular to the direction we had just entered. The walls were hollowed outward to either side of the rails. Men lay or knelt down upon the ground scattered along the walls with their tools. They used their tools to hammer away at the rock and cut pieces from it.
Our group turned to the left and began to walk down the rails. They became unusually silent as they walked. We had gone no more than five feet when I saw the guard. He was a large man, but he was skinny. He had a sabre type sword under a dirty crimson cloth tied about his waist. Other than this he wore the same garb as the prisoners.
He stood by the tracks with his arms folded glaring at the working men. The hatred in his eyes was horrible. He looked at us with the ultimate spite and loathing. He was not the only guard either. directly at his side were three other guards with equally ugly expressions upon their faces.
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