Lemurian City of Ladies

The girl slid into a deep niche as shuffling footsteps went past. She didn’t look; she knew better. It was enough to know that there was something out there and that she didn’t want it to see her. Finally the steps receded in the distance and she stepped silently out into the hallway again, brushing the dust off her clothing. Fortunately, that niche had been an old one, and the remains in it were long since dried out and crumbling. The newer ones could be a bit smelly and unpleasant.

Carefully, the girl took out a hoarded match and lit the stub of the candle she always carried with her. Shielding the tiny flame from the draft, she set out down the narrow corridor. She had a long way to go and needed to move quickly and stay vigilant.

She knew the path well; she took it almost every night. At first she had had to mark the correct corridors with tiny chalk marks, but now she didn’t need the reminders. Her feet knew the way all by themselves. The only reason she needed the light and her eyes was to watch for new obstacles and dangers that might appear. The tiny light didn’t seem to attract the creatures down here in the omnipresent darkness of the catacombs. Most of them used other senses to find their prey.

Wrapping her shawl carefully around her head and over her mouth and nose to keep out the worst of the dust and mold, she set out. The shallow niches to either side hid their contents in darkness, but the girl was not worried about those. Their residents were long dead and gone and no more worry to her. The things that concerned her out here would be wandering the same hallways she was or hiding in the deeper niches. The rooms she needed to cross were another matter.

She came to the first of the several rooms in her path. Peering around the corner into the darkness, shielding her tiny candle with her palm, she looked for tell-tale signs in the dust on the floor – new scuff marks, debris, splatters of blood or flesh. Seeing none, she crossed the room quickly, darting into a narrow crevasse on the other side. She breathed a sigh of relief; that first room was frequently occupied. More than once she had had to extinguish her flame and hide until a denizen of that room went off in search of more prey.

She listened before she continued into the small crack that led to the next corridor. Before she found this natural cave, she had had to traverse a long stretch of the catacombs that was home to quite a few unpleasant creatures – and while they were small, they were all carnivorous and attacked in packs. They were a problem in the older sections of the catacombs, like this one, where people seldom went. They avoided the newer parts.

The coast was clear, and the girl continued on. A few more bends, a small leap over a crack in the floor, and she was looking into the next room. She didn’t like this room either. It was quite old, and while the remains of the occupants had become no more than a few bones and a lot of dust long before, the spirits here were restless. All had died on gallows or gibbet or deep within the torture chambers in the dungeons of the palace. All had been high born and still been buried here rather than in a potter’s field, but all had died badly as criminals or traitors. Some of the spirits here wanted forgiveness, but most wanted revenge. A few wanted their lives back. One had tried to take her over once and she still remembered the dreadful feeling as the angry spirit of a murdering noble tried to force her out of her own body. A few others still fed on the misery and fear of living beings and these scared her the most; they would isolate her and inundate her with fearful images until all she could do was weep in a corner while they feasted. They would keep her there until she died, paralyzed with the grief or terror that they caused. There were several sets of remains in the room that bore silent witness to this. They had almost caught her one time – but almost, and only once. When she had holy water, she sprinkled it over herself before she entered the room to keep them at bay, but she had run out last week and still hadn’t had time to get any more.

This time the dash across the room did not go as it should. The girl missed seeing a bit of freshly fallen stone from the ceiling in the middle of the floor and went sprawling. Her candle-stub flew from her hand and went out as she landed on the hard, gritty floor. Immediately, she could feel the spirits converging on her prone form – some moaning and sobbing and others hissing greedily. She scrambled to her feet and fled in the direction she knew the exit had to be. She ran headlong into the wall on the far side of the room and felt her way along it dizzily until she came to the crack that she was seeking. Jamming herself through the opening with the spirits right behind her, she wiggled along until she was out of their range; they stayed close to their old bodies, bones and dust though they were. Something brushed up against her leg in the darkness, and she stifled a scream. A rat, she thought as she heard a scurrying sound. It was only a rat.

She gave the candle up as lost. Perhaps she’d pick it up another night. She wiggled down the crack in the complete darkness until she came to the next corridor and then pulled out her backup candle stub. She had learned the hard way to keep an extra one with her. One more precious match and she could see again.

She turned left at the next intersection – the catacombs to the right were flooded now, with the rains falling and the river high. She liked that route in dry weather, because it was quicker and safer.

The girl was half way done. She followed the bends and twists of this hallway, walking silently and listening all the while. A shuffling sound was coming her way and she needed to hide. The only niches here were shallow ones, bad for hiding in. She blew out the candle and pressed back against the stone shelf, trying to quiet her breathing. She realized, as the noise grew closer, that she was not hidden. Trying not to cry, she levered herself up on the shelf with the dusty bones and lay atop them. Some ribs were pushing into her back and her head was vying for space with the skull. A mandible pushed into her ear, leaving tooth marks there. The shuffling grew closer and closer. It paused by the niche she was hiding in and she held her breath. Then whatever it was grunted and shuffled on past. She let out her breath silently and waited for the count of one hundred after the sound receded before she slipped off the shelf. A bone fell off with her, and she stood frozen, listening for anything that might have heard the noise coming to investigate it. Another count of one hundred and nothing happened, so she picked up the bone and placed it carefully on the shelf with its fellows, whispering a thank you to whoever had owned those bones in life. She took out her candle and lit it with the last of her matches. She looked at the name on the plaque above the shelf and smiled – the bones belonged to a distant ancestor of her own. No wonder they had kept her safe.

Still smiling, she navigated the corridors until she came to the last room she needed to cross. This one wasn’t dangerous, it was just sad. It held the mortal remains of a large family that had died tragically in a house fire. The room was filled with moans and screams as the spirits who were unable to let go of this world relived their last tortured moments. She whispered a prayer as she crossed, to send the spirits off to the peace of the afterlife. Sometimes she thought that did some good; there seemed to be fewer spirits screaming in agony in here these days.

A quick run down a hallway that led past a sealed plague-room, where remains of plague victims lay and few sad and confused spirits still lingered, and then a wiggle through another natural crevice in the wall opposite the bricked-off archway, and she was almost through.

After a few more twists and turns of the next hallway and she was in the new section of the catacombs. It smelled a bit more in here, but the danger was less. There were still a few spirits to avoid, and a few rats darted along the walls, but the nastier creatures didn’t come here, where living people still came regularly.

The girl found a particular niche and blew out her candle-stub. Down on her hands and knees, she crawled into a small opening under the shelf and through a small tunnel. She emerged in the sewers. It was raining hard, and the water in the channel was running high, but it was cleaner than usual. Avoiding the larger puddles on the ledge, she quickly made her way to the opening closest to her home.

The girl stopped before she exited from the sewers. She looked around carefully and listened for a while. This was the most dangerous part of her trip home from work every night – the last four blocks in the pitch dark of the city night, through the narrow stinking alleyways and filthy streets of the Beggar’s Quarter. She felt safer navigating the catacombs with all their dangers than she did walking the streets here after dark. But Mother and a hot dinner waited for her and her meager wages, just a few blocks away. She took a deep breath and climbed out from the eternal night of the catacombs and sewers into the true darkness of the night time city streets.

-She Wolf © 2008