3
Their voices rose in unison and toward the same shrill octave, and the note reverberated off the cavernous ceiling before shooting straight back into their ears, filling them up as if stuffed with cotton. Also in unison, Alyssa and Chalayne made a motion to turn around and run back up the spiral stairs, but the voice sharply cut through their yelling and said,
“Don't!”
This silenced them both. And then there was a long, drawn out pause before the shadowed figure made a quick move into the light and, more than silencing them, the motion made the girls choke on their intense fear. They remained frozen in place as they watched the person move into the light.
The lady's hair definitely was knotted, but grey and not black. And her eyes were large and penetrating, but of a light blue, or even grey like her hair; and they were kind, not evil.
“Welcome.” she said, a bemused expression upon her face. She looked from one girl to the other, and then back again. “You seem to have screamed yourselves hoarse? Well, in that case,” she moved closer toward the girls, who drew back automatically. She smiled, and with a touch of encouragement in her eyes, she repeated, “Well, in that case, I will introduce myself first, though it is proper for the guests of a home to announce themselves upon arrival. . . Especially when uninvited.”
Alyssa looked to Chalayne and saw that Chalayne looked as unsure as she felt. Neither of them knew what to make of the lady yet.
“My name is Salyne. I am an artist who works in paint and stone, mostly, and you have found me run away from much distraction to this subterranean hollow. I've always fantasized about living in one—since I was around your age, in fact. Ever since I read The Hobbit, I suppose.” The lady smiled, and looked as if at this moment she would gladly take a hand to clasp warmly if one were extended to her, but neither Chalayne nor Alyssa moved. To break the unabated hesitance, she added, “I work in paints and stone, girls; I will not harm you for experiment. Organic mammalian matter is not my medium of choice.” At this she couldn't help herself from laughing. “Oh, do loosen up you two. It is the least you could do to hold up your end of the conversation, now that you have broken into my home.”
“We didn't mean to disturb you. We were only curious.” Chalayne offered.
“I know you were. I've been watching your return to the fields for the last three weeks. I was watching you tonight, too. I was hoping you might summon the courage to scamper in; it's why I left the door unlocked.” Salyne said.
“You were watching us?” Alyssa asked, incredulous.
“Oh, not all night. I had many things to occupy myself with, and you two weren't doing much to hold my attention.” She laughed lightly again at Alyssa's indignant expression, and then she invited the two girls to follow her farther into her home, walking toward the curtain through which she first emerged and sweeping it gracefully aside to reveal a doorway which appeared to open into a kitchen. Again the two girls exchanged meaningful looks and, guessing at their thought process, Salyne said, “You can leave if you'd like, of course. But I thought you might like to see more? You did seem so curiously enraptured by the stone facade upstairs.”
For the first time since climbing through the window, Chalayne began to feel herself relax. She felt she could trust this person. She smiled and nodded and said she would like to see more, and she swiftly marched across the room and, with a sheepish grin flashed at the lady, she passed under the curtain and found herself in a brightly painted kitchen. It was as wide as the room she just left, but only half as long, though that still made it considerably spacious. The floor tiles were small and regular, painted white, and the walls were a nice yellow, like that of a yellow rose. There was an expansive island counter set between a cast iron oven on one side, and a wash basin on the other. A few stools were set around the island. Its top was a thick sheet of granite. Alyssa followed resignedly behind Chalayne, and Salyne entered last.
“Well then, have yourselves a seat, and I'll make some tea. Then I'd like to hear all about the cause for the intrigue you felt toward my house.”
And so that's what Chalayne did: she told Salyne all about her own boring house, and her strict parents and predictable neighbours. She told Salyne about how her future was already set, determined by her parents, and how she couldn't remember the last conversation she had had that had moved beyond questions of common courtesy. She lamented how in school the teachers didn't allow her to adopt any approach that might lead her to ideas and answers outside the curriculum as they taught it, and how multiple choice exams made her want to tear her hair out (“because they try to make the straightforward material more difficult simply by tricking you with the wording, and that shouldn't be what the class is about!”). She admitted that when she was younger, she had been supported in her desire to perform in the school plays (though she now has no time for drama class since entering junior high, because her parents want her to focus on getting educated in areas that will gain her acceptance into a 'practical' college program).
To all this Salyne listened quite intently, her left hand cupping her chin, and her right holding close her mug of tea. When Chalayne seemed to have run out of things to say, and not before, she said,
“Oh I understand perfectly, my dear. You're quite right to want to venture out from the norm from time to time. I felt the same way at your age. I still feel that way, in fact. It's probably one of the more pervading occupations of my thoughts.”
Alyssa sat beside the two, listening vaguely as she tried to keep herself from nodding off. After all, this whole business was Chalayne's thing—she had only come because she was a good friend. No, she did not share Chalayne's need to escape from her life; she quite enjoyed her life, even the regularity of it.
“Now, I'm sorry if what you ultimately found—me—is a little anticlimactic. I am only a person—and only some sort of similar creature could live in a house, after all. Though I do invite you over to pick my brains from here on, however often you may wish. I do not shy away from scrutiny, in that regard.”
“Why do you live underground, again?” Alyssa suddenly butt in, her eyes, for the brief moment it took to ask the question, snapping completely open. Salyne eyed Alyssa with that same bemused expression she wore when first laying eyes upon the girls, in the other room, and she watched even as she prepared to answer as Alyssa's attention began to slip away again, to the backs of her eyelids. But she answered all the same.
“I suppose it's because I feel as if it suits me much better than the world above. Paradoxically, within these walls I feel my imagination runs freer.” She took a sip of her tea. “Maybe because the other world feels so far away down here. So unaffecting. I find its influence on me, over my life, has been mostly negative, and for very many of the same reasons Chalayne seems so affected by it. I felt stifled.”
With a slight scoff tempered by her exhaustion, Alyssa signalled that she remained unconvinced, and her eyelids drooped more heavily. It was about three in the morning, by now, and thus her tiredness was to be expected, and Salyne let her despondence go at that, though she added under her breath,
“I simply don't speak the common language of the day, I think is what it comes down to.”
Chalayne, though falling asleep too, heard her and smiled faintly up from where her head lay in her folded arms placed upon the counter.
“Anyway, it's getting late.” Salyne declared, and she stood up from her stool. “I have a spare mattress you two can share for the night, and then you can be off on your way tomorrow morning. Sound good?” The two girls nodded with as much enthusiasm as the late night hour would allow. With blurry eyes and heavy feet they followed Salyne through another door on the other side of the kitchen, to a bedroom which seemed to radiate velvet green: the walls were green and made almost iridescent by the light drifting in from the kitchen, as was the bedding on the mattress. After taking off their shoes and socks, Alyssa and Chalayne climbed into bed, and Salyne said good night to them both and went to her own bedroom.
In the morning Salyne showed them out through a secret 'rabbit hole', as she called it, which she had installed as a sort of secret security measure.
“Plus it's just fun to emerge from the ground pretending that you're a bunny. Here, try it.” She sent them both up through the hole with carrots, and they climbed with the carrot sticks held between their front teeth so that they could use both hands on the ladder.
They made short work of packing their tent and rolling their sleeping bags, and then they walked their bikes to the road. From the road, Chalayne stared back at the black stone hovel which appeared so haphazardly assembled around that perfectly cut window, though she now knew its design had not been haphazard at all. The sky was bright blue with not a cloud in sight, and though the massive tree in front of the odd structure was blanketing it in shade as dense as ever, Chalayne found the house to have a different colour, now.
“It doesn't look so gloomy anymore.” she said.
“I suppose not.” Alyssa agreed with only slight interest, glancing back at the place quickly, as if only to humour her friend.
“It looks even brighter, somehow. Not as black. Not as scary as it looked last night.” Chalayne continued.
“That's true.” Alyssa said, mounting her bike. “Let's get going though. I kind of feel weird knowing she might be watching us.”
“You didn't like her?” Chalayne asked, surprised.
“Are you kidding? I knew anyone who lived in that place would be no good. She was just strange. And weird. And creepy. Through and through.” Alyssa said.
“No she wasn't! She was just. . . different.”
-the end-
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