Stories for Another Day
Long ago, the second kingdom was ruled by darkness for many long years. Any of the people who complained or rebelled were imprisoned in deep underground caverns, so far beneath the earth that no light ever reached them. When the darkness was finally vanquished and light reigned in the second kingdom once more, the people dwelling in the caverns had long been forgotten. Their captors gone, they themselves had forgotten that they had once lived in the light. They married and had children and their children had no memory of what the light even was.
Once or twice a man or a child might venture along the path that led upwards towards the surface, but they always came back with terrifying tales of a great burning redness that scalded their eyes and burnt their skin, and no-one ever went a second time. They were content to live always inside the earth, eating worms and beetles, and any roots and bulbs that they found.
Although they could not see each other, or anything at all for that matter, they recognised each other and their surroundings by touch and by their extraordinarily sharp sense of hearing. Music and singing were their delight. Some of them were experts at sleep, and could entertain the others by the hour, by relating their dreams.
Now there was one young man, Marten, who was always full of questions. He knew that the world above was dangerous, ugly and filled with nothing but deadly, fiery heat, but he wanted to know how dangerous, how ugly, and how deadly it was. Questions and wondering bubbled in him like water boiling in a pan, until he couldn’t stand it any more. He had to find out for himself. So without telling anyone, he went and found the path leading to the surface, and started up it.
It rose slowly, uncoiling like a twisted root. At every corner, Marten expected to be scorched to a crisp where he stood, but when he finally came to the end of the path where the outside world began, he found thick curtains of vines, which blocked every scrap of light. When he pushed past them and stepped outside, he found himself in the most wonderful place.
It was a deep forest, with trees wider than a man could stretch both arms around, that had grown up over many long years. It happened that Marten had come out in the middle of the night rather than in the daytime. Thick, comforting darkness surrounded him, but above he could see the shining sliver of the moon, and a myriad of stars glinting among the treetops.
He wandered, awe-struck, in the forest, until he came to a clearing where he sat down with his back against a tree and simply gazed at the heavens above him. And so it happened that when the sun began to rise, Marten first saw it as a gentle glow, then colours such as he had never seen before, streaking the sky, and then a soft golden warmth.
For hours he sat there, bathed in light and colours and smells he had never known. He found the answers to questions he had never thought of, that sparked even more questions in him. Eventually he got up and went forward, out of the forest and into the world of light.
Days and weeks passed and Marten could hardly get his fill of wonders, sights and sounds, food, flowers, people dressed in bright colours, murmuring streams and wide rivers, and more animals and plants then he could ever dream existed. After a long time of wandering and learning, he began to think of his old home, and in particular of a girl called Tamsen. He wondered how she would look in the light, how her voice would sound without the thick muffling walls of earth on every side. So he made his way back to the forest and found the thick curtains of vines and slipped back between them.
When he reached the bottom of the path, his friends and family, who had long given him up for dead, came crowding around him, eager to know where he had been.
“He smells strange,” they said to each other. “His skin is hard and rough, and oddly warm.” And they stood back from him, afraid. One of them Jorden, said, “These strange smells that cling to him – what if he is bringing a sickness among us?”
“No,” said Marten. “I have been to a wonderful place, a new world, full of light and colour!”
“Colour?” they said to each other. “What is that?”
Marten took some things from his pockets to show them. “Tomatoes,” he said “warm from the sun. Taste them!”
Jorden bit into one and immediately spat it out. “Faugh! What is this foul thing?”
The others took the fruit and the nuts that Marten gave them and sniffed them, amazed. Tamsen took a bite of a ripe apricot and her face lit up with wonder. At last Marten took a rose from his pocket and held it up for her to smell. “Take care not to hurt yourself on the thorns,” he said, but Jordan grabbed it away from her.
“Arhh!” yelled Jorden, sucking his finger where a thorn had caught it. He threw the rose on the ground and trampled it into the dirt. “Dangerous, foul-smelling things – and Marten is bringing them among us! Get him! Lock him up! Let’s block up the pathway so no-one will go up to that evil place again!”
The people grabbed Marten and went to drag him away. “Wait!” he yelled. “First listen to this!” He took one last gift from his pockets, a small wooden flute, and he began to play. The people fell back, astonished and enchanted, then they crowded around eager to know how he made such beautiful sounds. Marten began to sing for them the songs he had heard up in the world of light, songs of valleys of ripened corn, and clear, sparkling rivers full of fish, songs of joy at the coming of spring, of longing as the leaves fell in autumn, of peace at sunset. The people wept, moved to the heart by the beauty of the music.
Tamsen put her hand in his. “I would like to see this place,” she said.
Turning, Marten led her up into the light.
A Wombat Named Benson 