The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [116]
The river opened out onto a pebbly strand, where a tide of water lapped, and rose and fell, quietly enough, a pink and grey frill. Thomas could not see the other side of the tide, whose surface shimmered endlessly before him, but he did see that it was not grey, but red, like blood, or perhaps was blood. There were neither sun nor moon in that evenly slate-grey overarching roof. The horse stepped forward without hesitation into the bloody tide and walked on, lifting its proud feet delicately. And soon it was in knee-deep, and occasionally breast-deep. And Thomas saw that the blood appeared to stain the white coat, and then dripped off fetlock and silver hoof, leaving no permanent mark. And they went on in this way for what seemed to Thomas not hours, nor days, but weeks, with a sullen water-roaring in his ears, and flat grey and crimson ripples before his eyes.
They came to another strand, in the end (or I should have no further tale to tell) and the horse stepped out on the fine sand. It shone golden, and before Thomas’s eyes was a long beach, and cliffs of white chalk, covered with fine green turf, and white gulls swooping and crying, and a few woolly sheep balanced on the cliff-edge, munching the low bushes that grew there. The cliff-walls were riddled with caverns, out of some of which little rivulets ran, cutting edged tracks in the sand, meandering round pebbles. Thomas looked back, and there, a space out at sea, was a red line which was the edge of the blood, and a great wall, like a looming sea-fret, which was the edge of the grey world, through and beyond which nothing could be seen at all.
“This is my own country,” said the Elf, dismounting and helping down Thomas. “And here we must part, for although I live under the hill, I cannot go with you underground, where you must now go. I will give you my satchel of food, and the water bottle which was filled at the spring in my orchard, where I hope in time you will come. The right way in—one of the ways in, for there are many—is through the central one of those three slits you see in the cliff-face. You must wind your way in and down, in and down to where the Dark Elf and the rat are waiting. The way is long—walking, scrambling, climbing, crawling. The mine-tunnels down there are populated with all sorts of creatures, human and inhuman, ancient and very young and lost. You will find help and companions—so much I can see—and you will meet dangerous things, and wild things, some of which She will have sent, and some of which have their own concerns, nothing to do with Elves, or rats, or shadows. You will do well to travel with others, but you must choose your companions wisely for there are wicked things down there that seem reasonable and friendly at first sight.
“I have three gifts for you. The first is a light which will shine in the darkness—it is made of elvish fireflies, enclosed in a glass, which will spin into flaring brightness, briefly, if you shake them and whisper to them the words ‘Alfer Light.’ I advise you most earnestly to let no one know that you have this glass—or any of these things. The second is an imperfect map of the tunnels that lead to the dark court. It has been made by Light Elves, many of whom perished in the passages, and we do not know—for no one has survived who knows—how accurate it is, or how many major branches are not recorded. If you could mark on it where it goes wrong, and where it is of help, other later travellers will be grateful.
“The third thing is another thing even I do not perfectly understand. It is a little brass case in which is suspended—we do not know how, or by what physics, or magic—a