That’s going to take some really tricky thinking, that is! he thought to himself.
But the immediate task now was to locate Mary, give her whatever immediate aid he could and then, with that done, they could take stock and figure out things from there.
He swallowed all of his worries and doubts and pressed on. Miraculously, he still had his trusty torch, but its weakly flickering beam did little to add any illumination of his environs. The glowing grey cloud above him cast but a very dull light and although there were several other fires flickering here and there around the cavern, the somber light from these was more like the last dying embers from near-burnt-out coals.
I do hope there isn’t a tribe of savage, man-eating Cave-men, or Troglodytes down here! he thought grimly to himself.
There were several stalagmite columns he had to navigate past and avoid as he weaved his way towards where he’d last heard Mary call from, so he thought he’d best call out again and ensure he was heading in the right direction still.
“I’m not far off now, Mary,” he yelled. “Can you shout out to me again, it’s very gloomy down here and difficult to see anything at all. Are you still all right?”
“Yes, I’m all right, Roj; Well, at least… sort of. I’ll explain when you get here.”
Roger sighed with relief, he was heading roughly in the right direction and so trudged on.
But it was in fact lucky he had paused and not just rushed on, regardless. As he took a few further cautious paces and turned slightly to his left, to head more directly toward Mary’s voice, his foot suddenly trod onto… thin air.
He barely kept his balance and played the beams of his torch over the ground, right where he’d been about to step. He gasped in horror. There, just to his right, was a large gash in the ground; a deep, dark split in the cavern floor. How deep he had no idea. And he didn’t want to know. If he hadn’t stopped when he had and then turned slightly, as he had done, then right now he’d be at the bottom of that narrow chasm to nowhere. He’d be lost and dead for sure!
“Oh, my Leaping Leonardo da Vinci!” he swore, appalled, sweat breaking out on his brow and his heart hammering loudly in his chest.
He traced the edge of the long crack with his torch and saw that several yards further on to his left; the crack narrowed. He carefully picked his way across the rubble-strewn floor, following the line of the chasm’s ragged edge, until after only a few yards, the crack had narrowed down to a split only a foot across. He then just stepped across, half expecting it to suddenly expand and gulp him down into the bowels of the Under-Erf.
But instead, he was safely across.
Whew! Well that was a lucky break! he thought, and continued cautiously on his way, intent on his chivalrous mission to rescue his friend, Mary Maddam; And this time taking extra care to ensure there were no more hidden cracks waiting for him to fall into.
Away on the far side of the narrowed crack, he could see that he was very nearly there. Just a hundred feet away, he could just dimly make out a large mound of rocks, with an area right by them that glowed, as if from burning red coals. These helped guide him on his way, as it was from that very mound, next to those glowing coals, that Mary had been calling from. He made his way towards them as fast as he dared.
“Hello there, Roger, so nice of you to drop in!”
He looked around startled and gave a great gasp. There, by the middle of the rock-mound, lay Mary. She was lying on her back, propped up against what looked like a huge jumble of boulders on the floor, and despite her cheery greeting, she seemed in pain. Roger could see she was torn and tattered and was tightly holding onto her ankle with both hands.
She was obviously putting as brave a face on things as she could. He could see she’d been crying, from the tell-tale tracks of her tears, running down her soot-stained cheeks.
Her eyes though still blazed bright defiance in the redly glowing gloom of the smoky, cathedral-like chamber of the cavern. Her pretty round face now lit up with a wide and welcoming grin of recognition, as Roger joyously ran towards her.
“Wh-wh-what on Erf…?” he said, hardly being able to speak. But then he calmed himself and gathered his wits. And his relief gushed out in a barely controlled torrent of questions.
“By Thomas Edison’s Ten Toes, Mary, I’m happy to see you. I really am. But, are you hurt? What has happened to you? How did you end up down here? And how did you survive that fall?”
He saw she was lying propped up against a particularly large boulder and sitting pretty much right in the middle of the cloud-covered cavern. He still didn’t understand how she’d made it… and survived. It seemed nothing short of a miracle.
“I’m all right, Roger, really. I’ve just twisted my ankle and stuff is all,” she told him.
“Mavis here saved my life!” she continued. “But, oh, goodness, I’m pleased to see you, Roj. Seems like I’ve been down here for hours and hours. But I knew you’d come for me!”
Roger thought she was just babbling now. “What is she on about? A ‘Mavis’ saving her!” he thought, “But she’s probably still recovering from the shock,” he quickly decided.
Then, without warning, the large rock behind Mary suddenly moved and a quick flash of orangey-red flame, along with a great gout of grey smoke, erupted from out of it.
Roger jumped back and screamed, “Mary, quick, we’ve got to run for it. There’s something here in these rocks! And it… c-c-could be a giant… well, anything, in this dangerous sort of a place!”
But then the rock suddenly moved again, and this time, two very large and heavily lidded, reptilian eyes blinked open, and shone out with a yellow, sulfurous light, and looked piercingly and directly, right at Roger.
“Oh, my Dizzy Diogenes!” Roger yelled. “Quick, Mary! For Science’s Sake, move!”
Mary just laughed. “It’s all right, Roger, this is Mavis, and she’s a good Dragon,” she said calmly, casually introducing the Dragon to him as if she were an old and dear family friend. “She caught me and broke my fall with one of her huge wings. If she hadn’t, I don’t think I would have survived, Roj. I really owe her my life, you know!”
Mary looked up at Mavis, the Dragon, with much heartfelt and teary-eyed gratitude.
Roger looked at Mavis too. He was stunned into a disbelieving silence. He rubbed his eyes with grimy fists and blinked and gawked in confusion, then blinked again, but still, he saw what he saw.
Right there, right in front of him, loomed the unbelievable, inconceivable, unimaginable, but the indisputable presence of… a real live and actual, fire-breathing Dragon!
She was huge though, at least the size of three double-decker buses. And Roger could see that she was also a very lovely creature indeed; a beautiful, shimmering, red and gold dragon; occasionally belching out ruby-red flames; briefly erupting into the smoky clouds above their heads; And thereby giving the clouds and the cavern its eerie, red glow.
And she also seemed to be in some pain, as her breathing was very ragged and irregular; he could sense the deep anguish and pitiful pain in her heavy-lidded, amber eyes.
Those large, reptilian eyes stared steadily down at him as if stripping his very soul bare.
“B-b-but, d-d-dragons d-d-don’t exist!” was all he finally managed to stutter.
Mary laughed, although somewhat painfully, at the sight of poor Roger, standing there totally dumbstruck, with his smoke-stained face and his posh clothes all tattered and torn from his perilous journey to the underworld.
He stood there miraculously before her, with his dirty spotted handkerchief still over his mouth and nose and his bent, round glasses, glinting in the red flickering gloom of the smoke-filled cavern.