Nearness

(This was for an assignment for my writer's group, for which stories are theoretically supposed to be about 500 words.  I almost never stay even close to that- I'm doing well to keep it below 1000, to tell you the truth.  And my first attempt at writing this was actually abandoned about 700 words in because I had not gotten nearly far enough with the narrative- so please forgive me if this seems a bit stunted.)

(It sprang up from an story seed I had regarding the other half of the rainbow being in the underworld, and I will most likely expand it one of these days...)

***

Once when I was a child I decided to follow the rainbow to its end.  It was further away than I’d expected, and it was only after several hours of chasing that I was able to track it down to a little canyon I’d never encountered before.  I saw the rainbow had come to rest between two boulders, and was so excited by the prospect of finally dancing at its end that I forgot to take care with my footing, and so tumbled to the ravine floor, smashing my left arm into a rock on the way down.

I lay there for several minutes, dazzled with pain and wondering how I’d be able to climb back up, before I noticed that I’d landed right next to the two boulders I’d spied from above.  Sure enough, the rainbow swept down between them, but now that I was so close I could see that it did not end there, but in fact had slipped into a crack in the earth.

The crack was too small for any adult to get through, but for a child of my size it was more than large enough.  And since I could not go up, I decided I might go down, holding my left arm awkwardly in my right.

It was fortunate that the rainbow was giving off a faint glow, because the interior of that crack was as dark as- well, as the underside of a rock.  But the further into the dark I went, the stranger the colors of the rainbow became- it was almost as though they were inverting themselves, or becoming their own shadows.  Whatever it was, within thirty yards of the crack, the rainbow had become colors I had no words for, colors that I had never seen before, nor since.

I began to grow uneasy, and glanced back over my shoulder to reassure myself with a glimpse of daylight.  Surely no harm could come to me so long as I could see my way back out.  As I was thinking this, I ran into someone, jarring my wounded arm in a way that made me feel nauseated.

I let out a cry of pain and collapsed at the pale feet of the other person.

“Oh!” the voice was sweet, but strangely hollow sounding- almost like wind across a large reed.  The young woman crouched down next to me, and I saw by the quality of her garment and the purity of her skin that she must be nobility.

“You feel pain,” she said it as though surprised, and reached out a hand as if to touch me.  She stopped just short of my shoulder, however, and I was glad of it.

“Yes, Lady,” I panted.  “I fell from the cliff and I think I may have broken my arm.”

“You are far from home, I think,”

“Yes Lady.  The rainbow led me here.”

She shook her head.  “This place is not for you.  If you had gone just a few steps further you would have lost sight of the light, and you would not have been able to go home at all.”  I felt a shiver that distracted me from the pain.

“Lady, the truth is that I don’t know that I’ll be able to go home, light or no.  I’m not sure where I am- and even if I was, I can’t climb back out again.”

She looked at me with dark eyes that reflected the strange inverted colors of the rainbow, and I thought she looked terribly sad.

“Perhaps this place is for you, after all,” she said.  I felt a tightening in my throat and knew that tears could not be far behind.  She sighed, and it was like the wind again- but this time like the wind through a pile of fallen leaves.

“But no,” she continued, as though to herself, “you can still feel pain- and the light is still within your reach.  I think I can send you back, this time.”

“But Lady, the canyon walls-“

“Are of no concern.  Close your eyes and do not open them until my messenger tells you that you may.”

I closed my eyes and felt a pair of arms wrap themselves around me.  Their touch did not hurt me, not even against my arm- they were warm and comforting as sunshine on a spring day.  Somehow I knew they were not the arms of the Lady: her arms surely would be cold as her breath upon my ear as she whispered,

“Good bye, mortal child.  We will meet again.”  And she kissed my cheek.

The arms tightened and I squeezed my eyes tighter, determined not to disobey the Lady.  But I must have slept, for the next thing I knew a voice soft as rain was saying, “Wake up,” and I was in my own bed, arm covered in plaster.

Later my mother would say it had only been a fever dream- that some of the men had found me at the base of a cliff not half an hour from our house, and had brought me back and dressed my wounds.  And I might have believed her but for one thing- to this day there is still a place on my cheekbone that is cooler than the surrounding skin: an area the exact size and shape of a pair of lips.