Sagaria by John Dahlgren Page A

took the wind out of me and made the world go round in circles for a while, if I’d sprained my ankle I would have been in serious difficulties. As it was, I sat up and looked around and saw there was little chance of climbing the well’s smooth walls back to the open air. The little circle of sky overhead seemed a long way away.
    But when I pushed out with my hands, I found that there was an opening leading off from the bottom of the well. I had a little flashlight in my pack, so I dug it out and took a closer look. The opening was just big enough for me to crawl into and beyond it was a tunnel. The beam of my flashlight showed the tunnel curving around to the left after a few yards.
    If I’d been thinking right, I probably wouldn’t have crawled into the tunnel, but I was so unhappy in those days about your grandma, wasn’t I? In I went.
    I tell you, I was breathing hard by the time I’d got round that bend in the tunnel, squeezing through the tight passage with my shoulders rubbing against the bricks. With every movement forward, my flashlight created a thousand new living shadows that danced on the tunnel walls ahead of me. It was probably those shadows that got me spooked out, because I was pretty frightened even before, about twenty yards past the bend, I came to what looked like a dead end: a moss-covered brick wall. I realized how stupid I’d been crawling into the tunnel in the first place. How was I going to turn round and get out again? The passage was too narrow for that.
    I tried crawling backward. The bricks jammed against my rear end. It was as if I’d got myself into one of those Chinese finger-trap toys, easy enough to putyour finger into, almost impossible to get it out. What I was going to have to do was go flat on my face and slither back out.
    It was going to take me hours, and once I reached the bottom of the well again, I was still going to have the problem of clambering up the walls. If I could do it at all. It looked like I could be trapped underground forever.
    I don’t mind telling you, I began to panic.
    Then the wobbling beam of the flashlight caught the mossy wall in front of my face at a different angle, and I saw that there was something fixed onto the brickwork. Bumping and scraping my elbow, I was able to wipe enough of the moss away to reveal a little sign. It was hard to read the inscription because the letters were written in an ancient style and because my heavy gasping was making the flashlight beam jitter and jerk around, but at last I made it out:

    Well, that didn’t mean much to me, as I’m sure you’ll understand. Much later I’d decide that the name Sagaria was important enough that it would make me want to ask your mother if she could call you after it – yes, that’s where “Sagandran” comes from. But lying there, puffing and gulping at the end of that weird little tunnel, I hadn’t a clue what or where Sagaria could be.
    The biggest word on the sign was “gateway.” If this was a gateway, then maybe it wasn’t a dead end after all. It had to be some kind of door. Maybe it was a door that didn’t open any longer, but I didn’t allow myself to think that dismal thought as I scraped and scratched away at the moss. I didn’t even notice the pain when I broke some of my fingernails, I was that keen.
    But, once I’d got the moss off, it still looked like a brick wall. I closed my eyes tight to stop myself from bursting into tears. I was just going to have to snake my way backward out of the tunnel, and hope for the best when trying to climb out of the well.
    When I opened them again, I saw that, just to add to my troubles, the light of the flashlight was beginning to go a little yellow. The batteries were starting to run out. Even if I’d had spare batteries in my pack, I wasn’t sure if I’d have been able to reach round and take them out. I tell you, Sagandran, it was