Sagaria by John Dahlgren Page B

really tight in there. Even as I watched, the light got dimmer and dimmer.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly spotted something gleaming in the top right corner of the brick barrier. I reached for it and with the tips of my fingers, I touched a tiny key hanging on a small hook. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to see some things in dim light than when it’s bright, that I hadn’t noticed the key before, but I don’t think that’s the truth of it. I think the keyreally wasn’t there before – that the gateway had been looking me over and had at last decided it was going to let me through.  
    I banged the flashlight on the floor of the tunnel and, as sometimes happens, the biff made the light shine more brightly again. It wouldn’t last long, but it was enough for me to take a proper look at the key. The head of it was no bigger than a penny, but I could see that on one side there was an engraving of a rising sun and a rainbow while on the other, there was a set of lines zigzagging across each other. Sort of like a road map, I thought, and then wondered why I’d thought it.  
    The light was already beginning to go yellow again, so once more I tapped the head of the flashlight on the floor.  
    My tummy growled, reminding me that I’d been down there a long time. I tried to ignore it. Yes, Sagandran, I can see you beginning to snigger. That was beginning to be a problem as well, and I did my best to ignore it too.  
    Anyway, wherever there’s a key there should be a keyhole, right? But when I was scraping away the moss from the brickwork my fingers had gone over every last square inch and I hadn’t found a keyhole. Yet, when I looked up this time, there was a keyhole right in front of my eyes. See what I mean about the gateway having thought for a while before it decided that it was going to let me through?  
    In less time than it takes to tell, I had the little key in the keyhole and was turning it.  
    It was getting airless in the cramped confines of the tunnel, but that wasn’t why I was finding it difficult to breathe as the brick door swung open easily, as if it were on freshly oiled hinges. I pushed it back until it was fully open.  
    On the other side of it, perhaps a yard or so from my nose, was what I thought was a mirror at first. Then I realized what I was seeing wasn’t a silvery surface at all. Instead, it was glowing with all the different colors there are – far more than you’d see in any rainbow. Strands of those colors, like the fringes of a woven woolen rug, were constantly shifting and overlapping each other – steely blues, rusty orange-reds, polished metallic greens and other hues I couldn’t recognize and wouldn’t be able to describe, even if I wanted to. All of them pulsing with their own chilly light.  
    The surface didn’t seem to be solid like a mirror’s surface. You’ve seen mercury in dishes in your chemistry classes at school, Sagandran, with the shiny liquid spread across the bottom of the dish. Well, it was like that.  
    Looking back on it, I guess it was foolish of me to reach out and touch the surface when I really hadn’t the first idea what it was, but that’s what I did anyway. My fingers went right into it as far as my palm. It felt like cold water against my skin, only thicker, as if it were honey, but not as sticky. Once again,it’s difficult to describe, but it made my skin tingle, like there was a very faint electric current in the liquid. I jerked my hand back. Electricity! It was only a tingle now, but how was I to know it wouldn’t suddenly strengthen and burn me, perhaps even kill me? I just watched those restless shifts of almost invisible color for a while. Then I began to think. Yes, Sagandran, I can see you grinning again. Your old Grandpa hadn’t done a whole lot of thinking since he’d fallen down the well, and it was well past