Astronauts of Agādha

Floating

It was utterly dark when he woke up.

He remembered falling through the rabbit hole but hadn't the slightest idea as to how that happened or how long he spent there, lying on the stone floor.

Laura would be mad at him for getting lost, he thought at first. However, as soon as he realized how lost he truly was, he had no choice but to let the tears run down his cheeks freely, hot and humid. The first drops of a storm that, once released, seemed to go on forever.

Every time he tried to calculate how far he had diverted from the cave, despair would engulf him and the flow of tears would resume. By nightfall, he felt he had cried all the water stored in his body. 

Still sobbing, he started checking which parts of his body had been hurt by the fall. His legs were ok, his feet and ankles too, though one of his Nike tennis shoes was missing.  

His throat felt completely dry and there was a bump in his forehead the size of a golf ball. To make things worse, the more aware of the wounds he became, the harder they throbbed. 

One of his wrists was completely swollen. Maybe he had fallen over it, maybe he had used it to hold his body back and soften the impact. He didn't remember. All he knew was that he couldn't move it. Instinctively, he tucked it under his shirt.

The entrance, which he could see once his eyes grew used to the darkness of the chamber, was about six feet above his head. There was no way he could reach it without a stool or something to climb on.  

With his good hand, he started groping along the walls in search of something that might be of use. There was nothing to fear in the dark, he was smart enough to know. Still, he feared.

Ahead he went, finding not a stool, nor his missing tennis shoe. 

Tears threatened to break loose again, but he fought them back. Crying wasn't going to solve his problem. Instead, he invested what was left of his energies in screaming for help, for anyone who happened to be walking by. 

Screaming, however, brought on a headache. So he stayed quiet and focused on being well, being safe, warm, protected. One or two tears escaped as he imagined himself with Laura back at the hotel, sipping ginger lemon ice tea, or even better, back in Zurich, preparing for the approaching winter.  

Time passed. An hour, maybe two. Probably more.  

Something knocked on the backdoor of his mind. Noises coming from outside. Dogs barking. A siren in the distance. Male voices speaking to each other. All these sounds flooded the chamber at once.

They were looking for him, of course. Somewhere up on the surface, the police were already looking for him. Laura, probably Professor Donne too. All he had to do was scream now and they would find the rabbit hole.

But then there were other voices, voices he found hard to ignore. A low-frequency rumble, an almost inaudible choir propagating from all around him. 

EliasEliasElias, it called. No pauses. As if one word spawned from the other. 

He answered "hello" in his native Portuguese, as if he were back in his home country.

HereHereHere, the voices answered back. There was a light coming from the wall in front of him now. A faint bluish glow. Yet the voices did not necessarily concentrate there. They emanated from every inch of the chamber, from every stone and the spaces between them. 

"I fell. Why are you down here?"

HomeHomeHome, the voices replied in unison.

Before Elias had time to ponder who would call such a place home, the glowing stones turned into a transparent glass and a group of creatures, shorter than he was by at least a head, appeared behind it. Their color and texture seemed to be that of a dirty eraser.

The impulse of a scream formed in his throat and died there.

There was no need to be afraid, they spoke to him. They wanted to help. He was lost and hurt, but they could fix it. They could fix him back to his LauraLauraLaura.

One by one, the creatures stepped out of the glass wall and into the chamber. In less than a minute, Elias was surrounded by a pool of the beings. 

All was done without a sound. Their conversation was wordless, and Elias thought for a moment that it was so much easier that way. Why didn't we communicate like that?

WhyWhyWhy, they resonated his unspoken question, amplifying it into an echo.

One of them stepped forward and raised a four-fingered hand. He understood the gesture as the equivalent of a handshake and raised his good hand, which happened to be the left. The right, still tucked under his ragged shirt, was now a true epicenter of pain.

Elias realized that, instead of fingerprints, the creature had tiny suction cavities at the tip of his finger. His contact hand tickled and, just like magic, the headache was gone.

Some of the creatures raised their hands to touch him, mirroring the first one. He allowed it, even welcomed it, as reality itself seemed now light as a feather. 

All the weight was lifted off from the world. Even his mother's memory, an ever-present source of sadness, faded. He felt more and more relaxed, especially after one of them touched his broken wrist. Yes, it had been broken by the fall they whispered, but now it was fixed.

FixedFixedFixed, the voices echoed.

"Thank you!" he whispered back. 

The noises from outside grew louder, more urgent.  

"Are you the astronauts painted in the cave walls...?" he yawned, barely finishing the question. 

There was no answer this time, only a sensation unknown to him and a vague idea of depth, a bottomless abyss on the verge of which he had tripped. Before he knew it, he was floating at the center of the chamber, at least five feet above the ground. 

Only then he realized he felt more than relaxed, he felt drowsy, as if under the effect of medication. 

His eyelids became too heavy to keep open, and he had to battle them to stay awake. He needed to tell Laura where he was, otherwise she would never find him again. He would stay trapped down the rabbit hole forever. 

Scream now, he thought, as the world drifted away and all the lights dwindled.   

EliasEliasElias.