\u201cWhat was that?\u201d I asked aloud, my own voice echoing back to me in a sinister whisper not my own, as though someone stood in the shadows mocking me.\u00a0 Turning around to study my surroundings once again in the flickering torchlight, I saw only the damp, moldy walls of the lowest dungeon.\u00a0 With each step I took across the debris-strewn floor, crunching noises erupted from beneath my feet.\u00a0 As far as I could see in the unsteady light, the carcasses of various rodent and vermin, some of them human, lay in heaps scattered across the floor.\u00a0 A shudder went down my spine.\u00a0 The smell of it all beat upon me\u2014the perfume of death and decay.\u00a0 The only sound here, the relentless traffic of water, seeping through the floors, the walls and ceiling.<\/p>\n
I remembered my foolish boast, \u201cWhat is there to fear in the dungeon?\u201d\u00a0 What indeed?\u00a0 Steeling myself to my mission, I pressed onward, down one of the many narrow, low-ceilinged passages honeycombing the bedrock foundation of the castle.\u00a0 The path wound its way ever deeper beneath the earth.\u00a0 Not the slightest hint of air current stirred through this death maze.\u00a0 How could he be alive after all these years, in these conditions?\u00a0 How anyone could live a week in this filthy hell, I could not fathom, but two decade?\u00a0 Impossible!<\/p>\n
After an interminable time, the passage leveled out and I entered a cavern with iron cells built along its walls.\u00a0 Holding the torch up to each as I passed, I began searching for the one that held my father.\u00a0 What I saw here cannot be described: creatures, no longer human, staring out at me with vacuous eyes, their sweet, syrupy, sticky\u2026smiles of delirium and madness, drooling little trails of spittle through the filth that covered their half-naked bodies.\u00a0 The stench of it all threatened to overwhelm me; several times I retched until I thought my stomach itself would heave out upon the floor.<\/p>\n
Finally, in the last of the cells, I found him.\u00a0 I knew him.\u00a0 Perhaps it was his spirit that gave him away to me; certainly it was not his appearance for he had aged beyond the intervening years.\u00a0 Somehow, he had survived\u2014his gaunt frame only the slightest whisper of his former self.\u00a0 But his spirit was indomitable.\u00a0 I could see it his eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cFather, I’m here! I\u2019ve come to rescue you!\u201d\u00a0 I choked on the words as I fumbled frantically with the locked\u00a0 gate. The key I had acquired fit easily, but try as I may, it would not turn.\u00a0 In my haste, it broke off in the lock.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is no use,\u201d his voice grated, like the rusted gate, it had not been used for a long time.\u00a0 \u201cIt has been bewitched.\u201d<\/p>\n
I fell back, startled to hear him, and hopeless at his words.\u00a0 \u201cBut there must be a way!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but all is not loss.\u00a0 I have waited for you.\u00a0 I knew you would come.\u201d\u00a0 He erupted in a racking cough, blood appearing on his lips.<\/p>\n
\u201cFather!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t worry.\u00a0 Death will come as a relief to me here.\u00a0 I will at last be free.\u201d\u00a0 He smiled weakly.\u00a0 \u201cI have waited to tell you what only I can tell.\u00a0 They have tried again and again to get it from me.\u201d\u00a0 He coughed again, this time the blood flowed more freely.\u00a0 He wiped it with the back of his hand.<\/p>\n
Incredulous that he had managed to keep his secret against every effort to pry it from him, I was excited that the answer would soon be mine.\u00a0 So many had died attempting to attain it.\u00a0 And, many had killed, as well.\u00a0 I leaned against the rusting bars and strained to catch his words.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s,\u201d he gasped, \u201cThere\u2019s a\u2026\u201d and he collapsed dead upon the floor.<\/p>\n
I grieved there by his cell for as long as the conditions would allow me.\u00a0\u00a0 When I could bear it no longer, I made my way up the wending path, to return again to the world of light.\u00a0 I could not grieve deeply for a man I barely knew, but I felt a deep satisfaction that my traitorous uncle would never know the answer to that question.\u00a0 It never occurred to me that he would not believe my father had not told me.\u00a0 When the guards met me as I emerged from the secret passage, I suddenly realized it had all been too easy, that I had been allowed to \u201crescue\u201d my father, in the very hope that he would divulge the precious secret.\u00a0 Now I sit in the very cell inhabited by my dead father, to scribble these words upon the damp walls for no one to read, and to ponder the question my father died refusing to answer, \u201cWhat is REALLY at the end of the Rainbow?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWhat was that?\u201d I asked aloud, my own voice echoing back to me in a sinister whisper not my own, as though someone stood in the shadows mocking me.\u00a0 Turning around to study my surroundings once again in the flickering torchlight, I saw only the damp, moldy walls of the lowest dungeon.\u00a0 With each step […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prompted-writing","category-snippet"],"yoast_head":"\n