“Saphronia,” he called again.
     Saphronia, came the reply. The voice his own. But not quite. Altered by its reflection. Saphronia. The echo fractured in collision with unseen objects. Stalagmites, hanging dangerously from the ceiling. Stalagmites, because “they might fall,” said Mr. Barton in science class. Not to be confused with stalactites, which grew up from the floor. Saphronia. Twisted by swirling eddies of alkaline water. Water seeping from the ceiling. Drip, drip, drip, drip, kerplunk. Collecting in pools on the cavern floor. Deep black bottomless pools. Pools a person could disappear in and never be found. Saphronia. His voice came back, fractured, twisted. Don’t go there, Denver. Don’t go near those pools. Drip, drip, drip, drip, kerplunk. Find her. She’s out there somewhere. His own voice. But not quite. Saphronia. Echoing off the walls of a huge limestone chamber. Far below the ground. No answer but his own voice. Echoing. Saphronia.
     And again silence.
     He felt his way along the wet floor, dragging himself through a sticky, mucous-like clay. Wet and sticky and clinging. He hugged the cavern wall to his right. Out there to his left was something. A large room. An abyss. The wall seemed safe. Safe and wet and warm.
     He pulled himself along inches at a time until the floor beneath him began to slope away from the wall and he had to stop. He felt as if he would slip away. Go down that slippery slope. To where? To places so deep, so dark, inhabited by things undreamed of. To places unfathomable. Through wormholes to the other side of the universe. To Arcturus. To the frozen fields of hell. Icy landscapes with bubbling pits of sulfuric acid. Primordial Slime. Flesh eating bacteria.
He imagined them. He banished them, one by one, only to find another crawling up from the mud. Slithering up his cold, naked leg. Burrowing through his skin into his bloodstream.
     Lights flickered in the blackness. Reflections of sunlight on chrome. Broken glass. The backyard under the old maple tree. Sun on his face stirring up memories. Memories of summer mornings in Granny Goat’s garden. Memory of time when the world spun slow. Slow as an old dog on an August afternoon.
     I think we’re dead. He opened his eyes. Saphronia stood there. Under the maple tree in his back yard. “I think we’re dead.” She smiled her sad smile. Chased a fly from her face. “My baby…,” she moaned. “My baby….”
     “I’ll help you find him.”
     She brushed another fly from her face. Her face contorted in pain. “No you won’t.” she said. A piece of skin pealed off where she had brushed the fly. He watched in horror as the skin began to fall away in chunks. Little white wormy things crawling over the pieces of torn flesh. There was a buzz of flies. A buzz of death. And the macabre voice of death moaning like that thing in the field.
     “We’re dead,” it croaked. “I told you we’re dead.”

     He awoke to find himself slipping. Sliding down the muddy bank. He let out a muffled cry, clawed at the mud, but there was nothing to hang onto, nothing solid to break his descent. Until he hit bottom. He found himself lying in a rocky stream bed. The water trickled by, only a few inches deep. Warm water. Warmer than that cold dampness that seeped through the limestone walls.
     He stood up slowly, surprised that he could. Surprised to be alive. “Saphronia,” he called out. Nothing but an echo.
In front of him a tiny light flickered far off in the distance. He was too lucid, too sobered, to believe that it was Arcturus. Or a reflection of sunlight. He thought maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. But he walked cautiously in the direction of the light, hoping.
     He walked forward, stumbling occasionally on the uneven ground, but the light never seemed to get any closer. It seemed as though it moved along with him, guiding him. Or maybe it was a reflection on the lens of his eye, The reflection of some inner, dying light.
     He heard a muted sound echoing from the cavern walls, a rythmic drum thumping out a slow, steady cadence like the beating of his heart.
He moved one step at a time, doggedly, until he was tired. Dog tired. And his leg came across something large and immovable, and he fell, face forward onto the hard ground.

A bright light shone in his eyes. A bright, flickering light which painted dancing shadows on the cavern walls. Flickering lights spinning around his throbbing head. Two eyes gazed down upon him. Eyes with flickering lights dancing in their depths. He tried to sit up, but pain made him wince, and he quickly lay back down again.
     “Stay,” said the eyes with the dancing lights. “You have been injured.”
     Around those eyes a face began to appear. A craggy face the color of the rocks, framed by long, silky black hair, loose, hanging around the shoulders. Shoulders draped with soft, tanned leather; figures of animals painted in earth tones; dear, bears, birds like cave paintings he once saw in a science book. What were they called? Pictographs?
     Behind the eyes with the dancing light another face took shape. This one too had eyes with lights and the four lights danced together like four dancing stars. Denver wanted to laugh but he hurt too much.
     Starting in his chest, a sharp pain shot down his side and he doubled over, letting out a groan. Another pain, slower this time, circled his ribs, gripped him, twisted him, and he wanted to cry out, “Mama! Mama, I hurt so bad.”
     It was worse than the time he got food poisoning and Mama rocked his head in her arm. He was too big for that then. But now he wouldn’t be ashamed if Mama would just hold him and comfort him.
     His thoughts turned to Saphronia and her soft, warm body next to his the night before. “Saphronia,” he murmered, “where are you?”
      In the blackest of nights he floated in space. No stars. No light. No lullabyes. Clouds of dark matter swirling about his body refused to coalesce into planets. He was alone again.
     Arcturus is a latin name. Not an Arcturan name. Was there a name, a word, a magical spell that would bring him back down to someplace where he could walk? Where his feet dug into real, solid earth?