Such Stuff Ch. 22

Part 22
Underground

Lizzie was on a boat with people — but going where? It had stopped at the mouth of a woody hollow and tied up. Lizzie let herself be swept along with the crowd as it swarmed ashore. Soon she was running with the others so that all the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone through with. By-and-by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things began. Lizzie was puzzled where she was—where her dreams had taken her—but it was fun and happy and she was not much bothered. By-and-by somebody shouted: "Who's ready for the cave?" It was then that Lizzie realised where she was. She saw it was Tom Sawyer doing the shouting. Lizzie had dreamed about him before and she sup­posed she was again the female Huck Finn.

Everybody was ready for the cave. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the hillside—an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door stood unbarred. It was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look out upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impres­siveness of the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter and a new chase. But all things have an end. By-and-by the procession went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering rank of lights dimly reveal­ing the lofty walls of rock almost to their point of junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more than eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still narrower crevices branched from it on either hand—it was the most amazing place for explorations, hide and seek and all manner of fun.

By-and-by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of the day.

Lizzie had engaged in the hide-and-seek frolicking with zeal until the exer­tion began to grow a trifle wearisome; she found herself with Tom Sawyer as they wandered down a sinuous avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of names, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carry­ing a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his small body behind it in order to illuminate it for her gratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep natural stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Lizzie re­sponded to his call. She was finding it all a most enjoyable, interesting and ex­citing dream.

As Lizzie squeezed behind the Niagara in stone she felt her body grow, changing and filling. Tom was changing too. No longer the boy but a grown youth verging on manhood. Lizzie felt, in her dream, a surge of desire as she followed him down into the secret depths of the cave, making marks as they went. In one place they found a spacious cavern, from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the length and circumference of a man's leg; they walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching spring feeding a subterranean lake that stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows.

The couple were hot, surprisingly hot for a cave formed long ago by the tireless passage of water but there again it was a dream. Tom whispered,

"I'm mighty hot, think as I'll take a swim. Come to think, Becky, do you want to try too?"

It was then Lizzie learned that, rather than being Huck Finn, she was Becky Thatcher who, she recalled, Tom was somewhat sweet about.

"Don't mind if I do. You go first."

Tom immediately pulled his shirt over his head but then stopped. "No, don't look now, t'aint right."

Lizzie did look the other way but the light of the candles cast Tom's shad­ow high on the towering wall rising from the Lake. It showed a giant image of Tom elongated upwards giving an exaggerated length not only to his limbs but also to his evidently erect cock. She turned to look at him just as his strong body slipped into the black water and he began to swim.

Standing, Lizzie stripped off her own clothes and stepped naked towards the water. Tom, despite his own injunction not to look, had no qualms himself but with the candle behind Lizzie he could only see her in silhouette. Nonethe­less her shapely breasts and the soft curve of her thighs and ample curve to her hips were clear. He almost thought he could discern the hidden curls be­neath her legs as the light shone twixt her thighs as she stepped towards the water. Despite the water's initial coolness, which had caused his cock to sub­side, it now rose again until it touched his stomach. He could feel it bobbing as it hung beneath him in the water whilst he swam across the pool.

Lizzie was in the water, swimming out into inky darkness away from the flickering light of the twin candle flames and out beyond where Tom had swum. It was mysterious and exciting to be swimming deep underground in this secret cavern with only an aroused handsome boy for company. Lizzie's thighs opened and closed rhythmically as she swam breaststroke out into the dark. There was something, Lizzie thought, intensely erotic about swimming naked. It could just be in the mind but it might also be the way she could feel her breasts moving unrestrained by a costume or the complete feeling of free­dom between her legs. A shout from Tom called her back and she swam power­fully in a crawl back to him.

He was standing on the floor of the lake, chest above water but stomach, and therefore erect penis, below the water line calling out, "Not too far out, please Becky. You'll frighten me. I didn't know you could swim like that."

Lizzie swam right up to Tom and then pushed herself up and out of the water. Tom, his own back to the candle had been watching Lizzie coming across the Lake and particularly watching her white rounded bottom rolling as she came in a powerful crawl towards him. She shot up out of the water so it cascaded down her body and across her exposed breasts. Tom's eyes grew round as he took in their fullness and the nipples that crowned them.

"I like this, Tom, it's good here. What's the matter with you?" She put her hands on his shoulders, "You alright?"

"Sure, Becky."

Lizzie hugged him causing his penis to be squashed between her and him. Lizzie could feel it hard against her curly hair. Equally Tom could feel her hair against his excited cock.

"Come on Tom, let's swim again." Lizzie released him and headed back out into the water. Tom followed, his hard penis pointing in the direction he was swimming, rather like some strange probe secured to the bottom of a ship. Ahead of him moved Becky's white bottom. He thought of how it might be if he was to come up behind her, swim between her legs and mount up onto her sinking his cock into whatever was her secret place between her legs—some­thing he knew very little about but would very much like to know more. But of course he could not do that in the water, it would force Becky's head under: but what if she was resting, perhaps her hands and arms resting on a rocky ledge, her legs still in the water? His penis throbbed. For a moment he stopped swimming and stroked himself a couple of times, before continuing to follow.

They were far out into the Lake, the candle flame a long way back, so it was now only just possible to see ahead. Tom could only just discern Becky as a faint greyness in the Stygian blackness.

"I've reached the other side, Tom." He swam to her voice only just able to make out something a little less black then the surroundings. His hand touched something soft and warm.

"Haul yourself out, Tom. There's a ledge we can sit on." A firm hand clasped his arm.

So Tom found himself sitting on a rocky ledge in pitch darkness, or near as makes no difference, his feet dangling in the water, next to a completely naked girl that he couldn't see at all, his bottom feeling the hardness of the rock but penis pointing up and touching his belly. It was quite something.

Lizzie put her arm round his shoulders, "I like it here."

"Becky, might I kiss you."

"Tom, what a question, 'course you may."

He gave her a peck

"It's funny us sitting here." She said. "The others would sure be surprised if they could see us."

"Lucky they can't, 'cos we ain't got clothes on. Suppose it's lucky I can't see neither."

"Why Tom, wouldn't you want to see me?"

"No, I didn't mean that Becky, no way."

"Boys are different from girls."

"Yeah, I know."

Tom felt a hand touch his arm, feeling for his hand. His hand was lifted and placed on something round and warm. He was touching Becky's breast! Through the palm of his hand he could feel the hardness of her nipple. He squeezed. Lizzie kissed him on the mouth and Tom responded as his other hand came up to hold her other breast.

After a time the kiss broke and Lizzie slipped back into the water. "Let's swim back to the light so we can see, Tom."

The naked companions swam steadily back towards the candles. The sin­gle point of light far away seemed almost mesmerising as they slowly moved towards it—a single point of light in the great blackness of the cavern. Gradu­ally they could see each other again and the single point of light became two flickering candle flames. Nearing the shore Lizzie stood again with the water now scarcely higher than her knees. Tom stopped and floated supporting him­self on his hands and just looked and looked at the naked girl.

"Come on Tom, you stand too. I want to see you."

Tom was a bit loath, conscious of his erection, of the very visible indica­tion of his excitement of being with a naked girl. Lizzie bent and pulled him up by the arm, so he stood revealing his hard muscular body and his penis stand­ing up from his own patch of curly hair.

"Why Tom, just look at your cock. What a sight!" and Lizzie bent to look closer at it.

Tom had rarely felt so embarrassed but his feelings instantly changed to never having felt so good when Becky actually touched his cock, indeed grasped it in her hand and was moving and rubbing it - doing what he had done to himself in bed so many times and alone down by the river. But more was to come. Lizzie bent closer.

The smooth head in her mouth was cooler than she expected but her warm tongue slipping over the soft skin soon warmed it. Lizzie loved the feel­ing of a penis in her mouth. The strange connection it made with a man. The happy feeling of giving pleasure and the exciting feeling of not knowing when, should you go too far, you would suddenly find your mouth filling with that hot salty viscous fluid. It did, of course, mean your own pleasure might be de­layed or, maybe, not fulfilled, but it was better to give than receive, and, in any case, it gave her a certain irrational contentment. How many cocks had she sucked since her strange dreams started? How many more were there to come? Would she ever taste a real cock—would she ever be home? Lizzie fal­tered, the dream wavered, the feeling of sadness souring her dream.

Tom picked her up and carried her to the shore, kissing her and whisper­ing to her. The dream strengthened and her momentary feeling of loss passed as she returned to the sexual excitement of the dream story.

On the ground they rolled together, entwined, Tom kissing her with pas­sion, his tongue in her mouth, his hands on her breasts, his cock pushing against her. Lizzie opened her thighs and Tom felt the hot wetness of a woman for the first time on the very end of his cock. He almost came. Pausing he calmed himself. There was no need for hurry in the dark. His fingers felt, his fingers explored, his fingers entered. Lizzie's thighs spread wider, her excite­ment mounting as she once more enjoyed her dream.

By the time Tom judged it right to attempt entry, an entrance he was actu­ally surprised to find was not in any way denied, Lizzie was very close to com­ing. This was just as well as in the nature of things and inexperienced boys, Tom did not hold back either in the force exerted by his buttocks in thrusting against her or in the quickness of his own coming. The orgasm was mutual and satisfying.

After their lovemaking they sat and rested awhile. Tom in a state almost of stupefaction at what had just occurred, at what he and Becky had just done together. But this delicious feeling of contentment was not to last as now, for the first time, the deep stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon their spirits. Lizzie said:

"Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of the oth­ers." Lizzie grew apprehensive. "I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back."

"Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better."

"Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me."

"Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!" and the girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.

Dressed again, they started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time Tom made an exami­nation, Lizzie would watch his face for an encouraging sign, and he would say cheerily:

"Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right away!"

To Lizzie the dream was turning sour. She knew they were lost, were trapped and knew with dreadful certainty that once again Conrad, from his cell in the Tower Innominate, was insinuating himself into her mind, making her dream this dream and turning it so she was caught, imprisoned, just like him.

Tom felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was "all right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost!"

"Listen!" said he.

Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were conspicu­ous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that resembled a ripple of mock­ing laughter.

"Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Lizzie.

"It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know," and he shouted again.

The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it so con­fessed a perishing hope. They stood still and listened; but there was no result.

"Tom, Tom, we're lost! We're lost! We never can get out of this awful place! Oh, why DID we ever leave the others?"

Lizzie sat with her knees pulled up to her chin in despair, how were they to get out of this place? What happened in the story? How did Tom and Becky escape? Yes, yes, Tom eventually, after days of despair, tried further exploring leaving Becky with one end of a kite-line and eventually on one exploration, when he was at the extremity of the line, glimpsed a far-off speck that looked like daylight, dropped the line and groped toward it, pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad Mississippi rolling by. But that was days away and what if they didn't find it—what if Conrad had changed the story, what if he had closed up the hole, what if she Lizzie did something different—and she must already have done countless things—so Tom did not go that way? But, Lizzie once again gathered herself together pushing black fear from her, and thought, thought of how she had escaped from Oz when trapped by the Wicked Witch, how she had escaped the Trial in Wonderland, and her spirits began to revive. Yes, she could escape this, after all it was only a dream: not real, she wasn't really here any more than this love­ly boy beside her in the candlelight was real. Conrad was not going to get her down, was not going to push her into despair—she would beat him and es­cape.

"Tom, your kite line. Let's explore these side passages." She took it and tied it to a projection, and they started, Lizzie in the lead, unwinding the line as they groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended in a "jump­ing-off place." Lizzie got down on his knees and felt below, and then as far around the corner as she could reach with her hands conveniently; she made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged to - Conrad. A slow, widening smile grew across his face as he shook his head from side to side and mouthed "trapped" at her before disappearing.

Lizzie was not going to mention this to Tom but it certainly unnerved her. Conrad's look had been so confident, so sure. They moved on again—aimless­ly, simply at random—all they could do was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of reviving - not with any reason to back it, but only because it is it nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and familiarity with failure.

By-and-by Tom took Lizzie's candle and blew it out. This economy meant so much! Words were not needed. Lizzie understood, and her hope died again. Conrad was getting the better of her. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in his pockets—yet he must economize.

They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after this—they could not tell how long—Tom said they must go softly and listen for dripping water—they must find a spring. They found one presently, and Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Lizzie said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay.

"Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something? We must stay here, where there's water to drink. That little piece is our last candle!"

They fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched it melt slow­ly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand alone at last; saw the fee­ble flame rise and fall, climb the thin column of smoke, linger at its top a mo­ment, and then—the horror of utter darkness reigned!

An awful hopelessness oppressed Lizzie; had Conrad won, really trapped her now? The feeling was awful. She could sense his triumph, his thin smug smile—was he watching her, what did he really see? After all thatshe had done, not least causing Conrad's just immolation in the Tower Innominate, was Lizzie now herself trapped and would that then enable Conrad find a way to escape? But, she reasoned, he had failed in Oz, failed in Wonderland; so surely she could find a way out of these caves? Perhaps Tom would find the chink of light—but what if Conrad had changed that? Even so, surely there was a way out of her dream—how did Conrad make her dream anyway? He no longer had his pen but was that just about his own made-up world? Where had he obtained that—who had given it to him/ Had he just found it?