Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.” ― Robert Frost
Waiting in the gloom of his cell would have been unbearable for Kyle if not for Hairy’s company. Hairy sensed the boy’s sadness as he rested on his lap. The little creature trembled and he smelled foul. His hair was greasy and covered with mites. Nevertheless while stroking Hairy’s head, Kyle recognized in the obscurity of his thoughts, as if a distant song hovered just beyond his hearing, how depressed he would be without the companionship of the little creature.
His resolution was tired and beaten, a child-built damn to hold back a raging current. The longer he sat in isolation the more his despair grew. And still that remote song lingered. Naturally Kyle thought that the song was an impulse in his mind. Yet, he was aware that he could physically hear the melody as he heard the dripping water in the cave. For a long time he coexisted in this way coaxed by the purpose of the indistinct tune. And then as if he had figured out a simple equation he smiled faulting himself for not recognizing the thing sooner. He was not alone. It hung in the air and hovered in the darkness like the smell of a cigar long after the smoker had left. Aside from their breathing and the trickling of an unknown stream the secured cavern was silent. Kyle concentrated on the understanding that he was not alone in the cavern. Hairy raised his head alertly acknowledging the existence of another presence in the cave. Kyle embraced the small creature as he looked peripherally. He concentrated on the edge of the diminishing torchlight where the shadows seemed to grow. “What other friends do you have in here Hairy?” he inquired expecting no reply. He, of course, received none. He listened again actually leaning forward to locate the source of the sound. He was sure that he didn’t hear anything. As his awareness of elapsing time returned Kyle was beset again by the thought that he and Hairy might perish in the cave where no-one would ever find him. Darkness and silence. Kyle’s hopelessness reached a new threshold. Aching sadness encompassed him in his solitude. In his desperate moment he heard a chorus. “What?” he exclaimed, again he searched the darkness.
This time the presence was more vivid. He heard, “You are not alone.” Although he was sure that he did not recognize the speaker he sensed that it was familiar. It was not the voice of one of his cousins, nor that of his parents. The speaker, Kyle understood, was a chorus of identities. “We are with you.”
“Are you a ghost?” Kyle addressed the darkness around him. There was no reply, yet the hairs on his arm raised with awareness. He felt a sensation in his back as if a phantasm ran his fingers along Kyle’s spine. “I’m going crazy, that’s it. Who wouldn’t if they were in my place?” Hairy lowered his head against Kyle’s warm belly.
Kyle heard as clearly as if someone was standing in front of him,“We are always with you,” .
Kyle was convinced that he was imagining the presence. He feared ghosts as any child does. He addressed his fear as he typically responded to any struggle, “You don’t have a flashlight and a ladder, do you?” There was no reply.
More time passed before Kyle understood the final comment, “We are always with you, you only need to listen.” The cave grew silent again, but Kyle was no longer fixated on loneliness. As if a dark veil had been removed from his eyes Kyle saw his situation differently. He again studied his surroundings in the dank cave. He considered why he was being held in isolation, away from all other life. If the Dark Master wanted him dead he would have ended Kyle’s life when he previously confronted him. The pantars could surely have slew him. Strangely, this thought restored Kyle’s hope. He had a purpose it seemed even if he had no idea what that purpose was. Determined now in the shadow cast by the burning torch, Kyle began to devise a desperate plan of escape.
Kyle hid in the dark corner of the cave where the large stone barricaded the opening just beyond the light of the torch. Time, it seemed to him, had stopped as he anticipated the possibility of what could happen to him. He reassured himself according to the rapid pacing of his heat, “You are not alone, you are not alone.” He waited and he waited.
Finally, he recognized approaching the familiar thumping of the pantar’s paws on the cool rock floor of the exterior corridor. He shrunk in the corner as best he could in order to escape the vision of the wild cat. Kyle heard the large stone placed in front of the cave’s mouth hauled to the side of the entrance. He anticipated the pantar entering the cave just as he threw in the opposite direction from his hiding place the little ball that he had tossed to Hairy. Hairy scampered after the ball.
Kyle’s luck had changed, this pantar was alone. As the pantar looked in the direction of the sound of the scampering feet Kyle raced from his seclusion and ducked out of the cell behind the unsuspecting pantar’s back. Hairy, with the ball positioned in his maw, raced after Kyle darting under the feet of the startled pantar.
His plan was bold as well as impatient. Reaching the hallway he was enveloped by total darkness. The torch that the pantar held in the cave was the sole means to light the hallway where Kyle’s cell was located. He hesitated momentarily attempting to regain his bearings. He started to run in the direction where he was led from, still he was, at best, uncertain where he was fleeing to.
The image of the bloody reptile that the pantar had maimed or fatally injured commanded Kyle’s memory. He raced on. He heard Hairy’s feet scamper ahead of him just before the pantar roared fiercely. The alarum of its cry echoed down the stone corridor. Kyle listened to determine where Hairy was as he reasoned that his little pal’s knowledge of the caves made him a mole in the darkness. Indeed, Hairy knew where to run to. He knew where the predatory reptiles lurked. His hearing, his smell, his vision, and especially his instinct exceeded the boy’s. Kyle spotted a dim distant light ahead. As they approached the burning torch Hairy hurried off to the left where the cavern split. Once again, the prisoner and his companion were engulfed in darkness. They continued their desperate flight. Hairy leapt into the air to avoid something that laid across the floor of the corridor. Kyle’s foot tripped over the object that appeared like an oversized thick cool cord. The boy was sent tumbling into the darkness. He momentarily lost consciousness from his brutal collision with the wall of the cave. As he regained his alertness he saw the light of the torch carried by the pantar closing in his direction. Disoriented he closed his eyes just as the pantar released the spear held in his other paw.
The pantar’s spear whizzed by Kyle’s head pinning the body of an ancient Titanoboa against the wall just as the reptile prepared to strangle the boy. A second spear coming from the other direction of the corridor hit its mark striking the boa in the head ending the Titan’s life. Helpless Kyle was roughly lifted by the two pantars as they half-led and half-dragged him back to his cell. They tumbled him into the cave rather than violently thrusting him as if they were tossing their young into their protective den. A hollowed pumpkin filled with water was left next to the entrance-way before the pantars replaced the large rock in front of the only means of Kyle’s escape. The pantars, it seemed to Kyle, were less abusive than when they had previously handled him. The wild cats in fact were struck by his futile attempt to escape. That desire within them had long vanquished. They remained under the Dark Master’s control initially because of their immense loyalty for their kind. More profound however was that over the countless passing of time their spirit to be free had been lost like anything that is neglected for so long. The child’s desperate attempt to escape was strangely appealing to them despite their inability to comprehend its magnitude.
Kyle again sat hopelessly alone in the middle of the dimly lit cavern. The grotto smelled of brimstone and dampness. He wondered how long he could remain in his seclusion before he would lose his mind. The dripping of water sounded like a clock echoing louder and louder each passing second of time. “Alone,” he expressed to himself, “is the worst feeling ever.” Again he thought he heard those familiar voices rising above him in the darkness. His mind was too forlorn for him to discern the message. At that moment Kyle was engulfed by complete hopelessness. It suffocated all other meaning.
Is it possible to hear all the raindrops land on the ground when it is raining? You certainly can hear a drop of rain. You can train yourself to hear two. What about three? Sure. At what point do you lose track of the raindrops? During a rainstorm you hear the collective pattering of the rain, but you can only account for so many raindrops. That understanding, of course, goes only as far as your general proximity to the immediate sound. The noise overwhelms the sound. You can’t hear the raindrops one hundred feet away, but you see them falling to the ground knowing that they too add to the rhythm to the rain. In order to truly hear you have to learn to eliminate the noise that interferes with your ability to be an able listener. Kyle’s mind, in his solitude, amidst unbearable conditions could only hear the noise that his terrified mind would allow–the uncertainty, the despair, the inevitable. In that darkness when he was almost convinced that he was isolated from all else, the miracle returned. He eliminated the noise and he listened, not with his ears, but with his soul and he heard a song that carried over the gloomy Black Mountains finding its way through the small hole that his cell provided to the outside world. The noise, of course, was unexpected and so he was confused. But he managed to overcome the confusion as well. He listened with his heart. At such a vulnerable age faced with overwhelming circumstances, he managed to listen with inexplicable faith. At the precise moment that his cousins heard the song of the spirits on an island far, far away Kyle heard the same song in his isolation in the cave. “You are never alone, you are never alone,” the chorus of uncountable spirits sang and in that miraculous moment he heard them.
Kyle was suddenly jolted when he heard a sound near the barricaded entranceway. His spirit lifted when he saw Hairy licking water from the hollow pumpkin in the dim light of the cave. Kyle looked around his otherwise empty chamber. He breathed an immeasurable sigh of relief. He crawled over to the small creature and stroked its head, “Well Hairy, like they say, ‘We’re never alone’”.