On the seventh day since entering the tundra, an hour after the disappearing of light, a vast abyss opened before him, wider and emptier and deeper than any he had yet come across. Like a crushed cylinder of otherworldly proportions, it yawned directly in front of him, dropping deep into the earth. His forelegs hovered trembling above the void.
This must be the passage, or he would die. He no longer trusted his judgment; it had fallen in the snow many miles behind him. It could well be madness, but he felt a presence far below, some wild hope….. No. He must find shelter. Perhaps it was there. A shelter. If he could find it. MUST CONTINUE ON. NO, HERE. IT MUST BE HERE, OR I AM DYING. SO. . .EASY TO SURRENDER. LIKE FALLING ASLEEP. LETTING GO. NO!
He turned his sinking body around, and forced it to descend: hooking and digging, scraping into ice, forelegs stretched to the limit, trying not to slip. To slip was death. Down. Down farther. A little farther. THE WIND IS LESS HERE. Here. KEEP MOVING. MUST KEEP MOVING. NO STRENGTH. . .BUT WARMTH COMING BACK. YES, WARMTH. MOVE. FARTHER.
DON'T SLIP! DON'T SLIP. An overhang. CAREFUL. MUST STRUGGLE PAST
SOMEHOW. SOME WAY. PAST. WARMTH. IT MUST BE WARMER. KEEP MOVING.
IT WILL BE WARMER, OR I AM DYING. I AM DYING. IT IS WARMER.
After the long and grueling climb, stopping many times to marshal strength, he found himself at the bottom. The cylinder had narrowed, so that now it was scarcely thirty meters broad, a sharp cleft of stone, rising sheer into ice that overtook it for perhaps a thousand meters more. He rested there, his body pulsing, spent. The cold was not as intense, and the wind was less, and the movement had warmed his limbs.
But he was weak and near dead from hunger and exhaustion. He needed sustenance badly, soon. Or it was over. He moved to a tiny pool of snow that had formed from a trickle of the torrent above, and with his trembling foreclaw worked small bits of it into his mouth. All done in pitch darkness, and very little feeling left. Then moved to examine the corners of the cleft.
The first was blocked, solid stone. He turned about. He did not know he had reached the opposite wall until he passed through it, was inside. A cave had opened blindly and taken him in, narrow and not high, but a cave nonetheless. A passage. After a time he knew instinctively that he was underground, but was far too weary for the knowledge to have much effect. He continued forward. He must find some kind of sustenance. Sustenance. He thought of his foreclaw, but remembering the man….. No. Not yet.
He wandered on, stumbling, raising himself up to go on. Plodded forward, sinking ever deeper, and onward, until the air around him suddenly grew larger. A loosened rock rolled off another, and the echo did not return for some time. He moved to his right, sensing something, and stroked the tip of his claw against the slanting surface which met it. The surface was sometimes soft and not smooth; it was not part of the stone. He tried to break off a small piece. The layer was thin, and it crumbled. He tried again, brought the wretched substance—-some kind of dried blood, or excrement—-to his mouth. Its taste was bile and bitter and acid. Then swallowed. Throat burning, he repeated the motion perhaps a dozen times, then collapsed, half holding, to the floor. And lay unmoving.
*
Simin woke from his delirium many hours later, somewhat stronger, but still dizzy and confused. The little nourishment he had taken lifted his mind back to awareness, strong, if subtly altered by the thick aura of the place, and by the strange and pressing reality of his quest. He rose slowly, careful not to spend the wavering hope he had found, and looked around him.