The sewer waited, the porthole yawning like some black mouth ready to swallow me alive. Crossing myself, I squatted down and sent my legs over the hole’s lip to find the ladder’s rungs. The echoes of my descent! Every breath, every step, every grunt, came back to my ears with an eerie similitude, like the sounds of something almost human mocking my every step.
The sewers were old, older than the city itself, the remains of the ruins our forgotten ancestors built over, and as I descended into the tunnel, I felt as though I were entering another world. Where was the sky? Where the summer breeze? What was I doing in this alien place?
I stopped, waited for the echoes to die, and listened to the silence. Here was something, something I hadn’t known before. Above, silence was a relative term which meant, in general, that the conversation—conversations, rather—was happening around you. That the dogs weren’t barking at you. You had fallen out of the costermongers’ sight. Silence meant that above, meant the salesmen were shouting at someone else, the dogs snarling at a stranger, the incessant talk still going on…all going on without you.
Here, there was silence, and more, for the silence was happening to you.
I let my breath out and felt a deep relief at the sound. My eyes wandered down the unlit tunnel.
“Miles to go,” I mumbled. “Miles to go.”
Tale Told 