She cursed, and flames flew up through the air, their sparks shining like stars. She cursed again, and threw herself in the bottomless pond, the rope on her neck tightening. But her curses kept on coming, bubbles from a bottomless, mud filled pool, rising up to the full moon, exploding when the words kissed the air.
The soldiers watched the pool until the night was quiet again. They had done their jobs, and the witch Cunera was no more. The curses still rang in their ears, and echoed through the dune valley.
But the memory didn’t last. The soldiers died in the following years, being slaughtered on the battlefield, or drifting away in agony on their sickbeds. Stories became legends, legends became lies. The bottomless pool was forgotten and the curse muted.
***
Buildings peaked into the air, touching the clouds on bright days, shrouded in smog on others. Over a million people lived here, died here on soggy soils and in shower spoiled streets. It were as if the water wasn’t giving up it’s fight, and the sea kept on attacking the coast, twice a day, as ever before. The sea was winning now and then, and was sometimes beaten by dikes and dunes.
Not only the flow of water, but also the steadily growing flow of traffic threatened the people of Duinen, Blato’s biggest city and capital. Between the highrise buildings the streets were crowded with people, bicycles, skaters, and all kinds of motor powered, air polluting vehicles. The trains were packed with people on their way to their work and back home again in the evenings. Cars parked at every free spot in the city. Children played in cyberspace - the streets were a playground no more.
In the Residence, the politicians of Blato argued about the problems of the city, the traffic jams, the continuing flow of traffic. How could they ever cope with these problems? After all, the people who caused the traffic jams were necessary to the economy of Duinen, without the workers and the spenders the city would be flat broke. They turned and twisted the solutions to the problem until they had seen every corner of it. Then it was decided: a tunnel would be build, from the edges of the city to a big parking lot in the very centre of Duinen. The traffic would no longer drive through narrow streets and slums, the public space would be given back to the children and the pedestrians. They really liked the plan.
***
“Nothing will ever grow in this soil,” Cunera spat out to the soldiers in front of her. “Nothing! The people here will live in poverty and illness, and die in agony! I curse you and your rulers! No compromise will ever hold here, yet you will be forced to make compromises!”
They didn’t listen, but laughed at her. They put the rope over her neck and told her it was a nice necklace for a woman of her reputation. They tore her clothes and ripped them off. They took the rings she wore on her arms and fingers. They ripped the golden rings from her ears and the blood dripped on her shoulders, tracing the curves of her bones and breasts like jewellery. They pushed her closer to the bottomless pool. The water was black as if the night spend its days down below. No wave rippled the surface, there was no wind, there were no fishes. The dunes were silent and no witness turned up to see how the soldiers continued their business. A trace of Tiwaz’ anger hung in the air, thickening it, and the salty smell of the sea became more intense.
The other end of the rope was tied to a willow, and then the witch jumped in the pool, keeping her dignity to herself in her last moments. And while her curses floated up, Tiwaz lit up the skies with an enormous noise.
***
“It can’t be done,” the engineer said, “It is madness to build a tunnel like that in a soil like this. Yes, there are some possibilities, and I can build you a road to the moon if you want, but you will have to pay for it. Technical calculations are necessary for this project, no witchcraft.”
He stood upright in front of the large room, the overhead viewer lurking over his shoulder. The drawings shaded parts of his face, as if he wasn’t fully there. The room was dark, and except for some flashes of glasses and LEDs of mobile phones he couldn’t make out his audience.
“Blato Construction Ltd. has offered us a new method of building,” the chairman said. He waved at the engineer, who stepped aside to make room for the accountant of the BCL. The accountant put his sheets on the overhead viewer and abstract calculations filled the wall. “It can be done,” the accountant said, “It can be done much cheaper than the engineer has told us. BCL uses a revolutionary new method of building, called multi-using. Parts of the tunnel perform more than one function, and can be both decoration and construction. Some parts have different constructional functions at the same time. We can save lots of money here. Just look at those figures.”
The engineer, still standing at the edge of the light, shook his head. “How are you going to do that? You are going to push and pull the same elements at the same time. I’m telling you, this can’t be done, the tunnel will float on the mud like a ship if build in this manner. Just tell me, how are you keeping those parts together? With witchcraft and magic?”
“Listen, the working of this method is a company secret, so I can’t tell you, but is surely does work. My company has absolute faith in it.”
“I pray to god you are right,” the engineer muttered.
The audience voted for the revolutionary method, just curious to see how the impossible could be done.
From the mirrored windows of the Residence the building of the tunnel could be seen. Many people saw how the work was done and the tunnel was shaped over the months. Of course, they only saw the work on the surface, and most of the work was done below ground level. It looked as if the tunnel was a portal to another world, a world without traffic jams. Some people thought about the words of the engineer, and laughed about it too. The engineer was no longer welcome in the Residence, though he was spotted more than a few times next to the building site, also curious how the work was done.
***
Nothing grew in the dunes, at least nothing worth mentioning. Bloodthirsty thorn bushes, sharp grasses and leafless trees stood in the sand, hanging in the salty winds that blew from the sea. No one lived there, and small villages nearby lost their inhabitants. The dunes were a grim place, and whoever walked there could hear the sound of the ghosts on the wind, and under layers of sand history was silenced. Ghost there were, and skeletons were dug up by the wind every now and then. Dunes walked over emptied farmhouses, leaving no trace of life. Even the bottomless pool lost it’s fight against the wind and the sand, and was filled with quicksand and mud. Legends of long ago got lost in history.
Centuries later, Duinen was build on this spot, close to the older city Eik, next to the sea, a port to other lands was build, the Residence too, people came to live there, and liked it too. Trees lined the lanes of the city, providing shadows for the travellers. Big, richly decorated houses proved Blato was doing well in international trade, but the slums were a mere excuse for housing.
The city was build on compromises, yet the compromises were the only reason nobody got what he rightfully should have. The Residence was the very centre of both the city as the rumours, the revolutions and the raving riots. And this way, Cunera’s curse seemed to come true.
***
Commotion caused a crowd near the entrance of the tunnel. The building was going well, but now the work has stopped.
“They found a body in the tunnel,” it was whispered. “The body of a woman, naked, with a rope around her neck. She was strangled, centuries ago. It could have been a ritual sacrifice.” The body was well kept in the muddy soil. The skin was tanned, but the fleshless limbs were intact. The face was beautiful, the eyes closed, as if the woman slept. Her dark brown hair was spread around her pretty face, covering her ears, but soon the archeologists discovered the ripped ears. “Sacrifice to Irmin,” they concluded.
The tunnel building continued after the body was taken to the Museum of National History and put in a glass box.
***
Cunera walked the dunes all day, all the way from Masemund to the ruined Tower of Kalla at Rhinamund. She was always looking for herbs and hunting birds in these deserted regions. Meanwhile, she kept an eye on the sea and tried to read it. The waves, the lights, the clouds above, they told her the story of the future. She could tell what weather it would be the coming days, and if the crops would be blessed by Nehalennia that year. She could see the spring tide coming and the storms. She could see the dark edges of the future closing in.
One bad day, seagulls screamed at her. Fate would strike, the Norns would cut her lifeline at last. The waves told her the war would be lost, and she told the soldiers. Soon after that, drowned and murdered bodies washed upon the shore, and told her she had been right. Spring tide drowned the streets of many cities, and Witla was forever lost to the waves. Storms came over Blato and destroyed the crops. She had foretold this, she had asked, demanded, begged to take measures against this fate, but people were deaf as shells to her words. Yet they had heard her, and now they blamed her for their misfortune. They send the soldiers to get rid of the vermin called witch. And they obeyed.
***
The engineer watched the tunnel construction. The concrete walls and floors shaped a dark hole, shadows lurking beyond the light. It was damp in there, and water was pumped out of the tunnel every second. The clouds filled the air above Duinen, getting darker until it looked like midnight at noon. The showers of heaven opened then, and rain poured down like a river. People hid away in shops and public houses, the engineer ran to his car. He was soaked before he reached it, and the water reached his ankles. He sat in his car, turned on the radio and his windscreenwhipers. It was impossible to drive in this rain, so he stayed there and watched. Duinen looked as if it were deserted. Water ran from the roofs and formed permanent filters on windows. The windscreenwhipers couldn’t keep up with the rain, and the view of the city was as if the whole city was under water, blurred, dark, and deserted. Fish could have been swimming around his car, the engineer thought.
Then the streetcar rounded the corner, and went slowly in the direction of the city centre. The engineer watched the slow driving cars. People were looking back, like a weirdly twisted aquarium. Then, the streetcar disappeared from sight. It took several second before the engineer realised the streetcar had disappeared in the street. It had gone through the surface and fell in the tunnel!
He dashed out of his car and went to the entrance of the tunnel. It was filled with water, like a subterranean swimming pool. No way he could reach the streetcar. A big hole indicated the place were the streetcar had disappeared. Through the rushing of the rain, sirens could be heard now. The rain coloured blue as the flashing lights of police cars and ambulances came closer.
Newspapers interviewed the engineer. “They said it could be done, but their spell wasn’t mighty enough,” he told them. “They wanted to save money, now they paid with the lives of sixty streetcar-passengers. The tunnel is drowned and I doubt if it can be repaired. I mean, this is Duinen and like the rest of Blato, it rains a lot. Are we to close the tunnel every time it rains? Or is a design of submarine streetcars included in BCL’s revolutionary design?”
But despite the words of the engineer, money was raised to repair and dry the tunnel. The construction of it went on. Some kind of revolutionary new glue was used to put the pieces back together again, and then nobody really minded it anymore.
***
“Oh, yes, as ever, pride will destruct this country,” Cunera muttered as she gazed to the stars. “Pride, yes, and ignorance. They will never learn.” She shook her head and walked to the small fire near her hut. She watched around, to her hut, her garden, her goat, the darkened dunes. It wouldn’t last for long. She could almost hear the soldiers marching in, but it didn’t disturb her, for she already knew...
She got up and walked around, under the guiding stars. The bottomless pool was not far from her hut, and in the night she often lingered there, watching the pitch black surface of the water, trying to read it. But the pool kept its secrets to itself. It stank and poisoned vapours caught her thoughts.
She saw kings and queens fall and drown in the pool, she saw strange and weird dressed persons drown there, and horseless carts falling towards a bottom that was not there. It was all there, yet she didn’t know what it meant. What about this new religion? They said there was an inferno called Hell down there. Was that the place these people went? Were they disbelievers? She couldn’t catch her thoughts anymore, and turned to her hut to sleep.
***
The engineer was in his car again, watching the tunnel. It’s opening was in front of him, like a mouth of Hell. And it could eat him and destroy him and take him down to the place were the sun was no more than a doubtful rumour. Small flags waved in the wind, and reminded of the opening of the tunnel. They had finished it, at last. Now they were celebrating in the Residence. Laserlights flashed, fireworks went off, and people roamed the streets, drunk and happy. The revolutionary new method had proved it worth and now the engineer with his old fashioned ideas wasn’t even invited to the party. He turned his car around and headed west, to his apartment in Eik.
He took a bottle of vodka from the fridge, sat down on his sofa and turned on the TV. He wasn’t really going to watch anything, but surfed the channels instead, drinking vodka and didn’t really notice the soaps and sitcoms he saw flickering in front of him. He had his mind on the tunnel construction. How could they have done it, after all? It certainly looked like magic. The elegant walls seemed strong enough to keep the water out and to prevent the tunnel from floating. And the floor not only kept the water out, but kept the walls apart too, pushed as they were by the water pressure on their exterior. It looked like a miracle, really, it did.
Then the soap was cut off, right in the middle of a clue scene. The flickering screen now showed the Residence in the background, and in front a large hole where the tunnel should be. What happened? The engineer sat on the edge of his sofa, clutching himself to his bottle.
“There is nothing to see here, people,” a policeman said, and he was right. There was nothing left of the tunnel but a large hole. “Please don’t stop, walk on. There can be danger!” He waved away the disaster addicts.
Now, water came seeping up. Small fountains of mud spoiled water spouted up. With the laserlights still flashing, it looked like one of these post modern abstract art parties.
The screen showed a new scene. The chairman of BCL stood in front of the camera, looking panic struck, and uttering nothing more than “No comments”. It was unclear what the situation was, and the camera’s couldn’t catch the whole panorama of the disaster. It was just bits and pieces. The horrid faces, bloodlust filled eyes of the disaster addicts, the ever unchanging features of the politicians, the fabulously pathetic eyes of the television reporter. Water, mud, the laserlights. Sound of sirens, the sound of the house party in the background, and the rhythm of the rain.
With a loud crash the parking garage of the Residence fell into the hole, and screams rose in the wet night.
As the engineer watched the motions on his screen, the telephone rang.
“Yes?” he told the device.
“Good evening. You know of the recent problems with the tunnel?” a reporter asked him.
“I wouldn’t call that a problem,” the engineer said, “It’s a disaster!”
“Do you have an opinion about all this?” the reporter asked.
“They shouldn’t have built on that place,” the engineer said.
“The place is cursed?” The reporter knew a good story and this could be one of them.
“It looks like that, but if anybody had looked at the geological layers on that place, they would have known... there is a big, deep pit there, filled with a kind of weird mud, going trough all layers of clay and sand and peat... it’s like quicksand, only the top layer is stabile...” The engineer tried to explain his job to the reporter, but the reporter was only interested in a hot story, a scoop, three columns on the front page at least.
They both fell silent on the phone.
In front of their eyes, on the screen and very live, the hole in the soil opened it’s jaws and swallowed the Residence itself. The shiny white building with the mirrored windows collapsed, slid away in the hole, crashing into flames as the electricity lines broke off and short circuited themselves.
“It’s a curse, all right?” the reporter said, and hung up to write down his story.
“It’s just quicksand,” the engineer told the dead phone line.
***
After the disaster, the engineer walked into the dunes, rethinking his thoughts, and trying to forget about what had happened to the Residence. It wasn’t really his fault, but he thought he should have done more to prevent the builders from doing strange things with revolutionary new methods.
He didn’t notice the fog closing in, isolating him from his surroundings. The air grew cold, and then the engineer looked up. He felt as if someone was looking at him. Then he saw her.
***
She had walked a long way in the dunes, not knowing what to do. She was worried, the strange stories from southern parts had reached her door and she had listened to the horrors done to her fellow witches. What could she do now? No way she could turn, nowhere to hide, captured between the sea and the Woods without Mercy. She thought about the name. No mercy, not for her. The fogs rose from the sand, covering the dunes in their white shadows. She turned around, when she felt someone was very close to her.
***
He looked at her, gazing at her furs, wrapped around her, and under the furs, she wore rough clothes, dirty, muddy. Her feet were bare, and her hair hung wild around her shoulders. She seemed to be surprised, not scarred.
She looked at the man in front of her, his clothes so weird and brightly coloured. He had gems in front of his eyes, and shiny black hair. She had never seen anything like him. He must be a god, or a wizard perhaps.
“Hi there,” he said, “You got lost in the fog?” His accent was so strange.
“No, I know where I am,” she told him. He listened carefully, as if she spoke a language he hardly understood. Maybe he was from Hamaland, or further away. “Have you seen any soldiers?”
“Soldiers? No, why? If there are any, they are in the city, trying to prevent plundering. Since the Residence was swallowed...” He waved in the air. “You know. The city is a mess these days.”
“What happened?” she asked.
He told her patiently, thinking she must be a lone soul, walking the dunes without newspapers or television shows.
She tried to understand what he told her. He must be a priest or something the like. He told her about strange vehicles and magical devices; he spoke in riddles and mysteries. She listened, knowing she should get a message out of his words; it could be so important.
But then the fog disappeared slowly and left her alone. The man was gone. Not so much as a footprint was to be found. She wasn’t afraid, not anymore. Now she knew. Let the soldiers come in. She knew what would happen, be it in twenty years, be it in twenty centuries...
***
I’d like to dedicate this story to all citizens of The Hague, especially those cursed by the Tramtunnel).
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© Vanip 2000