They had been forced to flee the house, when they ran from the terrible child with the gun. Their only way was down and Ishmael led the descent, going lower than the cyclops had ever dared to before. At the mouth of the well they stopped and he doubled over, fighting for breath. Seth saw this and knew what he must do. He looked at Aklia, and she nodded and put her hand deep in her mouth. Seth brought his tight Bakelite fingers down onto the coughing Ishmael and pinched his neck hard. The cyclops passed out. Seth turned him over and unbuckled the belt of his trousers. Aklia brought a thick paste out of her throat and applied it putty-like to Ishmael’s mouth, nostrils, and gaping imitation eye socket. While it was setting, her brother turned Ishmael over and lovingly wormed his long brown finger into his anus. After a moment or two he found the conduit with the fleshy switch and turned it off. Ishmael instantly stopped breathing. Together they lifted him and dropped him into the well and then slid down after him, grasping the sinking body as it swirled, spiralling like a heavy meaningless pebble through the thick black water.
Below the meniscus of the water in the deep cold well, the tension changed. Seth and Aklia were holding Ishmael between them in the pitch-blackness that flowed between the well of Kühler Brunnen and the centre of the Vorrh. They kicked against its resistance and crawl-swam farther and farther from the city.
The pool that was embedded in the heart of the Vorrh was fed by the twisting river that passed through it. It also gained dimension and substance from underground waters that streamed from the unnamed core. And who would dare attempt to classify the interior of that compacted heart that still tastes the impact of the violent planetary bodies that wandered into the earth’s sluttish gravitational lure? After so many millions of years the core still remembered the impacts and passed them on in stutters to all its waters. The myriad capillaries and veins wormed their way upwards to meet the fault lines that run weblike in all directions. The most profound of the enclosed channels was the muscular aorta that led into Essenwald. The one that ended in the well beneath Kühler Brunnen. The one in which two swimmers propelled a sagging weight inch by inch through the tight water, scraping and clawing against the irregular pitch-black sides where roots forage but obey the laws of this uninfestable water. They do not intrude but grip around the conduit, creating riblike enforcements that have strengthened its intention over the millennia. Even the inquisitive nibbling hairs at the foraging roots’ farthest tips dare push not any deeper, dare not fulfil their ultimate purpose. They have learned that intrusion here would wither and perish all the patient wood that creaks above to semaphore the stars.
The dense root mass that cups the pool and strains towards the old heart is thicker than the earth that it drinks from. The tangle of blind suction has dug deep and grabbed all substance with its anchoring fists. Even the roots of the tree of knowledge are down there. The tree itself is long since gone; it had started to wither before the sons of Adam had populated the world. Its husk hollowed out, choked and leached by the vines and strangling figs until it fell away, leaving only a circular stump. But a stump that was not entirely dead. It thick dark mass had been fed by the trees around it. Tendrils of mercy seeking its lostness and insisting on sustenance. The black cap got darker and hid what was happening below ground, the roots having copied its primary form. An albino structure of florescent grey echoing what once was above. So that each bough, branch, and twig is mirrored in the dark moistness. Each contour and gesture locked in the earth where none may see or disturb it ever again. The tunnel of water passes beneath it and at that place a vibration was felt in the working cream inside the Kin. They knew they were near their exit as they dragged their burden towards the surface. The darkness in the water-filled tube was changing as their vibrations travelled ahead to the open waters of the forest pool in the straining realm of turgor.
When Seth rose up and punctured the air, a great wave of water spread across the pool’s surface. His polished brown head looked around for signs of danger, steam rising from his temples; when he made the erroneous assessment that nothing malign was in the vicinity, he bobbed back down to fetch Aklia and Ishmael. The moment his head went below the water, a chattering whistle was spat out between the dense foliage. Small smears of yellow could be seen in the stubborn bushes moving closer to the pool. The anthropophagi where there, and they were hungry.