The Princess Bride (20 page)

Now Westley knew that she meant to say “not a single syllable of it,” because a syllabub was something you ate, with cream and wine mixed in together to form the base. But he also knew an apology when he heard one. So he held her very close, and shut his loving eyes, and only whispered, “I knew it was false, believe me, every single syllabub.”

And that out of the way, they started running as fast as they could along the flat-rock floor of the ravine.

Westley, naturally enough, was considerably ahead of Buttercup with the realization that they were heading into the Fire Swamp. Whether it was a touch of sulphur riding a breeze or a flick of yellow flame far ahead in the daylight, he could not say for sure. But once he realized what was about to happen, he began as casually as possible to find a way to avoid it. A quick glance up the sheer ravine sides ruled out any possibility of his getting Buttercup past the climb. He dropped to the ground, as he had been doing every few minutes, to test the speed of their trackers. Now, he guessed them to be less than half an hour behind and gaining.

He rose and ran with her, faster, neither of them spending breath in conversation. It was only a matter of time before she understood what they were about to be into, so he decided to beat back her panic in any way possible. “I think we can slow down a bit now,” he told her, slowing down a bit. “They’re still well behind.”

Buttercup took a deep breath of relief.

Westley made a show of checking their surroundings. Then he gave her his best smile. “With any luck at all,” he said, “we should soon be safely in the Fire Swamp.”

Buttercup heard his speech, of course. But she did not, she did not, take it well. . . .

A few words now on two related subjects: (1) fire swamps in general and (2) the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp in particular.

(1) Fire swamps are, of course, entirely misnamed. As to why this has happened, no one knows, though probably the colorful quality of the two words together is enough. Simply, there are swamps which contain a large percentage of sulphur and other gas bubbles that burst continually into flame. They are covered with lush giant trees that shadow the ground, making the flame bursts seem particularly dramatic. Because they are dark, they are almost always quite moist, thereby attracting the standard insect and alligator community that prefers a moist climate. In other words, a fire swamp is just a swamp, period; the rest is embroidery.

(2) The Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp did and does have some particular odd characteristics: (a) the existence of Snow Sand and (b) the presence of the R.O.U.S., about which, a bit more later. Snow Sand is usually, again incorrectly, identified with lightning sand. Nothing could be less accurate. Lightning sand is moist and basically destroys by drowning. Snow Sand is as powdery as anything short of talcum, and destroys by suffocation.

Most particularly though, the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp was used to frighten children. There was not a child in either country that at one time or another was not, when misbehaving very badly, threatened with abandonment in the Fire Swamp. “Do that one more time, you’re going to the Fire Swamp” is as common as “Clean your plate; people are starving in China.” And so, as children grew, so did the danger of the Fire Swamp in their enlarging imaginations. No one, of course, ever actually went into the Fire Swamp, although, every year or so, a diseased R.O.U.S. might wander out to die, and its discovery would only add to the myth and the horror. The largest known fire swamp is, of course, within a day’s drive of Perth. It is impenetrable and over twenty-five miles square. The one between Florin and Guilder was barely a third that size. No one had been able to discover if it was impenetrable or not.

Buttercup stared at the Fire Swamp. As a child, she had once spent an entire nightmared year convinced that she was going to die there. Now she could not move another step. The giant trees blackened the ground ahead of her. From every part came the sudden flames. “You cannot ask it of me,” she said.

“I must.”

“I once dreamed I would die here.”

“So did I, so did we all. Were you eight that year? I was.”

“Eight. Six. I can’t remember.”

Westley took her hand.

She could not move. “Must we?”

Westley nodded.

“Why?”

“Now is not the time.” He pulled her gently.

She still could not move.

Westley took her in his arms. “Child; sweet child. I have a knife. I have my sword. I did not come across the world to lose you now.”

Buttercup was searching somewhere for a sufficiency of courage. Evidently, she found it in his eyes.

At any rate, hand in hand, they moved into the shadows of the Fire Swamp.

Prince Humperdinck just stared. He sat astride a white, studying the footsteps down on the floor of the ravine. There was simply no other conclusion: the kidnapper had dragged his Princess into it.

Count Rugen sat alongside. “Did they actually go in?”

The Prince nodded.

Praying the answer would be “no,” the Count asked, “Do you think we should follow them?”

The Prince shook his head. “They’ll either live or die in there. If they die, I have no wish to join them. If they live, I’ll greet them on the other side.”

“It’s too far around,” the Count said.

“Not for my whites.”

“We’ll follow as best we can,” the Count said. He stared again at the Fire Swamp. “He must be very desperate, or very frightened, or very stupid, or very brave.”

“Very all four I should think,” the Prince replied. . . .

Westley led the way. Buttercup stayed just behind, and they made, from the outset, very good time. The main thing, she realized, was to forget your childhood dreams, for the Fire Swamp
was
bad, but it wasn’t
that
bad. The odor of the escaping gases, which at first seemed almost totally punishing, soon diminished through familiarity. The sudden bursts of flame were easily avoided because, just before they struck, there was a deep kind of popping sound clearly coming from the vicinity where the flames would then appear.

Westley carried his sword in his right hand, his long knife in his left, waiting for the first R.O.U.S., but none appeared. He had cut a very long piece of strong vine and coiled it over one shoulder and was busy working on it as they moved. “What we’ll do once I’ve got this properly done is,” he told her, moving steadily on beneath the giant trees, “we’ll attach ourselves to each other, so that way, no matter what the darkness, we’ll be close. Actually, I think that’s more precaution than necessary, because, to tell you the truth, I’m almost disappointed; this place is bad, all right, but it’s not
that
bad. Don’t you agree?”

Buttercup wanted to, totally, and she would have too; only by then, the Snow Sand had her.

Westley turned only in time to see her disappear.

Buttercup had simply let her attention wander for a moment, the ground seemed solid enough, and she had no idea what Snow Sand looked like anyway; but once her front foot began to sink in, she could not pull back, and even before she could scream, she was gone. It was like falling through a cloud. The sand was the finest in the world, and there was no bulk to it whatsoever, and, at first, no unpleasantness. She was just falling, gently, through this soft powdery mass, falling farther and farther from anything resembling life, but she could not allow herself to panic. Westley had instructed her on how to behave if this happened, and she followed his words now: she spread her arms and spread her fingers and forced herself into the position resembling that of a dead-man’s float in swimming, all this because Westley had told her to because the more she could spread herself, the slower she would sink. And the slower she sank, the quicker he could dive down after her and catch her. Buttercup’s ears were now caked with Snow Sand all the way in, and her nose was filled with Snow Sand, both nostrils, and she knew if she opened her eyes a million tiny fine bits of Snow Sand would seep behind her eyelids, and now she was beginning to panic badly. How long had she been falling? Hours, it seemed, and she was having pain in holding her breath. “You must hold it till I find you,” he had said; “you must go into a dead-man’s float and you must close your eyes and hold your breath and I’ll come get you and we’ll both have a wonderful story for our grandchildren.” Buttercup continued to sink. The weight of the sand began to brutalize her shoulders. The small of her back began to ache. It was agony keeping her arms outstretched and her fingers spread when it was all so useless. The Snow Sand was heavier and heavier on her now as she sank always down. And was it bottomless, as they thought when they were children? Did you just sink forever until the sand ate away at you and then did your poor bones continue the trip forever down? No, surely there had to somewhere be a resting place. A resting place, Buttercup thought. What a wonderful thing. I’m so tired, so tired, and I want to rest, and,
”Westley come save me!”
she screamed. Or started to. Because in order to scream you had to open your mouth, so all she really got out was the first sound of the first word: “Wuh.” After that the Snow Sand was down into her throat and she was done.

Westley had made a terrific start. Before she had even entirely disappeared, he had dropped his sword and long knife and had gotten the vine coil from his shoulder. It took him next to no time to knot one end around a giant tree, and, holding tight to the free end, he simply dove headlong into the Snow Sand, kicking his feet as he sank, for greater speed. There was no question in his mind of failure. He knew he would find her and he knew she would be upset and hysterical and possibly even brain tumbled. But alive. And that was, in the end, the only fact of lasting import. The Snow Sand had his ears and nose blocked, and he hoped she had not panicked, had remembered to spread-eagle her body, so that he could catch her quickly with his headlong dive. If she remembered, it wouldn’t be that hard—the same, really, as rescuing a drowning swimmer in murky water. They floated slowly down, you dove straight down, you kicked, you pulled with your free arm, you gained on them, you grabbed them, you brought them to the surface, and the only real problem then would be convincing your grandchildren that such a thing had actually happened and was not just another family fable. He was still concerning his mind with the infants yet unborn when something happened he had not counted on: the vine was not long enough. He hung suspended for a moment, holding to the end of it as it stretched straight up through the Snow Sand to the security of the giant tree. To release the vine was truly madness. There was no possibility of forcing your body all the way back up to the surface. A few feet of ascension was possible if you kicked wildly, but no more. So if he let go of the vine and did not find her within a finger snap, it was all up for both of them. Westley let go of the vine without a qualm, because he had come too far to fail now; failure was not even a problem to be considered. Down he sank then and within a finger snap he had his hand around her wrist. Westley screamed then himself, in horror and surprise, and the Snow Sand gouged at his throat, for what he had grabbed was a skeleton wrist, bone only, no flesh left at all. That happened in Snow Sand. Once the skeleton was picked clean, it would begin, often, to float, like seaweed in a quiet tide, shifting this way and that, sometimes surfacing, more often just journeying through the Snow Sand for eternity. Westley threw the wrist away and reached out blindly with both hands now, scrabbling wildly to touch some part of her, because failure was not a problem; failure is not a problem, he told himself; it is not a problem to be considered, so forget failure; just keep busy and find her, and he found her. Her foot, more precisely, and he pulled it to him and then his arm was around her perfect waist and he began to kick, kick with any strength left, needing now to rise the few yards to the end of the vine. The idea that it might be difficult finding a single vine strand in a small sea of Snow Sand never bothered him. Failure was not a problem; he would simply have to kick and when he had kicked hard enough he would rise and when he had risen enough he would reach out for the vine and when he reached out it would be there and when it was there he would tie her to it and with his last breath he would pull them both up to life.

Which is exactly what happened.

She remained unconscious for a very long time. Westley busied himself as best he could, cleansing the Snow Sand from ears and nose and mouth and, most delicate of all, from beneath the lids of her eyes. The length of her quietness disturbed him vaguely; it was almost as if she knew she had died and was afraid to find out for a fact that it was true. He held her in his arms, rocked her slowly. Eventually she was blinking.

For a time she looked around and around. “We lived, then?” she managed finally.

“We’re a hardy breed.”

“What a wonderful surprise.”

“No need—” He was going to say “No need for worry,” but her panic struck too quickly. It was a normal enough reaction, and he did not try to block it but, rather, held her firmly and let the hysteria run its course. She shuddered for a time as if she fully intended to fly apart. But that was the worst. From there, it was but a few minutes to quiet sobbing. Then she was Buttercup again.

Westley stood, buckled on his sword, replaced his long knife. “Come,” he said. “We have far to go.”

“Not until you tell me,” she replied. “Why must we endure this?”

“Now is not the time.” Westley held out his hand.

“It is the time.” She stayed where she was, on the ground.

Westley sighed. She meant it. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll explain. But we must keep moving.”

Buttercup waited.

“We must get through the Fire Swamp,” Westley began, “for one good and simple reason.” Once he had started talking, Buttercup stood, following close behind him as he went on. “I had always intended getting to the far side; I had not, I must admit, expected to go through. Around, was my intention, but the ravine forced me to change.”

“The good and simple reason,” Buttercup prompted.