Day Fifty Two : Luminaria

Luminaria

Definition

: a traditional Mexican Christmas lantern originally consisting of a candle set in sand inside a paper bag

Luminaria is a fairly recent addition to English; early usage dates from the 1930s, about the time that the Mexican Christmas custom started to gain popularity among Anglo-Americans. In some parts of the U.S., particularly New Mexico, these festive lanterns are also called farolitos, which means "little lanterns" in Spanish. We borrowed luminaria from Spanish, but the word has been around with exactly the same spelling since the days of Late Latin. The term ultimately traces to the classical Latin luminare, meaning "window," and to lumen, meaning "light." It is related to other light-bearing words such as luminary, illuminate, and phillumenist (a fancy name for someone who collects matchbooks).

The matches were running out. True, they were only little flimsy things I'd gotten from the sad little bar of the cheap hotel I'd been staying in - but they'd been a god send when I'd awoken to complete darkness. 

The tour I'd been a part of - one I'd only joined due to my girlfriend insisting that it's be educational - not to mention super cool - to have a tour of the endless, lightless catacombs buried deep beneath the city. To me it sounded nothing more than a nightmare inducing scenario, but our relationship was still in the early, hearts and rainbows and every bird in the bush seemingly singing a love song stage and I had no desire at all to jeopardize such a candy coloured and fluffy atmosphere by baldly stating that I had no desire to go because even the very idea of it was enough to give me the screaming heeby jeebies. 

So no. I hadn't said any of that and had instead followed my lover faithfully into the dark, down into the sunless land below, deep into the earth where the dead lie. 

And now I had woken up, cold and alone, no light, no love anywhere to be found. 

As hard as I listened, I could not hear the slightest sound of my tour guide - nor see anything beyond the small puddle of light cast by my little flame. I didn't recognise anything about me - mostly because everything looked completely identical to every other part of the catacombs - earth, earth, skull, earth. Was I still on the route I had been before? Had they even noticed I'd disappeared? Surely my girlfriend at least had noticed my absence. Were they looking for me? Should I stay were I was.

I didn't want to stay where I was. I wanted to get out of here. 

I also knew that I had no chance of making it out of here on my own. The tour guide had been firm in saying that the catacombs went on for miles and miles beneath the city in a seemingly endless maze that there was no one alive who knew the entire extent of it - let alone the way round it. 

My last match went out. 

It became pitch black. There was nothing, no light, no breeze, no sound except the noise my panicked breath was making as it threw itself back and forth from my lungs. 

Something touched my face. 

I screamed. 

"Oh, I do apologise. I didn't mean to startle you." A woman's voice said.

I started hyperventilating. 

"Oh, no, no, no don't do that - the air here is quite bad and you'll make yourself sick. Hold of one moment." There was a dry rustling noise and then a soft glow suddenly illuminated the tunnel. A woman, judging by her voice at least, stood before me. She was covered head to toe in layer upon layer of soft cotton veils - even her head and face were covered. Not one inch of her skin was exposed - even the hand that held the paper lantern was wrapped and draped in fabric.

My heart stopped. 

"Are you alright?" She asked again.

"A-a-a-a-are y-y-y-y-ooouu part of the t-t-t-t-our." I stuttered out. 

"The tour?" She paused. "Oh, oh the tour. With the tourists. Yes, yes I am - I, uh, I'm a special member of, of the tour. Yes, yes, that's what I am. Definitely."

For the sake of my sanity, i decided to roll with this clearly insufficient answer. In any case, I thought, brightening up, maybe she was one of the costumed characters hire by tours to add 'authenticity' to the stories they told. There had been costumed characters like that on the ghost tour we went on the night before.

Yep. I was trapped miles beneath the ground in the land of the dead, with no way out on my own and suddenly a mysterious women appeared in front of me, making no sound, apparently needing no light to get around and I couldn't see how she could possibly see where she was going with that get up on but that didn't matter at all because right now, all I wanted to do is get out. 

Plus, she seemed nice enough. And she seemed enough of an incompetent liar that I thought I could trust what she said. 

"I'm lost." I said somewhat pathetically. "I got separated from the tour somehow."

She tilted her head. "You have't eaten or drunk anything since you've been down here have you?"

I blinked. Well that was a random and terrifying question to be asked by a faceless women under the earth. 

"No?" I said, thinking about it. "My girlfriend offered me a drink earlier but i didn't have any." In truth, I had been so terrified the entire time we were walking about with the tour guide, that I didn't think it would have been possible for me to have swallowed anything. Hence, I had politely refused my girlfriend's offer of water. 

"That should be fine then!" She said cheerily. "If you get up, I'll take you up to the surface."

I shakily clambered to my feet. "You know the way out then?"

"I know this place like the back of my hand." She looked down at her cloth wrapped hands. "Probably better in fact."

"I thought the tour guide said nobody living remembered the way through the maze down here anymore - which is why they only show a little bit so everyone doesn't get lost."

"Oh that's true." 

"....I see."

Not thinking, not thinking, not thinking!

"Have you worked for the tour guide company long?" I was trying desperately to be polite and distract myself from the horrible gloom about me - then I realised seconds after I said it that it was a terrible question this was to have asked.

An awkward silence descended.

"Yes, I've been down here for quite some time now." She eventually said, her tone a bit stilted. 

"I see."

Silence descended once again. I felt the weigh of the earth above me start to press down again. 

"Your lantern seems lovely." I blurted out.

"Thank you!" She said, delighted, "The was of the candle is made from the corpses of the dead that were buried here."

"....how, ethically sustainable of you. Nothing wasted." I said weakly. 

"Would you like to hold my hand?" She said suddenly.

"Sorry?"

"It's just, you don't seem to like being underground that much. Or the dark. Or the bones either - you keep flinching away from them when we go past."

"I'm ok, really." I said hastily. 

"I really don't think you are." She said. "There's no shame in being afraid. Scary things are scary after all."

She started to hold out her hand, then stopped. "Ah, I guess I count as one of the scary things too." She said, somewhat sadly. 

From what little I could see of her body posture under all her layers of sheets, she seemed to draw into herself.

I reached out and took hold of her hand. "No, out of all the really scary things down here, you are definitely not one of them. Thank you for helping me."

"Well," she said, somewhat bashfully."I'm only doing what anyone would."

"I appreciate it." I said fervently. "I would have died down here without you. You're my hero."

Her sheets seemed to billow about her, almost as if she was squirming in embarrassment underneath.

"Let's go." She finally said. "The surface isn't far from here."

Together we walked off. The light from her dead man's candle spreading soft and gently light over the bones slumbering in the walls. 

 Soon, the tunnel seemed to lighten, making the candle seem dim in comparison. My companion extinguished it and seemed to fold it down and store it away amongst her clothing

"There's the exit." She said, pointing. 

And there it was. A slab of sunlight stabbing through the dark. We walked towards it, hand in hand. 

There, on the other side, surrounded by candles and flowers oddly, was my sweetheart.

"Darling!" I called out, waving with my free hand. 

She looked at me with an expression of extreme rage, closely followed by shock and horror as she caught sight of my companion. 

"No!" She cried out. "I gave you a sacrifice."

"But not a willing one." The woman beside me said sweetly. "The offering is rejected."

"Wait, wait." She begged desperately. "I can, I can get another."

"What's going on?" Trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. I mean, I'd always known that my girlfriend was way out of my league - like way out. But she'd seemed so happy with me....

There were symbols painted in what I hoped was ketchup scrawled all up her arms and over the floor. The sun was going down. 

"What have you done?" I asked.

"She tried a ritual and failed. We only take the willing. Ever. She knew this and still tried to trick you." The woman beside me said. "Now she must pay the price."

"Wait, wait." I cried out. But it was too late. 

The ghost woman flew past me, her sheets flapping about her. My girlfriend turned to run but was too slow. The other woman caught her in her fabric embrace, wrapping the cloths round and round the two of them - almost as if the fabric was alive and acting as an extension of her own limbs. 

The fabric wrapped together, together, together about the two of them, smaller and smaller until they were suddenly gone. 

I was left alone in the setting sun. Wilting flowers and burned out candles surrounded me. 

My girlfriend had gone. Clearly she'd never seen me as anything more than a tool to be used. I would be nothing more than a fool if I regretted, even for a second, what happened to her. 

I'd been happy though. So happy to be with her I'd even gone into the dark. 

Where she'd left me to be sacrificed. 

Yes, I am a fool. 

I turned round and walked back down into the dark.