The Princess Bride

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.'