Summary: The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountain

Hi, this is a summary of The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountain by Neil Gaiman. This was part of my literary thesis and probably the only part where in I really made with my own words (and without proof reading it). I just wanted to post this, to help any who wants to have a summary of this wonderful story, or novelette as some may classify it. The sentences in italic form where lifted from the story.

I encourage you, fellow readers, to read this story. It is so eye-opening and deep and very gothic in a way that probably we all may relate. Have fun!

                            The story unfolds with the narration of man, described as small and child sized, secretive and also unnamed. The man asks the reader if he thinks that he can forgive himself. And the man answered that he can, that he can forgive himself for what he did to Calum MacInnes but not for the year that he hated his daughter when he thought that she ran away. The dwarf man then sets forth to seek a cave on the Misty Isle where it is said to contain the entire gold. He then comes upon “a house that sat like a square of white sky against the green of the grass and the heather just beginning to purple” whose owner is Calum MacInnes. The dwarf man then asks Calum MacInnes as a guide to the cave, and after much bargaining, Calum MacInnes hesitantly agrees. With only a rope on Calum’s back and food and supplies in the dwarf man’s, the two set off up on the highlands.

                        During their travel they first meet an old woman who can read a man’s future though their palms. She predicted that the dwarf man “I see death in your past and death in your future; There is a woman in a tree, there will be a man in a tree” while for Calum MacInnes the old woman said “You return to where you began. You will be higher than most men. And there is no grave waiting for you, where you are going”. Her predictions on the two men prove to be true but with the twist and a shattering truth will be revealed soon.

                        One day, rain fell forcing the two to find shelter in a small croft house. There they meet the woman of the house who seemed fearful and hesitant to welcome the two strangers for her husband is away at the moment. The dwarf man and Calum MacInnes were able to convince the woman as the custom of hospitality is strong in the highlands that “strangers who ask for hospitality must be granted it, though you have blood feud against them and their clan or kind”. Although they were welcomed, the dwarf man became uneasy and early in the morning he woke Calum MacInnes to leave immediately. As they near the cave on the Misty Isle, some secrets of the dwarf man will be revealed to the readers. The dwarf man has special abilities, although small he can “run faster and longer and more sure-footedly than any full-sized man” he can run for how many days without sleep or stopping and is also stronger than he looks.

                        When the two reached the mouth of the cave, Calum MacInnes suggested that they rest for the night but refused to rest inside the cave. During the night, Calum MacInnes placed a blade under the dwarf man’s throat because of his growing suspicion. Through the dwarf man’s threat that if he dies, Calum’s family might be killed too by those who hired the dwarf man to get gold. Calum Mac Innes eases and puts his knife down. The following day Calum MacInned voices out his suspicions on the dwarf man, that he stronger than he looks and faster too. The dwarf man admitted so, and then there conversation shifted to if they ever killed a woman. Calum MacInnes denied that he would have ever killed a woman but the dwarf man knew wrong because he has heard a story of a woman with golden-red hair and a thorn bush. Indeed it was Calum MacInnes who tied the long hair of the girl by the thorn bush so that he may take her red cattle. It was not in another year that he came by and saw that the girl was still there but already dead.

                        The following day, the dwarf man was ready to enter the cave. Calum MacInnes told him to leave his dirk as it was custom. Once in the cave, instead of piles of gold and riches, the dwarf man only saw shadows and rocks although he felt that something was in the cave. Another secret was revealed, that the dwarf man was half mortal through his mother and the other, his father who came and went from the West. And it is because of this ancestry that he didn’t see the illusion of gold but what he heard was something else. A whisper came in his ear which revealed that people who have taken the gold from the cave gave something in return, “I taste their pleasure and their joy. I feed, a little, feed on what they do not need and do not value.  A taste of heart, a lick and nibble of their fine consciences, a sliver of soul”.

                        Instead of gold, the dwarf man wanted something else, he wanted to know who killed his daughter, his daughter who he once thought ran away to the city. The spectre told him that it was indeed Calum MacInnes. For a price, the spectre also gave the dwarf man an awl and a way to get past Calum MacInnes. When Calum MacInnes was sleeping, the dwarf man ambushed him. The two rolled off by the side of the mountain until they were stopped by a hawthorn tree not much larger than a bush by the ledge. Calum MacInnes cannot move his right arm and his leg broke during the fall. The dwarf man decided to climb up the steep mountain side, he was able to reach the top and once he did, Calum MacInnes shouted and asked if the dwarf man would come back for him. The dwarf man nodded, saying that he will get some rope for him. And it would be another year that the dwarf man would aximi his promise to get back to Calum MacInnes with ropes just as how Calum MacInnes went back after a year to see the golden-red haired girl he tied to the thorn bush. The same golden-red haired girl named Flora, who was the dwarf man’s daughter.