“I’d be careful if I were you…one move and our planet gets wiped of all life.”

I was a ten-year-old girl when I heard those words, but they haunt me even now at eighty.

Everyone tells me I dreamed it, and I don’t say I didn’t. All I know is that all my dreams have felt like dreams, even when I didn’t realize they were dreams until I woke up.

All except that one.

I don’t remember how I got there, but I was walking in a cave so dark I couldn’t see. It was so hot I could barely breathe. I’ve always been short, and I was small as a girl, but I had to stoop so low that I was almost crawling.

But even though I literally saw nothing, I knew I wasn’t alone. Don’t ask me how I knew he was there: I couldn’t hear his breath, I couldn’t smell him, couldn’t feel him, nothing.

But the gnome was there; that I knew.

I also knew we were going downward, deeper and deeper. I can’t remember when I began to hear it, but at some point I heard the terrible sound.

Under any other circumstances I would have identified the sound as someone snoring. But this was as though the entire earth was snoring all around me! I felt it more than I heard it!

“I’m scared, Peter,” I whispered.

I wasn’t trying to whisper, but the air was so still that I almost had to shout before I could be sure the gnome heard me.

Don’t ask me how I knew his name was Peter; I don’t remember him telling me.

“As you should be, June,” he said. He didn’t say it like a warning, or like a practical joke; he just said it.

The snoring that shook the earth became unbearable as we came to a place where the ground no longer sloped.

I still couldn’t see, but I knew that Peter the gnome was opening a very large door. The whoosh of cold air almost knocked me down.

“Take off your shoes,” said Peter curtly.

I didn’t ask questions or protest; I just took off my shoes. They were slip-on shoes, and I wasn’t wearing any socks or stockings. The sharp rocks and the dust assaulted my bare feet as I stepped through the door.

I found myself in an enormous building. I kept silent, as I would have done in church. The place seemed to demand it, even though the noise sounded more hellish than anything.

Now there was light. I have no idea where it was coming from; I couldn’t see any light source, natural or artificial.

But there was definitely light. A dull red light.

And then I saw HIM.

And trembled.

“That is not the Satan,” said Peter, answering my question before I asked it.

“Who is he?” I mouthed.

I was face to foot with the hugest giant I could have imagined. He lay down, taking up practically the whole space. A very old man, who looked like he had never known what youth was. His skin looked like it had been draped casually onto a skeleton. I knew that if I touched him, he would be ice-cold.

But the stench overpowered my other senses, and I wasn’t sure it was his breath.

If he hadn’t been snoring, I would have been sure this was a dead body.

“In his waking life all lived under him as their king,” said Peter. “He was called by different names. The Greeks called him Kronos. Now he dreams of the surface.”

In spite of myself, I reached out my hand.

“I’d be careful if I were you…one move and our planet gets wiped of all life.”

Every muscle in my body tensed up.

“What do you mean?”

“He dreams of you, girl,” said the gnome. “He dreams of all who dwell on the surface. All that happens above is but his dream. When he awakens again, it is the end.”

For once I wasn’t sure I believed Peter. I knew I was real. Besides, if I wasn’t, how could I wake him up?

So what held me back?

********

That only happened once, when I was ten years old. I’m now an eighty-year-old widow.

Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder what would have happened.

What if I, June Pandora Hargreaves, had awakened Kronos on January 27, 1951?