We reached a ramp carved out of the rock, heading down. In the walls were spaces hollowed from the rock, “alcoves”, I think they were called. There were crystal things that glowed with a gold light. It was weirdly different from the Mossville-like deal in the cavern above. I wondered why this didn’t have that same blue-green vein stuff in the walls.
“What we’re doing here is important,” Keisha said. “It can change the world.”
That definitely didn’t sound like Keisha. Something had happened in the three-plus months since we’d last been together. I still couldn’t believe it had been that long. Why had it taken us so much longer? I flashed on that feeling of being a glacier back on the fairy road, that moment when everything moved so slowly, and the Dark-Net dudes telling me it was my anger that held me back.
“Sounds like something worth sweating for,” I told Keisha. I sounded fake even to my own ears, and Keisha wasn’t buying a word of it.
She stopped suddenly, and her goon squad stumbled a bit when they realized she’d stopped. Finally she was going to get pissed at me and we could have a fight, and maybe she’d wake up and realize she’d been conned.
“You don’t understand at all.” Her gaze was calm. “All you care about is yourself, and getting what you want.”
It felt like Keisha had punched me in the gut. “That’s not true.”
“Don’t lie. Stop it. You’ve been lying to me for God only knows how long, and I’m tired of it.”
Another punch to my guts with her words.
The old Keisha would have conjured razorblades and sliced me six ways from Sunday.
“Keisha, I,” I started to say.
“Just be quiet. I’m sick of this B.S.”
I closed my mouth. She was right. I’d been hip deep in bullshit. But what choice did I have?
We continued on, down the ramp, which did a series of switch-back like turns.
We reached a landing. There was a big stone door. Keisha lifted the bronze knocker on the front and banged on the door, three times. A moment later the door swung open with a grinding sound. There must have been gears in the wall. Beyond the open door was a stone corridor. Three guards in hooded cloaks waited in the corridor. More of those crystal globes shined light from alcoves in the walls. The walls had spiral patterns carved in them, reminding me of waves.
We passed the guards, two men and a woman from the looks of them, who watched us silently. I felt a faint tingle from them. More “Imbued” with low-grade powers, I guessed.
The corridor zig-zagged. I didn’t see any doors. We walked on in silence for a while.
“SAVAK is looking for this place,” Keisha said suddenly. “They’d love to find it. People are constantly coming, refugees, from other sites around the world. All through… never mind.”
“The fairy road,” I said in a low voice. That really must have been how all those people arrived here. Maybe they took a different path, but one like the one Alex and I walked.
She arched her eyebrows. “What?”
“The path you took. We took it, too.”
“No way.” She glared at me. “You couldn’t have. Unless you waited three and a half months.”
“We didn’t!” I insisted. We glared at each other.
The old Keisha was back. All that was missing was a right cross. But just as quickly as the anger had brewed up in her, it was gone again.
“Loris will know,” she said, her voice quiet. She sounded so certain.
I leaned in close. “Loris? What gives, Keisha? You never used to buckle under so easy.”
Her face became sad. “You are so wrong, Mat. This isn’t about buckling under to anyone. This is about following a vision.”
“A vision that could get you all killed. Come on! You know what could happen.”
“This isn’t the Renegades, Mat. We aren’t in your “Hideaway” in Portland. This isn’t a bunch of street people.”
“Really? Because where I’m standing this looks a hell of a lot like that.”
She shook her head. “You haven’t even seen this place. You’ve just been around the edges so far. You don’t know anything.”
I gestured at the walls. “You said SAVAK is looking for this place, sniffing around. What are the odds that Support is, too?”
Alex’s face twitched at the word, Support, but he kept quiet. He was damn good at keeping quiet. Unlike Big Mouth me. But I couldn’t let this slide.
I pointed at Keisha. “You are putting all your eggs in one basket.”
She gave me a disbelieving look. “Mat, do you even hear yourself?”
“I can see, Keisha. This reminds me of Mossville.”
“We were there for like an hour or two. I’ve been here for over three months.”
“Did you check your brain at the door when you arrived?”
She swung at me then, clipping my jaw and sending me staggering into the rock wall, next to an alcove. Her people all jumped when she hit me. Alex took half a step toward me. I shook my head. I’d gotten what I’d wanted, it was worth being slugged.
I wanted to jolt her out of whatever the hell this was.
“Shut up.” Her voice was low, menacing. Good.
I jabbed a finger at her. “You’re putting all your eggs in one basket, like I said a minute ago. A basket to be smashed. That’s stupid.”
A muscle in Keisha’s neck throbbed, and she bit her lip. Pretty obvious she wanted to smash my face in. But she didn’t. She shook herself. Took a deep breath.
“Sorry, Mat, I shouldn’t have hit you.”
Before I could say anything, she turned and continued down another ramp.
I stood there like an idiot for a moment, not believing what I had just seen. Why hadn’t Keisha stayed angry? I almost called after her. But instead, I half-ran to catch up with her.
The corridor did another ninety-degree turn, revealing another landing. This one had a pair of statues of winged-lions with the heads of crowned kings, on either side of a giant pair of double doors. The doors were gold-colored. They couldn’t be gold. But they gleamed like gold, a coppery yellow. They looked super old.
Keisha went to the doors, but didn’t try to open them. Instead, she bowed her head, and waited, another pair of the crowned human-heads on winged lion bodies statues on either side of her. The others surrounded Alex and me, edging close.
“I’m not going to do something crazy,” I told the big guy.
He looked distant. “You already have,” he said quietly.
Alex seemed preoccupied, drawn into himself. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer. He rubbed at the side of his head, like it hurt. His face looked pinched.
I squeezed his arm, gently. “Alex?”
He slowly looked at me. “I’m fine.”
“I was worried—” I started to say before Chloe cut me off by shushing me. My ears reddened. I hadn’t been shushed since I was six.
We waited. The light came from a pair of alcoves, on either side of the landing. It was almost like torchlight, but pulsing rather than flickering like torches would. We waited some more.
This was ridiculous. I started to push my way forward.
“Wait,” hissed Chloe.
I wanted to snap “you’re-not-the-boss-of-me,” but that would only complete my return to being a bratty kid. I stopped and took a slow breath.
None of this had gone like I’d imagined. When we left Mossville, I figured this would be a snatch-and-grab. We’d get in and get out. No wasted time. Then, Ella’s projection told me she didn’t want me to come to Sanctuary. I hadn’t thought too much about what that would mean. The trip to Astoria and then on the fairy road got in the way of planning how to convince Ella to come home.
Alex had been right at the time, better to pretend, even though I was sick of lying.
Standing there, waiting in front of the gold doors, it hit me. I still wanted to protect Ella. Did I force her to leave in order to save her? Could I? Sure, I was he
r big sister. But even so, what right did I have to do that? I’d be kidnapping her.
So, instead, was I prepared to join Sanctuary for the long haul, in order to save her? Did I have the right to risk Alex? Okay, it had been his idea to come with me, but he was here because of me. All those questions looped through my mind while we waited.
I waited there, surrounded by Fellowship cultists, next to a man who increasingly seemed like he loved me, and who suddenly seemed withdrawn. That wasn’t like him at all. My one-time best friend stood in front of me, head lowered. She was closed off to me. As far as I was concerned it had just been a couple of days ago since I’d last seen her. But, apparently three and a half months had passed. What had she gone through since I last saw her?
I stood there and ached inside.
Finally, Keisha raised her head. A slow grinding sound, and then the doors swung inward, opening to show a huge cavern, lit from above by warm, golden light. A slight breeze ruffled my hair.
Keisha stood there at the entrance, with the rest of us pressing right behind her, like she was waiting for permission.
I could see her nose twitching, and then I smelled it—a mix of earth and copper, and something growing. Just like at Mossville.
“Okay, we can enter.”
She walked forward in long strides, down carved stone stairs into the huge, echoing cavern.
An underground city stretched out around us. Ancient stone towers up toward a rocky ceiling hundreds of feet above us. Between the towers were a jumble of other buildings, some flat-roofed, with trees on their rooftops, while others were domed. There was a crazy quilt of streets and alleys. Ahead of us was an open plaza. The rocky ceiling high above had window-like openings flooding with golden light, brighter than moonlight, but not as bright as the sun.
I shivered. This place was beyond strange.
A paper lantern floated into view high above. Three more appeared from behind a tower, then six, until there were a dozen drifting below the cavern’s ceiling.
As we walked, I craned my neck to watch the lanterns float away.
I moved closer to Alex. “What’s up with the lanterns?”
He blinked, looked up. “Saying goodbye to someone?” He shook his head.
He seemed as mystified as me. He smiled at me, and suddenly the world seemed just a little brighter, even underground.
“Not goodbye, welcoming the newly gifted,” Chloe said. She had sharp ears. Sharper than I remembered in Mossville.
“Does this happen often?” I asked.
She looked away and went back to walking. “Ask Loris,” she said.
The lanterns disappeared behind one the twisting towers. We walked past a bridge over a chasm in the rock floor. The chasm was deep, the golden light didn’t reach the bottom. The bridge had big symbols, like hieroglyphs, carved on it. We walked along the chasm and neared a hundred-foot tall ziggurat. More winged-lion statues were at the base of wide stone steps heading up the ziggurat. The flat-roofed building on top was lit from inside, by what looked like modern lighting.
Keisha stopped, and waited for us to join her at the bottom of the steps.
“You going to have us sacrificed?” I said, trying to make a joke.
“You don’t know us at all.”
“It was a joke,” I said. “Come on, Keisha.”
“This is something so much bigger than us, but you don’t see that.”
I missed my friend, the Keisha who would flick shit back at me.
“Okay, help me learn,” I said.
“Perhaps, if Loris decides you can stay.” A chill ran through me. My friend, letting my fate be in someone else’s hands. That wasn’t Keisha. “For now, we’re going up to the temple.”
“Temple?” I asked her.
“That’s what I said. Temple.”
We tramped up the worn stone stairs. Alex and my breathing grew ragged as we climbed. The others seemed fine. Guess they must have gotten plenty of practice climbing the steps.
As we neared the top, I thought I heard the hum of a generator. A couple of big guys in cloaked hoods and robes right out of a cheesy horror film stood on guard at the top of the ziggurat. We walked past the guards and headed to the open entrance of the temple building. At the entrance were statues of two naked women. One held what looked like the earth in its grasp, the other held a stone staff with a sunburst on one end and a crescent moon on the other.
Keisha strode right inside the temple and the rest of us followed.
There were standing lamps set up, with a big pool of water in a basin in the center of the room.
A woman in robes sat in a wooden folding chair next to the pool, her fingers tracing a pattern on the surface of the water. Her hood was back and her long white hair fell forward. She looked old and young at the same time.
She raised her head, brushed back her hair with bony fingers. Her eyes were bright green. She looked at me and for a second I felt like I was five years old again. I wanted to crawl off and hide from that gaze.
She motioned at me. “Come closer, young woman,” she said. Her voice sounded young and musical. It was a voice that didn’t match the face. She sounded gentle and kind.
I stumbled forward. My legs felt like they were lead, and my mouth was as dry as this cave.
Those eyes: I couldn’t look at them but I couldn’t look away, either. I felt naked.
I reached her. She seemed as old as Bey, and yet, at the same time, younger than me.
I had this horrible thought—what if I hadn’t left the fairy road, and was just going on and on with Alex. But those scenes in Tehran, and the dusty desert drive to here, those had been real, like the world I knew.
“Mathilda Brandt,” the woman said. “Welcome to Sanctuary. I’m Loris.” She smiled. “Don’t be afraid. This is not Hideaway.”
“How do you know about Hideaway?”
“Your sister told me.” She smiled at Keisha. “As did your friend here.”
I wonder what else they had told Loris about me. “Then you know what happened?”
“This is not that place. I’m sorry for what happened to you, and to them. We are safe here.”
“If you heard about Hideaway, then you know that the Professor thought the same thing as you. He ended up dead.”
“Such a waste,” she said. “He would have flourished here.”
She didn’t know anything about him. Not really what he’d been like, or what Hideaway had been like, back when I was sixteen. But I didn’t throw that in her face. She was sympathetic. She sounded like she cared.
“You’ve come a long way.”
“Yes.” My voice was a croak.
“This can be a new home for you, just as it is for your sister, and Keisha. We welcome you.” She smiled again. The hairs on the back of my neck rose. The air crackled with power.
I swallowed, but couldn’t moisten my mouth.
She picked up a little clay cup and dipped it in the pool next to her.
“Please drink,” she said.
My hands felt twitchy, like I’d get shocked or something if I took the clay cup from her. But I was thirsty, and her gaze was concerned, reminding how Ruth looked whenever I’d been sick as a kid.
“Thank you,” I said. The others watched me closely, waiting to see what I’d do. I took the cup. The water was cool, almost sweet. I closed my eyes and drank. I heard a few of the people behind me exhale slowly, as though they were worried at how I would react.
“Better?” she asked.
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said again.
“You’re welcome.” She smiled. “Now, what did you want to say to me?”
“Please, I’d like to see my sister,” I said. I lowered my head.
Loris nodded. “I see you care about her a great deal. As a loving sister does.” She grew serious. “But you can’t see her, not now.”
I flinched. “I want to see that she’s okay. Please,” I begged.
Loris sighed, sadly. “Why did you come, Mat
hilda Brandt?”
I twisted my hands. “To bring my sister home.”
“But Ella is home. This is her home. She has friends, family here.” Loris explained in a patient, warm voice.
A tear rolled down my face. “I’m her family. She has family back home that misses her.”
Loris tilted her head. “I see how much you care. It does you great credit, Mathilda.”
I suddenly blurted out, “Please, can’t I see her?” I asked, my voice a whine. What had happened to me?
Loris stared at me with those bright green eyes of hers. “I understand how you feel. We all have family or friends we miss. But sometimes we have to be apart for a while longer. Sometimes just for a while. Sometimes for good.”
Part of me wanted to say no, but her warmth in her voice was so reasonable, so caring.
I nodded. “I understand.”
Her smile made me feel warm.
“Why do you want to take your sister away from Sanctuary?” She asked.
Part of me wanted to deny that I did, but lying to Loris felt wrong. “This place isn’t safe,” I said quietly.
“No ordinary place is truly safe,” she said. “You must know that better than most.”
My shoulders slumped. “I’ve seen a lot of people die.”
“I’m so sorry, Mat, that you have,” she said. “But this is no ordinary place.”
I looked up at the strange cavern roof with the glowing skylight-like things, filling the cavern with that warm, golden light, and took a slow breath of the charged air. “I can see that.”
“Then you can also feel the power of this place. But there’s more to it than you realize.”
She stood up, more easily than I would have thought, not frail at all despite looking ancient. Well, looking ancient half the time at any rate. “Please walk with me,” she said, putting a strong hand on my arm.
I glanced back at Alex to see if he was okay. My chest tightened. His face was drawn again, and he was staring off into the distance.
“What about my companion?” I asked Loris.
She glanced at Alex. I almost thought I saw a greedy look cross her face, but that had to be the light. “He’ll be fine, nothing a good hot meal won’t take care of,” she told me. She turned to Keisha. “Could you please take him to the hotel?”
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