Heartlight

by T.A. Barron

  Ariella’s laughter rang out, and even the wind seemed to pause and listen. “Why, from the snow, of course! Our light radiates from the snow and lights the sky. It’s in the nature of the crust; a thin layer on the surface glows all the time. Do you mean to say that on your Earth it’s the other way around? Your sky lights the snow?”

  “I guess our snow is a lot different than yours,” said Kate. “Our Sun is our only source of light. And Grandfather thinks it’s about to die!”

  “Did you think our snow could help?”

  “No … but Grandfather thinks maybe Trethoniel can. That’s why I’m sure he’s out there someplace. He says Trethoniel is the healthiest star in the galaxy, and if he can just figure out what keeps it so healthy, maybe he can use that knowledge to help the Sun.”

  “Once that might have been true,” said Ariella, lowering her voice so much that Kate could barely hear her above the whistling wind. “Before the Great Trouble began.”

  “What is this Great Trouble?” asked Kate.

  “I don’t really know,” said Ariella. “I only know The Darkness is part of it. Other things have been happening, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that,” the snow crystal answered, pointing one arm toward a gray patch of snow far below them.

  At first, Kate thought Ariella was pointing to some sort of shadow, probably from a cloud. Then she realized her mistake. The gray color was part of the snow itself!

  “What is it, Ariella?”

  The deep pools of Ariella’s eyes seemed to fill with sadness. “That was once a field of snow crops—one of the most fertile around. It used to grow tall stalks of crystalmeat, the favorite food of our People.”

  Examining the field more closely, Kate could see it was covered with hundreds of thousands of stiff gray stalks. They stuck out of the snow like drying bones, giving the place the feeling of an abandoned cemetery. Next to it, another snowfield was covered with pearly white stalks, but an area along its edge was also beginning to turn gray.

  “What’s wrong down there?” called Kate above the winds. “Is it some kind of disease?”

  Ariella studied the landscape glumly. “If it is, it’s no disease Nel Sauria has ever known before. Some people say it’s because of the warmer temperatures. Others are sure it’s something else. Nobody really knows. Not even the Sage of Sauria knows, I’m sure.”

  “The Sage of Sauria?”

  Ariella’s eyes refocused on Kate. “Oh, that’s just a figure of speech. The Sage of Sauria is a legendary creature who supposedly once lived near the Bottomless Blue, but no one has seen her for thousands of years. Most people agree that she never really existed, that she’s just another character out of the ancient writings.”

  Kate nodded. “We have characters like that on Earth. The Greek myths are full of them, and then there’s Merlin and Gandalf and all the others … Sometimes they seem too real to be just stories, but then I realize I’m just imagining things. What was this Sage of Sauria like?”

  “Very mysterious, and very wise,” answered Ariella, glancing at the pinnacled ridge of peaks looming ahead of them, drawing closer by the second. “The Sage was supposed to sit for decades, motionless as a stone, watching the waters of the Bottomless Blue. Only the wisest and bravest of the ancient People tried to find her secret hideaway, in order to seek her advice, and most of them wandered for years and never found anything. Of the lucky few who found the way, most of them could not understand the meaning of the Sage’s riddles, or could not remember them when they returned.” She paused thoughtfully. “You are very brave yourself, Kate, to journey all the way to Trethoniel.”

  “Not really. I just worry a lot. If I hadn’t been scared by a ghost, I’d probably never be here.”

  “I’ve never seen Trethoniel myself,” said the snow crystal. “I’ve read many writings about it, though. I’m sure it’s every bit as beautiful as the old legends say. I hope it has what you need to save your Sun.”

  “I do, too, but mainly I hope it has Grandfather, and that he’s safe.”

  “There!” cried Ariella, pointing to a small hole in the snow below them. “That’s where we start looking.”

  Like a feather on a breeze, Nimba glided to a stop near the place where Kate had been buried not long ago. His two passengers slid off his back and stood on the snow, facing him.

  “Thank you,” said Ariella, touching the point of his head lightly.

  “We owe you a lot,” added Kate.

  “Don’t mention it,” replied the Triangle. “I hope you find your ornament before another avalanche hits.” He eyed Ariella with concern. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Be very careful, young one! Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to see whether that updraft is still going strong.”

  With a whoosh of air, Nimba was aloft. Soon he was completely invisible against the white clouds.

  They began the search. Ariella spun in slow circles around the area, looking for anything unusual. Meanwhile, Kate stepped to the edge of the hole in the snow, examining it closely. Had she really dug such a deep tunnel?

  The tortured black knot of the tentacle sat near her feet, marring the whiteness of the snow. She kicked it vengefully, and the snow sizzled with the impact. Foreboding as it felt to gaze into the place where she had almost perished, she knew that the ring could well be buried down there. She hesitated, then decided to try it.

  Kate began to climb down into the tunnel, her heart pounding loudly. As she left the daylight behind, a sudden rush of panic seized her. What if the snow around her collapsed? Would she be buried again? Her hands grew very cold, and a chilly finger of fear ran down her spine.

  She turned around, and the sight of the circle of light above helped to calm her. A few dim shafts of light drifted down to her, illuminating the tunnel’s frozen walls. But her heart continued to pound with the rhythm of her fear. Then she thought of Grandfather, somewhere up there, searching … So too was The Darkness! She swallowed hard and forced herself to keep climbing downward.

  The shaft seemed deeper than she had remembered. Then, at a certain depth, it suddenly narrowed and dropped swiftly downward in a vertical descent. Kate clung to the snowy wall and peered down into the seemingly bottomless hole.

  This doesn’t make sense, she told herself. This tunnel is far too deep—and also too steep. I’d need a ladder to go down any further.

  Then she noticed a faint trace of green on the snow. The ring! She began to dig madly in the wall of the tunnel, despite how cold it made her hands, until there was a large cavity in the snow. Yet there was no further sign of the ring.

  “Kate!” cried Ariella’s small voice from outside the tunnel entrance. “Are you there?”

  “Yes! And I think the ring is down here, too. But the tunnel is much deeper than I thought.”

  “Can you come up here?” called Ariella. “I think I’ve found something important.”

  Carefully, so as not to lose her footing, Kate climbed back up to the surface. Squinting from the bright light, she looked for Ariella.

  “Over here!”

  She ran to join the crystal, who indicated some subtle depressions in the snow.

  “They look like footprints,” panted Kate. “Probably Spike’s.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s so important about that? I thought you made a big discovery.”

  “The odd thing about these footprints,” explained Ariella, “is they don’t leave this area. I’ve searched all around, and there is no sign of Spike leaving here. Since he isn’t here now, that leaves just one alternative.”

  “I get it!” exclaimed Kate. “So Spike went down into the tunnel—and made it deeper!” She paused thoughtfully. “But why would he go through so much trouble? Unless—”

  “Unless he was going after your ring. Spike only digs when he’s forced to, or when he’s sure he’ll find something valuable. Otherwise, he wouldn’t dream of lifting an arm to dig. I’m sure he was trying to fi
nd your ring … and keep it for himself.” Ariella’s eyes darkened. “He wasn’t always like that. But ever since he lost his family in the great ice wall collapse, he’s been totally different. So full of bitterness. I’ve tried to bring him around, but it’s hopeless. I’m ready to give up.”

  Kate pondered the gaping hole in the snow. “Grandfather said something once about PCL—about its special properties—oh, yes! He said PCL can melt through anything frozen! So if the ring was somewhere in the snow, it would have melted straight down—”

  “And left a small hole behind!” finished Ariella. “That must be what Spike was following.”

  “As well as a green tint in the snow,” added Kate. “I saw some of it myself down there.” Her brow furrowed in concern. “But following Spike isn’t going to be so easy. Digging straight down is one thing, but climbing straight down is another.”

  “No problem,” declared Ariella. “Just follow me.”

  The six-armed crystal moved to the mouth of the tunnel and positioned herself just as if she were going to sled down it. “Climb aboard and I’ll show you.”

  Doubtfully, Kate sat on top of her.

  “Give me a push!”

  “But—”

  “Trust me. Now, push!”

  She followed the crystal’s command, and they slid over the edge. To Kate’s surprise, instead of falling straight down the tunnel, they began to float slowly downward, as Ariella curved her back like a perfect parachute. Gently they drifted deeper and deeper into the great bed of snow, twirling slowly as they descended. As they passed the point where the tunnel narrowed and dropped precipitously, the circle of light shrunk into nothingness above them.

  “How far down does the snow go?” asked Kate, even as the tunnel grew totally dark.

  “No one knows,” came the reply. “The People of the Snow have always asked that question. Many years ago, before I was born, a few brave explorers tried to find out. But none of them ever came back.”

  “What’s that sound?”

  A low, slow rumble rose to them from far below. It grew ever louder as they drifted downward, seemingly magnified by the blackness, until it soon filled the entire tunnel with its reverberations. Gradually it grew into a roar, louder than all the pipes of a great cathedral organ sounding simultaneously.

  “What’s that—”

  Splaaash!

  They landed on the surface of a surging river. Suddenly Ariella became not a parachute but a raft, with Kate as her unwilling passenger.

  “Ariella!”

  Round and round they spun, as the swirling torrent carried them deeper into the caverns of this underground river, raging as it had raged for centuries beneath the silent snows of Nel Sauria. Irresistibly it flowed, far below the mountains and glaciers of the surface, ultimately to empty into the Bottomless Blue.

  Onward they rode in the utter darkness of the cavern. At one point, the roof hung so low to the river that Kate was knocked backward and was suddenly submerged. Ariella grabbed her by the arm and struggled to hold on, as the cascading waters pummeled them. Numbed with cold, Kate tried desperately to breathe, but all she got was water. Finally, they bobbed up again and she filled her hungry lungs with air.

  “Help!” she sputtered, but the din of the terrible torrent swallowed her words.

  In the blackness, they could not tell that the river had now joined other rivers and that the cavern had widened immensely. Mighty stalactites, pinnacles of ice stretching hundreds of feet down from the ceiling, filled the darkened cavern like finely polished teeth.

  Then, through the crashing waves, a dim light appeared. Weak and waterlogged, Kate thought it was only her imagination. She felt heavy enough to sink, too weak to struggle any more. Would she ever see Grandfather again? It seemed Ariella had saved her from one death only to join her in another.

  Just then a blast of heated air struck them, as though a great furnace door had opened in their faces. In the same instant, the world suddenly grew bright—and Kate realized they were falling, tumbling over the edge of an enormous waterfall.

  IX

  The Bottomless Blue

  At the top of the waterfall, Kate spied the vague outline of a twisted root dangling over the edge. She stretched for it, grabbing hold just as the great falls emptied into the basin below.

  As she caught the root with one hand, she felt it sliding through her palm. She twisted in the torrent and reached for it with the other hand, as the force of the cascade bounced her like a ball. The root held fast, but her grip was tenuous.

  “I’m slipping!” screamed Ariella, who was clinging desperately to Kate’s waist.

  “Hold on!” cried Kate above the thunderous roar.

  A sudden wave crashed against them. Kate was hurled to the side of the waterfall, where she struck a rock wall and lost her grip on the root. She tumbled down to a narrow ledge protruding from the mountainside.

  Amidst the spray, she lay still for a moment. Slowly, she lifted her head, then scrambled to stand. Her ankle throbbed painfully.

  “Ariella!” she called.

  Her eyes followed the course of the frothing falls as it descended, falling freely for thousands of feet. Finally, it merged with a towering cloud of vapor rising from its base, and she could see no more.

  Ariella was gone!

  Kate slumped in a heap on the rocky ledge, mortified at her fate. She had meant to risk her own life, but not Ariella’s—and now she was lost. The ring was lost. Morpheus was lost. Everything was lost.

  Tears swam into her eyes, mixing with the mist of the waterfall. Suddenly she felt a searing pain in her hand.

  “Ow!” she cried, jumping to her feet. “That rock is hot.”

  Then, for the first time, she looked beyond the spray to the landscape stretching before her. So great was her shock that for a moment she forgot about everything else. She stepped along the ledge away from the waterfall in order to get a clearer view.

  There was no Bottomless Blue!

  Instead of the wide blue ocean that Ariella had described, Kate could see only a roasting red desert beneath a rust-colored sky. From horizon to horizon stretched a single reach of baked rocks and burned soil. No liquid whatsoever moistened this searing cauldron, but for the seething stream of lava Kate saw pouring from one volcanic cone in the distance. Into the burning basin flowed several powerful waterfalls like the one next to her, but none was more than a mere cloud of steam by the time it ultimately reached the desert floor.

  Kate lifted her eyes from this desolate landscape to the glowing red disc above her head. Trethoniel dominated the sky. It radiated powerfully, even majestically. Yet … it seemed somehow different from here.

  “Uhhhhh.”

  She whirled around. What had made that sound?

  There, lying in the shadows of the rocky ledge, lay the bent form of a snow crystal. She ran to see if it was—

  “Spike!” Kate couldn’t hide her disappointment. “I thought—I thought maybe you were Ariella.”

  “Uhhhhh,” moaned the crystal, struggling to sit up. “I’m just as glad to see you, Alien.”

  Moving closer, Kate could see that a portion of his lower body was missing, and a long crack wound its way up the columnar crystal’s back. She reached to help him, but he swatted at her angrily.

  “You keep your distance. It’s your fault I’m here. If you hadn’t talked about your precious ring—oh! That hurts! My only mistake was listening to you, Alien.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “And you’ve killed Ariella, too, haven’t you?” Spike tried again to sit upright, but slid back unsuccessfully. “Ah! These sizzling rocks are going to melt me in no time. I’ll disappear just like the ocean did—if it ever existed. I never should have listened to those stupid fairy tales!”

  “Don’t you want some help?” asked Kate. “Maybe I can help you if you’ll let me.”

  “Not on your life. Don’t touch me.” He groaned painfully. “What’s the use? I’m not going
to last much longer—in this heat.”

  “Are you really melting? Does that mean Ariella—”

  “So she did come with you! You’ve killed her, Alien! Killed her for sure. Even if she made it to the valley floor alive, she’s been burned to a crisp by now. Those hot rocks down there … this place is one big oven. Snow People can’t survive in heat like this.”

  Kate’s eyes again filled with tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” she said sorrowfully. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “That doesn’t help her much, does it? You did it to her—just like you did it to me.” A look of genuine sadness filled Spike’s long eyes. “It’s one thing for me to die; I probably deserve to melt, anyway. But Ariella! She stood by me after everyone else had given up trying. And I never got to tell her …”

  Kate turned away from Spike and peered over the side of the ledge. A sheer rock face dropped precipitously below them. The ledge itself, while it bent upward for some distance along the ridge, stopped completely at the waterfall. There was no route to climb down, no way to reach Ariella.

  “If you’re thinking about saving her, forget it!” snarled Spike. “She’s long gone. You’d better—ow! Uhhhhh … I’m getting weaker … by the second. You’d better think—think about saving yourself, Alien. You’re trapped here, too. I hope I live long enough to see—to see you melt.”

  Kate turned again to the crumpled form of the snow crystal lying on the ledge. He looked as miserable as an abandoned child: alone, lost, and frightened.

  Then, to her surprise, she spotted a faint outline of something on the rock wall above him. Was she hallucinating? It looked like some sort of carving, a petroglyph made by some ancient hand.

  She moved sideways to see if a different angle made the image any clearer. There, indeed, she saw carved into the stone the unmistakable shape of a six-sided snow crystal.

  “What are you staring at, Alien?”

  “A carving in the rock! It looks like Ariella!”