The Tale of Amaretto

Eighth Grain

In which Amaretto meets La Sorcière...

As Amaretto and her godmother stepped out of the corvette-tank, Katherine began to walk forwards at a brisk pace. As she did so, Amaretto scrambled to get out of the car remembering the mall incident. As soon as she had closed the car door behind her, Amaretto frowned and said, "What about the car?"

Katherine waived a hand at it absently. "It will keep."

Amaretto sighed and then began to walk towards the strange temple after her aunt. "You know. It looks like something straight out of an Indiana Jones film."

Katherine paused at the steps and then began to root around in her purse. She then pulled out a pair of 'queen' high heel open-toe sandals with a bow detail on the front. Katherine looked to her godchild and then said, "They are pale pink python with light gold." She smiled and Amaretto rolled her eyes.

"Do you always have to do that?"

Katherine smiled. "You mean pull a new pair of shoes when the occasion warrants?"

"Something like that," said Amaretto.

They walked into the first antechamber beyond the entry arch and the room that Amaretto saw made her jaw drop in wonder. There was a small hall at the end of the antechamber and through the hall; there was a small doorway with the glow of light at the end of it. The hall was carved through the rock as well and the sides were carved into beautiful reliefs of women in various poses that looked like dance and as she walked towards the other end of the hall, she noted that the women all had sad smiles. The smiles threw her for a moment, but she was soon overwhelmed again too much to notice or remark on it.

As she stepped from the hall into the new cavern, her mouth dropped open at what she saw. The cavern itself seemed to keep rising up into the solitary mountain and along the walls, carved from the living rock, there was nothing but caryatids and statues of people, doing all manner of things that were akin to life. Amaretto stared at them in awe looking around at all of them. Amongst the statues, hundreds upon thousands of candles were placed in niches and convenient spots so that the light would be able to be cast everywhere. Flickering flames swayed to the rhythm of their own wind. The whole of the inside of the mysterious mountain was a softly glowing monument to man and what they did. It was beautiful to Amaretto and she was sure that she would never see anything like it ever again.

In the center of the room, on the floor, spanning almost thirty feet across was what appeared to be a large glass dome. The sides were almost all but bolted to the floor by a large gold band of at least five feet in thickness that had runes all across it. The strange runes danced across the gold band and made it seem as if they were constantly shifting, though the glass itself never did. The glass dome didn't seem to rise above ground level anymore than two inches. Hundreds of shapes flickered through the runes and soon Amaretto realized that they were letters that were flashing in between the runes, from several different languages. It was astonishing and a little cool. She wanted to bend forwards to inspect it a little closer when something else caught her eye.

In the direct center of the strange glass dome, standing on the top was a small girl who had dark colored hair which was tied up into several braids and long sticks were used to keep them up as they trailed down the sides of her face. Her eyes were a deep sable green and golden flecks swam in there. She stared at her two new arrivals and then clasped her hands firmly in front of her.

"It seems that you have finally come around and shown up now." The girl's voice was musical and floated on the air in between the candles and flowed around the whole room and echoed softly as well. After the girl had spoken it was almost as if the air in the room had floated melodically enough to cause the candles to stop flickering for just a moment.