Quara stifled a scream as she slid down the smooth, steep tunnel in complete darkness. Her arms were crossed and squeezed tightly against her chest, clutching her bag as she accelerated, faster and faster, feeling the smooth granite walls rushing by, taking her further away from the only home that she'd ever known, with every second that passed. She knew that somewhere, close behind her, Lina was following her down towards this hidden city of hers, but now that she was actually sliding along through the darkness she found herself questioning how she had ever come to agree to go along with her sister's crazy scheme.
This was complete and utter insanity. She was certain of it. How had her sister ever discovered this place? Who would follow a tunnel like this deep into the ground? They were far more likely to end up roasted in a lava pit than walking through the halls of some ancient, long forgotten library. How would they ever climb back up?
Just when she began to believe that they would slide on forever, Quara saw a dim light, barely visible in the darkness far below her. Pressing her feet against the rock she gradually slowed her slide before they reached it. How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten? No, it must have been closer to five. How long had Lina said it would take? She couldn't remember but she knew that in the past she'd come to believe that Lina had no concept of time. She'd been that way her entire life.
For Lina minutes could feel like hours and hours like seconds. Quara sometimes felt as if her youngest sister lived outside of the flow of time as everyone else knew it, and only dipped her toe into the stream now and then to meet up with the outside world when it suited her. Still, how long would it take to climb back up, out of the forgotten city? Quara pushed the thought aside. She didn't want to think about it.
As she neared the light source the tunnel widened and Quara found that she could see the slate grey walls drifting past. She tilted her head back and saw Lina a few lengths behind her, hair blown back away from her face, arms spread out wide as if she were flying. Turning back Quara put her feet down hard as the end of the tunnel came into view, skidding to a stop as her sister managed to squeeze by her on the widening track, passing her on the left hand side before coming to a stop a short distance away.
Quara sat, frozen, as she gazed at the landscape that stretched away as far as she could see in any direction. Her first thought was that they must be beyond the dome altogether, and that the footprint of this city was far larger than the perimeter of the Walemont Dome itself.
They had come to a stop on a wide flat space about ten lengths across. A length was the distance of a full grown man's arm, from his shoulder to his fingertips, and was the common unit of measurement used within the Caverns, along with a half-length and a hand span, which were used to measure smaller objects. The area they stopped on was flat and smooth, made of the same dull grey lava rock of the tube they'd just come down, although it had obviously been worked into an even sculpted half circle with smooth curving edges.
Standing, Quara saw that the half disc that they had stopped upon was actually suspended about twenty feet above the ground. Glancing down she realized that they weren't actually in the city itself. They were above what appeared to be the dry lake bed of a great underground lake. The lake bed extended from the wall of the cavern at their backs, which was the only outer wall of the cavern that they could see, out a few hundred lengths to a place where a great sea wall came down to what must have once been a beach. The lake followed along the granite wall that formed the end of the city's domain, and it was clear that the water had once been captured between the city sea wall and the cavern wall, both of which extended out of sight.
Raising her eyes to the city itself, Quara gasped in wonder. It was every bit as marvelous as Lina had promised that it would be. It was far more enormous than she had ever dared imagine. The city itself was cut from a dazzling white stone that rose in layers from the place where it had once come down to meet the lake. Quara had never seen anything like it. The Caverns that she had grown up in suddenly seemed small and crudely made. These were houses and buildings that had been built, from their foundations upward, that just happened to be entirely underground. There were roofs and balconies and entire streets. And the entire city seemed to be rising up towards a great castle that was perched atop the densely settled kingdom. These people didn't live in caves. They built magnificent structures.
The castle itself had spires and towers and a great white wall that encircled the entire lower half. As she studied the castle she blinked several times and then leaned forward as if she doubted what her eyes were showing her.
"It's exactly what you think it is." She realized that Lina was now standing beside her, following her gaze towards the focal point of the entire landscape.
"It can't be. I mean, I know that this place must have been wealthy. It makes sense that they must have had great mines. But I can't imagine that..." her voice trailed off.
"The roofs were made of gold?" Her sister supplied the words that Quara had failed to say. "If you think about it, every roof here is entirely for show. It's not as if it ever rains. No one needs these roofs at all. And why shouldn't the castle of this city, which was obviously so incredibly great at one point in time, not have roofs made of pure gold. What better way to possibly demonstrate their enormous wealth to anyone who passed through their underground world?" Quara tore her eyes away from the palace to stare at her sister. Her expression was nearly as surprised as the one that she'd gazed at the golden rooftops with, so Lina continued. "I haven't spent all my time exploring. And the books in that library down here aren't nearly as boring as the ones in the Walemont Library. I guess you could say that I was getting an education of sorts while I was down here and the thing that interested me the most was the history of this city."
"So you know what happened to the Princess and the King?" Quara's voice was anxious as she asked the question, so that it almost sounded as though she were talking about someone that she knew.
"Oh no, I don't know that at all. That book that I showed you, that journal, is the only thing I ever found mentioning that part of the city's history. And it was sitting open, with a pen laying across the page, on a lone desk in a room, all by itself. Or mostly by itself. There are plenty of bookshelves in that room and a bit of furniture. But in this city I've seldom found a book out on a table, much less open and this one was, so it caught my eye."
"Are you trying to tell me that there's a chance that the story was never finished and that something happened to all the people here and there's a rather likely chance that not a word of what happened is written in the many, many books that you told me about in the library?"
"I suppose it's possible." Lina tried to force her voice to sound as though she thought that the possibility was highly unlikely, but that really wasn't the case. She had tried to find the story herself, and while there were far too many books to have eliminated every possibility, she was fairly certain that whoever had begun to write the story had been forced to stop when disaster had struck and the entire city had been evacuated, leaving behind only the shell of the greatness that had existed when it had been a lively, bustling place filled with laughter and music and the sound of many voices. At least that's how Lina pictured it when she imagined the city as it must have been back when great kings still ruled the land.
"So you did read it!" Lina shrugged again, much to her older sister's annoyance.
"I told you I skimmed it."
"And you already looked for the answers and couldn't find them. Is that why you wanted me to come down here with you?"
"You are great at finding things in the library." Lina said the words, but even as she said them she knew that that was never the real reason that she'd wanted her sister to come down here. The real reason was more elusive and she was certain that she couldn't put it into words that would make any sort of sense.
Quara's gaze returned to the city. Above the palace, far up embedded in the cavern ceiling, was a large light source nearly identical to the one that made farming possible in the Dome. It was larger than the one in the Meadow, and now as the sun rose in the world outside, it began to glow steadily brighter, by almost unnoticeable degrees.
"It mimics the twenty eight hours that it takes our planet to go around the sun." Lina followed her sister's gaze and began to explain more facts that she had learned during her trips down into the city. "I've never been here at night, of course, or even sunset, but I've been here plenty of times to sit here on this ledge and watch as it grows bright and light washes across the city." Quara dropped her gaze from the light and stared at her sister with her mouth slightly agape.
Would the wonders never cease? Her sister, who always seemed to shun any sort of book learning was a veritable fount of information in this strange world below the world they knew. "And you've got to read about how they were formed for yourself. But the fact that we have two of them up above in the dome must mean that the rooms above that make up our Caverns were used for something at some point, although I suspect maybe just for agriculture and mining."
"You've said more in the last two days than I've heard you say in your entire life before this week." Quara made the observation still staring out at the city.
"Well. I have something worth saying now. And you're listening." Lina dropped the words one by one, as if they were heavy and she'd carried them for far too long.
For a moment Quara almost shot back a response that she always listened to her sister. Everyone did. But then she stopped herself and thought for a long moment, her eyes sweeping back and forth over this city that her sister clearly loved.
Did they really listen to this small, impetuous girl, who was suddenly surprising her at every turn?
Surely she'd been showered with attention, more attention than all of her four older, and in comparison calmer, siblings combined. But with a flash of insight it suddenly seemed to Quara, as she surveyed her sister's twelve years in the Dome, that they had spent so much time trying to keep her safe and alive that her thoughts and words and even sometimes who she actually was, had been pushed aside in the effort to keep her safe. Quara wasn't sure how they really could have done it any differently, but a part of her ached with the thought that perhaps they could have. Turning her head she stared for a moment at the younger girl's profile, her pale white skin framed by her dark hair. Her tiny nose turned upever so slightly at the tip. And in that moment Quara felt that she was truly seeing her sister for the first time, perhaps in all of her life.
As she looked back out at the city, her eyes sweeping over the buildings rising steadily up to the palace, which was built on the highest point of the city, she vowed that from that moment forward she would do all that she could to listen to what her sister was saying, both when she spoke using words and when her actions spoke into the silence.
"So how do we get down off of this thing?" Quara leaned forward slightly and gazed down into the dirt below. It must have been at least ten lengths to reach the bottom of the lake.
"Not that way. Be careful of the edge." Lina grabbed her sister's hand and pulled her back towards the tunnel that they had just emerged from. "The rocks on this side are easy to climb down. I think that this must have been a giant waterfall back when they were still taking water out of our Lake. At least that's how the picture comes together in my mind when I try to imagine what it must have been like when everything was the way it was built to be."
Quara glanced back up the tunnel and then looked down into the lake and realized that her sister was right. It looked as though the lava tube that they had just come down through had once been the water source for the ancient city's lake.
"If I had to guess I would say that either the water level used to be much higher and it drained through the tunnel into this lake, or they had some sort of pump in place to transport water from the high lake to the lower lake. Although I can't really imagine what would work for something that huge."
The girls walked on in silence as they made their way to the edge of the flat surface and began to scramble down the large boulders that were stacked haphazardly around the base of the dry waterfall. Lina went first, and it was immediately clear to Quara that her sister had followed this route many times before. She knew exactly which direction over or under or around each boulder that they came to would offer the path of least resistance.
They made it to the lake bottom without incident and Quara breathed a sigh of relief. She knew that making their way through those boulders had been as easy as walking across a flat, smooth surface for her sister, but it had taken all of Quara's concentration to keep from nearly falling or breaking her ankle at least a dozen times before her feet were back on flat, solid ground.
From the top of the waterfall Quara hadn't realized that the bottom of the lake was filled with several inches of tiny crushed shells, which gave the lake bottom a slightly pinkish tinge. "Below it is stone," Lina volunteered when she noticed that her sister was staring at her feet. "And I have no idea how or why they brought this here. It must have come from the outside and been brought here from the sea. But for the life of me I can't figure out why."
"Can you imagine the enormous amount of man power it would have taken to bring this here?" Quara shook her head.
"And it would have been much easier to walk across this lake bed if it weren't like this." Lina began walking as she said the words, following a rather worn trail that led from the base of the rocks off towards the city. "Although I guess back when people lived here this thing must have been full and no one worried about walking across to the city at all."
Quara followed closely behind her sister, but soon she found that her eyes were cast down at her feet, carefully watching where Lina stepped as she made her way towards the city, which from the lake level suddenly seemed much further away.
"Sometimes I think that these people must have had far too much time on their hands. Bringing crushed sea shells to decorate the bottom of their lake." The sea, coral, and sea shells were really only things that the girls had read about in a lone book in the library that described life along the seashore before the war began.
"And too much money." Quara's words were hardly more than a whisper since most of her breath was directed towards surviving the hard walk through the crushed coral. "Golden rooftops. Pink sand lake bottoms. What else did these kings do with their ridiculous wealth?"
"Oh just wait until you see the rest of the city." Lina said the words easily, as if this walk was one of the most pleasant that she had ever been on. Her breath was slow and steady as she trudged across the flat expanse of pink sand. "By the time this day is over all of this will seem like nothing at all. Golden roofs and crushed sea shells. This entire city was built to show the wealth of the kingdom."
They marched on in silence, Quara kept her eyes on her feet most of the way, so that she wouldn't trip in the shifting sand. She was taken by surprise when she looked up and saw that already the massive city wall was looming before them.
Standing at the base and staring up she could see only the smooth white marble of the wall and the enormous cavern's ceiling far above. With the wall in the way she couldn't see the city's light source at all. Lina turned to the left and Quara followed after her, walking along for several hundred lengths along the base of the wall. The ground began to rise under their feet as they came to what at one time must have been a beach of sorts, raised as it was above the rest of the lake, and they climbed to the top of it and followed the wall, which curved back away from the water, until they came to a break in the wall that opened onto a staircase. The stairs were carved into the rock and Quara ran one hand along the brightly polished wall as they walked up the path that led to the city above.
When they came to the top of the wall Quara glanced back at the way they had come and tried to picture the lake as it must have been when it was full of water, with a cascading waterfall that came down the tube they had descended through. For a moment, in her mind's eye, she could almost see it as it had been, the water sparkling in the golden light of the Heart, children playing on the pink sand along the water's edge.
Turning away from the bone dry lake she surveyed the city. The sea wall that extended down to the lake, rose up beside a walkway to just past her waist once they were on the sidewalk above. The walkway itself was wide and made of the same white marble that seemed to be everywhere she looked. There were benches along the wall, where people might stop and rest.
It was what was beside the walkway that surprised her the most, however, and she looked from side to side up and down the wide street that ran along the waterfront. Streets did not exist inside the modern Walemont Dome. There was no use for them. There weren't horses or carriages below ground, and space was at a premium, so they had never been carved into that grey granite world. The passage ways in the Cavern were wide enough to move goods here and there, but most goods were created with the idea that they needed to fit through the standard Cavern passageways and anything that was larger than those passageways needed to be able to separate into pieces.
This street wasn't small either. If a carriage was two lengths across than she guessed that four carriages could easily fit across side by side on this road. And on the other side of the road there was another walkway, raised slightly above street level. Shaking her head Quara raised her eyes to the opposite side of the street and saw storefronts, their goods still in the windows. Perhaps every bit as novel as the items that she found her eyes sweeping back and forth across, was the fact that the windows were made of what must have been glass.
"Today is a day of seeing things I'd only read about." She spoke in a half whisper, as Lina stood silently by her side, giving her a chance to take it all in.
There was a hat store directly in front of them filled with hats both lovely and ridiculous. Some were small and round, others were covered in lace. Several were nearly half a length tall and covered in giant plumes of brightly covered feathers. There was a hat shaped like a great purple hoop, which was made to stand vertically on the wearers head, with what must have been a hundred violet colored silk flowers suspended on nearly invisible strings attached to the top and the bottom of the hoop. Beside it were many hats caught up in great webs of soft white that would engulf the wearers head and shoulders.
Next to the hat store was a cobbler's shop and behind the glass windows were dozens of pairs of ladies shoes and boots. There were tall boots that looked practical for treading up and down the city's streets, but there were also small strappy sandals covered in gemstones and sleek satin covered shoes with heels so high that Quara couldn't imagine anyone actually being able to walk in them.
On the left side of the hat store was a women's clothing store. Quara was staring so hard at the dresses, her eyes wide, that she hardly noticed that she'd walked across the street and was standing at the glass until she reached out her hand to touch the cold surface. There were practical dresses, not unlike the one that her mother wore for special occasions, with high necklines and buttons that went all the way up to her chin and flowing ankle length skirts, but they were further back inside the store, away from the glass.
In the front window were three dresses that she absolutely knew must have been intended for princesses or some other sort of royalty. The first was a deep forest green ball gown. The skirt was a giant hoop, covered with layer upon layer of netting, creating a gown so wide at the bottom that if Quara stretched her arms out as far as they would go they still wouldn't quite span the diameter of the skirt at its widest point. It was covered in intricate embroidery, with small brightly colored flowers stitched along the edges. The bodice was tightly fitted, with a neckline that cut across the collarbone and swept out wide towards the shoulders and sleeves that just barely covered the top portion of the arms.
The second dress was made of a dark cobalt velvet that had Quara longing to reach through the window so that she might feel the heavy richness of the fabric. The silhouette of this dress was far less extravagant, and the long sleeved gown had a low waist which turned into a loose skirt that pooled about the floor around the dress form. Quara couldn't imagine wearing it without tripping.
She was about to turn her attention to the third dress, a light, gauzy pink frock, when Lina grabbed her arm and began to drag her along, off to her right, past the hat shop and the shoe store. "We can't take anything." Lina's voice was adamant.
"But they've just been sitting here all these years!" Quara was surprised at the insistence in her tone.
"And they'll sit here for a while longer. The second that we take them with us, up above to the Dome, everyone will know that there's something going on. And then they'll start asking questions and it won't take long before you crumble and tell them everything that you know. Which is nearly everything now. So the clothes and shoes and jewelry stay here for now." Quara realized that Lina's words were logical and she allowed herself to be pulled along down the sidewalk.
"Besides, the library is inside of the palace. And while it doesn't look very far from the water fall, it's quite the hike to get up there." With a heavy sigh and one last glance over her shoulder at the gowns, Quara followed her sister down the waterfront to find the next staircase that would lead them up through the city to the palace grounds.