Bryan Davis - Eye of the Oracle

“A prophecy, Father?” Shem asked.

“Yes, Son.” Noah lifted his gaze upward. “A prophecy. . and a promise.”

Mara held open the bottom of the scroll with her elbow and ran her finger along a line of text. The light from her lantern flickered across the page. She squinted in the dim glow, nearly swallowed by the shadows of the stony cavern, yet bright enough to read Mardon’s handwriting. The story filled her with wonder dragons, elephants, monkeys, and hundreds of other wonderful creatures all loaded on an amazing floating vessel long before she was born. She rubbed her hand along a sketch of a dragon, admiring the image of a world she had never known. What she wouldn’t give to have been there!

She glanced at the hourglass perched on her worktable next to her elbow. Only a few grains of sand remained at the top. As she rolled up the scroll with its heavy wooden dowel, pain throbbed in her stiff shoulder. She grimaced at the ache. The soreness was worse than usual, but no surprise, considering all the digging she had been doing.

She hugged the scroll to her chest and closed her eyes. As a tear trickled down her cheek, she wagged her head back and forth, trying to chase the beautiful images out of her mind. Seeing all those wonders was just a dream. There was no way an insignificant slave girl could ever hope to visit such a paradise, much less live there, so she might as well get back to reality, the reality of hard work, sweat, darkness, and pain.

Breathing a big sigh, she opened her eyes and admired the tall, arching alcove she had excavated in a massive wall, her rocky workplace for the past several days. Although it was fairly shallow, only about as deep as the fireplace cavities up in Shinar that she had read about, it still had taken a long time to chisel out.

She knelt at the ankle-high hearth at the base of her alcove and pulled out three loose bricks, making a low, wide cubbyhole, perfect for hiding away the scroll for a while. As she pushed the scroll inside, a clicking noise made her swing her head around. She gazed into the dimness that shrouded the massive chamber. It was probably just one of the timid rock mice that sometimes skittered through the air vents. Then again, maybe it was Mardon coming to inspect her work.

While giving her shoulder a one-handed massage, she slid a lever embedded near the bottom of the hearth, opening the magnetic field. A chorus of low hums sounded from the wall, each with a slightly different pitch that slowly rose in volume.

Taking a step back, she surveyed the bricks that lined the border of the alcove. The magneto brick at the top of the arch glowed green, just as it should. The three on the left glowed blue, indigo, and violet, while yellow and orange emanated from two of the bricks on the right. A third one remained dark.

Mara wrinkled her nose. What was wrong with the red one? The magneto should have energized by now. She leaped onto the hearth and pushed on the end of the malfunctioning brick, budging it just enough to align it with the side of the alcove. It pulsed red, then glowed steadily, adding its hum to the chorus. She brushed her hands together and smiled. Finally! The last magnet was working!

Stepping inside the alcove, she pressed her back against the rear wall. When she reached forward, her hands didn’t quite pass the point where the wall was before she chiseled it away. Stretching her arms to the sides, she could barely touch the magnetized bricks with her fingertips. Finally, she reached as high as she could, but the arch was still more than twice her body’s length over her head. It was perfect.

She skipped out of the alcove, jumped off the hearth, and spun around, crossing her arms as she admired her creation again. The lantern on her worktable flashed and beamed a strong yellow light that painted her shadow on the recessed wall. Shallow as it was, the grotto had taken eleven days to excavate, even with the sharpened chisel Mardon had given her, but now it was finally ready for her spawn.

As Mara retied the sash on her smock, she noticed a tiny pebble sliding toward one of the magnets. She slapped her forehead. She still had to check the balance! Reaching under her smock, she pulled a glass vial from her dress pocket and held it close to the light. She shook it, loosening the iron filings that had settled at the bottom. After setting the vial inside and at the center of the alcove, she scanned the seven magnets in turn. Each metallic brick seemed to aim its end directly at her iron filings.

Kneeling on the hearth, she peered into the vial. The filings began to dance, arranging themselves into a perfectly symmetrical crystal with tiny black diamonds sketched throughout.

Mara laughed. “I wonder if they’re always that pretty.” An echo repeated her words, ending with a quiet, “pretty. . pretty. . pretty.” She glanced around the empty cavern, her gaze finally landing on the dark passageway that led out of her work area. Not a soul in sight. The voice was just a cruel joke bouncing off mindless walls through a heartless underground world. She wiped her dirty hands on her even dirtier smock. Of course no one in the hidden realms would ever consider her pretty.

She untied her smock and sighed. Getting banished to the growth lab was bad enough, but having to do everything alone was the worst. Sure, mining in the trenches was hard, but at least she could talk to the other girls there. Even the boy laborers on the brick level had each other. . or so she had heard.

She shut off the magnets’ lever, silencing the hum, snatched up her vial, and dropped it back into her pocket. After picking up her lantern, she sauntered toward the passageway. Time to venture to the seedling room and get the newest nursling. Maybe Naamah would be in a good mood today and tell her a story about the great giants of old.

As her bare feet padded on the warm, stony floor, she stuffed her hair back up into her coif and retied it over her head. Mardon wouldn’t like it if he knew her hair had fallen loose while excavating, and even though her work was finished, it still wasn’t a good time to take it off. The river lay just ahead.

The tunnel slowly brightened, and as she passed by a stone-framed window in the wall, she winced at the light pouring from it and pulled down the coif’s attached veil. Although she could see through the material well enough to walk, it protected her eyes from the terror that lay beyond the window. She had seen the river of magma at the bottom of the chasm once before, and the image would never leave her mind a bubbling and churning flow crawling toward who-knows-where. She shuddered as she passed by, nearly in tears at the thought of the underborns who had perished in the fiery stream. When she cleared the window’s glow, she jerked off her coif, crumpled it up, and stuffed it into her pocket.

As she continued, the tunnel darkened again, and her lantern’s flame burned green. The familiar sounds of this darkest portion crept into her ears a chorus of squeaks from bats hiding somewhere in the recesses of the tunnel; cascading water from the stream falling into Lucifer’s Pool; the tiny splashes of minnows in their never-ending pursuit of larvae; the incessant pounding of a chisel in the hands of a faraway laborer, probably one of the girls desperately trying to get her magnetite quota from the trenches; and finally. . yes, there it was, the pleasant warble of Naamah’s song.

Mara peeked into the seedling room. A trio of lanterns hung from the high reaches of the cavern, casting a blend of yellow light and crisscrossing shadows. Mara hid her own lantern behind her back. Naamah’s singing meant she was probably in a good mood, but Mara didn’t want to take any chances. Better to wait a few minutes and watch for signs of bad temper.