Marc Zicree - Angelfire

I hear someone shout my name, then there’s silence and darkness. I take another step and the silence is replaced with the slow drip of water and the whisper of air and something else that I don’t hear so much as feel. My eyes adjust to the new reality-a pocket of misty light. Firelight, I think, because of the way it waxes and wanes.

I stumble and fall forward a few steps. Dirt and sand crunch comfortingly under my feet. I put a hand out to steady myself and touch water-slick rock. I’m still in the cave. I smell cave, hear cave, feel cave, and, as my eyes focus, I see cave.

Impressive. Someone’s mimicked rock and earth so well that it took me half the night to see through it. I wonder how far into the mound this goes.

Any second, I suspect, Cal and company will realize what’s happened and come blundering through after me. Question is, do I wait around for them, thus triggering another round of recriminations and explanations and apologies, or do I plow right on in?

I plow, heading for the source of the dancing light. The narrow passage widens out and jogs right. It meets a broader corridor with a ceiling so high it seems to connect with outer space. There are torches here, stuck in crude sconces along the rough walls. To the left, the corridor descends farther into the earth; to the right, it rises. The sound of rushing water comes from the lower branch; above, I hear something that’s almost music.

I swing upward to the right, passing so close to a torch that it should’ve singed my hair. It doesn’t, because it’s putting out no heat. It’s also completely silent. Someone here has gotten the faux-glow thing down to a fine art. I touch a finger to the flame.

“You’re one stubborn son’vabitch, aren’t you?”

I wheel to find the flare, Magritte, floating about five feet up the passage from me in a wash of pale violet light. She throws me off balance, like misjudging a step.

“So I’m told,” I answer. “The Preserve, I presume?”

She tilts her head, looking me up and down with those amazing golden eyes and making me acutely aware of my sartorial shortcomings. Reflexively, I try to shove hair out of my face.

“The doorway to it. A doorway,” she amends. Her voice is soft and carries the lilt of the bayou. “You shouldn’t’ve come here. Mary don’t want people to come here without they been invited.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to gate-crash, but it’s very important for me to understand how Enid protects you from the Source.”

“I know.” She seems sincerely empathetic. “But I don’t think you can understand it. It’s just something he does. What you do gotta understand is that Mary’s built this whole world here, and she’ll protect it.” She floats closer. So close I can see the subtle wrinkle of concern between her pale brows. “You should go.”

“I can’t. I need to talk to Enid. I need to at least try to understand what he does-how he does it. Maybe it’s something I can learn.”

She shakes her head. “No one’s been able to learn it. Not even Kevin Elk Sings, and he’s a medicine man and a musician. You gotta turn back around and get outta here, before you get caught. She’ll do whatever it takes to protect this place from the wrong sort of people.”

“We’re the right sort of people, Magritte. I promise you.” “Nice words,” says a new voice, “but cheap. How do I know I can afford to believe them?”

If Magritte’s voice is cloud, this one is rock, iron, steel. The woman it belongs to doesn’t even come up to my shoulder, but even at first glance I can see she suits her voice completely. She’s what they used to call a handsome woman-strong-featured, with a square jaw and pale eyes that could cause chilblains with prolonged exposure.

Before I can answer her question, which I suspect is rhetorical, two large and very substantial gentlemen appear on either side of her, making trust irrelevant.

“Mary McCrae?” I bow slightly. “Goldie, a.k.a. Herman Goldman. I see I have some convincing to do.”

“You’re welcome to try, Mr. Goldman, but I can only promise to listen.” She gestures for me to move up the slope past her. I’d be crazy to decline the invitation.

The cave broadens out into a large rounded room with a natural stone pillar at one end. There’s a sooty niche in the center of the formation-someone’s been using it for a can-dleholder-and faded graffiti on the walls.

There are grunters here, squatting on their haunches and doing grunter things: chowing down on something unrecognizable, guzzling from steamy clay mugs, and leering at us out of their milky, slug-trail eyes. I can’t contain a shiver.

Mary is amused at my squeamishness. “We are not what you’d call an elite society, Mr. Goldman.”

“Really? I somehow got the idea you were only interested in ‘the right kind of people.’ Um, what kind are those, exactly?”

She stops and drills me with those pale, miss-nothing eyes. “The kind who need refuge, a community, a place to belong. The kind who want a chance to maintain a grasp on their humanity. Can you understand that, Mr. Goldman?”

Do I understand? My years of being looked past, stepped over, and even spit on are not so long gone. I remember someone we encountered in our first days out of New York. A boy named Freddy. At least, before the Change he’d been a boy. After, he was alone, scared, and no longer completely human. In an alternate universe, Freddy might have come west with us to find this place, but he’d run off because he was no longer like us.

“I do understand,” I tell her, and change the subject. “Do all the mounds connect to the caverns?”

She gives me a sidewise glance out of the corner of her eyes. “At times.”

So I’ve seen. I start to ask who designed her “drawbridge” when we reach a concrete stair that spirals upward. I’m reminded of my dream-stairway to oblivion and experience a moment of sharp, clear panic. But this stair goes up into sunlight. Not that wishy-washy post-rainstorm stuff, but golden, unambiguous sunlight. I hold my breath and climb.

At the top of the stairs I stop dead. Before me is arranged a campground of sorts about a large irregular sward of grass laced with neat graveled paths. Among the encircling trees are cabins, summer cottages with canvas walls, travel trailers, campers, RVs, and tents. Directly upslope there is something I have trouble wrapping my mind around. It looks like a little Wild West town complete with saloon, assay office, church, train station, and jail. All is bathed in a golden glow, as if I’m looking through a cinematic filter.

Reality check, please .

The world pauses to watch me. My hostess also watches, an unreadable expression on her face. There is a pleasant ringing in my ears-the music-not-music I’ve been hearing since I got here. It seems to come from all around me. Everywhere there are people, both natural and processed. I see a few more grunters plying the sunny clearing, wearing shades or carrying umbrellas and bundled up as if to keep any exposed skin from being touched by ambient light.

Sounds cute, huh? They are not cute. They are creepy. There are also some tweaks here I’ve never seen before.

My breath catches in my throat. I see another flare-a white-haired boy, who stares at me through azure eyes as if I’m the oddest thing in this picture. An instant later he darts behind a tree.

Mary is watching me closely; she doesn’t miss my reaction.

“How many…?”

“The fireflies? Seven now.” A shadow crosses her face and is gone. She gestures toward the one-horse town, urging me forward.

The town ambles up the hill, at the top of which is a large lodge with smoke curling cozily from its several chimneys. Picturesque in the extreme, but nowhere- nowhere -is there a single burial mound of any kind.