Shadows from the Past

   It was dark inside the cave, out of the bright white of the mountain storm. A light flickered and settled, helping Magge to catch her breathing. She followed the sudden lamplight ahead as Deora twisted around rock protrusions.

   "Lucky you spotted that opening," Deora whispered. "Plenty of people freeze to death caught in these storms." The storms used to be the least of their fears; before the war ended, the territory had been Averdi land. The mountain passes were treacherous on their own: landslides, storms, huge predators. But the Averdies that lived beneath the mountains had haunted Magge's nightmares throughout her childhood. They were gone now — authorities claimed they were all dead, and after some time the people believed it.

   A quick turn and a cavern blossomed into view. It was a narrow strip of open air with uneven walls, ceiling and ground. A tiny creek cut a path in the sharp groove before her feet. From here, they could go back the way they had come or continue deeper.

   “Might as well see what we find down here until the storm dies down, right?” Magge nodded and followed carefully. The chance of finding an Averdine settlement was low. The towns had been well hidden — something Magge’s grandfather had claimed to be the worst part of the war. “They were burning our capital to the ground, and we couldn’t even find a village of theirs. The deceptive scum.”

   She didn’t know what he’d say if he knew his little Magge was now seeking out these towns for profit. Magge couldn’t say why she had agreed to come with Deora. The prospect of becoming instantly rich was the only benefit, and it was a long shot.

   “Let’s check every section of this area. They could’ve hidden an entrance anywhere,” Deora said. “You check to the left, I’ll do the right.” Deora left the lamp in the middle of the chamber balanced on a semi-flat rock, and the flickering light made the rocks look like shadow dancers over the walls. Magge looked at the cavern wall, seeing rock shelves up high and a few recesses low where anything could be hidden. She still didn’t know what she was looking for, but when she reached the highest point of the first shelf she searched as best she could.

   The fourth shelf she checked turned out to be larger than expected. Magge pulled herself up into it, sitting on the ledge and studying the shadowed walls primarily with fingers. In the uneven light she noticed scratchings. She looked closer and rubbed her fingers into them. They certainly seemed to be unnatural, so she called to Deora who confirmed the find: Averdine. Neither of them had a clue what it said but Deora recognized their letters. Her frantic hands were at the wall in an instant. They palmed the mark, pushed at stone and slipped into tiny crevices while Magge retrieved the light and held it over Deora’s shoulder.

   Magge never saw what worked in the end, but part of the wall shifted back to reveal a small, dark hole, and Deora crowed.

   “This is it, Magge. We’ve found it. I bet there’s a whole city down there, ripe with jewelry and fine clothes, and all sorts of things we can sell for the metal.” Magge couldn’t imagine Averdies wearing jewelry, but Deora was more the expert. Besides, if they were here for riches, she ought to hope for a king’s ransom. Deora began to climb down without waiting for Magge’s response. Her head disappeared into the dark and Magge peered over the edge. Her fingers were white around the lamp handle.

   “Come on, Magge, hurry up! I can’t see at all down here!” Deora crouched no more than ten feet down. The walls of the hole had plenty of footholds to Magge’s relief. She lowered the lamp to Deora then took the climb down herself.

   The tunnel’s ceiling was low. Magge risked scraping her head if she stood at her full height, but the walls were smooth and regular. It ran for 100 feet or so until the path opened and Magge set eyes on the largest underground cavern she had ever seen.

   The space was clearly not naturally formed. The walls curved away from their spot, rising far over their heads and presumably creating a continuous dome past the lamplight. A soft moss covered the ceiling, broken only by the occasional dead and bare patch. Magge peeled a section of moss from the wall and squished it with her fingers. It felt dry, and branches fell away in brittle flakes. She pocketed it idly. Ahead they could see towers and roads, painstakingly shaped but according to an unfamiliar pattern. The shadows of buildings faded into darkness past the lamp’s light. Magge’s and Deora’s footsteps echoed in the quiet; it was nothing like Magge had imagined.

   “I can’t believe we found one,” Deora whispered excitedly. She approached the first doorway and stood, poised, muscles ready to move. The lamplight quivered in her hand and her eyes were bright.

   “What were the Averdies like?” Magge asked.

   “Short. Greedy. Insane, too,” Deora responded. “Word was their leader was a god. Guess that fell through, considering she died with the rest of them. Doesn’t matter now, in any case. Let’s see if we can find where the rich monsters lived.” She kicked at the doorway and entered, Magge close behind in the path of light.

   Dust and fragments of fetid cloth covered the ground inside. The building was primarily stone, occasionally reinforced or decorated with metal fixtures. Magge found she liked the simple design, much to her own disgust. Deora kicked at the drift underfoot then ducked through the first doorway on her left.

   Magge followed close behind, keeping close to the light. Deora left the lamp on a raised stone slab in the center of the room to dig through boxes nearby. That could’ve been a table, or a desk, Magge thought idly. It was strange how domestic and common the building looked. Deora threw objects over her shoulder as she searched and a few stone pieces fell near Magge’s foot. She picked one up and realized it was a small boat, deftly carved so that the deck looked to be composed of wooden planks. Another seemed to be a cart of some sort; wheels were carved into the sides.

   “Nothing but junk,” Deora said. She slammed the box shut and picked up the lamp. “Rotted soft goods and cheap stone figures.”

   “Do you think this was a toy?” Magge asked.

   “I don’t know, and I don’t care. We came for the real goods: precious metals, gems — what’s anyone going to do with a stone boat?” Deora knocked the boat out of Magge’s hand, pushed her aside and continued to the next room with the light. Magge fumbled in the dark for the boat and when her hands clasped the cold model she slipped it into her pocket next to her dried moss. Then she stood and followed the light back to Deora.

   The lamp sat on a shelf at eye level while Deora searched through a pile of rubble on the floor. She seemed more excited now; Magge saw the opaque face of unpolished metal before an object disappeared into Deora’s pack.

   “Magge, help me out. Check that over there.” Magge followed the flick of fingers to the far side of the room. Magge did as commanded and her hands worked through some pest-eaten fabric. She pulled a long sheet away and met the dark empty sockets of a skull.

   Magge shrieked and pushed away from the corpse so fast her back hit the far wall and knocked the wind out of her. She gasped for breath, her eyes fixated on the skull. It was small enough Magge could probably grip it with one hand, with a sharp slope from the top of the jaw to the chin. The top was round, and the forehead seemed non-existent as it curved up.

   “Calm down, Magge. We knew the Averdies were dead before we got here.” That was true, but Magge hadn’t prepared herself to come face to face with a skeleton. She was still trying to find her breath when Deora picked up the lamp. “Did you find anything on it?”

   Magge shook her head forcefully. Deora gushed air from her lungs; Magge felt a spark of jealousy that Deora didn’t seem upset at all when she began to search the remains. With a grin Deora pulled a jeweled necklace from the bones.

   “See? I told you. Just gotta find the town and there’s riches about.” Deora lifted the skull in her hands and Magge felt ill.

   “They were all that small?” Magge asked.

   “I didn’t think so. I don’t know, maybe it’s a child.” Deora dropped the skull back into the pile and stood, but Magge had had enough.

   “I’m going to wait outside,” Magge said. Deora tried to protest but Magge’s mind was set. Magge didn’t want to touch skeletons or dig through rotting clothes, or even consider the possibility of Averdine children. She would help Deora carry whatever they found, once the finding was complete. When Deora was ready to move to the next room, Magge turned back towards the door Deora had kicked in. It’d be pitch black while she waited in the path outside, but it had to be better than looking at that empty skull with its oddly pointed jaw and empty holes for eyes.

   Once Magge cleared the doorway she took a few steps forward then stopped. Without the lamp she couldn’t see anything at all. She tried to recall maybe ten, fifteen minutes earlier when they’d arrived, before she’d had to think about Averdies having normal lives. The path was wide, but where it didn’t meet a tower or building, it dropped away, possibly a very real and dangerous drop. She remembered other paths branching off, some sloping upwards, some bending down. At least one path had cut by overhead, a walkway some twenty feet up and connecting the upper floors of houses. She remembered the well-hewn shapes, some curved and some at precise angles. She wondered if that had been an Averdine aesthetic that would die with them. It was probably best; Magge had seen no particular appeal in it.

   Gradually, as time passed, Magge almost believed she could see the shapes of those buildings again. There before her was a curved roof, perfect like a circle on one end and a harsh drop on the other. The house Deora was searching had a pointed top, a perfect cone that pointed directly towards the sky through the mountain crouching over her. She even thought she saw the path overhead. The shapes of the buildings were coming into dim focus, but not lit by a flickering flame at their front like before. The facade toward her was entirely blank. Instead, light seemed to emanate from behind the city.

   A dim light blanketed the ceiling overhead and the walls around as if the entire sky were a dim dome of soft green light. Every so often Magge noticed a patch of darkness, as if the light there had died away. In her pocket, her hand brushed the bristled ends of the moss, and Magge had an idea.

   She pulled the plant from her pocket and held it close to her face. It was the same pale green she’d seen before, and she could even make out the shapes of her fingers lit by the strange plant. That was how the Averdies had lived underground. They’d had plants to emit light for them. She suspected if cared for the plants could make it bright enough to live here.

   Magge noticed something else as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The shapes that had seemed completely odd under the lamplight now appeared as figures, sometimes morphing into a single shape when two buildings stood in a row. Far from where they had entered — farther than the lamp could have shown them — she saw a shape that looked like a large bird ready to take flight.

   Somewhat blindly, Magge walked further into the city. She remembered the path was wide; they had seen a large square further on, but she remembered the drop-off as well should she misstep. Her heart, which had taken a jolt upon seeing the Averdine skull, picked up speed once again, this time with curiosity. She felt like she was making a discovery that no one had seen before. It was true that her people knew next to nothing about the Averdies; to her knowledge they’d never interacted before the war.

   Magge stopped when suddenly the shapes seemed to fall into place. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and the crisp outline of each building was clear. There was the bird, still, but here to her right was a group of plants, almost like mushrooms, growing out of the ground and present in silhouette form. The strange building she had seen first joined with two others to form a woman kissing a child on top of its head. Magge stared at the buildings in awe; the plan was simple and yet ingenious.

   A bright flash and the silhouettes faded. Magge’s eyes slammed shut against the sudden onslaught of light: Deora had returned with the lamp.

   “How’d you get way over there?” she called. Magge squinted, slowly opening her eyes as they adjusted yet again to brightness. She had indeed wandered far, standing nearly in the dead center of the square. Under the lamplight she could see the stark fronts of the buildings. The shapes faded away into individual structures, which, her mind reminded her, were filled with corpses.

   In the dark, all the details of the past war had drifted away. She’d even forgotten the dead lying all around her. With the light returned a stark and ugly truth, and despite the beauty she’d seen in the dark, Magge couldn’t bring herself to forget everything else. The Averdies were dead and even if they crawled into her nightmares, Magge desperately wanted to take comfort in the fact they couldn’t continue the war. Her people had never understood the Averdies, but she couldn’t be the one to start that path.

   Deora was moving to the next building, one with designs etched into its archways and tiny jewels embedded deep into the stone. Magge ran to Deora just before she got inside.

   “Deora, wait. I was being stupid before. I’ll help you search the houses. It will go faster if we work together.” Just before she followed Deora inside, Magge took the boat from her pocket. Deora had taken the lamp again, leaving Magge and the square in darkness. She hurled the boat with all her strength to where she remembered the edge of the road to be. She didn’t wait to hear it land, nor did she let her eyes adjust. Magge stepped back into the lamp’s bright light, then set to work helping to strip the town of the valuables it had left behind.