It took them almost half an hour to get the first brick out of the wall, but after that, the job went much faster, and by the end of the hour they were pulling them out by hand, the sandy mortar crunching beneath their feet.
Most of the houses in their village were built of mud bricks. Baked hard and protected from the rain by the overhanging roofs and layers of clay plaster, properly shaped bricks degraded slower in the rain than even stone, and it was much easier to replace a damaged section. The use and maintenance of the mud bricks had been honed over the hundreds of generations their people had lived on the mountain. The bricks and plaster were held together with rice straw, and the few houses that utilised stone in their construction all used a rice mortar to bind the stones together. You couldn't escape it, it was even in the walls!
Recently, some people in the bigger cities had started using stone blocks instead of the small mud-bricks, coating their roofs in plants like those in foreign lands, but Health had heard they were leaky things, prone to rain-rot and sudden collapse. Much better to use varnished clay tiles and replace them once or twice a generation than to have to deal with that mess. Prettier too.
The bricks they were removing now were formed in a strange style, the straw in them seemingly absent, and Pearl had pointed out lingering traces of magic, once used to make them appear all almost identical.
Their village produced rice, and a lot of it, but further down the mountain Health knew that there were other villages, specialising in other things. One of them had to make bricks. They had never been outside of Ricetown, but the other villages were probably all named stupid things like Claytown or Brickington. All their inhabitants spouting names such as ‘The Clay Forms Around Our Souls’, ‘We Eat Clay for Dinner’ and ‘Clay Clay Clay Clay Mud Mud Mud’.
I'm not bitter, Health grumbled, pulling the last brick out of the gap and setting it aside, not bitter at all.
-
Pearl went through the gap first, Health following close behind, one hand on the back of her shirt and the other holding the lamp.
Between them, they had enlarged the gap more than they strictly required, in the hopes of allowing light in, but the sun had moved on, the entrance a white portal behind them.
As they worked, they'd discussed what they expected to find behind the wall, and it was everything from “monsters” and “gold” to “another wall, built of sturdier materials.”
What they actually found was an extension of the existing corridor, as if somebody in the distant past had picked an arbitrary point to brick up. The walls were still flat, smooth stone, and the corridor ahead of them stretched off into darkness.
They had prepared for this though, and the miners lamp, pilfered from the same place as the hammer and chisel, cast enough light ahead for them to see by. Pearl had murmured something about cats, and how their eyes reflected light, but that was her prerogative, Health merely reaped the benefits. It was strange though, the way everything seemed to be made up of different shades of grey. Even the flame within the lamp seemed to shine with white light, rather than the orange-red they knew they would normally see.
The passage went deep, deep under the mountain, and they walked for several minutes before it turned sharply.
The silence was deafening. Health had never before been anywhere where you couldn’t hear birds or insects, and the absence of sound was like a physical pressure, the shuffle of their feet and the sounds of their breath the only noise. Their ears seemed to fill in the gaps with great whining noises, which they knew weren't real but couldn't find a way to stop.
A touch of the wall from Pearl and a shake of her head showed that if the way ahead was concealed by magic, then it was far above her ability to detect.
With a nod, they turned.
Within a few paces, the corridor turned again, and then once more a moment later, setting them back onto their original heading. What the purpose of the baffle was, neither of them could discern, but the spot of light far behind them was now well and truly banished.
Lamp double-checked, the two of them continued onwards.
-
The end of the passageway seemed to sneak up on them. One moment they were in the same narrow hallway they had been in the whole way down, no side rooms, no change in height, and then, all of a sudden, they weren’t. A step into the darkness, and the narrow hallway opened up into a large room. It was probably three stories high, and only the enhancement of their eyes allowed them to see that there was a ceiling up there at all...
There was a little muttering between the two of them, before together, they stepped into the room.
Upon entering Pearl was the first to react. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed, shaking off her surprise at the surroundings and taking confident steps forward into the atrium. Health followed a step later and had to stop in wonderment. What had a moment before looked like a dark hall was now a well-lit atrium. From somewhere high, high above them, the sun shone weakly down, and Health winced as their eyes adjusted to the light.
The room was circular, the walls stretching straight up until their vision blurred and eyes watered. Those same walls, which had so far had been bare carved stone, were now covered in the remains of faded murals, the paint blistered and peeling in the high humidity until nothing discernible was left, merely spots of colour and the impressions of figures. Flakes of paint littered the floor, and the air had a damp, musty quality to it, like the cellar or a storeroom in a long-abandoned house.
In the centre of the area was a raised platform, and on top of that a low table, carved out of a white stone, the likes of which was assuredly not local. Despite that, there was no rain damage in the room, and no plants, except for one.
Placed upon the table was a vase of fresh roses.
Five, perfect, roses.
It was to make out with their altered vision, but for all it was missing colours, it was still sharp, and Health could see the dew on the petals, and smell the scent of jasmine in the air.
Something about that was very strange, but it was dismissed as Health lurched forward, grabbing the back of Pearl's shirt as she reached the edge of the dais. She was almost two years younger than them, and although she was smart and stubborn, her childishness sometimes showed at the worst possible times!
Luckily she stopped just as their hand clamped on the back of her shirt. The smell of the flowers was stronger here, closer to the table, hanging in the air like a thick perfume. The smell of a summer's night, with the rice fields in full bloom. The flowers were in a glass vase, half full of water, and Health felt the hair rise on the back of their neck as they stared at them.
Something was watching them.
“You can’t go up there,” Health hissed, dragging her back, but she shrugged out of their grip. A moment of hesitation, and then she turned towards them, her brow a furrowed line in the dim light.
Slowly, carefully, their hand pulling on her shirt, they retraced their steps, returning to the doorway, the dog on their heels. Pearl looked back at the flowers as they left, and opened her mouth as if to speak, but then shut it again. To speak in that room felt as if to invite the attention of something much bigger than them.
Then they were both out of there, back into the darkness of the corridor. The air here was cooler and fresher, the doorway a dark curtain behind them.
“What was that?” Pearl whispered, the words still seeming too loud.
“I dunno”, Health wrapped their arms around their torso, shivering at the sudden temperature change. “A bad thing?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I don’t think so, it was so pretty!” Pearl spoke louder now, wistfully, giving a glance back to the way they had come but making no move to go back through into the light.
She paused, thinking about it, “There was a lotta magic in there, but it wasn’t anything I could use?”
Health didn’t know how to respond to that, magic wasn’t their domain, but… “I didn’t like it”, a shudder, and then a “let’s go home. We’re gonna be missed soon anyways.”
Pearl stopped staring back at the doorway, instead turning to look at them. There was no light here other than from the lamp on the floor, and the light was cast upwards, highlighting her cheekbones and leaving her eyes in shadow. “No.”
-
What? Her intonation and voice had changed and their baby friend suddenly seemed to grow up in an instant, “what?”
She seemed to stand straighter, to square her shoulders in a way Health had never seen her do before. It made her look taller and older, as she looked directly into their face. “We came this far, Health, whatever’s in there, we can’t just leave… I gotta...”
She trailed off, the confidence seeming to drain out of her all at once, her shoulders sagging and the conviction on her face turning to confusion. “What…”
She trailed off, staring off into the gloom. They could see her eyes reflecting the light from the lamp like stars, but the rest of her face was still obscured.
Health reached out, laying their hands on her shoulders, “Hey, Pearl, you ok?”
She shrugged, not pushing them away, but looking a little lost. “I… I…” She trailed off again, eyes flicking to their face for a moment, and then back into the darkness. She chewed up her lip for a moment, and then gave a vigorous shake of her head, like a dog throwing off water. “It’s ok, I'm ok. Let’s go back in.”
"How about let's not?" Health countered, hands still on her shoulders and absolutely not up for going back. Pearl was young and impulsive, but she was generally also rock solid. They had never seen her demeanour change like this before.
She opened her mouth to protest, but before she could speak, from behind them, in the darkness of the corridor, came a scuttling noise, small claws scratching across stone. They both turned to look, the lantern still on the floor between them, casting a small cone of light.
Both of them waited for a moment with held breath
“Hello?” Health finally shouted into the darkness, listening as it echoed back each repetition shrinking to sound smaller and further away in the gloom. The silence seemed to press into them now, the blood roaring in their ears. Beside them, Pearl laid her hand on their arm.
"Probably just a ra-" Health started, before-
“Boo!”
The voice came from behind them, and both of them jumped as if they’d been shot. Health grabbed the lamp from the floor, swinging it around like a weapon but hitting nothing. Within the lamp, they could hear the oil sloshing, but the light stayed thankfully lit.
“Really now! There's no need for that.” the voice was still behind them, in the corridor this time, “It’s been a while since I last had visitors, never-mind two kittens!”
Health resisted the urge to swing around again, the flashing of the light off the walls and the risk of losing the light too much.
Unwittingly, they took a step back into the big room, and around them, everything went white.
-
It was blinding. It was the first glimpse of daylight after generations that had known only darkness. It was the very first crystal to form in a winter frost. The first breath taken by the first chick of spring, still trapped within its protective shell.
It was life and light and magic, and as they stumbled backwards, Health was completely overwhelmed. He could see the colours of the murals on the walls, bright and new, the paint rotten and flaking and showing the bare stone beneath. Their vision was still shades of muted grey, but every colour was there, red and white and blue and purple and and and-
Something inside their brain short-circuited for a moment, and it was only the pull of Pearl's hand on their wrist that got them to look away. She seemed unaffected, her mouth a grim line, even as Health tried to gesture at the walls, trying to look anywhere but at those bright, unnamed colours.
Far above them both, the roof was streaked with an aeon's worth of dirt and grime, yet the sun which shone through seemed as bright as daylight, and he felt a rush of magic run through him as Pearl Shifted him back to their normal form, colours, real colours rushing in all at once.
Ahead of them, on the dais, the roses were gone, and sitting on the table was a man.
Health didn’t know how they knew that it was a man, but they did. Normally you had to get that from conversational clues or from being told, but...
They frowned, squinting in the bright gloom. The features of the man on the table seemed to slide away from their eyes. There was an impression of bright hair and a flat chin, but the moment they tried to focus on it, it was unfamiliar again, like it was the first time they'd met.
Combined with the walls, this whole thing was absolutely headache-inducing.
“So how about you two introduce yourselves!” the man smiled, his voice the gentle crackle of the fire on an autumn night. He was their friend, and nothing here would harm them. This was the ultimate truth, and also possibly a lie.
Headache inducing. Beside them, Pearl gave a polite bob of her knees, frowning and squinting her face. She introduced herself, and then Health, but the words seemed lost in the roar of the wind, and Health looked around, expecting to see a raging storm.
Upon the dais the man nodded as if he could hear them perfectly, as if the cavern wasn’t crumbling to pieces around them, the paint chips swirling around in an endless tornado of colour.
Which it wasn't, and they weren't, but the wind noise was so loud now that it should have been.
With a hop, he jumped down off the table, and the world shook as his feet impacted the floor, sending up little clouds of dust. They shimmered in the air, and Health was caught again for a moment, the colour was… Was…
Then the man was in front of them, his shirt blocking the view. Homespun linen, they could see every fibre as it filled their vision, every stitch and mark.
A hand on their shoulder, and another on Pearls, and gently they were being guided towards the exit. Past the door and into the blessedly stark corridor.
“How did you two even get in here?” the voice rattled cheerfully on, “I thought we'd sealed this place up years ago!”
Pearl seemed to be explaining something, but they couldn't hear, couldn't concentrate.
The corridor had been shorter before, it hadn’t taken them this long to walk it surely. Beside them, the voice continued, “but yet here you are. Man, if I was a better host I’d offer you some cake and tea or something, but, you know how it is, crumbling old ruins don't tend to have much left in the cupboards!"
He took his hand off Health’s shoulder briefly, to gesture around, before placing it back with all the weight of the mountain above. “I thought you’d like the flowers, but I guess that’s more something for parents, right? Not sure I’ve ever met a kid truly into tasteful floral displays.”
Health stumbled for a moment, they wanted to stop walking, wanted to…
“You’re talking nonsense.”
Their words were lost to the wind, but still managed to reach the ears of the Thing. It wasn’t a man, they told themselves. It was a Thing, a Thing they shouldn’t have released, and they would refer to it as a Man no more. Pearl shook her head next to him, but whatever she was saying was taken by the thunder and the rain.
The Thing scrunched up his nose and appeared for a moment as if he, it, he, it it it might be offended. But then a grin stretched over his it’s face and it stopped. It was in front of them now.
It clapped its hands together, pleased, and next to them Pearl flinched. Health hoped she was ok. She was stubborn, but she could see through this, could take apart the magic and reduce this thing back to its base components whenever she wanted. That's what they told themselves, sheltering their face from the storm with their hands.
"Drivel!" Health shouted through their fingers, "garbage, nonsense. Absolute, utter, bollocks!"
These weren’t the words they used, of course, language is a fickle thing, but it was the impression Health tried to give, over the wind and the roar. They were shouting now, the pain in their chest increasing and increasing.
And then, all was silent. They were back in the big room as if they’d never left, and the Manthing was sitting on the dais still, his hands on its knees, face serious. Health's hands were by their sides, the lantern held in a firm grip.
“Let’s just say I was a genie”, it spoke, “and I could grant you one wish, what would that wish be?”
Neither of them knew what a genie was, but they could get the gist of it. One wish. Each?
“Just the one.” it nodded.
Health thought about this, glancing at Pearl, who was biting her lip and staring at the ruined murals. He nudged her in the side, and she started, looking at him, and then at the Thingman, “Can we decide together?” she asked.
It nodded again, hands resting on its knees, fingers moving to an unheard beat.
There was some frantic whispering between the two of them, before they both nodded.
“We’d like,” Health started, their voice loud in the silence.
“To get away from this dumb village.” Pearl finished.
"Somewhere far away." Added Health, for good measure.
The Thing blinked at them, tilting its head. “But you have family here surely, friends, a future? It can't be all that bad."
Health shook their head. “We have a future of rice. Rice and nothing else.”
Pearl nodded in agreement. “I didn’t even know I /had/ magic until somebody new came to the village. And if I’m found usin’ it, then they'll kick us out."
The Thingmanthing on the platform thought about this for a moment, rubbing its chin. "Surely that solves your problem then?"
Pearl shook her head. It wouldn't understand, leaving of their own free will was different, exile was exile, but to choose to leave, well. They'd never really thought about it like that before, and the two had another whispering session, before agreeing that it was their wish. More than gold or riches. They didn't want to be exiled, but they did want to be gone.
On the table, the Thing waited for them to finish. It looked like an adult, long blonde hair, tied back into a scruffy braid, loose at the edges. The linen of its clothes was dusty as if it had been sleeping in dry fields for many days, and its face was clean-shaven. Beneath the mane of hair was the glint of a single gold earring. The more Health stared at it, the more human it seemed.
Best not to stare, in that case.
“Well.” It removed its hand from its chin, coming to a decision, “I’m not actually a genie, but I can do that. Are you sure about this?”
The both of them nodded in unison, and it was done.
-
The vines snaked up the side of the mountain, clinging to the rock face with small thorns. Overhead, a storm broke.