PART 20
We didn't speak during the long descent from the mountain,
nor during the entire two-day drive toward the Great Lakes.
Daniel drove a stolen truck we found at a logging camp,
his face a mask of grim determination that hid a deeper,
more profound despair.
He could see the physical changes in me now,
changes that could no longer be hidden by long sleeves or dark lighting.
The skin on my left arm had taken on a pale,
translucent quality,
and under the surface,
the veins glowed with a faint,
phosphorescent light whenever the moon was full.
"We are approaching the perimeter of the third node,"
I said,
staring at the dashboard where the compass Arthur left us was spinning wildly.
The dark liquid inside the device was no longer forming geometric points;
it was splashing against the glass,
frantic and terrified.
The air around Lake Superior was thick with fog,
a heavy,
wet blanket that smelled of rot and ancient timber.
The water was completely flat,
lacking even the smallest ripple,
like a sheet of dark glass that stretched out into the gray horizon.
"How are we supposed to get to a sunken city?"
Daniel asked,
stopping the truck at the edge of a deserted rocky beach.
"We don't have diving gear,
Amelia,
and we don't have a boat."
"We won't need them,"
I said,
stepping out of the vehicle and walking down to the water's edge,
feeling the cold stones shift beneath my feet.
The third node was a memory of the deep,
the archive of things that had been drowned and forgotten by time.
I extended my left hand over the water,
the silvery patterns on my skin flaring to life,
casting long,
blue shadows across the pebbles.
For a moment,
nothing happened,
and the only sound was the rhythmic ticking of the truck's cooling engine behind us.
Then,
with a low,
sucking sound,
the water began to recede from the shore,
pulling back into the darkness of the lake.
It didn't form waves;
it simply rolled away like a carpet being pulled back,
revealing a wide,
muddy path that led down into the abyss.
The lake floor was littered with the wrecks of old ships,
their wooden hulls rotted away to reveal iron skeletons,
their cargoes of coal and stone spilled across the mud.
And there,
looming in the distance,
were the stone towers Arthur had shown me in the reflection of the telescope.
They weren't made by human hands;
the stones were too large,
the angles too precise,
forming a massive labyrinth that led toward a central ziggurat.
"Come on,"
I told Daniel,
not looking back as I stepped onto the wet mud,
my boots sinking slightly into the ancient silt.
Daniel hesitated for a single second,
looking up at the towering walls of water that stood on either side of the path,
holding back millions of gallons of lake water by nothing more than the force of my will.
Then,
with a deep breath,
May you like
he stepped down into the void beside me,
his hand finding mine in the dark.
