With the Gods Touched sailing at full speed, we close in on the strange object. It’s no bigger than Zuly’s tanker, but is rectangular in shape, with a rounded roof. It’s dull gray, like scrap metal, but somehow not a single flake of rust graces its sides.
There’s no green surrounding it, not in any direction.
This is wrong, all wrong.
“It must be a marker,” I reason aloud, “a sign that we’re headed the right way.”
Harlie gives me a skeptical look.
“Let’s get as close as we can and stop a minute,” I say.
“The storm,” she warns.
“If this place holds directions that weren’t on my map and we pass it by, we’re doomed. We pause here.”
She turns us against the wind. As Asher and Reed lower the sails, I work the brake. We slow steadily, then sag to a stop a quarter click from the structure. I vault over the wagon’s sideboard and sprint ahead, pausing in the sand that has gathered at the base of the dark formation.
Its sheer size gives it away as Old World–made, a relic of the past. I walk around it, dumbfounded. It’s pocked and cratered up close, made of something more akin to rock than metal. Certain areas are darkened black, as though they’ve burned.
On the eastern side, there’s a recessed doorway, tall and wide enough to allow passage to the wind wagon, but it’s caved in. Rock and rubble are piled in the entranceway, sand and dirt blown between every crevice.
I don’t know what this place is, but it’s definitely not the Verdant.
But then I look up toward the roofline, and I freeze.
Above the collapsed doorway, four Old World letters are etched into the stone.
E D E N
Chapter Thirty-Three
Asher steps up behind me.
“Look.” I point to the letters.
“Like on our map,” he murmurs.
“I don’t get it. This isn’t the Verdant. The map was supposed to show the way to the Verdant.” A sickening sensation twists in my stomach. I feel like I’m still back on the wind wagon, bucking and swaying over the hard-packed earth.
“Maybe the rest of the directions are inside,” Asher suggests. “Like you said earlier.”
I nod silently. That must be it. It has to be.
“Think we can fit through there?” He points to a small gap of darkness in the corner of the doorframe, just above the giant pile of rubble.
“Maybe. And if not, we can widen it.”
I glance back toward the wind wagon. Harlie is still wrestling with the excess rope, tying everything down in case the storm doesn’t peter out before it reaches us. Reed helps.
“Let’s get started,” I tell Asher. “They’ll catch up when they’re done.”
We climb the rubble, which is more difficult than expected because everything is half covered in dirt. It skids out beneath our heels, sending our boots sliding. More than once I nearly twist an ankle. Finally we reach the opening. I peer into the darkness, but can’t make much out. Even after Asher gets a candle going with a flint, I still can’t see more than an arm’s length ahead.
“I think I can fit if we move this one,” I say, toeing a rock the size of my head. With a good deal of grunting and huffing, we dislodge it and roll it aside. It keeps on rolling, crashing down the rubble hillside.
“Watch it!” comes Reed’s voice from below.
“No more clearing anything till we join you,” Harlie hollers. “I didn’t come all this way to be crushed by a boulder.”
But we don’t have to move anything else because the opening is now wide enough for me.
I go in headfirst, if only so I can see what I’m getting myself into. There’s a pile of rubble on this side, too. The air is stale and heavy, old. Despite the stuffiness, I hug myself, rubbing warmth into my arms.
Asher passes the candle through. “What do you see?”
The light flickers over the rocks. “I’m standing on another huge pile of rubble, same as outside.” I hold out the candle, and the flame dances over the smooth walls that surround me. There’s one overhead, too. “It’s like a chamber. And at the base of these rocks there’s . . .” A shiver sends my hair on end. “It looks like a door.”
Its face is as smooth as the walls, its frame perfectly straight. No plane can shave this evenly, no saw cut so clean. The Old World tech I’ve seen before—jars and deserted rovers and rifles—have smooth edges, organic shapes, but this . . . It’s divine, otherworldly. The work of gods.
I have a wild, terrifying thought.
Maybe the gods didn’t desert us. Maybe they’ve been testing us, just like Ma always claimed, but we’ve been going about it all wrong. We’ve been praying to the stars and working the land, trying to prove that we are worthy of a green earth when we should have been working to find this. EDEN.
Maybe this is a doorway to the gods.
“Stay right there,” Asher says. “We’re coming, too. Soon as we move another few rocks.”
* * *
Some time later, after a bit of a scare when rocks went tumbling on their side and I feared one of them would be swept away in the fall, Asher’s face appears through the widened gap. Reed comes after him and then Harlie.
“You don’t want to stay with the wagon?” I ask.
“Storm’s almost on us,” she says. “Better to be inside. Hopefully she doesn’t get too banged up in the winds.”
We descend the pile of rocks carefully, making our way toward the door. There’s a wheel protruding from it, perfectly round, like the opening of an Old World jar. Asher touches it, pauses. “I think you should do it,” he says to me.
I shake my head. “Together.”
The wheel is cool beneath my palm, firm. It reminds me of scrap metal or the side of Zuly’s tanker, but it’s smooth, barely rusted. When we try to turn it, it won’t budge. “Help with this,” I say, motioning for Reed. It takes the three of us to get the thing turning. Metal groans on the other side of the door. There’s a click and an echo. It sounds like a secret being whispered.
“Now,” I say. “Pull now.”
We open the door about three boot lengths before it hits the base of the rubble pile. There will be no opening it farther. But it’s wide enough for passage.
I cross the threshold cautiously, hold out the candle.
There’s a set of stairs leading down into darkness.
It’s the opposite of everything I expect. Instead of brilliant rivers and teeming green and calm skies beneath a radiant sun, there’s just this stairwell. Leading into the ground. Behind a locked door.
Nothing could grow in here.
But the secrecy of it makes my heart beat wildly. We are close. The Verdant waits at the bottom of this staircase. The gods would never take so many precautions unless they were protecting something truly vital.
I worry, briefly, if they will let me reach it. If my lack of faith is a thing they can sense, will they keep the truth from me? I glance at Asher, glad he’s here. His faith is so enormous, it should be enough for both of us.
I lead the way down the stairwell. There’s another door at the bottom. Again, we work a wheel. It groans. The door opens, and we step into more darkness.