She gave him a sideways glance and a half smile, which she knew he would take to mean “no” as well as “please tell me everything you know about the supernova,” and he proceeded to fill her head with scientific jargon she hardly understood until he finished rambling, out of breath and red in the face with excitement.
Pausing in the dragon’s lair she tilted her head quizzically. “And now . . . for us mere mortals, if you please?” Dash was brilliant. And she suspected he had no idea at all.
“Lucy.” He shook his head back and forth in mock disappointment, but she knew he relished this part most of all. “A supernova is a gigantic burst of light like you’ve never seen before.”
“You haven’t seen one, either.”
“No, but I will, one day.”
Once inside the cottage, Lucy’s mother placed a mug of chocolate in Dash’s one hand, and her father a screwdriver in the other, and they set to work building the telescope Lucy’s father was coaching them through. As they worked, Simon the watchmaker told his riddles, and Penny the gardener propagated lilacs and schemed great schemes for fountains, follies, and all manner of courtyard beauty. For many years ago, Gerald W. Bessette had seen her green thumb, dubbed her the resident gardener, and increased their stipend.
At precisely seven o’clock, the watchmaker packed away his tools and opened a palm toward Lucy as if to give her the floor. She stifled a smile, put on her serious face, and pulled the watch on its long chain from her pocket. With a quick snap, she held it out for all to see and uttered her favorite words in all the world: “Let the story . . . begin.”
And with that, the walls fell away from their narrow cottage and imagination swept them to far-off lands, the world around them transformed in Father’s rugged cadence. The growl of the Underground beneath them tumbled straight into their tale as the sound of the waking dragon. Or the roll of a storm-tossed ship. Or once, even, the dwellers of an underground city.
“Pay attention now.” When Dad said things like “Pay attention,” he made it sound like an invitation.
Mum chimed in. “Pay attention. From the Latin ad tendere.” She loved her Latin. She pronounced the scientific names of her plants as if they were magnificent treasures, not just clumps of soil and plucky seedlings clinging to her knuckles.
“What’s that mean?” Lucy asked.
“It means to stretch toward.” Mum slid a plate of lavender shortbread beneath their noses. “Pay attention to those cookies, too, will you?” She winked.
Dad cleared his throat. “As I was saying . . .”
“Oh, hush. Time enough for biscuits, too.” Mum placed one in his hand.
He ate it in one giant bite and returned to his story. “Now, picture it, children.” He ran his hand around a yellowing globe. “Here we are, this tiny island nation. Green and lush, surrounded by ocean. And here”—he slid his finger across the ocean, down, down, until he tapped the desert stretches of Australia—“nearly the bottom of the world, is another island nation. Forget the trees and grass of England. Imagine sand and rock the colour of rust. The only trees in sight are those made from metal, by man, for shade. The outback stretching as far as the eye can see.”
Lucy felt parched, envisioning it.
“Here,” Dad said, “light is born.”
A myth, then. A legend of the sun’s birth, or fire’s origin, or . . .
“Coober Pedy,” he said, leaning forward. “The underground city.”
“Like Poseidon’s palace?” Lucy remembered his story of jeweled iron and coral, twisting together into a fortress under the sea. She inched forward. “Or the Shadowlands, or the Deep Realm, or Bism!” Mum had finished reading them The Silver Chair only last week.
“Or the Dwarf Cities,” Dash said, reaching for The Fellowship of the Ring and leafing through it. “The realm of the Longbeards. What was it called? Doom . . . Kad-doom . . .
“Khazad-dûm. Beneath the Misty Mountains. Yes, like all of those . . . but real.”
Lucy felt reality push back against his claims. “But you said light was born there. We know that can’t be real.”
“Have a listen. There at the bottom of the world, you might go travelling across the desert. You might see signs of life. A lemonade stand sitting empty upon the stretching desert plains. Trucks abandoned, no driver in sight. A cross aboveground—but no church to be seen. Heat scorching the earth, dust storms tearing across the land with a mighty roar!”
Dash jerked his head up as Dad hollered the last word.
“Where are all the people?” Dad asked, palms up.
“Beneath ground,” Dash said. “But why?”
“You are a scholar of the highest pedigree, Dashel Greene. They live there—they have their doors in the hillside and have dug homes for themselves right out of the earth. Hollowed bookshelves out of the limestone walls, vaulted intricate carved ceilings in their church to rival the artistry of the Sistine Chapel. Rooms and reaches and swimming pools and everything you can imagine, all there underground. But why, you ask?”
He waited. His watch tick-tocked, spinning a spell.
“Water runs down into the earth there. Seeks out all the cracks and chasms, the broken places, and sinks deep, bringing with it mineral deposits. It lands in voids—empty places caused by faults, the shaking of the earth. Or places fossils once lay. The water does its good work, depositing something called silica, then just”—he raised his hands and wiggled his fingers, as if performing a magic trick—“vanishes.”
“You mean evaporates,” Lucy said. “The water evaporates.”
“Isn’t that what I said?” Father winked, his dark bushy brows scrunching. “And what do you suppose it leaves behind?”
“Mineral deposits,” the girl said. “You told us.”
“Yes, Lucy. But don’t you miss the wonder, all covered up in the big words. Peel them back and see what lies beneath.”
“Beneath the mineral deposits?” Dash furrowed his brow. “You said it yourself. Darkness and emptiness.”
“Indeed there would be, if not for the miracle. The darkness is filled . . .”
Dad reached out his arm, beckoning his wife’s hand. She laced her fingers into his, smiling and keeping his secret. She had heard this before.
He held her hand out toward them as Lucy held her breath, heart beating.
“With light,” he whispered. He turned Mum’s hand this way and that, letting the pale light from the room’s solitary window skim over the gem on her finger. It lit into an explosion of colour beneath its cloudy surface.
“They are mining opals, there in Coober Pedy,” he said. “Just think. In the dark, beneath the scorching heat and sandstorms above, they live cooled by the earth, and pull colour and light from its belly.”
Mum laughed. “You make it sound so fantastical.”
“Ah, but it is. You remember that, children. You mine for the colour and light in the dark, in the harshest terrain. Because these truths . . . as dazzling to the mind as they are . . . are only echoes.”
“Echoes of what?” Lucy was always anxious to cut right to the heart of the matter.
“The truest story of all.”