It was I who did command
The dragon god of these hills
To send down the snow
Whereof a few fragments perchance
Were sprinkled over your home.
—poem attributed to Lady Fujiwara, Man’yōshū or Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves 11:104, the oldest surviving book of Japanese poetry
Kong’s gaze drew up to the sky as a flock of fliers went overhead. They looked like the creatures the little ones called war-bats. He had fought them before. They were tough, but not really a threat unless they attacked in large numbers. To him, anyway. But they could probably easily kill Small Ape, who kept looking up at them nervously.
Kong vocalized in a way meant to be reassuring. Small Ape mostly looked puzzled. It frustrated Kong that he couldn’t communicate better with him. He had tried Jia’s hand language, but Small Ape didn’t understand it at all. He did understand some of Kong’s more basic sounds and gestures, but not others.
But he knew what Kong wanted—to lead him to where the other apes lived. That was enough for now.
They were deep in new territory for Kong. Most of the plants were the same, and some of the animals. But there were smells here he did not know, and that made him cautious. He kept a close watch on Small Ape too, who probably knew these lands better than he did.
Ahead, another group of fliers had landed to search for food. He remembered these from the cave where he found his axe. They posed no danger to him, so he continued to stride forward. He noticed that there were smaller ones among them; the larger ones seemed to be helping them feed. He glanced at Small Ape. Was he supposed to do that? Help Small Ape eat?
Of course, Small Ape had led him into a trap earlier. He wasn’t sure he liked Small Ape. He just needed him to find the others.
The fliers scattered at their approach. Seeming to take comfort in this, Small Ape moved a little more confidently, and soon led Kong to a big flat-water place. Small Ape paused, glancing up at Kong, then splashed into the water. He gestured for Kong to join him.
Kong didn’t like the smell of the place, but if Small Ape wasn’t afraid, there was no reason he should be. Small Ape cupped some water in his hands and took a drink.
Kong was thirsty. He waded in. The water felt good, just a little cooler than the air. He threw some up on his head and shoulders. That was good, too.
He kept his eye on Small Ape, who was now between him and the shore. He thought the other was starting to look a little nervous. He seemed to be looking at something behind Kong, and he made a little sound—like he had made a mistake? Like he was sorry about something.
A shadow fell over them, and Kong turned just in time to see the huge snake-fish thing rear up above him and strike down with its sharp-toothed mouth. He lifted his axe with two hands and wedged it between the snapping jaws. Small Ape squealed and ran.
Another trap. Small Ape was good at this.
He threw the thing back. It was slick, and smelled like fish, blue striped with yellow, and had a fin on its back. As it thrashed in the water, he charged toward it, wielding his axe in one hand. It arched over him and struck down like before, but this time he was ready, catching its head and shoving it down, lifting the axe to decapitate it. But before he could swing, its tail swept up from behind him and coiled around his axe-arm. Then it yanked him backward. Surprised, his uncertain footing on the squishy ground below the water failed, and he pitched over, the snake-fish pulling him under.
He struggled to pull the coils off his arm, but more looped themselves around his neck. The water was deep here, and the snake-fish was trying to keep him underneath, where he couldn’t breathe.
The snake-fish was strong, one long powerful muscle. But Kong was stronger, and he was angry at being tricked again, outraged that the snake-fish thought it could kill him when he had fought far stronger enemies.
He got his feet back under him and pushed, burst back in the air, pulling at the coils with one hand while keeping hold of his axe. The mouth appeared again, darting toward his face.
He brought the axe down, hard, felt it slide through skin and flesh and snick through bone. The coils writhed as if they were still alive, but they were no longer trying to hold him. He pushed them off, grabbed the head, and looked off in the direction Small Ape had run. He saw him there, scrambling frantically through the underbrush, and started after him. When he was close enough, he hurled the axe, watching it turn end over end before burying itself in the ground right in front of Small Ape, who stumbled and fell to a stop.
Then he tossed the head next to him.
Small Ape looked terrified. His eyes darted around for a chance of escape, any escape. Kong glared down at him. Small Ape cowered in a submissive posture—and not a very hopeful one. When Kong reached down, he sank back further, but when all he did was pull the axe from the ground, he looked confused, making small, soft noises.
Kong jerked his head back toward the lake. Small Ape looked in the direction, then started that way. But he couldn’t keep his gaze off Kong and tripped. He got up hesitantly, then continued on. Kong followed.
Once there, he dragged the fish-snake’s body out of the water, cut off a chunk with his axe, and started to eat. He’d been hungry anyway.
Small Ape watched him as he ate, making hungry noises, but keeping his distance. Kong could tell he wanted some of the meat, but he didn’t try to get some, or make any sort of gesture he recognized as asking for it either.
Kong bit into the tubular section, pulling out the slippery insides and gulping them down.
Small Ape picked his own fur and ate something very small he found there.
After a moment, Kong gripped the meat with both hands and held it out toward Small Ape.
Small Ape bristled; he screeched a threat and went into a defensive posture, as if he expected to be attacked.
Kong didn’t really remember other apes. He remembered the Iwi. They had shared food with him. He had sometimes given them food. When she was little, he had to find food for Jia.
There had been other little ones through the years.
But something felt wrong about how Small Ape was acting. As if being offered food was a bad thing.
Or… maybe Small Ape thought it was a trap, a trick. After all, Small Ape played tricks. Maybe he believed others would do the same to him.
Kong shrugged and tossed the meat at him. Not hard; just to show he wasn’t going to fight for it. Small Ape looked at it as if he didn’t believe it was there. Then he dashed over, grabbed it, and ran off again. He began tearing into it as if he had not eaten in many day-night times.
He was afraid the meat would be taken from him. Kong felt oddly heavy. He had decided that Small Ape wasn’t just little, he was young. A child, like Jia. Maybe he would call him Child instead of Small Ape.
He noticed Child was coming closer, for some reason, bringing the meat with him. He sat near Kong and began eating again, slower this time. As if he had figured out Kong wasn’t going to take the food from him.
Or it might be another trick that Child was planning. He would have to keep an eye on him.
But for a while, everything was calm, and the two of them ate together, and he didn’t mind.
“Director?” Laurier said.
“Yes?” Hampton didn’t look up from her monitor. She had been through everything twice now, but she felt that she had to be missing something.
“The sub is nearing the target.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Godzilla?”
“He submerged a few hours ago. But given his speed and trajectory, he should be there too.”
“Speed and trajectory? Don’t we have eyes on him?”
“Not at the moment. The energy field from Tiamat’s lair is playing havoc with the instruments. The sub and fly-over crew have been playing it safe since the EMP incident in France.”
“Bring the sub in closer,” she said. “We need to know what’s happening there.”
Laurier nodded and went off to her station.
“What are you up to, Godzilla?” she murmured. But she knew, didn’t she? She just didn’t want to believe it. She had been going through every bit of information collected about Tiamat, and especially that gathered in the past few years, since the sea-serpent Titan had been defeated by Godzilla in the Pacific. It looked like Tiamat’s first instinct was to just get away from Godzilla. Monarch had tracked her erratic path for months. Notably, at no point during that period had she attacked anything. The working theory was that she was trying to comply with Godzilla’s “instructions.” After his fight with her, before he himself became quiescent in some caves deep below the Pacific waters, on the outskirts of Hollow Earth, he had seemed to send out some sort of signal commanding the Titans to become dormant. Tiamat looked like she was complying along with the rest of them. She had challenged Godzilla and been put in her place, and now she was doing what the King of the Monsters bid her.
She had found her new, energy-rich lair in the Arctic, and since then she hadn’t come out. Hampton had hoped to find some evidence that the Titan had slipped off to trouble the shipping lanes or perhaps trash a coastal village or two, but there was no evidence or even rumors that she had done anything but hang out in her iceberg palace.
Usually, when Godzilla went after another Titan, there was an obvious reason. Scylla had been on a rampage—Godzilla ended it, with extreme prejudice. It fit the usual pattern; get out of line, Godzilla would come along and straighten you out.
But Tiamat had been playing nice. Sure, she could just be charging up, planning a future excursion to New York, Copenhagen, or Sydney. Maybe Godzilla knew that somehow and was just being pre-emptive. Maybe years in her lair had made her much stronger, and she was the threat he had been charging up to fight before she became too much to handle.
Or he was just going there to murder Tiamat, steal her energy source and further power up to face what must be an unthinkably dangerous threat.
She hoped desperately that it was the first, but just as she could find no evidence of bad behavior on Tiamat’s part, nor could she find any link between Tiamat and the distress call from Hollow Earth.
But they were about to find out in real time, weren’t they.
“Sub moving into position,” Laurier said.
“Put them on,” Hampton told her.
She turned her attention to the flyover images, all blue water and sea-ice, nothing stirring the surface. Tiamat’s lair was a massive accretion of frozen sea riddled with passageways, and like most ocean ice the vast majority of its mass was underwater. As one of the other monitors flickered on, she could see part of it in underwater view, courtesy of the submarine’s forward cameras. On the other display, the interior of the watercraft was now visible, with Commander Betts firmly in the foreground.
“Fifteen Alpha reporting to base,” he said. Then his eyes lifted and met hers through the video link as his side of it came on.
“Director.”
“Captain,” she replied.
“We’re entering Tiamat’s domain,” he said. “But something’s off. Tiamat’s energy is distorting our radar. We don’t have a visual on Godzilla.”
“Can’t help you with that,” she said. “We’ve got nothing on this end either.”
“We’re getting in closer.” He nodded to his crew. “Take us forward, silent running, five knots.”
The underwater feed brightened as the submarine floodlights snapped on, revealing the hulking iceberg in front of them, growing larger on the viewscreen.
Hampton realized she was holding her breath and let it go.
The sub drifted closer.
Maybe he’s not there at all, she thought. Maybe we’ve misread this situation from the start.
The underwater view suddenly blazed with blue light; the view of Captain Betts and his crew rattled violently. Filters cut in and the glare dampened, resolving the new brilliance into a blue-white beam.
Godzilla’s energy weapon. He was attacking the sub.
No, she thought. Why?
But then she realized that the sub commander and his crew were still on screen, looking shaken, but alive and intact. If Godzilla were trying to kill them, they would already be gone. No, the beam had narrowly missed the submarine and was boring into the submerged mountain of ice. He was trying to get Tiamat’s attention.
He succeeded. In seconds the blue beam cut through the entire frozen mass; on the other side an expanding plume of steam and crystals billowed into the frigid waters. Behind the cloud, something broke from the iceberg, like a length of ribbon writhing in the current, but quickly resolving into the Titan which Monarch had given the name Tiamat.
She was named for the ocean goddess of ancient Mesopotamia, but to Hampton she resembled depictions of sea-serpents. Her lengthy, sinuous body was equal parts eel and sea-snake but she also had four stubby—albeit lethally clawed—limbs. A double row of spined, fishlike fins ran down either side of her backbone, glowing with an eerie violet energy similar to Godzilla’s blue charge. The four petal-like appendages that had been flattened against her skull opened up, crackling with power, and her mouth gaped open. Godzilla returned the challenge with his own underwater roar, and then they raced straight for one another.
Tiamat coiled her long body around Godzilla and began to rotate her coils. Each scale on her body was sharper than a flake of obsidian and harder than titanium. She was not only constricting Godzilla but cutting into him like a diamond saw. The aerial crew had located the fight now, and from above the outlines of the two Titans, limned in the light of their energy fields, turned beneath the ocean’s surface. The view from the sub was a little better; as Tiamat tried to slice Godzilla into sandwich meat, Godzilla bit off a hunk of her flank and tossed it away. The serpent-Titan shrieked and darted her head toward Godzilla, engulfing his entire skull with her cranial appendages; her purple glow increased.
But blue fire ran up Godzilla’s spines, and a moment later an explosion blinded the sub’s cameras. From the air, though, a blue beam was visible streaking up from below the surface and stabbing into the clear arctic sky.
Then everything went still.
“What’s going on?” Hampton asked. The sub’s forward camera feed had not come back online, but the view inside the sub remained. Crew members scurried about on fire patrol.
“You guys okay?” she asked.
“We’re damaged,” the captain said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
“Where’s Godzilla?”
“I’m not sure,” the captain said. “We’re trying to get a visual.”
“Oh…” Hampton said. “Wait. Never mind.”
Tiamat was surfacing—or rather, parts of her were. Lots of them. A heartbeat later, Godzilla breached like a whale, tossed a mouthful of meat that was mostly one of Tiamat’s legs, then dove once more.
“Well, that’s Tiamat,” she sighed. “Anybody still got eyes on Godzilla?”
“Hang on, Base,” Captains Betts said. “Re-establishing visual.”
The screen came up, just in time to show Godzilla vanishing into a tunnel in the iceberg.
“He’s going into Tiamat’s lair,” Betts said.
“Yeah,” Hampton replied. “I can see that. Clear the area. He’s going to be a whole lot stronger.”
As Godzilla disappeared into the ice, Tiamat’s severed head crossed their view, drifting slowly toward the sea floor.
Beyond the barrier, the terrain itself was a lot like outside the barrier. The jungle continued through a scattering of ruins; the water Jia had released continued to flow along in its little canal, and they kept following it. But Ilene felt, well, watched. Jia kept looking off as if she was seeing things Ilene wasn’t, and even Trapper was on edge. Not usual for him.
Bernie, however, was having a ball. He kept going on about how incredible it all was, how the people who followed his blog weren’t going to believe it, but they would have to believe. His sheer wonder was endearing, but she wished he would do it all more quietly.
But what did it matter? If there were Iwi here—or people like the Iwi—they probably already knew there were strangers in their territory.
And if there weren’t people here, if the buildings they had seen in the distance were just more ruins, then it didn’t matter either way.
Bernie’s awe was infectious, though. The Iwi of Skull Island had all died, all but Jia. Ilene had tried to help them, but in the end it just wasn’t possible. But she had known them as a people, and many of them as individuals. Their culture had been unique and it had been admirable. The chance that some of them were still alive, down here, living in their own way—it was exciting. And what it would mean to Jia she couldn’t even guess, but she could see how excited the girl was. Deep in her gut, she knew their lives were about to change.
She desperately hoped it would be for the better.
A few steps later, Trapper put his hand on Jia’s shoulder. He held up a finger.
They were emerging from a narrow canyon into a small clearing bounded by closely set trees.
Trapper seemed to be searching for something.
We’re not alone, Jia signed.
“Wait, what did she say?” Trapper asked.
“She says we’re not alone,” she told him.
“See, I knew,” Trapper said. “I knew I felt something.” He drew a hunting knife, flipped it in his hand, flourished it.
“Come on then,” he said, louder. “Where are ya?”
Ilene was looking too, but she didn’t see anything. If they were Iwi, that was hardly surprising. The ones she knew had been quite good at hiding themselves in the jungle. They’d had to be, given the monsters they had shared their island with. That was likely even truer here.
Then Bernie screamed as if he’d been struck. She spun toward him and saw that someone had stepped out of the trees and grabbed him from behind. And now they were everywhere—behind them, in front of them, all around them. Their bodies were painted and they wore cowls of the same color so they blended in with their surroundings. Ilene guessed they had probably been following them for quite a while, maybe since they had entered the territory protected by the veil.
But now more people were coming, and these were not camouflaged. They wore saffron-colored clothing and carried spears with long, glowing crystalline blades. They contracted around Ilene and her companions like a noose. Trapper had changed his grip on the knife so it was suspended from his thumb and forefinger by the point.
“It’s going away!” he said. “See, it’s going away.”
Bernie had been shoved into the circle with the rest of them. He still had his camera out, but he had his hands up like the rest of them so it dangled, pointing at the ground.
“Are those… are those Iwi?” he asked.
A woman with a spear lifted its tip so it stood up straight, no longer threatening them. She was looking directly at Jia. Her black hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she wore a circlet around her head like the one Jia still affected. A blood-colored line of paint ran across her face from ear to ear, and another from her chin to her lower lip. She took a step closer to Jia. Then she nodded in the direction of the city. Jia nodded back.
We’re supposed to go with them, Jia signed.
Ilene nodded. “We’re going with them,” she told the others.
“Nice of them to ask,” Bernie said.
They were moving now. Their captors stayed close, the threat of their weapons never very far away. Ilene couldn’t shake the feeling that something was happening here, something more than an isolated people reacting to strangers. It was almost like they had been expected.
“I don’t think they talk,” she told Bernie. “The Iwi had a spoken language, but they almost never used it.”
“But you know it, don’t you?” Trapper said. “Maybe try a few words.”
She shrugged. “Where we all go?” she attempted, in Iwi. There was probably a better way to say it, but it was the best she could do. Iwi verb conjugations were… difficult.
No one reacted. She might as well have been speaking French or Yup’ik.
“So much for that,” she murmured.
As they progressed, the ruins vanished, replaced by intact structures that looked like they were still in use. She had glimpses of the pyramid-towers ahead.
Malenka, Jia signed, using the phonetic alphabet.
I think this place is called Malenka.
How do you know?
Jia looked troubled. I’m not sure, she replied.
Okay, Ilene thought. Places have names, even if no one says them out loud. That sort of made sense. What bothered her more was that she thought Jia wasn’t being completely honest with her: not so much that she had lied, but that there was something she wasn’t saying.
There was no question that these people had singled Jia out from the start. Was it just the physical resemblance they had picked up on? That Jia looked more like them than Ilene, Trapper, and Bernie? If these people were Iwi, or very closely related to them, that seemed unlikely. It wasn’t her experience with them. But they were definitely treating Jia differently. It was probably best not to jump to any conclusions as to why. She needed to keep an open mind, see things as they were rather than as she feared they might be.
Whoever these people were, there were more of them now, and more armed with the crystal spears. That wasn’t surprising, either. These people lived in a dangerous world. The Iwi greeted strangers with spears, too, not because they were an inherently violent people. If anything, they were the opposite. But Skull Island hadn’t been an island paradise. Meeting something, or someone, new without appropriate caution was just not the smart move.
As Mikael had learned, unfortunately.
They came into a clearing. No, more like a town square. But what a town! For a moment, every other thought was pushed out of her head by sheer wonder.
“Oh my God,” she said, sotto voce.
“Oh. My. God,” Bernie said loudly.
They were near the base of a gigantic pyramid, the largest of the three they had seen from a distance. It rose much more sharply than any she had seen before. The steepest Egyptian pyramids had slopes of fifty-three and fifty-four degrees. Nubian pyramids were more like seventy degrees. This one looked even closer to vertical than that, which is why from a distance they looked more like tapering columns.
Also, pyramids up on the surface didn’t scintillate in the colors of the rainbow. This one did; it seemed to be built of crystals—if it wasn’t just one huge crystal. A wide line of blue light started at the center of the base and continued to the summit. Far overhead she could see its twin hanging, point down.
Although the structure in front of them was the largest, there were smaller pyramids all around them. It was hard not to recall the shapes Jia had drawn, and the frequency patterns from the now-destroyed outpost. Were these the physical embodiments of the signal—the one Bernie insisted was a distress call?
She had guessed that this space was a sort of commons, but what did that mean down here? With the island Iwi, spaces like this had been a mixture of social and sacred. They didn’t tease the two things apart. Was it the same here?
More people were gathered here, sitting on steps or on the ground. Most of them rose, as if in greeting when the surface-dwellers came in sight. Or maybe it was just for Jia.
These new people weren’t armed, and most wore saffron-colored clothing. The designs on their faces were very Iwilike—colorful arrangements of mostly linear and rectangular patterns, some metallic, resembling gold-leaf. A few of them weren’t painted at all. Iwi body adornment was a complex language in itself—one that Ilene had only the vaguest grasp of.
“This is an entire human civilization protected within Hollow Earth,” Bernie said. “These structures—they look like they’ve been carved from enormous quartz crystals. That must be their energy source.”
Trapper said something to Bernie, softly, but Ilene didn’t catch it. She was studying Jia. The girl looked over at her.
I can feel their thoughts, Jia said.
That’s it, Ilene realized. That’s what Jia hadn’t been telling her. She was talking to them somehow.
They were at the center of an area flanked by four smallish pyramids—two to their left and two to the right. Ahead was a raised circular dais on which a number of people were gathered. Beyond that, broad, wide stairs—like courthouse steps—led up to an opening through which shone blindingly white light. Ilene tracked her gaze upward and saw—in the distant land-sky—a large circular opening, also shining with brilliant, but bluish, light. Specks of floating boulders in the null-gravity zone drifted in front of it. She knew what that was, at least, although it was somewhat shocking.
“That’s… that’s an undocumented vortex,” she said.
“Several of them, actually,” Bernie qualified.
He was right. There were a number of them. Usually there was no more than one in any given local. This—this was a sort of Hollow Earth Grand Central terminal.
“Routes to the surface,” she said. “These could lead—all over the Earth.”
“It’s incredible,” Bernie said.
A man suddenly stepped right up to her face, his dark eyes fixed on hers. Her initial instinct was to flinch from what for her was an aggressive move. But she checked the reflex and returned his stare.
“You should make eye contact with them,” she told the others. “It’s considered polite.”
The Iwi did this. It had always reminded her of the staring contests she’d had as a kid. And yes, they considered it respectful. It could also be extended to become a test. The Iwi figured if you looked away, you had something to hide.
“This… this isn’t working for me,” Bernie said, trying to maintain his gaze on the man who stood nose-to-nose with him.
Something rang then, like a gong, although Ilene couldn’t see the source of the sound. That was followed by rattling as all of the natives raised both hands, fingers spread, and began shaking them, causing the bangles on some of their wrists to sound. They were all facing the stairs and doorway beyond as someone emerged. The woman who had led their capture ascended to meet the new arrival.
It was another woman. Her age was uncertain; she had only a few small markings on her face, but the hand-rattling of the crowd redoubled. This was clearly someone important.
The two women looked for all the world like they were having a conversation, but there was no sound, no signing, no movement of their lips.
“How are they communicating?” Trapper whispered.
“Telepathically,” Bernie replied. “Very Village of the Damned.”
At this point, Ilene was inclined to believe him. The pieces had been in front of her for a long time. Now the puzzle was coming together. The Iwi of Skull Island had a spoken language, but they rarely used it. She had only been able to find a few older people who were truly fluent in it. She had suspected even then that their language was largely for the benefit of communicating with various other people who had ended up stranded on Skull Island. There was evidence of at least a small Polynesian population that had integrated into the Iwi, and she had identified what she was sure were a few Spanish and Malay loanwords. Shipwrecks had been washing ashore on Skull Island for a very long time. But down here, with no contact with other humans, any spoken language would have been completely forgotten centuries or millennia ago. It would have been unnecessary.
The woman with the spear stepped aside, and the important-looking woman at the top of the stairs gestured toward someone below, a matronly woman with no face painting. The older woman bowed slightly, and then came straight for Jia. She pointed to the important woman on the stairs, and then reached for the girl’s arm.
That was too much.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Ilene said, gripping Jia’s shoulders, but her daughter was pulled away, and the guards closed in with their spears, stopping Ilene from following. Trapper and Bernie also took hold of Ilene, albeit gently.
“Wait!” she called. “I don’t know where they’re taking her! Hey! Hey!”
Jia stopped and turned around. She looked confident, calm.
It’s okay, she signed.
They’re taking you from me, Ilene thought. How can it be fine?
But she nodded. “Okay,” she said. She watched as Jia walked up the stairs.
“I…” she said.
“It’s okay,” Trapper whispered.
“I know, I know,” Bernie said. They still held her, but not to keep her from running into the spears. To comfort her. And it did. A little.
“You know the Iwi,” Trapper said. “They’re peaceful. You taught us that.”
She took a breath and nodded. Yes. The Iwi were peaceful. They only ever acted to defend themselves. And these people looked like Iwi. They acted like Iwi. But what if they were really something different?
She had just seen what looked like a tree’s root ball eat a man.
But Jia said she could sense their thoughts. Jia said it would be okay. She had to trust her daughter.
Jia reached the top of the stairs and stood in front of the important woman, who looked intensely at the girl for a moment, then held out her hands, palms up. Jia nodded and placed her hands on the woman’s.
For what seemed an interminable period, nothing happened. Then the woman smiled, and Jia nodded. Jia turned, and both of them faced the crowd. They were holding hands. The woman held out her other arm and made a sort of lowering motion. Instantly the guards pulled their spears back and stepped away. The crowd parted for them as Jia and the woman turned and walked into the pyramid.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Bernie said. But Ilene was way ahead of him, already pressing forward.
As they ran up the steps and into the hall that entered the huge structure, Bernie seemed to be having second thoughts.
“Are you sure we’re not going to be sacrificed?” he asked. “I don’t want to be sacrificed before I clear my browser history—” He stopped talking as they passed through the hall and gaped at what lay within.
The pyramid was hollow, containing an enormous cathedral-like space. Hanging in the center of it was a crystal, or rather a cluster of crystals held together by bracing. A long cable stretched up to it, dropping all the way to the floor.
As amazing as all of that was, Ilene’s focus flipped immediately back to Jia. She caught the important woman’s eye.
“Can…” she started.
The woman nodded, as if she understood.
“Thank you,” she said, and ran to her daughter.
This is where it came from, Jia informed her.
Ilene looked back at the hanging crystal.
“What’s she saying, Doc?” Trapper asked.
“She saying that’s the… the beacon that we’ve been following. It’s the Iwi calling for help.”
The woman turned to the center of the pyramid and made an elegant—almost dancelike—motion with her arms. A man started pulling on the cable, which was held in such a way that it went around the central crystal and then off to another anchor point across the pyramid. As he pulled, the rope rubbed across the crystal, producing an eerie tone—or rather, a stacked sequence of harmonics that filled the entire space with unearthly music.
“I get it,” Bernie said. “Hey, look. We’re inside of a giant crystal singing bowl.” He chuckled. “I bet the pyramid’s shape directs the vibrations up, and it just amplifies them, man.”
A little carried away, he bumped into one of the Iwi spear bearers. The man didn’t react, but Bernie stopped talking.
“So, wait,” Trapper said. “They’re sending out this SOS and… Godzilla hears it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “They woke him up.”
“An SOS for what?” Bernie asked. “They already live in a nightmare monster hellscape. What could possibly scare them?”
The woman turned sharply toward them.
“Hey,” Ilene told Bernie. “She can understand everything you say.”
“Wait. She understands me?” He looked over at the woman. “And, uh, a nightmare monster hellscape is a wonderful place to raise a family.” He reached over and took Trapper’s arm. Trapper took his in turn, and they smiled, like a happy couple.