It made frightening sense.
He pointed at her. “Then you’re coming with me.”
47
May 14, 5:17P.M. ANAT
East Siberian Sea
Jason covered his mouth, trying not to gag. “What’s that smell?”
He hurried after the others, who had continued farther down the side tunnel by now. Jason had stopped to check his camera. After leaving the lodestone chamber, the device had started working again. Best of all, the exposure hadn’t damaged the videos he had already recorded.
Can’t lose any of this.
Chasing after the others, Jason started filming the tunnel’s walls. Their surfaces were inscribed with a gnarled entanglement of thorny vines, pendulant leaves, and crested flowerheads. It was like traveling through a petrified garden, one grown by Medusa herself. While recording, he had to be careful not to brush against the walls. Those thorny barbs snatched at his clothing. Some of the spikes extended a foot out, as if warding against trespassers.
As Jason finally caught up with the others, the stench grew worse. It made his eyes water, more than the sulfur of the boiling pit. He wasn’t the only one suffering.
“It smells like rotting meat down this way,” Anna said. “Like something died under a hot sun.”
Elle called from the front of the group, where she strode alongside Gray and Seichan. “Maybe it’sthisscent that spooked Marco and Tucker. It’s definitely making me want to turn back.”
Jason knew that wasn’t true. After entering this tunnel, the botanist had set a fast pace, one that had nothing to do with their short timetable, and all to do with her curiosity about the Hyperborean garden.
Ahead, the brightness that Seichan had first noted continued to grow. It was far from blinding, but it was enough for them to continue without their flashlights.
As they reached the tunnel’s end, gasps rose from those up front. Jason tried to get a look, but the others blocked his view. Finally, Omryn retreated back, stumbling clear so Jason could push forward.
The Chukchi crewman muttered a single word in his native tongue. “Kelet...”
Jason remembered what that meant. It was a name for what shared this island with his people’s sea gods.
Kelet.
Evil spirits.
Jason drew alongside everyone else. They were lined across an apron of rock at the edge of a cavernous chamber, easily the size of a football stadium, only the domed ceiling was suffocatingly low, draped with stalactites of limestone. The roof was also riddled with cracks, as if a god’s hammer had struck it. The hundreds of gaps shone with sunlight, but there would be no escape that way, not even if they had a ladder that could reach that high. The top was sealed over by the surface ice, but a translucent glow still seeped through, illuminating the garden below. A few of the higher cracks, though, appeared open to the air, showing azure skies.
“Careful,” Gray warned him.
Jason looked down and backed a step.
The apron of rock was more like a beach, sloping a few meters and disappearing into a silty, bubbling bog. Pockets burst with beachball-size belches of gas. Hot mud simmered and churned everywhere. A few islands of rock rose higher, but they were unreachable without asbestos waders.
Still, all this paled to what lay out there. Across the steaming floor, waist-high growths rustled gently, as if stirred by unseen winds. The plantswere clustered in stands or spread across muddy fields. Leafy fronds shivered, curling at their edges, as if urging them closer.
“The garden,” Elle gasped. “It’s still here?”
Jason gaped at the palm-size lobes, frilled by long cilia that waved seductively. Spiked stalks lifted those fleshy appendages high, making a mockery of true flowers.
“How could they have survived?” Gray asked.
Elle tried to answer. “I think they’re coming out of a dormancy period. With the spring. Some of the plants out there, those getting less light, look yellowed and drooped, likely still dormant.”
“What do you mean by dormant?” Anna asked.
Elle explained, “In the Arctic, mosses and other plants, even insects—bees, ants, spiders, some caterpillars—will freeze solid, only to revive in the springtime. Whereas this species, while kept warm down here, they likely go dormant during the winter when there is no light for months.”
