She was right.
Alison pulled the lever on their cart, sending it rocketing into the darkened cavern. She found it difficult to follow Keir’s well-intended instructions to keep her arms inside: the urge was to put her hands up into the air and to scream with joy at the thrill of the ride. Even Keir couldn’t help but laugh as they came around a corner and went soaring down a slope, the wind whipping through his dark hair.
(Willow, on the other hand, had crawled back into her basket, growling softly when the cart’s movement shifted it a fraction of an inch between Alison’s feet.)
Alison’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the cavern. The only thing she could make out was the trail of Lady Sibba’s golden curls just ahead as their carts whizzed through narrow passages, crossing over intersecting rails and descending into cooler air. On more than one occasion, the passage opened, bringing them into an open cavern with a crisscross network of elevated rails suspended in the air, thin streams of water falling beyond sight into the depths below. Sometimes a shaft of light pierced thedarkness, revealing ancient carvings in the stone and boarded up mineshafts, some still blocked by the kind of heavy machinery Gwenla’s family was known for.
It was incredible. There was an entire world hidden down here. Alison had known it, had heard about the ancient dwarven cities from the dwarves she’d known in Arcas Dyrne, which was itself built over something that had once been like this but was now unrecognizable, lost to generations of progress and sharing the land with the other races. But experiencing a true dwarven mine—flying through it in the cart, feeling the drop as the world fell out from beneath her as they went over a rise—was something else.
Soon they entered a different series of tunnels. These looked more familiar to Alison, more like the underground rail-wheeler stations she knew. They were lined with polished stone and decorative tile in modern designs, and they were filled with dwarves coming and going, some in carts like theirs, others walking on dedicated paths. Their cart stopped to accommodate crossing traffic and to allow other carts in ahead, a complicated symphony of motion controlled by countless levers pulled by unseen hands.
Finally, they arrived at the Central Plaza—Gwenla had been right; it was easy to recognize. The cavern itself was the largest one yet with an enormous number of buildings carved right into its walls, layers and layers stacked on top of each other, reaching right up to the top. There were dozens of bridges crossing over the open spaces between them, some intricately carved grey stone, some gleaming brass reflecting the ‘lectric lights which illuminated the space in a warm, hazy glow.
Alison’s cart pulled to a stop at a busy station behind Gwenla’s, which had arrived moments before. A crowd had gathered there. As Keir removed their trunks and a somewhatshaken Willow in her basket, she saw the familial resemblance among them.
“Gwenla!” The dwarves that greeted Gwenla shared her stout stature, but most of them were a good bit younger than her: nieces and nephews, cousins and second cousins and third cousins once removed, all come to see the legendary old woman who had left the mountain for a life under the sky decades earlier and had seldom returned since.
“Where’s Yordin?” asked Gwenla to a dwarf woman who looked to be near to her age as others loaded the trunks onto carts and wheeled them up a ramp with the rest of the party following behind.
“He’s up in the dwelling,” said the older woman. “He wanted to greet you but—well, you’ll see why he didn’t in a moment.”
“There’s a surprising amount of greenery,” said Lady Sibba as she came up alongside Alison. As an elf, Lady Sibba stood out perhaps the most of anyone in their group except for Weyland, whose sheer size kept him apart from the dwarven crowd even though he shared some of their features. Though there were others around with dark skin and golden hair, none had Lady Sibba’s long limbs or pointed ears. Few elves enjoyed spending long in the deep places of the earth where the dwarves preferred to dwell.
Few humans either, but Alison couldn’t really see why. It was noisy here in the cavern with the sounds of a great number of people at work and play echoing on the stone walls, but no more so than the city where she’d grown up, and there was a comfort in the darkness and the cool, a refreshing feeling like walking into her bedroom after a long day toiling under the sun.
Lady Sibba was right about the greenery as well—quite a few of the homes and buildings had window boxes filled with shade-loving vegetation: ferns, mosses, and a variety of edible fungi,too. “Good for the air quality, probably,” said Alison, though she wondered how the plants made do with so little light.
Just as Alison began to wonder how much more her legs could take, they arrived at a large pair of brass doors.
One of them creaked open slowly, but no one was there.
Inside, high-pitched voices were raised in confrontation. Gwenla hesitated at the door, a question in her look as a collision deep inside shook the walls, causing the door to once again slam shut.
“They’re overrun,” said Gwenla’s relative. “It’s been this way since little Mari was born.”
The door burst open again, and this time, a small dwarf girl with pigtails greeted them. “Dad says you should come in. He’s gotta pick the ‘frigerator back up, then he’ll be right with you.”
Before Gwenla could respond, the girl had vanished inside once more.
Alison noticed that she wasn’t the only one who had vanished. The dwarves that had carted their luggage up had gone as well, leaving her friends with just the sole relative as a guide, and even she refused to enter. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said to Gwenla. “It’s good to have you back again. I hope you’ll stay awhile. For Yordin’s sake as much as anyone’s.”
Alison, Lady Sibba, Keir, and Weyland followed Gwenla inside. Willow, sensing the commotion and perhaps imagining the pulling on her tail that would ensue if she entered, opted to look around the neighborhood instead.
The interior gave Alison the vague impression that some kind of explosive had gone off. Though the furnishings were clearly finely made, they were all askew: chairs toppled over, carpets curled into dangerous trip-hazards, picture frames with shattered glass hanging precariously by wires at strange angles that surely hadn’t been intended. There were lines of wax crayon running the length of the hallway, red and purple paths at waistheight leading them into the current center of the chaos: the kitchen.
Inside, a large dwarf man with greying hair was struggling with the ‘frigerator. He’d managed to get it upright again, but the door would no longer close.
“Let me take a look at that,” said Weyland.
The dwarf simply nodded, too exhausted to ask any questions about the giant, red-headed human who offered him help.
“Gwenla,” he said, rubbing his neck with a wince. “So glad you could make it. I’d offer you an ice-cold ale, but I’m afraid the ‘frigerator is out of commission.”
“That’s alright,” said Gwenla. “What’s going on here, Yordin? Where’s Marna? What happened to your nanny?”
Yordin laughed at the word “nanny.” “Marna’s up there somewhere with the rest of them,” he said, gesturing vaguely behind him to elsewhere in the house. “The nanny quit this morning. It’s the third one this year. This one only made it two weeks.”
Gwenla shifted uncomfortably. Yordin gestured at her to take a seat at the kitchen table. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Won’t they need you in the office?”
