Mara the slave girl had come back to life, a girl trapped in a dismal prison with no rescuers in sight.
She rocked back and forth on her knees, her hands folded tightly in her lap. Maybe, just maybe, that blossom would root and grow. Who could tell? If dragons could become humans, maybe a freak of nature could become something beautiful, something that could be loved, not just used for a while and cast back into the darkness, but loved and treasured forever.
Sapphira lifted her head and gazed at Lazarus’s cross, nailed to the wall next to the shelf where she kept Enoch’s scroll. The dark-grained wood, burnished by the flames that spun her back to the lower realms, sparkled from afar, reflecting a lantern hanging near the museum door. The dazzling gloss seemed to flicker in rhythmic flashes, reminding her of the Ovulum’s pulsing cadence, yet radiating white light rather than red.
Bowing her head again, she raised her clasped hands under her chin. “Elohim,” she whispered. “I hope you’ll give me another chance. I . . . I guess there’s still something I don’t understand, or maybe I did something wrong, and that’s why I have to stay down here . . . but that’s okay. I know Acacia and the other girls need me right now.”
She tucked her lips in, trying not to cry. “I didn’t really mean what I said about wanting you to leave me alone. I was tired and scared, and losing Elam and the Ovulum made me feel awful. It was like I died inside, twice in the same day.” She looked up at the cross and blinked at its dancing glitters. As the sparkles rode the grain from top to bottom and side to side, it seemed to laugh with joy. She fixed her gaze on the dazzling display and sighed deeply. “I hope you’ll come back someday and show me how to dance with you again.”
BOOK 3: REFINER’S FIRE
Chapter 1
NEW HOMES
But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. (Malachi 3:2-3)
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. (Isaiah 43:2)
Circa AD 1924
Crouching low, Sapphira peeked into the open trapdoor. With her flaming cross in one hand and a coiled rope draped over her thighs, she shook her head and whispered to Acacia behind her, “I can’t see a thing.” She grimaced at her own voice. The secret tunnel above the spawns’ mobility room always seemed to be a sanctuary of quiet, but now even a shushed tone sounded like a rushing torrent.
“I found a thick stalagmite,” Acacia whispered back.
Sapphira tossed one end of the rope to her. “Make sure it doesn’t rub on anything sharp. I don’t want it to snap on my way down.” As the rope tightened, she reeled out another loop.
“It’s secure.” Acacia crawled toward her along the stony floor but bumped her head on the ceiling. “Ow!”
“Shhh!” Sapphira warned.
Acacia rubbed her scalp. “I don’t think anyone’s down there to hear us. It’s been quiet for months.”
“Silence worries me.” Sapphira unwound the remaining coils into the open hatch and breathed on her cross. “Lights out for now.” When the flames died away, she pushed the cross behind her belt buckle and grasped the rope. “I’ll see you at the bottom.”
As she slid through the cold pocket of darkness, a chorus of sounds arose from below the familiar hum of magneto bricks; a persistent tick, tick, tick from an unseen source; and the rapid thrumming of her own heart. She clenched the rope more tightly. The silence above now seemed a lot friendlier than the noises of the forbidden room.
The long slide stung her hands. The fibers were coarser than those on the rope in the elevation shaft, but this had been the only one she could find in the land of the living. Ever since she finally opened the portal in the mining shaft and began foraging for supplies in garbage heaps, she had to make do with whatever people had thrown away or