She’s right—up where the ceiling should be, another gap is bridged by huge chunks of stone.
Outside might lie the plains and the ghostlands, but in front of me is evidence that, once upon a time, this really was a city.
One built by my ancestors.
I can see the bones of something familiar in it, but now it’s ancient, darker and wilder. It’s otherworldly, lit up by Nimh’s own personal galaxy. And when I look across at her, it strikes me all over again—she’s just like this arcade. Familiar and yet utterly different.
“Come with me,” she says, gentle as she interrupts my dazed train of thought. “I will show you what I found here when I was little.”
The floor of the arcade is flooded with old groundwater, and I notice Nimh avoids letting it touch her feet, so I do the same. If there was ever a place where something terrifying was going to be lurking, it’s here.
She picks her way around the raised walkway at the edge of the ground floor, pausing once to crouch and lay her staff across a gap in the pavement so the bindle cat can run along it to the other side, neat as any acrobat. When she talked to him outside, she spoke like he understands us, and I still don’t quite know how clever he is. Either way, I’m pretty sure I haven’t impressed him.
I peer into an empty store, and a memory springs up in my mind. My subconscious has found a result in that search program it was running, and it’s flashing like a lit-up sign.
For an instant, I’m not Below at all, not following this mysterious girl through this ancient place.
Just for an instant, I look at that dark tunnel and I’m at home. I’m underneath the city.
“North?” Nimh asks, pausing and turning back toward me.
“It’s like the engine rooms,” I whisper, pressing one palm against the stone again.
“Engine,” she repeats. “There’s that word again.”
The hairs on the back of my neck are rising, because it’s all clicking into place. The tunnel that led us here reminded me of the tunnels at the very base of Alciel’s engines. The walls there, between the slabs of ancient circuitry, glimmer when you run your flashlight over them. I think they’re infused with what Nimh calls sky-steel, just like this place.
And the mist-tainted air out on the plains—I can almost taste it again, and now I know why it freaked me out so much. It’s like a turbocharged version of the thick, stifling air in our engine rooms. I spent enough time poking around down there when I built the Skysinger’s engine that I’m sure I’m right. They’re one and the same.
My heart’s beating faster, and my gaze is darting around the ancient arcade as I study it in a new light, drinking it in like it’s the muddy-tasting contents of Nimh’s waterskin.
If they have sky-steel and mist here, does that mean they have materials I need to build a new engine for the Skysinger?
“This stuff,” I say, slapping my hand against the stone. “The sky-steel. You said your people came in here to dig it out? What do you use it for, to build …” I search for a word that might make more sense to her than engines. “Do you use it to make things? Machines? To power your boats, maybe?”
Nimh shakes her head slowly. “There is very little sky-steel to be had,” she replies. “The gods took almost all of it with them. What little we have, we use to power the guardian stones.”
“What are they?” I practically pounce on her answer.
“The guardian stones?” She blinks at me as if she’s having trouble processing the fact that I don’t know. “They stand at the edges of our villages. They repel the mist, just as the last remnants of the sky-steel here are protecting us now.”
“So you know how they work together? The sky-steel and the mist? If someone here understands that, they can help me power my glider. Maybe I could get home.”
“We …” She pauses, and I can tell she’s choosing her words. “Maintaining the stones is the work of our divinity,” she says finally.
“The god who stayed behind?” I ask. Someone here who remembered the old skills, who knew how to maintain the same tech that powers our engines, would seem like a god. “Your divinity sounds a lot like a mechanic to me, Nimh. Can you get me to them?”
“I …” She glances down at the cat like