Beneath the Hallowed Hill

by Theresa Crater

  The disaster—she winced away from the memory of the wall of water rushing to the bare shore—the disaster cut them off so unconditionally Atlantis might be just a story. They called them the immortals now, the fae. She fell into time, but the fae still lived, golden and glorious, beneath the Hallowed Hill.

  Her twisted fingers clutched the wool. Irritated with herself, Megan squared her shoulders, rallying her strength for the task ahead. “There was a time when people did not age as quickly as they do now, when we lived hundreds of years and traveled to the stars through great crystals almost as tall as these trees.” She pointed to the grove of yew up the slope. “When I was only a girl, I received my own calling, just like you.”

  * * * *

  Something scratched near the back door. Anne raised her head and listened. Maybe it was just a tree branch blowing in the wind. She turned to the next page, but then came another scratch followed by a whining sound. She put down the manuscript and got up to investigate. As she neared the kitchen, she heard a low bark. She switched on the light. On the back porch stood a hound, white head cocked to the side, red ears perked. The pattern continued with red stockings on each leg and a red splotch on the rear.

  Anne opened the door a crack and the dog’s tail wagged tentatively. “Well, hello. Are you lost?”

  The dog scratched the door again and stuck its nose into the crack. Anne blocked its entrance with her body and stepped out of the door. She bent over the hound but found no collar; it was female. She sat and regarded Anne carefully through eerie ice-blue eyes. She looked prepared to speak.

  “Hungry?”

  The dog woofed once.

  “I hope you like eggs.” Anne opened the door. The dog brushed past her, but instead of waiting in the kitchen, she trotted down the hall and disappeared into the office. Anne followed and found the hound curled up on a small rug next to the hearth, completely at home. If this was Cynthia’s pet, where was she? Perhaps with Garth? Maybe he let the dog out and she saw lights in her old house. Thinking her mistress had returned, she came home.

  Anne went to the desk and hit refresh; Michael’s plane would land in about an hour. The dog’s eyes followed her every move. She settled back into her chair and picked up the manuscript. The next page announced the first chapter. The hound lowered her head onto her paws, sighed mightily and closed those haunting eyes.

  * * * *

  “Megan, are you ready?” Pleione called from the terrace below. “Really, child, we must hurry.”

  “You can’t call me that any more after today,” Megan answered. “Besides, I turned thirteen two months ago.” She smoothed the flowing white silk of her dedication robe, pushed her feet into the silver slippers, and started toward the stairs. A sudden pang hit her at the door and she turned to survey her childhood room. The translucent aquamarine curtain surrounding her bed billowed in the breeze, the bright colors from the array of silk pillows flashing out then muting again as the curtain stilled. Scarlet fuchsia outlined the window seat that looked out over the house to the bay. She spent so many nights sitting there watching the stars fill the sky and listening to the roll of the distant surf.

  Eden was all a-bustle. In the spring, when the peach trees bloomed, the newest adults of Atlantis celebrated their own blossoming, leaving behind fundamental education and their nurture pods and presenting themselves to the oracle to confirm their role in society. Megan’s intuition told her she would remain in the capital city, but the oracle could choose her for training far away; she might even transport right after the celebration. Because they were close to full consciousness at this age, most had a presentiment of their future role, but surprises did happen. Her favorite shells and rocks covered a rosewood side table, and clothes lay scattered across the cool tile floor. Suddenly she was sure again; she would stay at home and study in the Healing Temple, taking her place beside her mother as she always imagined. She turned around and clattered down the stairs.

  “There you are.” Pleione held her at arm’s length. Pursing her lips, she smoothed out the kohl darkening Megan’s deep blue eyes, then stood back. “So beautiful. How did you grow up so quickly?”

  Megan shifted under her mother’s ministrations. “Is Diaprepes coming?”

  “He should be here any minute. Nervous?”

  “No.” Megan shook her head and her brown curls danced around her face. “Well, maybe a little.”

  “I wonder what the oracle will say.”

  Megan looked up at her mother, surprised she didn’t know already. Maybe she was testing Megan’s precognition. “I have a hunch,” she said.

  “What?” Pleione reached a hand out, but Megan bounded through the door.

  “Come on,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll be late.” She ran past the fountain in the interior courtyard among the heavy scent of gardenias.

  “Wait for me, young lady.”

  Megan lingered in the cool tiled foyer on the other side of the central garden of the family compound, waiting for her mother to catch up. Each of her mother’s sisters had an apartment as large as their own, and the elders of the sprawling maternal clan had rooms in the large house. Most of them still slept or kept to their rooms to honor the solemnity of the coming ceremony. They would be at the party tonight. Megan looked up and saw one of her grandmothers peeking from a third story window. She waved, but the elder woman flicked the curtain closed.

  Megan wondered if her friend Erythe would go with her to learn healing. She imagined Erythe’s strong square hands, her steady manner…probably not. Erythe’s talents lay in working with plants, or maybe she would join the government. Megan hoped someone from her group would accompany her. There were nine going through the Emergence Ceremony today. “An auspicious number,” the teacher said, a larger class than usual. The long-lived Atlanteans planned their families carefully.

  Her mother caught up to her. “Now, let’s have a little decorum, shall we?” She wrapped the train of her shimmering ocean blue robe over her arm and took Megan’s hand.

  Megan glanced back at the garden she had played in ever since she could remember.

  “You can come home any time you’re free from your training.” Pleione’s voice was quiet in her ear.

  “I’m ready.” Megan squeezed her mother’s hand. They stepped out just as a sleek silver craft set down on the landing lawn in front of the house. The bubble top opened and her father climbed out. Tall and commanding, Diaprepes shook out the folds of his deep purple robes. A thin gold band set with a simple crystal over his brow was the only sign of his office. He looked up and caught sight of the two. A smile broke out on his fair face, and Megan felt like the sun just came out. He held his arms out to embrace her, but she was suddenly shy of him.

  “You’re alone,” Megan said.

  “No need for a retinue, this is your day.” He studied her face for a moment. “Nervous?”

  “Only if you two keep asking.”

  Her parents laughed, and Diaprepes took Pleione under his arm. There they stood, the golden-haired Prince of Atlantis, regal even while standing beside his personal conveyance on this ordinary landing spot, and the High Priestess of the healing temple, an elegant lily exuding a power that sharpened the air around her. Today Megan would break from her orbit around these two powerful figures and find her own place in the world.

  “We’re going to be late,” she said, and slid into the back of the craft. Her parents settled themselves in front. Diaprepes closed the top, and Megan pressed her face against the window to watch the craft clear the trees. The square of the inner courtyard shrank, and the neighboring homes and gardens became a series of doll houses tucked away in the green folds of the hills.

  The craft skirted the verdant plain whose canals were like silver veins in the neat rows of crops and stretches of meadow. Diaprepes veered south and they flew past the three rings of s
tone walls and round canals surrounding the main Temple of Poseidon. The harbor unfolded beneath them, dotted with sleek ships that cruised the ocean or dove beneath her depths with equal ease. Diaprepes avoided the southern shopping district and headed west over the first row of olive foothills toward the deep blue peaks. The rounded cone of one of the volcanoes rose in the distance.

  Minutes later, the Temple of the Oracle appeared, a diminutive jewel on the edge of grey cliffs, the early morning sunrise reflecting in its faceted windows. The walls, built of the indigenous stone, blended with the mountain. Diaprepes landed his craft deftly beside three similar vehicles. They disembarked and headed toward the semicircle of stones in front of the entrance, careful not to step inside yet. A group of candidates and their parents waited just outside the semicircle like a flock of variously colored sheep. The parents’ robes reflected their guild: blue for healing, purple for high government officials, green for the agronomists, and so on. Children were raised in their mother’s clan, but both parents usually came for the Emergence Ceremony.

  “Diaprepes.” A stocky man with a curly beard called to Megan’s father as they approached. The two men hugged, then the women, then all of them together, and they began the usual chatter of parents losing their children to the world, a predictable series of congratulations, speculations, and condolences. Megan drifted around looking for Erythe, but it seemed her friend hadn’t arrived yet, so she leaned against a stone at a distance from the group and closed her eyes, trying to quiet her mind in preparation for the ritual ahead. She let the buzz of voices and sounds wash over her. A gull’s raucous cry carried from afar; the scent of vanilla wafted from the pines lining the mountain slope as the sun warmed their bark; something rustled in the grass nearby. Just as she was focusing to send her consciousness into that form to explore, the stones spoke.

  “She has come at last.” The voice came from the slim granite point she was leaning against.

  A murmur of agreement vibrated through the semi-circle. “This is the one.”

  “What do you mean?” Megan sent, but the stones only hummed a low note of contentment to themselves.

  Before she could ask again, footsteps approached. She opened her eyes to find Erythe standing in front of her, the white emergence robe setting off the soft brown of her face. “Nervous?” Erythe asked.

  “Not you, too.”

  “What?”

  “My parents keep asking me if I’m nervous.”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Curious, I guess.” Megan shrugged. “And you?”

  Erythe paused, then said in a rush of warm breath, “What if they get it wrong?”

  “Do they get anything wrong?” At Erythe’s frown, Megan added, “You can change if you’re not happy.”

  “Of course.” Before Erythe could say more, a single resonant bell sounded from the temple. The heavy oak doors, a gift from the north where the trees were sacred, parted and two acolytes, a young man and woman, stepped out. The distinctive robes of the Crystal Guild shimmered in the light, showing now violet, now silver-white, and always giving the feeling that if you concentrated hard enough, you could see whatever glimmered in the air around them just out of human sight. The acolytes walked toward the knot of people.

  Without another word, Megan and Erythe hurried back to the group. The young man nodded when they arrived. “Welcome to the Temple of the Oracle. We are honored to serve you today. Please, those who are consulting the oracle line up behind this stone.”

  “The families will come with me,” the woman said.

  Megan glanced at her parents, but they already fell into ritual protocol and avoided her eyes. The acolyte gestured for the initiates to follow. He walked to the edge of the stones and paused, tuning to the circle, then moved forward. Megan felt a familiar tingle in her limbs when she passed the first stone, as if she penetrated a thin membrane that closed itself behind her. They went through the ponderous oak doors, and there was a slight pop in the air as the group moved through the second layer of energy surrounding the temple.

  The initiates proceeded down a hallway lined with stained glass windows alive in the morning light. The first depicted Atlas, the axis of the universe, the Titan founder of their land. The window directly across from it showed the arrival of Pleione, whom her mother was named after, sailing across the heavens to mate with him. Next came the birth of their seven daughters, then the division of the land into the ten realms, and finally the gift of the Sacred Stone from the dragon Makara—all the central stories of the founding of Atlantis.

  The hallway opened into a circular room with adobe walls and onionskin marble columns. The ceiling flung the room up into the sky, soaring away in a triumph of selenite and thin metal beams. A low bench ran the entire circumference of the room, as if to attach it to the earth so it would not float away. The blue tiled floor added the color of the ocean, but showed no design, and a single flame burned in the brass brazier in the very center.

  The acolyte paused just a few steps inside the circle, but before the group could move to sit, an older priestess stepped out from behind one of the columns, her violet-tinged aura clearly visible around her. The first initiate was led to her, a question was whispered, and he disappeared through a doorway into the darkness from which she had come. After about fifteen minutes, another initiate repeated the ceremony. The group settled on the benches and waited in tense silence. Finally, the acolyte nodded at Erythe, who squeezed Megan’s hand before she walked to the priestess. She answered her murmured question and disappeared without so much as a glance back. At last, the acolyte nodded at Megan.

  Her mouth was dry. She swallowed and stood up. Why did she feel like she was stepping off a precipice to dive from a high cliff into the black depths of churning waters? This was Atlantis. She a well-loved daughter of gifted people, destined to take her place with them, to serve and grow into full consciousness as her body matured. Before she could rebalance herself, the priestess was leaning toward her. “What do you seek?” The sonorous tones of the woman’s voice tightened the knot in Megan’s throat.

  What did she seek? Confirmation of what she already knew, that she would go to the Healing Temple and learn with Pleione, that she would take her place one day as High Priestess, that she would live long and ascend to the stars. Instead she whispered the ritualized response, “To ask the oracle for guidance.”

  This seemed sufficient, for the priestess nodded and with a slight gesture of her right hand sent Megan into the darkness behind the pillar. Megan had to push slightly to move through the invisible shield of energy; it was like crowning at birth, but she was delivered into darkness instead of light. The floor slanted downward at a gentle angle. Megan put out her hand to steady herself against the stone wall, smooth and cool to the touch. The solidity of the earth reassured her somehow. The tunnel curved to the left and the angle of descent grew steeper. The darkness deepened.

  Megan made her slow and steady way down, but at the next curve, the darkness swallowed everything. The weight of the earth threatened to smother her. She stopped and groped around with her hand, but felt only the wall beside her. What if she took a wrong turn? What if the Earth shook as it had in the past and she was buried alive here, her life cut off before it could flower? What if she was found unworthy of the temple and sent to a simple shop in an anonymous town somewhere? Everyone’s place was important, she reminded herself, or at least so she was told. Megan forced herself to take a deep breath, then a second, surprised by these fears. She followed her training, surrendering to the black void that was consuming her, and walked toward the womb of her remaking.

  After the next turn, the darkness began to grey, and Megan forced herself not to rush toward the returning light. She continued in her deliberate way, allowing the temple to do its work of opening her awareness into the full receptivity of a newborn. The angle of the floor eased and, after another
turn, straightened out. A soft glow from the low passage at the end of the tunnel beckoned her, promising solace and understanding. She stepped through.

  The light came from a clear crystal ball in the hands of another priestess whose face Megan never saw, for she could not look away from the orb. Her eyes filled with tears, as much from the sudden light as from the harmony the crystal radiated. Lights swam in slow undulating spirals inside it, alive and intelligent, like celestial dolphin. The priestess handed the orb to Megan and directed her to sit on the smooth stone in the very middle of the cavern. Megan sat and nestled the ball in her lap as if it were a precious matrix holding the seed of all life. She was lost in the swirling light, bathing in the waves of energy coming from the stone as it took the measure of her soul.

  She noticed there were other lights around the circumference of the room, more orbs sitting on slender pedestals. Most of them were muted, but one brightened and beckoned to her. The priestess was suddenly beside her to take the orb and help her up. Megan walked to the welcoming crystal sphere and found it was not a sphere after all. It had a face, it was a crystal skull.

  I am in the Chamber of the Crystal Skulls, she realized. The Chamber of the Thirteen. She glanced back at the very center of the chamber where she had been. Where was the Master Skull? She was sitting where it should be, there should be twelve around the periphery. She started to count them.

  “Megan.” The bright skull on the pedestal called to her, and the sweetness in that voice made her forget all her superficial questions and remember the deep one sitting in her heart. “What is my life’s work?” She shed all her preconceptions and certainties.