Chapter 36: The Forest.
The darkness engulfed them completely, and they both stood there for a few seconds, hand in hand, trying to stay calm.
"What should we do?" Jen asked. Alex let go of her hand and began feeling the buttons of his officer glove, trying to find his flashlight.
"Let me get a light," Alex began. He finally found what he was looking for and turned it on. "Okay, now we are much better. Let's have a look at the doorways." They moved towards the first archway and began looking at its surface.
Like the rest of the room it was made out of nothing but rock and showed no signs of ever having three markings, or two, or four, or any marking for that matter. Jen summoned her own flashlight to search on her own and maybe find something, but there was nothing.
"Maybe this isn't it," she said.
"Let's have a look at the others," Alex said, walking towards the second archways. They examined the second and third archways, but there was no sign of any marking in any of them. "There must be something we are doing wrong," he said with a hint of despair.
"The words said 'through the three markings'; it's not an anagram and it can't be put in any other order. We need to find the three markings," Jen assured.
"What three markings? There are no markings in this archways, they are just natural caves, they didn't even make these," he said, pointing at the caves.
"Then, the three markers are in something they did put in here," she said. "Something like that," she added, pointing her light at the statue.
"Good idea," he conceded. They returned to the statue and examined each and every single bit of it. Each splashing wave, flying hair streak, wrinkle in the old man's face was carefully looked at, trying to find the aforementioned three markings, but to no avail. The statue was impressive, the detail and the movement it expressed were almost terrifying in the now dimly lit room, but they could find nothing they could interpret as three markings that led to a way out.
"Maybe I was wrong," Jen said sadly. "Maybe they are not on the statue either."
"On the statue," Alex repeated softly. "It's not on the statue," he began, approaching it with that lost look that meant he was deep in thought. "It is the statue," he concluded.
"You just said it wasn't on the statue," Jen argued.
"That's right. It's not something carved on the statue, it's the statue itself. Didn't Tao say something about Heracles fighting Nereus?"
"Yes," Jen answered and went silent for a second while she remembered. "He said Heracles choked him, holding on to him until he got his answer," she informed.
"Well, there you have it, we are supposedly Heracles, right?"
"Right."
"And here's Nereus, comfortably sitting on a cylinder, ready to be choked, is that a coincidence? I don't think so," Alex smiled as he approached the back of the statue, the end to which they had to press their faces to look at the kaleidoscope, and putting his flashlight in his mouth, he climbed up.
"Be careful," Jen advised simply.
Alex put one arm around the statue's neck, which was tricky because of the flying hair streaks. He moved to a more comfortable position and looked up.
There it was, one of the exits clearly pointed at by three markings: one streak of wild hair, the tip of the fin and the point of the raging wave. He jumped down from the statue and smiled at his wife after removing the flashlight from his mouth. "It's the one on the left," he announced, pointing at the exit. "From the position I took to choke the merman, the one on the middle is not visible, and the one on the right is only pointed at by one thing. The one on the left is pointed at by a streak of hair, the fin and the wave. That's our exit."
Jen smiled at him admiringly. "You are so smart," she said in a mock dreamy tone.
"I know, my dear," he said, taking her by the hand. The second they crossed the archway, a heavy iron gate closed behind them. "Let's go," Alex said, walking ahead, illuminating their path with nothing but their flashlights.
They didn't walk much. After only a few yards, the cave ended abruptly at a wall. They were shocked, had they gotten it wrong?
"There has to be a way out," Alex said forcefully, trying to keep his wife from panicking. And soon enough, he found a hole near the floor, big enough for both of them to get inside. He crawled inside with little difficulty, with Jen by his side, completely silent.
"This is it," he announced. The tunnel didn't continue straight forward or downwards, as he had thought, it turned 90 degrees and went upwards, like a chimney. It looked, however, easy to climb by the simple method of pushing against the wall. "Come on," he called to Jen as he sat up and slowly stood up, and began climbing the chimney, in a way they were taught in their Time Force training: pressing themselves against the wall and pushing out with their legs.
After his feet disappeared from the entrance, Jen climbed in and had a look. He was right, it look simple enough to climb, except she wasn't feeling exactly strong lately. Amazed at how easy it was for her to fit her small frame in the tunnel, she began climbing after her husband, but after a very short climb, she felt very tired. Alex was way ahead of her, almost at the top. Jen pushed herself a little harder and managed to get halfway through the tunnel, but she had to stop for a rest.
"Honey, are you okay?" she heard Alex ask concernedly from the top, the light from his flashlight bathing her.
"I don't think I can make it, Alex, I'm so tired I can barely hold myself up here," she said honestly.
"It's okay, honey, I'll throw you a rope and pull you up, okay? You'll just have to help me a little, all right?" he suggested.
She wanted to say no. She wanted to say she could do it on her own, that she was strong enough, but she just wasn't. And the fear of another drop like the one they had just been through helped her swallow her pride. "Okay, that sounds like a plan."
She heard him fumble with some equipment and soon felt the rope near her arm. "Grab a hold of it and I'll pull you up," he instructed. She grabbed the rope strongly with both hands and separated her back from the wall, but left her feet firmly pressed against the other wall.
"I'm ready," she instructed. She felt her husband pull and heard the faint sound of the pulleys he was using to assist himself. Soon she was at the top of the tunnel and he welcomed her by helping her out by the hand.
"Welcome," he said with a smile, but she didn't feel like smiling, she felt tears blur on the back of her eyes. "Hey, what's wrong?" he asked.
"I can't believe I couldn't even climb that little tunnel, I mean, it's not even that high," she sniffed. "I'm so out of shape, so weak. If we do go back to the Force I'll probably have to do the entire academy training again," she criticized herself.
"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself," he reassured her, holding her tight. "You just went through a very hard recovery."
"You went through the same recovery, and you had no problems," she argued.
"I had less problems, but I'm a man, and," he added when she opened her mouth, " I kept working out after I left the Force, not to mention my injuries were nowhere near as severe as yours. You also laid off the exercise for a while with the pregnancy and all that. And you've lost a lot of weight since we've been here, I was just noticing that. You have done very well so far, but you are getting tired; it's normal. It wasn't easy for me to climb up either, I need to rest too, if I don't want to damage my back again, although it hasn't been bothering me lately."
She seemed comforted by his words and nodded. "Probably those treatments they've put us through have helped your back as well," she said.
"Probably," he agreed. "Want some water?" he offered, she nodded and he handed her a bottle he had kept from their last meal. "Now, let's move on, if you're feeling better."
They got up, Alex packed his gear and they went to walk down the narrow corridor, this one covered in marble.
After they turned they suddenly found themselves in a forest, but not a real one, a petrified one. Unlike Alex had predicted, the trees were not made of marble, they were actual trees, but they seemed to glow with a greenish phosphorescent light that gave the entire complex a mystifying look.
"Wow," Jen let out as they approached the forest.
They stepped in very slowly, looking around. Everywhere, trees of all sizes and shapes formed a tight forest through which a river flowed ever so slowly in absolute silence. Their footsteps echoed all around them and their amazement only grew when they walked through the forest and found themselves in a circular clearing.
Right in the middle of a garden full of petrified flower beds, there was a gigantic petrified apple tree that didn't glow green like the others, but pink. Hanging from its branches there were a dozen golden apples, and right by it's roots there was the basket full of food they had learned to expect.
As Jen approached the tree, Alex looked around for the one-hundred headed monster, but nothing but silence and glowing trees surrounded them.
Jen, on the other hand, was wondering at the trees that surrounded them. She looked at the apple tree for a while, marveling not only at its lovely pink glow, but its lovely golden apples, so big and shiny. She then moved towards the other side of the forest, staring at all the other trees in it. There were all kinds of trees: fruit trees, berry bushes, palms and pines, all petrified forever, glowing in different shades of green from their glass-like surfaces. She extended her hand to touch a palm tree and was amazed by its soft surface, that was slightly warm and made of glass.
As they walked around, each on his or her own, they began to notice the shade of the trees began slowly changing to blue. Soon, all the trees were glowing blue, and the apple tree in the middle was glowing purple.
Practical as usual, Alex didn't allow himself to be amazed by the beautiful trees, and simply asked: "What do we have to do?"
Jen, who heard him in the absolute silence despite being a few yards away, turned back to him and said, "I don't know." She started walking, following the little river, to try to figure out where it was flowing to. Finally, she found herself standing in front of what seemed to be pair of gigantic stone doors, that were separated from the forest by a very wide clearing, and let the water pass through very small holes, causing it to flow slowly.
Alex continued to look around the clearing for clues to their task, and found absolutely nothing. He sat down, trying to figure out what to do, and Jen joined him a while after.
"The river flows towards a pair of stone doors that are just too big to move," she informed him.
"Yet, that must be the exit, somehow," he said. As they sat there in silence, the apple tree changed to blue, and the trees began glowing yellow.
"It's so beautiful," Jen let out.
Alex looked at her and smiled, putting one of his arms around her shoulders. "I think it's fiberglass, the trees are covered in glass, so probably that's what makes them change their color like that," he said.
"Fiberglass is so ancient," she said with a smile. "In the 21st century it was still sort of innovative. They had only started using it for a few things, like TV and other small stuff. After being the most used information transmission technology for so long, it is now reduced to coloring vitrified trees in an underground perpetual forest."
"In which we still don't know what to do," he added sadly.
"I know something we could do while we wait for instructions," Jen said with a wicked smile.
"Oh, really?"
"Yes," she summoned her sleeping bag and spread it on the floor. Then she sat down on it and removed her shirt, not taking her eyes off her husband for a second.
"Jennifer?" he asked, raising one eyebrow.
"Come on, how many times are we going to get the chance of making love in a vitrified forest that glows in different colors?" she asked with a wide smile, as she tucked her thumbs on her pants waist and began taking them off.
Alex couldn't resist and took off his own shirt, stopping Jen halfway from taking her pants off. "I'll do that, thank you very much."
"All right," she agreed with a small laugh. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer as he took her pants off, causing them both to stumble down, all tangled, on the sleeping bag.
They both burst out laughing and then looked at each other, their happy faces an inch apart. "I love you," they said at the same moment.
And then, they kissed.
To be continued.