Chapter 99
The light is sunlight, golden and warm. A shallow slope rises up from the doorway, a gentle hillside, made of rich brown earth, not steel. Tufts of grass at the edge give way to a solid carpet of green, tall stalks waving in a wind we can’t feel, dotted by clusters of trees and bushes. It’s a perfect park, in high summer, somehow dropped here in the depths of this steel leviathan. The Garden. I’m only a few feet short of the door, but it’s a moment before I can bring myself to cross the threshold. I walk forward, expecting a trick—invisible glass, a field of magical energy, something to keep me out. But I step past, and my boot sinks a little in the soil. New smells fill my nose, wind and grass and the aftertaste of rain. I look up, and the sun blazes in a cloudless blue sky. No. Not qu
- Writer
