Neither happened. The platform stopped at the landing with a gentle bump, there was another chime—louder up here—and Radar scrambled off, thumping Leah a good one with her rear end and sending her into Eris and Jaya. They teetered over the blackness. I shoved Leah with one hand and Jaya with the other. Iota pushed Eris and we tumbled onto the landing on top of one another, like clowns out of the little car at the circus. Iota began to laugh. I joined him. Eris and Jaya also began to laugh, although Jaya was weeping, too. There was a fair amount of hugging.
Leah put her face down on Radar’s back and reached out with one hand. I took it and squeezed it. She squeezed back.
“I’d like to know something,” Iota said. “I’d like to know where in fuck we are and why in fuck we came here.”
I pointed to Leah and shrugged. Her deal, not mine.
2
The landing was small and there was no railing, but we were able to stand in a line, which was safer than being crammed together on a six-by-six platform of solid gold. And that platform now began to sink back down to the floor, leaving us stranded up here.
Leah pointed to her right. Iota was first in line, and he began to sidle that way, looking down at the blackness of the drop and the descending lift platform. The rest of us followed, Jaya looking resolutely across to the far side of the spire. We were holding hands like a bunch of paper dolls. Probably not wise, since if one of us lost their balance, we might all go over the edge, but that didn’t stop us.
At the end of the landing was a low arch. Iota bent, let go of Eris’s hand, and duck-walked through. Radar went next, then Jaya and Leah. I came last, sparing one final look down at the descending platform, which was now almost out of sight.
There was another curved catwalk on the other side of the arch, and another chasm beyond it. We had ascended almost to the top of the central spire; we were now at the top of the one on the right. Leah made her way to the head of our little parade, each of us holding her around the waist as she passed. I could hear the rapid chuff of breath in and out of her nose. I wondered how much strength it had taken her to vocalize as much as she had, and when she’d last eaten. By now she had to be going on sheer guts… but then, that was true of all of us.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” I whispered to Jaya as we began to move again, now shuffle-stepping around the top of this second spire.
“Shut up, my prince,” she whispered back.
The catwalk ended at another arch on the far side of the spire, this one blocked by a wooden door no more than five feet high. Magic words weren’t needed. Leah ran a bolt at the top and used both hands to lift a double latch. There was no doubt she’d been up here before. I could imagine her and Elden as children, the runts of the litter and largely forgotten, exploring a palace that had to sprawl over seventy or a hundred acres, finding its ancient secrets, daring death on that platform （how had they ever been able to turn the wheel that powered it?） and God knew how many other dangerous places. It was a wonder they hadn’t been killed on one of their safaris. The corollary to that thought was that it would have been better for all of us if Elden had been.
Once the door was open, we could hear the sound of the wind outside. Its constant low moan made me think of the sounds Hana had made as she held the body of her slain daughter. The landing beyond the door was only big enough for one person at a time （or perhaps, I thought, for two small, curious children standing close together）。
Leah went first. I followed and saw we were at the top of a narrow barrel that seemed to drop all the way to ground level. On our left was a wall of stone blocks. On the right was curving green glass with those capillaries of black floating lazily upward. The glass was thick and dark, but enough daylight strained through for me to see the way down: a narrow stairway turning on itself in a tight spiral. There was no railing. I reached out and touched the glass with my fingers. The result was startling. Those black tendrils drew together in a cloud and flocked toward my touch. I pulled my hand back in a hurry and the black threads resumed their lazy perambulations.
But those things see us or sense us, I thought. And they’re hungry.
“Don’t touch the glass wall,” I said to the others. “I don’t think they can get through, but there’s no sense riling them up.”
“What is riling?” Jaya asked.
“Never mind, just don’t touch the glass wall.”
Leah, now half a dozen steps below me, made that twirling gesture again, like an ump signaling a home run.
We began our descent.