Trains are, by their very nature, a disjoint space. You step in here, you step out there. And the associated intent and belief of the passengers made them almost perfect for her purposes. Almost.

Schr̦dinger and Heisenberg and the others had got it right Рit was observability alone that had the power to collapse the waveforms of probability. While her fellow passengers could see the British countryside, the British countryside was where they were. Oh but the tunnels were a different matter entirely. Enter a tunnel and they could be anywhere. And so they were anywhere.

From the first dawn light until dusk’s radiant afterglow she had been sitting cross-legged and unmoving on the thatched palm-leaf roof, surveying the cliffs above. As the sun had wheeled slowly across the sky she had watched the shadows shift and change, revealing the structure of the crags and crevices, and planned her ascent. With full dark she stood, legs complaining only slightly, and dropped down onto the sand. She set about building a fire, though more for something to occupy her suddenly nervous mind than from any real need for heat or light. The sheltered cove and the old lean-to had been her sanctuary for weeks now, but she had things to do in the outside world, and the water was rising.

Out in the city the rain fell heavily, with a damp, sodden purpose. Closer to, on her windows, it left the effervescent remnants of a light but insistent spray, and in the fractured glow from neon and halogen it sparkled bright as jewels. It seemed to her that rain should be a sullen thing, not this cheerful glitter frosting the glass of her hotel room. It was wholly unsuitable for brooding, though she was doing her best just the same.

Three days into her search, she was no closer to finding the nexus, and things were beginning to look hopeless. It had even crossed her mind that the old man was perhaps crazy, or at least at purposes crossed to hers, but deep down she knew it was out there. Somewhere. Whether it would permit itself to be found, she had no idea.

The building hulked in the darkness above, just visible as suggestions of shade against the clouded night sky beyond. The feel of it in the air was heavy – warm and wet – but burned off in the chill breeze within a dozen paces. No lights could be seen anywhere disturbing the silhouette, but the scent of the place was distinct and sharp and organic, like curled ferns in a deep summer’s night. It smelled the smell that secret places do – like hidden glades and half remembered summers and unopened boxes. This city was unfamiliar to her, this district alien, and these streets entirely beyond her ken. But this place, this building, felt like the places she had played as a child – the backs of warming cupboards and the branches of fig trees and deep pools of clear black water.

The rain burns off into a light mist before it reaches this low in the city, but it brings an insistent damp just the same. The light shatters and fragments from the thick air and slick surfaces, and the streets and alleyways close in on themselves.

Moreso than either above or below, the city is a maze at ground level, and it is easy to spot someone out of place by how often they pause at intersections or gaze upwards looking for some sign of their place in the greater scheme of things. Those who are from here know their place well, and know that, though the city above is built on these foundations, it bears little resemblance to its roots.

In a large, deep, hollow in the lee of the western slope the forest grudgingly gives ground to a lake with a surface like dark glass, ringed on all sides and loomed over above by ancient sprawling trees. Figs and banyans and more besides stretch branches overhead, daring no more trespass than the occasional twig or leaf or fruit dropped to join the litter on the lake’s shore or to disturb briefly its glassy surface. The lake is just large enough to earn the name, but no larger, and the same could be said of the island at its center – the only place in the clearing free of fallen leaves, and the only place in the whole forest where one can stand directly, unobstructedly, beneath the sky.

Architecture holds power. It is not a new theory, of course. One only needs to look to the pyramids, or Stonehenge, to see that. But we have come a long way since then. Monolithic sigils are so ancient-world. We have been scribing entire spells and power-circles for centuries – the canals of Venice, the alleyways of Florence, the streets of London. (That one is of particular note, I feel, as it has been edited and rewritten so many times.) The one that still floors me to this day, however, is the subway and metro lines of Tokyo. Written in half a dozen hands, charm upon ritual scrawled chaotically with a meticulous rigor. I have traced its tracks – ridden circle lines and express trains and rush hour locals – but I am only just beginning to understand its meaning and its purpose.

The city crouched fiercely in the shade of the great mountain, a small but welcome respite from the glaring heat of the desert. Deep in caves below basements and storehouses, cool springs bubbled forth, the lifeblood that had allowed the inhabitants to carve out an oasis here in this hostile environment. They fed ponds and fountains and parks and orchards. Down below, at the source, remnants persisted of a city older still. Older than street and stone, older than hearth or history. Older even than the mountain above. This is the story of the city, and how it sank from memory and rose again. It is the story of the mountain, and how it came to be.

The trail crested one final saddle before plunging back down toward the desert floor, spreading the river valley out below them in the last light of full day. There were a few sighs and low whistles from the folk following – it was the first green they’d seen in near a week that wasn’t some cactus or other. Hell it was more green than some of the youngest had seen their whole lives. Of course, most were here for the gold, not the green. There promised to be a lot of it, too. As he read the strata laid out on hillside and canyon below he was sore tempted to stake a claim himself when they reached the valley floor, but there was something far more valuable to him than gold buried here. And he meant to find it.

For all the crazy excess and excitement in her life, it was the days like this that she lived for. The dusk came down like a curtain, sheathed in rain and all a-glimmer sequined with street lights and lanterns. Out there in the darkness beyond, the old forest hulked and threatened and beckoned. It felt, as always, as though the rain and the dark washed away the semblance of ordinary that the forest had clothed itself in to escape unwanted attention in this magic-bereft age. In there somewhere the old 神 still ruled – she was sure of it. She was counting on it.