The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

She turned away from the water and headed into the jungle.

She had no destination; she would let her feet carry her where they chose. She found herself walking beneath thick foliage roughly parallel with the beach, perhaps two hundred yards inland. All of this had been explored, of course. Dew was dripping from the leaves; the rising sun saturated the jungle canopy with a warm green light. The ground became uneven, folded into rocky ridges. At times she was forced to crawl on her hands and knees. At the top of a ridge she saw, below her, a gentle depression, guarded on three sides by rock walls roped with vines. Jeweled beads of water trickled down the face of the farthest wall, collecting at the base in a pool. She carefully descended. Something about this place felt new and undiscovered; it possessed a feeling of sanctuary. Crouched by the pool, she filled her cupped hands and drank. The water was clean and tasted like stone.

She rose and surveyed her surroundings. Something was here; she could sense it. Something she was meant to find.

As she scanned the rocky perimeter, her eyes fell upon a zone of shadow within the dense vegetation. She made her way toward it. It was a cave, the opening curtained by vines. She drew them aside. Here was a likely place—indeed, an ideal place—in which to conceal her journal. She reached down into the pocket of her dress; yes, a box of matches, one of the last. She scraped a match on the striker and extended it into the cave’s mouth. The space was not especially large, more like the room of a house. The match burned down to her fingertips. She extinguished it with a flick of her wrist, struck a second, and followed its light inside.

At once Pim became aware that she had entered not merely a natural formation but somebody’s home. The space was furnished with a table, a large bed, and two chairs, all fashioned from rough-cut logs roped together with vines. Other objects, similarly primitive in their manufacture, littered the floor: simple stone tools, baskets of dried fronds woven together, plates and cups of unfired clay. She lit another match and approached the bed. Shadows stretched before her, revealing a human form beneath the brittle blanket. She drew it aside. The body, what persisted of it—dried bones the color of wood, a whorl of hair—lay curled on its side, its arms tucked protectively against its chest. Whether male or female, Pim could not discern. Carved into the wall beside the bed were a series of marks, small slashes cut into the stone. Pim counted thirty-two. Did they represent days? Months? Years? The bed was unnecessarily large for one person; there were two chairs, not one. Somewhere, probably not far, would be the grave of the cave’s other inhabitant.

Pim stepped outside. That she was meant to conceal her journal in this place was apparent; the cave was a repository of the past. Still, she longed to know more. Who were these people? Where had they come from? How had they died? Standing at the edge of the pool, she could feel the presence of these silenced lives. She made her way around the walls. Gradually, as if a veil had lifted from her eyes, other artifacts emerged. Shards of pottery. A wooden spoon. A circle of stones where a fire had once been laid. On the far side of the pool, she came to a tangle of bushes with thick, waxy leaves. Something lurked behind it—a curved shape, bulging from the ground.

It was a boat—more precisely, a lifeboat. The fiberglass hull, about twenty feet long, was settled deeply into the soil. Vines entwined it, rendering it nearly invisible; a thick duff of organic matter carpeted the bottom, small plants growing from it. How long had it rested here, slowly sinking into the jungle floor? Years, decades, even more. She circled the hull, hunting for clues. It yielded nothing until she reached the stern. Affixed to the transom, partially obscured by vegetation, was a wooden plaque—faded, brittle, riven with rot. Spectral letters were etched into its surface. She crouched and pulled the vines aside.

For a time she did not move, so profound was her astonishment. How could it be so? But as the minutes passed, a new feeling rose within her. She remembered the storm, the great wind howling down, carrying them to shore when all seemed lost. Destiny was too small a word; there was a force at work that ran far deeper, a thread woven into the fabric of all things. When more time had elapsed she rose and returned to the clearing. She had no intentions; she was acting by instinct. At the edge of the pool she knelt once more. There, in the water’s placid surface, she beheld the image of her face: a young face, smooth and unlined, though this, she knew, would change. Time would have its way, as it did for everyone. Her babies would grow; she, and all the people she loved, would recede, becoming memories, then memories of memories, and finally nothing at all. It was a sad thought, but it also made her happy in a way that felt new. This island of refuge: It was meant to be theirs. It had waited for them all along, so that history could begin again. That’s what the words on the plaque had told her.