And then he glances around him. “You may rise!”
Immediately there is a stirring all around us as people start getting up and going back about their business of readying the food. Aeson is up immediately, and he looks at me with such desperate worry that I forget my moment of triumph and my heart starts pounding again. The two women rise slowly and gracefully and return to their seats—which they resume in dignity—as if nothing happened.
It occurs to me, they might all be used to this kind of treatment, such Imperial outbursts.
Well, I’m not. I stand motionless, frowning at him—the monster. I keep my mouth shut however, just in case anything else I say might cause harm to Aeson—or anyone else present.
But the Imperator continues observing me like a hawk, and now he is subdued and thoughtful. A complex expression is in his eyes. I’m not sure what it is I see in them, but there is something new there, a kind of doubt, an uncertainty.
“I am beginning to see why you chose her,” the Imperator says suddenly to Aeson. “She might indeed be a curious specimen, an Earth genetic anomaly worthy of extensive study—”
“She is not a specimen, Father,” Aeson interrupts in a strong cold voice. “She is my Bride and my Imperial Consort. A reminder, in case you forget, she is mine under the law.”
“Yes, yes, she is yours, boy,” the Imperator says dismissively. Suddenly it’s as if he is no longer taking me seriously, and I am no longer the focus of his scrutiny. “I have seen enough for the moment, and admit that your choice might have more merit than I originally thought.”
And then Romhutat Kassiopei glances at me. “Do not be afraid of me, Gwen Lark. You may take your seat at the table. I see I was too harsh on you, girl. There, sit—next to your Bridegroom.”
And the Imperator strides over to the tall-backed chair at the head of the table to the right of the Imperatris and sits down.
Aeson glances at me meaningfully, then walks around to take the empty seat to his father’s right. I follow him, and sit next to Aeson. This way I am seated directly across from Princess Manala.
“A lovely morning, is it not?” the Imperator says, raising his hand to motion to the servant who hovers nearby waiting. “Let us break eos bread.”
And as the servants begin moving with platters of food and carafes of drink, I suddenly feel Aeson’s firm hand take mine under the table, squeezing it with reassurance. He does not look at me, only his touch holds me tight. . . .
I glance up from the polished wooden tabletop and see Manala staring at me with her wide open eyes. At the same time my peripheral vision tells me that Devora Kassiopei watches me with her gentle eyes—her look is soothing like a balm.
But the Imperator speaks, and merely hearing the sound of his voice spoils everything.
“Welcome to the Imperial Family of Kassiopei, Gwen Lark. My new daughter, welcome to Atlantida.”
Chapter 5
Somehow I survive the Imperial “breakfast.” The food is plentiful and delicious—including dishes of something that could be cobbler made with strange great violet berries that smell like honeydew and caramel, and puff pastry drenched in creamy sauce and sprinkled with native nuts that taste like Earth hazelnuts—and it is served non-stop. But I hardly dare taste more than a few bites, and mostly push around pieces on my plate, and take shallow sips of some kind of light fruit juice. . . . Seriously, eating now, after the drama that just happened, is the last thing my body can deal with.
Table talk is extremely strained. The Imperator does most of it, speaking casually about matters at Court and people I don’t know, and switches back and forth from Atlanteo to English almost at random—I guess he is doing this to taunt me, because he glances at me frequently when it happens.
The Imperatris speaks very little, mostly commenting on the food and the weather—I learn that this kind of relatively cool and windy morning is considered a very warm morning here in the capital city Poseidon at this time of year. And Manala mostly just nods and thanks the servants every time they put something on her plate. I find her very gracious and innocent, and her entire appearance is somehow more naive than I would have expected. I think she might be only a little younger than me, but she seems vulnerable, for lack of a better word. Her facial structure is so fragile, such delicate features, and her skin coloration is a rich pale gold, less sun-kissed than that of her brother with his gorgeous bronze tan. I also see now that her eyes are a slightly different color than Aeson’s—his are true lapis lazuli blue, while hers are lighter, with a hint of violet.
Aeson meanwhile simply eats in silence, and whenever he looks at his father or replies to him, I see a cold hardness in his eyes. He also frequently glances at me and my mostly full and unmoving plate with concern, and says softly, “You need to eat, Gwen. . . .”
“Thanks, I’m fine,” I reply. But I’m still ice-cold inside, and it feels like my stomach is filled with rocks.
Only about fifteen minutes into the meal, a strange bell sound is heard, echoing on the wind like a rich gong. I glance up with curiosity, because it seems to come from beyond the edges of the roof terrace that borders the pavilion, from somewhere far below. . . .
The conversation pauses, and Manala makes a little sound of excitement, glances in the direction of the bell and then at me. She looks ready to spring up from her seat, and only her Imperial breeding is holding her back in place.
“What is it, Aeson?” I ask, looking out carefully at the panorama of white sky in the distance all around us, and trying to keep my eyes slightly lidded so as not to go blind.
“It is the Gardens rising!” Manala whispers, addressing me directly for the first time, and then glances at her brother. “Tell her!”
Aeson, whose generally tense and grim expression throughout the last half hour has been unrelieved, looks at his sister fondly, and a tiny smile comes to his lips. When he looks back at me, his eyes are almost back to their normal composed state.
“What?” I say, parting my lips. Curiosity gets the better of my fear and nervousness, especially since the bell tone, a deep, long and sustained C note, repeats itself, filling the expanse with placid harmony.
“It’s a little difficult to explain, and might be best observed,” he says after a brief pause.
The bell tone sounds for the third time, seeming even louder.
“Aeson! Tell her!” Manala mouths the words again in a whisper, then opens her eyes very wide and makes eyebrow gestures to her brother. I am guessing this is a method of family communication they share, because Aeson also widens his eyes and moves one eyebrow up at her in the closest to a “funny face” I’ve ever seen him make. I stare at him in amazement, finding it absolutely endearing. Did Aeson just make a face at his sister while their parents weren’t looking?
But it’s the Imperator who speaks, because obviously he is paying close attention to all that happens at the table, and my question has not gone unnoticed.
“Gwen Lark—you are the daughter of a classical historian, is that so?”
“Yes,” I reply, thinking, Wow, so he knows about my Dad being a classics professor! What else does he know about me? Probably a whole lot, if not everything!
“Then you must have heard of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.”
My curiosity takes over my fear completely. “Yes, of course,” I say, furrowing my forehead in thought. “They were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Okay, let me think—they were either a complete myth or possibly built by King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, or, according to another theory, they were built by um—what’s-his-name—I think, King Sennacherib in Nineveh. Whichever king was responsible, supposedly it was a gift to his wife. They were some kind of amazing terrace gardens suspended above ground on platforms or levels, though I don’t remember what made them hanging gardens—”
“You do know—your Father taught you well,” the Imperator replies, almost indulgently.
“I wish my Dad was here . . .” I blurt suddenly.
“He would verify the details for sure.” And then I shut up.
Aeson sees my face change, and he immediately speaks in my stead. “That’s right, Gwen, you have the right idea definitely.”
“Except, you, girl, can know only as much as your ignorant historians can tell you,” Romhutat Kassiopei says, with a barely visible cruel smile. Wow, is that a taunt directed at my own father?
I look at the Imperator, feeling a return of cold in my gut. “Ignorant historians?”
“Yes, your Greeks, Romans—whoever passed on the story to your modern scholars.” The Imperator picks up a clear goblet glass and swirls the amber liquid in it, then drinks from it before continuing.
Meanwhile the bell tone sounds for the fourth time, echoing around us. It seems to be growing closer somehow—an impossibility, I know, but there’s no other way to explain it.
“The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” Aeson says in that moment. “They were not an ancient myth, but very real. Except—they were not originally in Babylon, or Nineveh. They were built in Atlantis. And they were not Hanging but Hovering—the garden terraces were built to levitate in the air, suspended on orichalcum platforms.”
“What?” I say. “Oh, wow!”
Aeson smiles at me. “Furthermore, over the years they were moved from Atlantis to the site that only later became Babylon, then to a different site that eventually became Nineveh, then back again to Atlantis. In the very end, we simply took them with us when we left Earth for good. And now—now they are here.” And he motions with his head in the direction outside and beyond the roof terrace balcony. “The ancient Hovering Gardens of Atlantis.”
In that moment Manala cannot hold herself back any longer. “My Father! Oh, may I please be allowed to rise and show Gwen Lark the Gardens? They are almost at the level of the roof, and I don’t want her to miss any of it!”
“Very well, you may get up, both of you.” The Imperator motions with his finger carelessly. “Go on, my daughters. Go and observe.”
The way he says the word “daughters” makes my skin crawl with icy goose bumps.
I stand up, more than happy to be gone from the Imperator’s proximity.
Aeson attempts to follow me, but his father tells him in a hard voice, “Sit, boy. Let her go, at least for a moment.”
And so I follow Princess Manala out into the terrace and into the burning whiteness of the sky beyond the roof, squinting for my life.
Manala comes to the very edge of the terrace roof balcony and leans over the wide polished stone railing. I stop next to her, shielding my eyes with one palm and squinting, and yet I’m nearly blinded by the white brilliance of the morning around us.
Now that we’re both at the railing, I can see her up-close. She’s slightly shorter than me, with a delicate slim figure, covered demurely in a long dress outfit of many layers and sleeves of fine gauze fabric, so that everything stirs and floats in the strong breeze.
The Imperial Princess turns her face to me, leans in, and whispers loudly in careful, accented English, emphasizing every word, “I am Ma-na-la, Aeson’s sister. . . .”
“I know!” I whisper back, with a smile and a similar emphasis, because something about her makes me want to laugh.
Manala seems surprised and her lovely violet-blue eyes widen—which must be impossible in this crazy-bright sunlight—and her delicate eyebrows rise somewhat. “Oh! You do? Well, I am so glad to meet you, Gwen!”
Charmed by her innocence, I smile at her. “Me too!”
Apparently this is all the introduction we need, because Manala touches my arm with her hand and then nudges me comfortably with her elbow. “Now, look! Look at the Gardens! They are forming in place!”
I carefully look out through the slits of my eyelids and perceive the sky as a homogenous ocean of milk-white fire. In that ocean, I see dozens of floating dark shapes—platforms shaped like rectangles and squares, oblongs and crescent semi-circles—ranging from twenty to several hundred feet across. They are rising like disembodied islands, from an illusion of haze which is created by the background of pure impossible light. And it’s all happening in the air, everywhere around us, for hundreds of feet.
The islands are terraces. The closest are only about ten feet away, and I can see the rich colorful greenery of flowering trees and shrubbery and climbing vines on trellises. Some have waist-high railing fences, while others come to an end with nothing more than a shallow stone border before the drop-off into an abyss around it. They are filled with soil, and in places paved with elegant stone walkways.
In moments, a new living sound permeates the airy expanse before us. It is the chirping of birds as they nest and flitter among the branches of the vegetation. . . . Birds! Well, that answers the question if there are any birds on Atlantis. Do I hear insects too? I wouldn’t be surprised. . . .
Several of the terraces have circulating fountains—at which I stare in absolute amazement. And most have elegant bridges that rise upward then somehow unfurl into a multitude of segments that extend, as though out of nowhere, and then connect from one platform to another, falling neatly into place in designated spots like snap-on pieces, so that you can walk from one floating island to another. . . . Meanwhile other terrace platforms reveal staircases that descend and connect in similar fashion to other terrace segments that remain at a slightly lower level, several feet below . . . beyond which even more terrace platforms hover lower yet. . . .
The whole armada of terraces rises slowly and gently to the level of the roof, accompanied by birdsong and the long bell tones that come at regular intervals. And as we continue to watch, the pieces come together like fitted puzzle shapes—oblongs and ovals fit into the concavities of crescents, rectangles and squares align next to each other, some fitting together seamlessly, others continuing to be separated by air and connected with bridge walkways.
And the crazy part is—this is all happening at multiple levels!
In other words, the terraces hover at various height levels. They descend and interconnect and branch out, and levitate in place together, all the way down to the ground, like a flimsy house of stacked cards, or a sprawling tree. Basically you can be down on the Palace grounds level below, and then step onto a lowest platform of the Hovering Gardens and climb the sections all the way up to the roof. . . .
“What an amazing feat of engineering, to make this structure work together like that!” I say, trying to squint and yet see the details of the wonder before me.
“Oh, yes!” Manala replies. “I love it so much!”
“How does it work? Where do the terraces go when they are not hovering?”
Manala points down to a sub-section of the Palace complex that looks vaguely like an Earth multi-level parking structure. “They are kept in storage for the night, and during bad weather. The Gardeners direct the pieces into their proper storage places in there, and then they close the walls to keep them safe. In the morning they bring them out again.”
“That’s just unbelievable!” I continue with excitement. “So intricate, so many pieces!”
Manala smiles mysteriously at me. “Sometimes,” she says, “the Gardens are allowed to hover at night, for special night parties and Court celebrations. That’s when they bring out the Floating Lanterns. . . .”
“Wow!” My mouth remains open. “Can we—can we actually cross over from here on the roof and walk across to the nearest terrace? I’d love to see them up-close! Maybe later?”
“Of course.” Manala nods comfortably and points to a section of the roof railing about twenty feet from us where I notice a four-foot portion of the stone ledge has been retracted into the floor, to form an opening. Here, a bridge walkway now connects to the nearest hovering terrace. “Here is the closest entrance into the Gardens. Oh, but there will be so many walks and parties! Or you can just walk alone, or together with me, anytime!”
“Just the two of us?”
“Yes! And Aeson can come too. He is so busy, but he often walks with me wheneve
r he has time.”
I grin at her. And then I continue to look out at the Hovering Gardens of Atlantis until I suddenly can see past the white haze, and my eyes focus enough to distinguish what lies beyond the whiteness of sky.
I see a distant horizon line directly ahead, and to one side it is irregular and jagged with what might be hills or very high dark mountains with flat plateaus interspersed with sharp peaks—I can’t tell for sure which, because I am uncertain of the true distance and the depth of the perspective, since my vision is still adapting. On the other side the horizon straightens and acquires a hard bluish-silver glimmer. Suddenly I get it—I am seeing a great stretch of ocean!
The ocean starts many miles outward, past some kind of curving bay. But long before it begins, I see what has to be artificial geometrical structures, proof of sentient settlement, or rooftops of a great sprawling city, with tall skyscraper high-rises, great stadium domes, and various urban landmarks. . . . Sprinkled throughout is a hive of moving airborne dots, which I assume are transport vehicles of some kind—planes, helicopters, hover cars?
And now as I squint and stare, I realize it is all around us—the capital city called Poseidon. It begins immediately beyond the walls of the Imperial Palace complex with its sculptured park and gardens area, its private airfield, and other sprawling structures which I have not yet experienced. Poseidon is immense!
“Oh, wow, I just realized we’re in the middle of a city . . .” I say with awe, continuing to look out through narrowed eyes.
“Yes, this is Poseidon, capital of Imperial Atlantida. The biggest city on this continent,” Manala says. “Soon you will see it for yourself.”
“I really look forward to it.” I smile lightly at her. “All those moving dots. Are those flying cars?”
She nods. “Most city transport is through the air, using hover technology. And the traffic this time of the year is pretty bad. It’s Green season, which means the whole city is getting ready for the Games.”